How Do I Market Myself As A Coach?
The questions I get asked so many times are:
‘What should I say in my marketing? When should I say it? How do I create content? What type of marketing content should I create?’
‘How does it all fit together to get me clients, to get me leads, and to help me serve people with what I do?’
I will show you the complete system for doing exactly that right now…
How do I translate what I do into a marketing strategy to get coaching clients?
The first step is to know who you serve.
Who do you serve? Who are your ideal clients?
Who would benefit most from the things you love to do?
What are your skills, and why do you do this?
Why do you do what you do as a coach?
What does your ideal day look like?
There's no point in getting clients thick and fast if they're the wrong clients if they're not a suitable fit for your coaching if they're not the clients that you can serve best.
You need to find a fit between who you serve and what you love and are here on this earth to do. That's the first part of this...
When you know who you serve, you can speak their language. You can talk to prospective coaching clients about what matters, about what resonates with them, and you can show how you can transform their lives with what you do.
That's the first step in marketing your coaching business, know who you serve.
Understand the difference Your Coaching Makes
You must understand the difference that you make in people's lives with what you do.
If you don't understand this, then you will always fall flat in marketing your services.
As a coach, you really need to understand the transformation that you deliver in people's lives. Because remember this, this is critical. If you remember nothing else, remember this:
Nobody buys your products.
Nobody buys the products or the services or the courses at all.
They buy the solution.
They buy the transformation.
Your coaching clients buy the person who you can make them become, or you can guide them and help them become.
People buy the outcomes and solutions to problems, not products.
Understanding this is critical in making all of this work for you.
When you understand that you no longer sell a product, you no longer sell a service. ‘Hey, I've got these widgets come and buy them. Hey, I've got this cool thing. Do you want to buy it?’
Forget all of that… You're no longer doing that.
You're selling people from here on in on the outcome people want from your coaching. Okay?
Two Reasons People Buy Coaching
When anybody buys coaching services, or anything else, they do it for one of two reasons:
Moving away from pain or moving toward pleasure.
Moving Away From Pain
Feeling pain and wanting the pain to be reduced drives us with motivation to make a change, to make things different. So we look for ways to fix that.
Moving Towards Pleasure
The second is to move towards pleasure or desire. I'm here, but I long to be over there. I want to have this. I want to feel this. I want to know that; I want to be this. I want to be in paradise.
Here, people are in a desire state, moving towards the desired outcome.
Does that make sense?
People are moving away from pain or moving toward desire when they buy your coaching services. So that's what you should focus on in your marketing.
Not the product, because they don't buy that. They buy the outcome. And so when you talk about your products, talk about the pain. Talk about paradise, the solution state.
Prison to Paradise = Coaching Transformation
I use an exercise in my coaching called prison to paradise.
The prison to paradise exercise is looking at who that ideal client is for you, for your coaching business, and really diving in to understand what prison state they're in right now.
What does their life look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like for them?
Emotions in buying decisions are paramount.
We buy with 80 plus percent from emotion. So if you can understand that trigger emotion, what's driving people on that path to be more, to find more, to have more, then you're well on your way to being able to market yourself as a coach.
The antithesis of that is to understand what their life will look, sound, and feel like after they've consumed your product or services after they've been through your program after they've been on your course after they've been in your intensive… What would life look, sound, and feel like for those people when they are in the paradise state?
Then we come to the gap, the bit in the middle, the chasm, this is really the process by which you deliver your genius.
This is how you get them from prison to paradise. This is your course, your program, your coaching, these are the steps that you physically take somebody through to get them to paradise.
That is your process. That's your mechanism.
The Value Ladder For Coaches
Once you understand the people you serve and the problems you solve, you need to organize your offers into a structure, a Value Ladder.
In classical marketing, these are the Product and Price elements of the marketing mix. The goal is to have a range of products at varying prices that offer different levels of value (transformation) related to your client's journey. Breaking down the journey in this way allows you to grow your audience and your client base online using proven systems for building an audience (email list building) and converting that audience into paying clients (sales and marketing funnels).
How Two Circles, Prison To Paradise, and The Value Ladder Fit Together
Two circles, prison to paradise and value ladder are all inextricably bound.
Figure out your why and who would value that combined with the problems you solve for those groups of people and you have everything you need to market yourself as a business, transformation, or life coach online.
Diving into the problem part is where it gets very interesting…
We now face the wonderful task of organizing our offers, crafting customer journeys, and all kinds of cool things.
It begins, as always, with the client. What does their life look, sound, and feel like right now?
What do they see and read and hear and think and do and feel each day?
This kind of thinking transcends all traditional marketing segmentation.
Focus, instead, on the universal truths of being.
Innovative marketers in years gone by coined the term psychographic segmentation. Psychographic segmentation means the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of a group (segment) of people.
This is where things really get fun… Emotion drives buying decisions. Emotion drives our very being. Emotion triggers actions.
From a marketing perspective, for there to be a want or desire (more on the distinction shortly) there has to be a state of imbalance.
As a marketer, you should seek to redress that imbalance.
I have a desire for X, purchasing this product or service will give me X, therefore, I will be satisfied.
Desire is so interesting. It is simply a wish for things to be different from how they are right now.
We either want more of something that brings us pleasure, or we want to avoid something or have less of the thing that brings us pain.
Every human being on the planet, even you, is under the pleasure and pain spell.
More love, less hate. More fun, less work, more time freedom, less restriction.
Strip your offer back to the rawness of this desire to want something we don’t have, or desire to be free from something we have that we don’t want.
Understand your why and match your skills to clients who would value and pay for that (Two Circles), then solve problems for those clients (Prison to Paradise and Value Ladder).
This is what it means to put your clients first, at the center of everything you do.
Content Marketing Plan For Coaches
In creating content, the prison to paradise exercise has all the marketing content you need right there. You create content around the prison state. How to overcome the frustration of X, how to be seen as Y in your industry, etc...
And then the process here are five ways that you can overcome that frustration. Here's a really impressive technique that I've used with my coaching clients to help you understand X.
The things you do in your coaching become pillar content pieces.
Through and through you are being you in the world, you are sharing your expertise.
Share your knowledge as a coach and the wonderful things that you can bring into people's lives, not the product.
Remember, the transformation, the change, and the solution that you bring become your content creation strategy.
Transformation Becomes Your Pillar Marketing Content.
Pillar content is the stuff directly related to how you change people's lives, and how you transform people with your coaching, with your programs.
Further, Faster, Deeper with You As Their Coach
Create content pieces that drive people into your world and show them you can help them by helping. That's what sets you up as the ideal coach that can help them further, help them go faster, help them go deeper…
Know who you serve, understand the difference you make, and map out the prison-to-paradise journey - That's your service, your process.
Create pillar content from that process. Well-crafted pillar content will drive traffic to your offers. Traffic to what I call Rome.
All Roads Of Your Marketing Must Lead To Rome
In my marketing coaching, I teach people that all roads must lead to Rome. Rome is the end goal. As a coach, the likelihood is it's a conversation with you.
Have a page dedicated to that conversation with you. Have a Breakthrough Call or Strategy Session page with a Calendly link embedded on it, or some mechanism for them to get on a chat with you. Check out this online course that shows you the exact steps you need to create a high ticket funnel.
Use Calls To Action In Everything You Create
Create pillar content, all traffic, and all roads lead into Rome. Always have the next steps with everything you create.
Watch this…
…I have two popular blog posts with worksheets that show you how to do this. And I will link those below...
Look what I've just done in that, I've given you the next steps.
The next steps are things that you can do to go further down the rabbit hole, to go further, faster, deeper.
Do you see what I've done in the example? That's exactly what you need to do in your content.
This coaching business that you want to grow, or even create, will only happen if you create every day. If you show up to help people do the work, take the steps, be that helpful person you are, and be that person in the world. No excuses.
It doesn't matter if you hate the thought of making videos or writing; Get over that.
Find the thing you are amazing at, and you don't know until you play a little, until you try. Just try!
Don't sit on this, try, show up, be that person today, be that person tomorrow and the day after and the day after…
Show up, serve people, help people, deliver that transformation and show people how you can help by helping.
That's how you market yourself as a coach.
That's how you get people into your world who want to know more about how you can help them.
Your Coaching Is Not About You
Remember, it's not about you. It's not about your products. It's not about your service. It's not about your coaching.
It's about the difference you make in that person's life. That transformation you deliver from prison to paradise.
Show up, create every day, and take that step…
I wish you every success and I'll be back soon with more content to help you move toward that desired state. To have more clients, to have more presence, to have more recognition, to help more people with what you do.
You can change the world with your genius. You just need to step into that identity and be that person every day. You’ve got this!
Until next time…
Next Steps...
- Know who you serve - Two Circles
- Understand the difference you make - Prison to Paradise
- Create pillar content - Prison to Paradise journey
- All roads lead to Rome - Create a dedicated page for prospects to book time with you
- Create every day...
Find Your Niche - Check out this Blog Post and this Free Find Your Niche Course.
Understand Your Prison to Paradise process.
Check out the implementation checklist I created and my Content With Intent course.
