Running a business requires a lot of work, especially when it comes to marketing it properly.
Marketing a coaching business can be a daunting task, especially if you’re new to it.
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of information and advice available online.
So, let’s break it down to the basics.
In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into these six foundations to provide you with the insights and information you need to take your marketing to the next level.
Marketing A Coaching Business
The six foundations for marketing your coaching business include knowing your target audience, creating great messaging, having a website that is built to turn visitors into leads and customers, a CRM system so people don’t fall through the cracks, an email list to nurture your leads and make sales and automation tools to make your life easier.
By the end of this post, you’ll better understand these essential marketing elements and be on your way to developing a successful marketing strategy.
You can create a powerful marketing strategy that will help your coaching business thrive, but just like your house, you need a solid foundation to build it on.
Knowing Your Target Audience
The first key foundation of successful marketing is knowing your target audience.
You can’t market your business effectively if you don’t know who you’re targeting.
As the saying goes, “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”
This wisdom applies aptly to business. By focusing on a specific demographic, you can tailor your messaging, products and/or services to meet their unique needs and preferences, making your offerings more appealing.
Knowing exactly who you want to reach will help you tailor your messaging and tactics to resonate most effectively.
Spend time researching and understanding your target audience – what motivates them, what challenges they face, and how you can help them.
This will help you build strong relationships with your customers and earn their trust and loyalty.
It’s essential to identify your ideal customer and understand their needs and pain points.
For example, we work mainly with Coaches, Experts and Course Creators.
Does this mean that we don’t work with any other type of business? Hell no!
We love working with a number of different industries but we love working with coaches etc and as I’ve already said, if we tried to attract everyone we’d lose.
Don’t feel that if you pick a target market now that you’re married to it for life, we use to concentrate on Keap Website Design but realised that wasn’t where we wanted to concentrate on moving forward so we pivoted.
Pick an audience, go all in and test it out – you’ll have a much better idea of what’s working and what’s not than being a ‘jack of all trades’.
At a minimum you want to know;
- The type of customer you want to work with
- Age range
- Occupation
- What their challenges are
- What their pains are
If you know at least them worked out you’ll be in a better place.
You can download the above worksheet here.
Once you have a clear understanding of your target audience, you can tailor your marketing efforts to appeal to them.
Remember, trying to appeal to everyone will result in appealing to no one.
Create Great Messaging
Once you know who your audience is, it’s time to craft your message.
Create a message that is simple and clear, but most importantly, one that your audience can identify with.
Your messaging needs to talk directly to them in a language they’ll understand.
Keep it clear, concise, and solution-oriented.
Create messaging that addresses the pain points of your audience and highlights the benefits of your solution.
Focus on how your product or service solves their problems and benefits them.
Avoid trying to be cute or clever – ultimately, your messaging should clearly communicate how your product or service solves problems for your target audience.
When it comes to your messaging, there is one framework that I’ll always recommend – it’s what we use in our business and something I talk about A LOT!
It’s called StoryBrand.
I’d highly recommend you read the original book, Building A StoryBrand by Donald Miller where he goes through the framework and explains why it’s successful etc.
A quick way to get started with StoryBrand is this free online tool they offer, My StoryBrand, where you can start to develop your own StoryBrand Brandscripts.
As I’m sure you’ve heard before, storytelling is one of the most effective ways to get your message across and StoryBrand will help you do this and more.
Once you get your head around the framework (which is super basic, by design) you’ll be on your way to grabbing your audience’s attention and turning them from visitors to leads to customers in no time.
A High Converting Website
Now that you know who you are targeting and how you will talk to them, it’s time to turn your attention to your website.
Your website is often the first contact potential customers have with your business.
It’s crucial that your website speaks directly to your target audience with clear and concise messaging.
The best way to get people to stay on your website from the start is to check that it passes the ‘Grunt Test’.
The grunt test basically means if you showed your website to a caveman for 5 seconds and then asked them these questions, could they answer them?
- What is it that you do?
- Who do you do it for?
- What am I going to get out of working with you?
- How do I buy?
If you can answer these questions on the first section of your website, you’ve got a lot more chance of your visitors engaging in the rest of your site.
Your website should be designed to direct visitors to take a specific action, such as making a purchase or scheduling a consultation.
Make sure you place your call-to-actions throughout your website, I promise you, you won’t oversell on these and if you tell your visitors what to do, they’re a lot more likely to do it.
A well-designed and conversion-optimised website will help you convert visitors into paying customers.
I would always advise to also include a blog page that caters to your audience’s needs.
A great framework to follow here would be, They Ask, You Answer.
In its simplest form, you write blog posts that answer your audience’s questions.
This way, they will come back again and again whenever they need help or solutions to their problems and are much more likely to become leads.
Here are a few more ideas of things you can write about in your blog.
A CRM System To Keep On Top Of Your Leads
Now that we have the main 3 elements we need to bring in new leads, we need a way to manage them.
The fourth foundation is a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
A CRM system is a tool that allows you to manage your interactions with customers and prospects.
Every business, regardless of its size or industry, should have a system for collecting and managing information about leads and customers to make sure that none of them fall through the cracks.
This information can, in turn, help you develop targeted marketing campaigns and improve customer satisfaction.
Whether you opt for a purpose-built CRM software like Keap (which we use) or a simple spreadsheet, the important thing is to have a system in place.
This will enable you to track interactions, manage relationships, and ultimately drive better results.
Investing in a CRM system like Keap can streamline your marketing and sales processes, enhancing customer satisfaction and ultimately boosting your bottom line.
An Email List To Nurture Your Leads And Make Sales
Every business needs an email list – it’s a key foundation of effective marketing.
Time and again, email marketing has proven to deliver the best return on investment (ROI).
A well-maintained email list allows you to reach out to your audience with personalised messages, updates, and offers.
Be sure to include opt-in forms on your website, social media, and other channels to grow your list.
If you haven’t yet started building an email list, it’s high time you did.
Remember, the success of your email marketing efforts hinges on the quality of your list, so focus on attracting people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, it’s not just a numbers game!
With an email list, you have a direct line of communication (which you own) with your audience, which you can use to promote new products, offer valuable content and promotions, and keep them engaged.
The key to building an email list is to provide value to your audience in exchange for their contact information.
Offer incentives like valuable content, exclusive promotions, or free resources to encourage visitors to subscribe to your email list.
Automation
Finally, we come to automation.
Leveraging automation tools can significantly save you time and give you a competitive edge.
Automation allows you to create a personalised experience for your customers and frees up time so you can focus on other areas of your business.
You can automate email sequences, social media posts, and even your sales processes.
Automation helps you save time and effort, and it ensures a consistent experience for your customers.
Automation tools are a godsend for businesses. They can take over repetitive tasks, streamlining your operations and freeing up your time to focus on more strategic aspects of your business.
At a basic level, you should have automated systems for email follow-ups, invoicing and bookkeeping. However, there are many more types of automation tools available that can give you even better results.
Start with the basics, and as your business grows, you can explore other options.
Ready To Get Started?
Marketing your business can be challenging, but with the right foundations, it can be much more manageable and successful.
By focusing on your target audience, messaging, website, CRM, email list, and automation, you’ll be able to develop a solid marketing strategy that effectively communicates your brand’s message and converts visitors into paying customers.
Be sure to offer value to your audience, personalise your content, and, most importantly, stay true to your brand essence.
Remember, consistency is key, and with patience, persistence, and hard work, your business can achieve marketing success.
Once you have these 6 elements in place, it’s time to start driving visitors to your website and growing that email list.
Not sure where to start?
Book a free discovery call with us today, no catch, no hard sales pitch and no confusing chat. Just a conversation about your business and where you can make changes.
