“My integrity goes beyond marketing I’m afraid”
A coach just said this to me in a DM, and I’m blown away. We were conversing because he had asked me about a judgement he perceived in something I said in a comment on a coach’s post. There was no judgment. It was simply a fact.
To be clear, this coach had initiated the conversation in my DMs.
To make this easy to understand and to preserve the anonymity of those concerned, let me call the coach who posted Jim and the coach who believes that his integrity goes beyond marketing, George.
In his post, Jim referred to a challenge that his chosen audience of potential clients struggle with. The words he used to describe this challenge were the same words used by the potential clients.
This is important. If we are to reach people to help them understand that coaching can help them with some of the things they’re grappling with, we need to use the language they use themselves, or they won’t hear us.
I mean that literally. If people don’t understand what we’re talking about, they won’t listen.
George thought Jim was using the wrong term and was happy to say this in a comment on Jim’s post. He shared his view that the term we use as coaches to describe this challenge is more accurate.
George’s comment on Jim’s post started with the words we need to get the language right and told Jim how the phrase he’d used was wrong and that he, George, had the correct phrase.
George may well be right. It may be that his word is more accurate than the word the people who have the problem themselves use.
But that’s not important in this situation.
Which is better, to be right like George or, like Jim, to use the language of the group of people themselves? Using the language of the people we have chosen to focus our marketing on means we can reach people who may not understand the power of coaching in a way that encourages them to ask for help.
What I’m talking about is, of course, the difference between coach-speak and client-speak. Coach-speak is our jargon. Client-speak is the language our potential clients use.
If we look at this in a different context (and one in which I have recent experience), it’s like having the bloke at the Apple Store describe the features of an iMac to me in technical jargon. It may well be perfectly correct, but I had no idea what he was talking about.
Speak to me in words I understand, and I get that you can help me. Speak to me in a language with which I am unfamiliar and I do not understand that you can help me. It’s the same with coaching jargon. For example, what does ‘holding space’ mean to a non-coach? Even worse, using coaching jargon puts an unintended barrier between us and the people we want to help.
A Common Misunderstanding About Marketing
So, back to the DMs. George sent me a message because he felt judged by my comment. This is my comment (or an anonymised version of it)
It doesn’t matter how we, as coaches, intellectualise concepts or get stuck in semantics. What’s important is that we use the language the people we’re talking to (or about) use so that they understand what we mean. If we do this, people who don’t know what we mean when we say we’re coaches can still access our support because they can see themselves in our words. Jim knows what he’s talking about and speaks the language of those he’s describing.
George felt judged. He thought I was saying that Jim knows more about this particular group of people than he does. After all, he told me in a message, he also works with this particular group of people and knows them well.
I explained that Jim’s post wasn’t about being semantically accurate it was a marketing post. This is when George explained that his integrity goes beyond marketing. I’m sorry to report that I reacted badly to this comment, told George he was utterly patronising, wished him a good day and flounced out of my DMs. (George, I apologise for my reaction if you’re reading this. I hope this article goes some way to explaining why I reacted in the way that I did.)
I had a big emotional reaction to what appeared to be a small stimulus because it wasn’t a small stimulus.
George’s belief that integrity and marketing are not synonymous is prevalent among coaches. In particular – although not exclusively – it’s common among a specific group of coaches who built coaching businesses using the monetisable credibility they already possessed when they became coaches.
For the record, I don’t know if George is a coach who had existing monetisable credibility when he became a coach.
If you don’t understand what I mean by monetiseable credibility, I wrote an article about it – you can find it here: https://thecoachingrevolution.com/2022/10/31/monetisable-credibility/
Why It’s Not A Small Stimulus
The implication George was making was that his integrity is somehow better than the integrity of marketing. This is what many coaches believe, and it’s nonsense.
Worse than that, it’s nonsense that prevents a massive proportion of coaches (circa 80%) from succeeding.
The insidious message that we receive as coaches, that marketing is lacking in integrity or is unethical, is harmful to our profession. It’s harmful because it prevents coaches from learning how to market well.
Here are some hard facts.
- Every single business in the world has to have paying clients. Without paying clients it’s not a business, it’s a hobby.
- To have clients, every single business in the world must have a client acquisition process.
- For some coaches, that process can simply be using their existing reputation and network to acquire coaching contracts. If this is you, you are privileged.
- Most coaches do not have a stellar reputation and network to ‘work’ and so this ‘lift up your eyes and have good conversations’ way of building a coaching business doesn’t work for them.
- Therefore, most coaches need to build a different kind of client acquisition process.
My big emotional reaction was because I have spent the last 7 years and three months working to dispel the myth that all marketing is lacking in integrity, or is unethical. It’s important to me that coaches understand that this belief is harming them.
I work tirelessly because I believe in the power of good coaching. Without a solid client acquisition process – an alternative to the less solid ‘have good conversations’ – the majority of coaches disappear. They don’t lose their love of, or belief in coaching, they simply succumb to the belief that the coaching profession is saturated and stop trying to acquire paying clients.
The coaching profession is not saturated. For the coaching profession to be saturated, everyone who could possibly benefit from coaching must have a coach. Clearly, that’s not the case.
I have had significant success in my work because many coaches now have businesses due to what they learned from me. They didn’t just learn, of course; they implemented too.
If you’re wondering exactly what ethical marketing, or marketing with integrity looks like, why don’t you join my 4-Day Challenge? We run the challenge several times a year, and it is always very well received. You can find out more here: https://thecoachingrevolution.com/NailYourNiche