Posted on September 19, 2014 by Stephan Wiedner
It’s true. A lot of coaches hate marketing. I have heard it so many times and frequently from excellent coaches with amazing backgrounds:
“I suck at marketing”
“Marketing is foreign to me”
“It just feels forced”
I think I know why.
A lot of coaches think of marketing as hunting. You are out there in the great wild with a club in your hand ready to pounce on the next creature that walks in your path. When you knock it over the head, you feast for a while and then it’s back to the hunting game. The prevailing thought of the hunter is barbaric and hardly psychologically “evolved”:
“Me hungry. Must get food.”
Photo credit: Lord Jim on Flickr, Creative Commons
That line of thinking (“me hungry, must get food”) goes against our values, doesn’t it?!
Instead, consider marketing to be like farming. In order to have a plentiful harvest year after year (ahhh, just imagine a regular stream of clients coming to you month after month…), you need to start by clearing the soil and understanding what is going to grow in your environment.
Then, you can plant a variety of seeds, many of which will not bear fruit for some time, sometimes even years. Have the patience to tend to the garden, adding water, nutrients, and the essential ingredients to make your seeds grow. And know that things harvest at different times and some things take longer than others. Just like real clients. Not everybody is going to hire you on the first encounter. Give them lots of different ways to experience what you have to offer and build long-term trust and credibility.
Here are just a few ideas for the types of seeds you can plant to generate a long-term stream of incoming client leads:
- maintain a blog
- write a book
- give regular public talks
- host workshops
- volunteer
- SEO optimize your website
- buy Google Ads
- build a social media strategy
- host a local meetup
- create an online program
And of course, a paid membership on Noomii can be one of the many seeds that you plant. Go ahead and sign up if you haven’t already.
What’s to hate about marketing when you’re farming for clients?!!
Please leave your comments below.
Stephan, I LOVE this article. When I was first starting out, it was exactly like that for me! I found myself wanting clients so badly that I would go after anyone I could. Now it’s quite different for me and I’ve developed a taste for the finer clients. I’d rather go hungry than work with people who aren’t the right fit for me.
love the cave man analogy! I have a sales statistic on my desk to remind me of this point. Only 1% of sales are made on the first contact and more than 80% of sales happen on the 5th to 12th contact. People need to think of their own purchasing habits. How often do you buy a service on the first contact? Probably pretty rare. So why expect your ideal client to do it? Just keep sharing who you are, the results you can deliver, real life stories of your own clients and the calls will start coming!
Stephan,
Thanks for sharing the cave man perspective. It is so appropriate for so many of us. Marketing is also a cost burden until revenue outpaces. Cultivation takes time which is also in limited supply. My take away then is, do the right things, do them well and don’t give up.
A suggestion for Noomii: please separate coaching request into coaching practice style. I am a business coach from start-up to exit. Those are the only type of leads I would like to see in my in box.
Thank you,
Richard
Thanks Tom, Kathleen, and Richard for your comments.
@Tom: I hope you’re not going hungry and that the opposite is happening for you.
@Kathleen, It’s easy to forget the percentages and to write off a potential lead if they don’t become paying customers right away. Persistence is key.
@Richard: “do the right things, do them well and don’t give up.” Good words of advice. Also, thanks for the feature suggestion. I’ll run it by the dev team.
Hey man,
We do marketing plans maybe you should partner with us?
Thanks, Stephan! Great article! I second Richard’s advice – “don’t give up”. Believe in yourself and in what you are standing for and other people will too. It also helps me to remember that people can only learn about my valuable coaching services if I let them know about them.
I’m not a life coach, but as a career coach I share the same frustrations. I think the root of the problem is summarized in your Bootcamp video – people know when they need a plumber or a doctor, but they don’t know when they need a coach. That makes our marketing part awareness education, part branding, part authority establishment, and part sales.
One way to help speed things up – open an Adwords account and use the Google Keyword Planner to help you determine what search terms people are using to research the kind of problems you help solve. Then use those search terms in your articles, books, social media, etc.