If you ask coaches why we coach, or why we want to coach, the idea of having a positive impact on the world will always appear in one guise or another. It’s fundamental to who we are and why we do this work.
Coaching itself has a positive impact on clients, and that tends to be what we think of when we talk about making a difference. We think the way we can make a difference is through our coaching, through the transformative work that happens in those one-to-one conversations.
That’s true, but it’s only part of the story.
The Impact We’re Not Seeing
Once we understand how ethical marketing works, we realise we can start making a small impact almost immediately, and have the additional benefit of acquiring clients too. We can have a positive impact on a much wider group of people than we will ever work with as clients.
A ripple effect happens because good, ethical marketing is about speaking directly to a specific group of people about something that’s really troubling them – something that working with us as coaches can help them resolve. The way that marketing manifests is that we speak with knowledge and understanding of the situation in which this group of people finds themselves, and we empathise with it.
Calling Out The Shame
The kind of problems that coaching can help with often carry an element of shame with them, even when there’s no logical reason for the shame.
For example, someone who is continually overlooked for promotion often doesn’t realise that they are invisible at work, that being good at what you do and working hard just isn’t enough, and that they need visibility and influence too if they are to climb the career ladder. It’s not unusual for them to feel embarrassed and ashamed of their lack of progress. They look around and see people they helped train being promoted above them, and they think there’s something wrong with them.
More Examples…
Another example is the person whose lifestyle choices have led to ill-health that’s reversible if they can make different choices, but they don’t seem to be able to. They feel ashamed and embarrassed at what they perceive as their own lack of willpower. They look around and seem to see that everyone else has willpower but they don’t.
Another example is the person who has climbed the corporate ladder and reached the top of their chosen career, only to discover that the thought of having to do this for the next 15 or 20 years fills them with horror. They don’t know what to do and feel foolish and ashamed at themselves for being ungrateful. They look around and don’t see anyone else struggling with the feelings they have.
A final example is the coach who wants to build a coaching business but is really struggling to find clients. They have tried everything they can think of and nothing seems to work. The pervasive myths that the profession is saturated or that ‘no one is interested in coaching’ feel true. They’re embarrassed and ashamed that they’re failing when it appears that so many other coaches seem to be succeeding, but they don’t know how.
‘Secret Fear’
In each of the above examples, the ‘secret fear’ is something that no one talks about. The feelings of shame are internalised and are experienced as personal failings.
What Good Marketing Does
Good marketing calls out this shame, because there is no reason to be ashamed in any of these examples. The feelings that each of these people are experiencing are perfectly normal for someone who finds themselves in the position they’re in, yet no one talks about it because of the misplaced shame.
When we call out the shame in an empathetic way, the people we’re speaking to feel seen and heard. Coaching Revolution coaches often get private messages saying things like ‘I read what you wrote and you’re talking about me! It’s such a relief to realise that it’s not just me who feels like this!’
Being able to describe the problem our potential clients are struggling with in a knowledgeable way, and to empathise with them, helps people realise that there is a way out of their situation. Often people have no idea that coaching might be the solution because, in the main, people don’t understand what our kind of coaching is. Feeling seen and heard, and allowing people to realise it’s not just them, can be empowering for many. Some will reach out to become clients. For others, simply knowing it’s not just them and not their fault is enough.
The Impact Beyond Client Work
A personal example – I have coaches who contact me to say that they read my book and they have implemented everything and now have clients. That’s a huge win for me, and often the coach has read a free PDF copy of the book. I also have coaches who contact me having read an article, the ones about monetisable credibility in particular, who say that realising why ‘just having good conversations’ isn’t working for them and that it’s not their fault has lifted a weight from their shoulders.
I will never work with most of these coaches as clients, but I’ve still had a positive impact on their lives. Through marketing content that speaks to their specific situation with knowledge and empathy, I’ve helped them understand something important about themselves or their circumstances. I’ve helped lift shame they didn’t need to be carrying.
That’s the power of good marketing. It creates positive impact long before anyone becomes a client, and it reaches far more people than we could ever work with directly.
Why We Don’t See This
Most of us don’t realise that our marketing can be a force for good in this way because we are under the impression that marketing is about manipulation, about making people buy things they don’t want. Some of us may have spent thousands with a marketing ‘guru’ and got nothing actionable out of it because we ‘fell for the marketing’ and so we think marketing is a scam.
This leads us to resist learning how to market properly. We tell ourselves that if our coaching is good enough, clients will find us. We focus all our energy on becoming better coaches, believing that’s how we’ll make our positive impact on the world.
What we’re missing in this thought process is that without effective marketing, the people who need us most will never find us. The person struggling with invisible career stagnation keeps thinking it’s their fault, the person ashamed of their health choices keeps believing they’re uniquely weak, the senior professional filled with dread about the next 15 years keeps thinking they’re ungrateful and the coach failing to find clients keeps thinking they’re just not good enough.
All of these people need to read something that made them feel seen and understood. They needed someone to call out the shame and say “these feelings are normal for someone in your situation, it’s not your fault, and there’s a way forward.” They need the positive impact that good marketing creates.
Marketing As Service
When marketing is done well, when it speaks directly to a specific group of people about their real challenges with genuine knowledge and empathy, it becomes a service in itself. It helps people before they ever become clients. It lifts shame, provides clarity, offers hope, and creates connection.
That’s not manipulation and it’s not making people buy things they don’t want. That’s creating genuine positive impact in the world, which is exactly what we said we wanted to do when we became coaches.
When coaches understand this, they stop seeing marketing as a necessary evil or a scam and instead they see it as an extension of their mission to help people. They understand that every piece of content they create that speaks to someone’s specific struggle with empathy and understanding is making a small difference, whether that person ever becomes a client or not.
You Might Be Wrong About Marketing
If you think marketing is manipulative, if you think it’s about pushing people to buy things they don’t want, if you think the only way to have a positive impact is through your coaching work with actual clients, you might be wrong.
Good marketing – ethical, empathetic, focused marketing that speaks to specific people about their real challenges – has a positive impact long before anyone books a session. It helps people feel seen and heard. It lifts unnecessary shame, it offers hope and clarity and it creates connection. It creates a positive impact on the world and it’s available to you right now, not sometime in the future when you finally have a full diary of clients.
You could start making a difference today by learning how to market in a way that serves people, that speaks to their struggles with knowledge and empathy, that helps them feel less alone even if they never become your client. That might seem impossible if you’ve only ever seen marketing as something distasteful or manipulative. But it’s not impossible. It just requires understanding how ethical marketing actually works, and how it can be a force for good in people’s lives.
An Opportunity
If you’re even slightly curious about whether you might be wrong about marketing, about whether there might be a way to have a positive impact through your content and visibility long before anyone becomes a client, may I offer you a way to learn a bit more for free? Why not join my next free challenge, Nail Your Niche? We run the challenge several times a year and there’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me for just £99 (inc VAT) – that provides us with time for a lot of robust conversations about how ethical marketing works.
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