182 - Gaining Clarity on Marketing Strategies for Your Life Coaching Business

Do you ever find yourself at a loss for words when it comes to selling your coaching? Maybe all you need is a little clarity.

In this episode, we'll break down the key strategies for developing a clear and compelling marketing message that genuinely speaks to your potential clients. We'll dive into understanding what your client needs, painting a picture of what they're missing and why your coaching is the ultimate key to their success. 

Remember, effective marketing isn't about sounding smart, it's about clearly communicating a message that connects to your client’s desires and needs.

Tune in for valuable insights and tips on marketing and growing your coaching business without the doubt and overwhelm!

👉 Check out my 8-part Business Marketing Series to know about how to market your life coaching business organically. (Organic market is FREE marketing.)

👉 Create a profitable business that looks good and sets you up to be respected through the Fast Track Business Building Boutique Program 

👉 Check out my FREE Canva Workshop and learn how to create stunning graphics for your coaching business! 

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Transcript

Preview: The idea is that you want to be able to paint a picture of what they don't have and why your coaching is the answer. You might have a niche where maybe they have read books, watched YouTubes, and taken courses on whatever they think is wrong with them. But you need to be able to share as the coach, why you're the answer, why you are the thing that they haven't actually tried yet, why you can get them from where they are now to where they want to be.

Intro: Hello, I'm Debbie Shadid, the host of the Life Coach Business Building podcast. If you are ready to have more clients in your life coach business, then you're in the right spot. Each week I'm gonna teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads. If that sounds interesting. Stick around and let's get started.

Welcome to the podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about the benefits of having a very clear marketing message. In my coaching sessions in the last week, there's been a lot of questions about writing more effective marketing. So let's start by talking about how you get crystal clear and how you communicate with your potential clients about your coaching.

The first thing is you have to be crystal clear. You have to know exactly what you are offering. You have to know exactly who you are helping. You have to know what their problems are. Now, I want you to be able to describe what it is they do in a way that is so, so understandable. It really has to be very clear.

What I find is that so often coaches who are very smart and very well educated, they actually are talking above the client's head. They're actually talking in a way that is really unrelatable. I want you to be able to talk about your client's problem in a way that your person has in their mind, like the thought that runs through their mind. What is that thought? And you don't have to sound smart. You just have to say the sentence that's running through their head. That is how you talk about their problems. 

All right. And then in your messaging, you can fine tune it to say, are you a professional woman who is in midlife? Then you get to go in and layer in those extra things. Professional woman midlife who… do you see how that works? Then you're able to enact the problems that your person has with two or three identifying factors so that they know that you are talking to them. 

The next step in your marketing is to get very, very clear about the results that you can provide, not promises that you can't provide, but the results that you know your client can get. The idea is that you want to be able to paint a picture of what they don't have and why your coaching is the answer. You might have a niche where maybe they have read books, watched YouTubes, and taken courses on whatever they think is wrong with them. But you need to be able to share as the coach, why you're the answer, why you are the thing that they haven't actually tried yet, why you can get them from where they are now to where they want to be.

When I work with clients, we work on their marketing message and I can provide you with a form to create your marketing message. But the difference maker is that I work with you on that marketing message. Can you see by that example, I'm able to say, Look, you might be able to do it this way, but I'm the difference that makes it so that you want to hire me to help you do it. So how can you better explain what you do and what your role is as that facilitator to the result that they are working to get? Then you want to be able to share some key stories that really are the connection that bring all of this together so that your client can see she understands the pain points. Oh, I see the transformation and I see really clearly the path that is laid out for me to get to. Those are the basics of your marketing message that you need to understand. 

Now let's talk about ongoing marketing. Many of you might send an email or you might do a social media post or two or three, and you say, You know, I'm not getting the result that I wanted. And I would say, Well, of course you're not like, we need to be in front of people for months, for weeks. I keep saying the same thing, you guys, I'm sorry, but we need to be in front of people for a long time. But what I would ask you is like, let's assess what your client really does need to know. 

What I want to challenge you to do is to get several pieces of paper. And on the first piece of paper, I want you to write down all the things that your client needs to know about the coaching you do. If you have some specialized coaching or you do some kind of healing modality or you do something with anxiety or weight loss or whatever it is, what about your process does your client need to know? Write those things down. Look, don't worry about secrets. Share all your secrets because remember, you are still the reason why people hire you.

So write those things down. Write all the results that they want. Write down everything they desire, and then look on those lists and figure out which one of those items do I need to provide further clarity on in an email. So if you write your first intro email and you don't get the result that you want, which you're not going to do, then you want to write a second email that further explains one more concept that they just heard in the first email, but it's a deeper dive.

Then you're going to tell them in that email, Hey, look out for an upcoming email for me where I'm going to be talking about a transformation. Then you talk about the transformation that somebody had as a result of you working with them. Maybe in the next email you share your story about what happened with you as it relates to what your client is going through. So you're going to just lay out these pieces of paper and you're basically going to write the notes of what each individual email is going to say as you think about what people need to know, and then you're going to take those pieces of paper, you're going to put them in the order that makes the most sense from one email to the next.

What's the next most obvious thing they need to hear? What's next? And in those emails, you want to think about how you call people into action. What is your call-to-action now? Maybe your call-to-action is to consider how this particular thing applies to them. But I would highly recommend that your call-to-action is to connect with you. And I would not shy away from having a call-to-action that involves let's talk, some way you connect with them via a consultation. 

Now, maybe you want to offer free coaching, and free coaching is different from a consultation call, but I would not shy away from putting a really strong call-to-action in every single one of those emails. Why? Because not everybody is going to read every single one of those emails. That's the way it's going to be with all of your marketing. Every social media post, every workshop, every networking event that you go to, you want to think about what should the call-to-action be.

Now, as you develop your business, you're going to start seeing gaps where somebody needs more information. You just write an email and you fill that in. Imagine you rearrange the papers again. Each paper is one email, right? You rearrange the papers of the basic information that somebody needs to know about you. That is how you work on communicating in a way that makes more sense. Every time that you work with a client or every time you have a consultation call or you meet somebody in a networking event and you say something about what you do and you get that look of like, What is she talking about? That is your clue that you need to further explain something. So, sure, you might need to make some changes on your website. Maybe you need to change something in your Instagram bio. So small changes, but really it's through the continual long term messaging, whether it would be a blog or a YouTube video or a long format video on Instagram or something like that, or maybe they're real, a series of reels that you do where you further explain over and over the various things that somebody needs to know to understand why they want to hire you.

So tell me, how clear are you on what we need to do? I don't want one email to be the beginning and end of your communication. One email is just the start of a communication series that honestly is not going to end until your client removes themselves from your world. And then you just bless them and you release them. So until your client says, I don't need to be part of what she's doing because I'm not a fit for her, they will remove themselves. Then you would move people into that email marketing series. You will move them into your regular weekly emails where you're going to provide great value, ongoing super interesting information and content that they can use to be able to make some changes in their life today. 

Are you good, you guys? Are we clear about this? So I want you to fill the gap in your marketing. I want you to think about their problems. I want you to think about what it is they really desire. I want you to think about the results that you create and get that down on paper. And then, you don’t need to go looking for a guide. You are smart enough to decide how are you going to look at those emails and what are you going to do to communicate with people to better explain what you can do for them as a coach? 

Alright, ladies. Thank you so much for being here, for being part of the amazing women who listen to the teachings that I have. And I just want to invite you to connect with me. If you are not selling coaching and you don't know what to say and you don't have clarity around that, let me tell you what the people that you're talking to, they can't understand either. When you get super clear in your message, you will confidently show up and communicate that way.

And then things are changing your business. So let's talk about your marketing message. Let's get you clear on how to do that. Debbieshadid.com/schedule, I'll see you guys on Zoom. Have a great week.

Outro: Okay, ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to debbieshadid.com. I have this incredible Canva training, specifically designed for life coaches where I'm gonna teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching. All right. Have an amazing week. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.