Market your coaching program: Ten ways to increased profit
The first step in marketing your coaching program is to compile various products that are at different price points all leading up to the most expensive coaching program you can offer which is, naturally, one-on-one coaching with you.
Some examples of products that you can offer are:
• Blogs
• Articles
• Newsletter
• eBooks
• Print Books
• eCourses
• Group webinars
• Group phone calls
• One-on-one coaching
• One-on-one coaching via email
• One-on-one coaching via Skype or phone
The first thing you should notice about the list above is that the first one, blogs, is your simplest and easiest item to create and the last item, one-on-one coaching via Skype or telephone is your most difficult due to the scarcity of time. So in your marketing endeavors consider how you can maximize your offerings at the top of the list, the middle of the list, and at the bottom of the list.
By this, what I mean is that you will want to charge less for the easiest to create, offering it to more people, and charge more for your most time intensive offering creating more value for you and your client. Now that you have some ideas about what type of products you can compile and offer in your coaching program, we can get to the ten ways to market your offerings in a way that will increase your profits.
1. Blog — Create a blog that is attached to and part of your website. Try to write something useful on the blog daily. Do not over stress about what goes on the blog. It should be in your niche, it should be relevant, and not too aggressive in terms of asking for sale, although it should have a call to action of some kind.
2. Article Marketing — Even with the new Google algorithm article marketing is not dead. As normal you need to put out quality, original, relevant, and useful content to your article marketing directories of choice. Use only the most reliable directories that are picky about content that they accept.
3. Newsletters — Create a newsletter that everyone who signs up receives something useful at least weekly in their email in box. If you do not send out something regularly they will forget about you and think that you are spamming them when you finally send something. Don't forget that you can use automation features within your newsletter software to automatically update subscribers to your blog posts, your sales, and events.
4. eBooks & eReports — Make full use of your eBooks and eReports. Realize that even when you ask people not to, they're probably going to share them. So, make it worthwhile by including links to your other offerings, affiliate links, and anything that can bring more people to your coaching practice.
5. Print books –Believe it or not you can easily create a print book by updating and compiling all your other information into one book. Then you can use a self publishing service such as create space or lulu.com to create a wonderful book available for both print and eBook download on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble . Having your own book and being a published author can give you tremendous credibility within your niche whether you find a publisher or you self publish.
Did you notice that the first five tips are also products? They're products that you can earn revenue from, but they are also marketing for your coaching practice. The rest of the marketing ideas are simple marketing tactics and not products, but they are very valuable and you can use them to market all the items above, as well as your coaching practice.
6. Press Releases — One often overlooked method of marketing is the tried and true press release. Today you can create a press release and send it to the online places like PR Web, but you should also send it out to a targeted list of offline sources so that you can get your press release in your local, state and national newspapers, magazines and television news spots.
7. Join Social Networks — Join social networks that your target market is joining. Sure you might want to join a few where coaches hang out, but it will be more effective if you join groups that your target market is joining. Then, here is the golden rule: Give away your advice free by answering their questions with nothing more than the knowledge that they can click on your signature line to find out more of what you have to offer. It feels good, and it works.
8. Take it offline — Participate in meet-ups where your target market is and again, offer free advice always pointing people toward your products and services without being pushy. After all, you only want highly coachable clients in your lucrative coaching practice and an unwillingness to buy your products means they're not ready. This is especially true when you're offering various entry levels to your coaching program in the form of lower priced, mid priced and the ultimate your one-on-one coaching.
9. Create a fan base — If you have an “inner-circle” club you can create a fan base that will create actual cheerleaders for your business. Allow your inner circle to promote your products and services for a referral fee. This is called an affiliate or referral program and is an excellent way to not only attract new clients but to retain the ones that you have.
10. Test your efforts — The only way to get really good at marketing your coaching business is to test each of your efforts and pay attention to your return on investment. Testing each effort, changing a small aspect of each effort, and then trying again. When something works, do it again and again.
Glennette Goodbread, Owner
Premium Web Design and Hosting
