I hear from a lot of coaches that they're overwhelmed by all the advice and information available on marketing. Most coaches actually know quite a bit about the subject of marketing – they just don't know where to begin or how to tell if they're on the right track.
How do you know if you're taking the right steps with your marketing? Answer: It depends on your objective.
There's an endless number of possibilities when it comes to marketing a business, but there are basically only three ways to grow a business:
1. Increase the number of leads
2. Increase the conversion rate of leads to customers
3. Increase the average dollar amount that each customer spends over time
So the question becomes, "Of those three objectives, which one is most critical to focus on right now?" Once you're clear about your objective, the options for marketing activities will seem less overwhelming.
For example:
- Coach Mike has a knack for "closing the deal". He knows his target market inside and out and he's got great people skills – when he has an initial consultation with someone, they usually end up hiring him. If he could get more initial meetings scheduled, he could get more clients.
So Mike's key marketing objective is to increase the number of leads by setting up a prospect marketing system and becoming more visible to his target market.
- Coach Debra has worked hard to build a targeted mailing list. She has a loyal following of subscribers who love her newsletters; the problem is that she doesn't have as many customers as she'd like.
Studies show that a customer who buys once is far more likely to buy again, so Debra's marketing objective is to improve conversion.
She'll want to make sure she's offering enticing introductory products to her subscribers – products that are low in cost but high in value, such as ebooks, ecourses or audio products.
She also needs to make sure she's encouraging prospects to take action sooner rather than later, to shorten the conversion cycle as much as possible.
- Coach Wendy is an experienced coach who has worked with lots of 1-1 clients over the years. She's carved out a nice niche for herself and is really good at helping her clients accomplish their goals in a short amount of time. The problem is that once the goals are accomplished, the clients move on, so Wendy is constantly worried about getting more new clients.
What Wendy needs to do is expand her offerings for clients who have completed the initial coaching contract in order to grow the value of each client and create additional revenue streams so that she isn't so dependent upon 1-1 coaching clients each month.
If you've been feeling stuck about what you should be doing with your marketing, take a step back and decide what's most important for your business right now:
- Getting more leads
- Converting more prospects to customers
- Growing the lifetime value of existing customers
And then figure out the most obvious action steps you'll need to take to get that done.
Once you're on track with the first objective, you can turn your attention to the next.
