Ep 108 - 3 Steps to Market Your Coaching Business
Business Success + Life Coach, Debbie Shadid, is talking with you about the methods you can take to get your business seen by more ideal clients.
We know that marketing is important for our business growth, but the “how-to” of actually showing up for our business can be overwhelming.
In this episode, I’m breaking down how to market your business into three different steps - where to market, how to create the content, and how to re-purpose it so you never run out of things to share.
Tune in to this week’s episode for simple measures you can take to create value-packed content and ensure you're marketing consistently all year round.
FREE WORKSHOP: A Marketing Plan for Life Coaches
Watch on YouTube
Transcript
00;00;06;05 - 00;00;24;04 | Debbie
Welcome to the Business Building Boutique podcast for new life coaches. If you are a newly certified coach who's trying to figure out how to grow your business, you're in the right spot. Join me each week to learn simple business growth strategies along with step-by-step marketing tips to get you seen by clients in your niche. I'm going to be your guide,
00;00;24;04 - 00;00;44;21 | Debbie
I'll tell you what to do so you can feel confident in your business. And here's the truth, ladies. You can build your dream coaching business without paid ads and without a fancy sales funnel. So, if that sounds interesting and you're ready to get more paid clients, then let's get started. Well, hello. I hope you guys are having an amazing week.
00;00;45;06 - 00;01;15;08 | Debbie
Welcome to the podcast. Today is the second week of the three-part series on effective marketing for your life coaching business. Last week we talked about creating a clear and concise message for your marketing. It's going to be short and sweet, direct and clear, and really compelling copy that will get your clients to take action. This week, we're going to talk about how we put our marketing together.
00;01;15;24 - 00;01;40;29 | Debbie
I'm going to share three steps for how to put many pieces of it together. All right. In the first part, we're going to talk about designs. There are many options to design. There are many ways to market your business. But I really recommend that you guys work on your graphics and that you up-level those in Canva. All right?
00;01;40;29 - 00;02;08;23 | Debbie
I love pretty professional-looking emails, brochures, social media posts, websites, all the things. I wish right now that I was able to show you side by side some examples of what I mean by up-leveled. Because the difference in a few small tweaks can really make your graphics, the artwork that you do for your business, it can really make it be a high-end luxury that people will buy from.
00;02;08;24 - 00;02;27;24 | Debbie
So what I want you to do is I want you to start to notice. I'm going to explain to you what high-end graphics look like and I want to encourage you to go pick up or look at a high-end luxury magazine. Look at those ads with these eyes. You'll notice that they contain typically one beautiful photo and a few words.
00;02;27;29 - 00;02;57;08 | Debbie
There is no real details in the ad like they're not selling all the features of the product. They're just showing what somebody could either experience or feel like in the picture with a few words. There's just like a single marketing line, maybe a website. When you study those ads, further, you will notice that they're very spacious. It's almost like a clean slate with just a few words that really stand out.
00;02;57;20 - 00;03;17;06 | Debbie
And what's even more intriguing is that some of them are big, full pictures, you know, all the way, they're called full bleeds, all the way to the side of each page. But the words are super small at the bottom. Like, almost like you have to go down and look to be able to read the words. It almost pulls you in because the words are that small.
00;03;17;15 - 00;03;42;18 | Debbie
So just look and see when I talk about high-end marketing. Look at the color variations between what you see on your normal computer when you are typing in a certain color and what you see in like a logo or some artwork in a magazine. That's what I want you guys to be moving towards. And then I want you to collect any images that you like, graphics that you like because I want you to keep a collection of those for inspiration.
00;03;42;20 - 00;04;24;25 | Debbie
You know, back in the day, you guys remember, I published a wedding magazine since 2000. And when I first started designing graphics for people and helping people with ads, we crammed everything into one small space. It is so refreshing to see these really simple, beautiful designs. So, when you find yourself wanting to put everything in the ad, like, tell the whole story about group coaching, private coaching, all the stuff, just skip all those details. And remember that today, because people are scrolling so fast on their phone, it needs to be a really clean, spacious looking, either ad, or social media graphic, or email, or something like that.
00;04;25;10 - 00;04;50;03 | Debbie
So, you want to look out for those things. And if you are using Canva, look for templates that are also clean and simple, maybe modern. There are different categories that you can look for. When you join the Business Building Boutique, I actually have an entire library of templates specifically designed for life coaches that you guys have access to. They're all designed very clean and very simple, and that really makes things easy for you.
00;04;50;04 - 00;05;08;07 | Debbie
You can utilize all the templates that I have and all of your marketing will look consistent, so it's basically done for you. You just click and change your colors. The second part that I want to talk about this week is that you need to make a plan. In today's show notes, I want to share a link to a marketing workshop that I just recently did.
00;05;08;08 - 00;05;25;19 | Debbie
I'll go deeper into some of what I'm talking about in that workshop. I had great feedback from the workshop, so I think you're gonna love it, too. I mention this because when we talk about making a plan, there are several steps to it. I'm going to give you the short version. I'm going to talk about your plan in three parts.
00;05;25;20 - 00;05;48;14 | Debbie
I'm trying to make this simple for you guys to be able to follow it long may take some notes, but if you want to, in part one of your marketing plan, I always have people pick the places that they're going to market their business. And I typically recommend that you pick five places. Then we pick five places, and I actually recommend that you decide on those places and you do the same five places all year long.
00;05;49;03 - 00;06;15;04 | Debbie
This is really about getting kind of your mindset on five things, committing to it, because when you commit to one place, you guys, that's when you get results. So your five places could include networking events, Facebook groups, email marketing, social media, and print ads. You could be doing some paid online ads, webinars, and podcasts. I will tell you, I don't think that you need to spend money on ads at this point.
00;06;15;17 - 00;06;47;23 | Debbie
So I would probably stick to picking five free places to market your business. Then you want to make this content plan. So what I'm talking about there is like, what are you going to be talking about consistently in your marketing? And as a reminder, you're going to follow that same marketing formula that I talked about last week. Remember, the four questions that you want to answer in every marketing piece? But, in some of the marketing that you do, like a webinar or a workshop or an email, or a blog post, you're going to have a lot more room to have a bigger message there.
00;06;47;24 - 00;07;06;16 | Debbie
So let's just take email, for example. What will you talk about in your email? I want you to plan those topics in advance. So how you're going to do this is I want you to make a list of the things that you coach on. The topics that you consistently teach on. You've got some concepts that you share; you do some teaching,
00;07;06;16 - 00;07;30;06 | Debbie
I know that, and I want you to make a list. Let's just say you've got 12 ideas of topics, teachings, common questions, common problems, and situations that people come to you. Out of those 12 topics, you're just going to decide that those are going to be the 12 topics for your next 12 emails. Once you write those 12 emails, which I know sounds like a lot to you guys if you haven't written one.
00;07;30;06 - 00;07;57;22 | Debbie
But don't worry, it can be simple. Once you write those 12 emails, then you just repeat those same 12 topics. I think that we believe we have to recreate stuff all the time and come up with new ideas, new ideas. You don't, you guys, I can tell you that. You can repurpose things. In fact, you could take the same 12 emails and send them again to the same people and people will not remember what was in those 12 emails.
00;07;58;00 - 00;08;20;21 | Debbie
They might remember, oh yeah, I think I've heard about that, but they're not going to remember that it's the same email. You could take the exact same email or maybe make some small changes to it, or just take that topic and just present it in a different way. That will save you a lot of time, you guys. And, I want to remind you that we actually want to have people remember what we talk about.
00;08;20;25 - 00;08;44;11 | Debbie
We need to create a business that's memorable that people can refer to that people know. We want to be known for something. We can only do that if we are repeating things; the same themes over and over. All right, the third part of this is I want you to schedule your marketing in advance. You can only create consistent results when you are consistent with your marketing. A consistent presence in marketing
00;08;44;11 - 00;09;12;26 | Debbie
will guess what, keep a consistent flow of consultations and clients coming in. And the reason why you want to schedule it is that when you get going on your marketing and your business explodes, guess what happens? Your schedule is full and you're coaching. And then guess what happens. You do not have time to do your marketing. And so then the next month you haven't been marketing and you won't have that new flow of consultations and clients coming in.
00;09;12;27 - 00;09;31;24 | Debbie
So the only way that you can stay consistent in the flow of consultations and clients is to pre-plan your marketing. Because look, the hope is, is that we're going to fill up your calendar and when your calendar is full, then you don't have to worry about, "do I have that next set of people that are interested in working with me coming in?"
00;09;31;25 - 00;09;54;17 | Debbie
It's just like keeping your grass green, you guys, in your yard, it requires regular watering, and the same goes for your business. So you're going to have to regularly water your business with consistent marketing, right? Keeping the clients coming in. So let me share a few ideas of how you can do your marketing in advance. The first would be to create all of your marketing in one setting.
00;09;54;17 - 00;10;21;23 | Debbie
And I know again, that probably sounds overwhelming to you guys, but it is possible to do this in a couple of hours on a Sunday and to do an entire month's worth of stuff. I can tell you that when I sit down to do that, especially when I have like my 12 topics and all I have to do is pick something to talk about each one of those 12 topics, I allow myself to do the B- work, to keep it short and sweet, and to just get it done,
00;10;21;23 - 00;10;44;16 | Debbie
it really does make it easier. So, you're going to write them all at one time. Now, if you were doing email marketing and social media you could take the email and you could pull out three or four lines from the email and you could make your social media posts out of that, too. For every email, you could come up with four or five social media posts. So, you can repurpose it even there.
00;10;44;25 - 00;11;19;13 | Debbie
Take one piece of content. I was sharing in the marketing workshop that you guys are going to have access to. I was giving the example that if you were somebody who loved to blog, and some of you guys do love to write. Blogging is not necessarily one of the top things I recommend that you do, but if you want to blog, OK, great. Take that one blog, turn it into an email, turn it into your social media posts, turn that into an article, your blog becomes the article that you share when you network online, and it can further be turned into a workshop or a video training session that you do and you send
00;11;19;13 - 00;11;42;06 | Debbie
out to people. So, one blog post becomes the five things. The five things that you're going to do where you market your business from one thing. That's an example of how you can really make this work good. So you can imagine if you did five things with one blog post and every 12 weeks you repeated the same things, it would be so much easier on your business to be able to get things done.
00;11;42;06 - 00;11;59;15 | Debbie
So you're going to schedule things out because you're going to decide on the topics that you want to be consistent with. OK, once those emails are written, you're going to put them in your email service provider. I recommend Flodesk. You guys have heard me talk about that. I think you can do it very easily if you know how to work Canva you'll know how to work
00;11;59;15 - 00;12;16;10 | Debbie
Flodesk - it's very comparable in the way that it works. You want to make them pretty and get him scheduled and get them in there. So, pick the time that it's scheduled and then just call it done. Then you can go and schedule your social media. I recommend that you do that through Canva. You're already paying for Canva Pro,
00;12;16;10 - 00;12;38;14 | Debbie
you can schedule your Instagram through Canva Pro. And really, you guys, for most of you, that's the only social media platform that you need to be on. Now, if you are doing business coaching, if you are a leadership coach, if you're coaching teachers, if you're doing something more with professionals, then maybe you want to be on LinkedIn. But if you're going to schedule Instagram, just do it in Canva because you're creating the graphics in Canva.
00;12;38;14 - 00;13;02;08 | Debbie
Just schedule right there and then it's done. If you're going to schedule on LinkedIn or more than one social media platform, use something like Later. I actually use Later scheduling software. And so you can schedule from LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, several locations if you're writing blogs or doing podcasts, you schedule them, too. I schedule the release of these podcasts.
00;13;02;08 - 00;13;30;00 | Debbie
We put them up early and they're scheduled. So, all of those can be done. Anything that you guys are doing, I guarantee you, probably has a way to be scheduled. If you are going live, like, live on Facebook, then schedule it on your calendar, block it off, write the content for what you're going to talk about, then block it off on your calendar with a reminder so that you go live at the time that you say. All right, you got that, you guys? I can't tell you how good you will feel when you do this.
00;13;30;12 - 00;13;46;21 | Debbie
It takes so much pressure off of you. And honestly, you will feel so much more confident in your business. And you're going to show up differently because you're going to know that your marketing is done. So when you talk to people about your business, you're going to be so much more likely to say, hey, go find me on Instagram.
00;13;47;01 - 00;14;06;03 | Debbie
Because you know that you have posts coming up and you know that it's regular. It's not going to be, like, I posted once last month and once last week. You will also be more likely to invite people to join your newsletter because, if you have newsletters already written, just like I've done with this podcast series, I know what these three marketing things are about,
00;14;06;03 - 00;14;26;02 | Debbie
so I can tell you, "make sure you're going to be here because this is what we're going to cover." You'll do that with your emails. You'll tell somebody, "oh my gosh, you've got to be on my email list because I'm going to be talking about this, this, and this." It will keep that flow of clients coming in because you're going to feel empowered and confident that you've really got your business marketing together.
00;14;26;02 - 00;14;52;24 | Debbie
So to recap three steps on how to put your marketing together, number one is to create beautifully designed graphics in Canva. Number two is to plan your content, the things you're going to talk about, and get it done. Write the emails, post the social media, write in advance, and then pre-schedule things to keep you consistent. As a reminder, the link for the marketing workshop is in the show notes.
00;14;52;24 - 00;15;10;12 | Debbie
We're going to go deeper into planning there and you'll see more about what I am discussing here today. Next week I'm going to talk about the third part of the series. I'll be telling you what you need to know about tracking your marketing materials. All right, you guys, I hope this is intriguing to you. I'm telling you what, marketing is magic.
00;15;10;23 - 00;15;29;13 | Debbie
I mentioned it and I am not kidding. Marketing is the ATM to your business. So if you want to have consistent cash flow coming in, then you need to consistently market. And it does not have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be complex. You just need to be consistent in the same places with a consistent message. All right,
00;15;29;13 - 00;16;00;29 | Debbie
you guys, have an amazingly let's go do some marketing and bring more clients into your life coaching business. Until next time, bye-bye. That's it, thanks for listening. Now it's up to you. Put what you learned today into action, do what you need to be seen, and then be hired by clients in your niche. And, if you're ready to stop wasting your precious time and get your business finally booked up, you're invited to join me in the Business Building Boutique for new life coaches, where you will learn everything you need to be a coach with plenty of paid clients.
00;16;00;29 - 00;16;03;23 | Debbie
All right, have an amazing week. Until next time, bye-bye.