I speak to so many coaches from a wide variety of backgrounds. From the public sector, to small private companies to huge corporations – coaches and those who want to be coaches come in many shapes and sizes. Many of them tell me that their marketing is failing.
Often, coaches find their way into my diary when they are in the final throes of their coaching credential – for The Coaching Revolution, that’s the perfect time for them to talk to me. Others find us once they have already started their coaching business. To a (wo)man, these coaches will tell me that they’ve worked really hard on their marketing, but to no avail.
Nothing they do seems to generate anything more than a few likes.
The holy grail of an inbound enquiry hasn’t been reached, and the even holier one (as it were) of an actual paying client seems far away.
Why Your Marketing Isn’t Working (Probably!)
Here are 3 reasons why your marketing could be failing.
Website
There is a belief amongst coaches that people are searching for coaches. Well, I can tell you, They’re not. No one (or very few) goes to Google and searches for a life coach (or mindset coach, or any other kind of coach). The only traffic that will ever land on your website is traffic that you drive there yourself.
If you drive people to your website and when they get there, they find a site that’s all about you, they’ll leave. Do you have a website that’s about you? Check your bounce rate and you’ll see what I mean. (Bounce rate is how many/long people stay on your site).
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is, if it contains:
- your ‘story’
- lists your coaching credentials
- Describes all the different kinds of people you can work with (from business owner to divorcing couples)
- Talks about your different coaching programmes
then your site is about you and your marketing is failing.
It should be about your client – not about you.
Websites that clearly articulate who they are for and what problem they solve work. Those that are glorified CVs don’t. It’s as simple as that.
Your Social Media Profiles
When you set your social media ‘name’ as Jo Soap MFd, ABC, BCC, GHI (or whatever) this isn’t creating the impression you think it is.
You may think it is demonstrating your knowledge and expertise. It probably does demonstrate this to other coaches. We might think ‘gosh, Jo is an MFd, ABC, BCC, GHI coach – isn’t she smart/accomplished/highly qualified?’. The problem with this is that your intended clients are almost certainly not other coaches.
What it’s actually doing in terms of attracting clients is absolutely nothing. Potential clients who are not coaches (ie most clients!) have no idea what you’re going on about with your A-Z of your post-nominals. To be perfectly frank, unless your target audience is a huge corporation, they almost certainly don’t give a fig about your qualifications.
All they care about is one thing and one thing only: What can you do for them? If that’s not clear, immediately, you will simply not register on the radar of your potential client.
Your potential client only cares about what you can do for them.
Your Job Title/Business Name/Logo
Are you a mindset coach? A life coach? Or a master coach? Or even a professional coach? Is your business name uplifting? Is your logo meaningful?
How you introduce yourself is actually irrelevant. Your potential client probably doesn’t understand the meaning of the title you use in the way that you do. Ask people what a life coach is and invariably they think it’s someone who teaches people how to have a good life.
Agonising about job titles and clever business names is a waste of time because potential clients simply don’t care. I don’t mean to belittle your efforts and I know that there are some very clever names for coaching businesses, but what I also know to be true is that your potential client just doesn’t care.
All they care about what you can do for them.
What To Do Instead
If you’re weeping into your coffee, looking at your beautiful CV-type website, your branding and your clever business name, do not despair!
It is entirely possible to turn the tables on what has so far been unsuccessful marketing.
To stop your marketing from failing you need to:
- Decide what kind of client you are going to work with, and what one problem you can solve for that kind of client
- Write a marketing message that describes in crystal-clear language (not coaching language) how working with you will solve that problem
- Be where people who look just like the kind of client you want to work with are
Are you struggling to understand how to do this?
May I offer two potential solutions?
- Join Coaching Republic – our free, resource-filled community for business-building coaches
- Let’s talk? You can find a link to my diary here.