"Launch your 6-figure coaching practice in 6 months or less."
That was the headline of an ad I saw on my social media. So compelling, so attractive, and so much b*****t.
These programs usually give some good advice, and some of them have had some good success stories, albeit not the norm. Most importantly, they tend to be extremely tactical: do a webinar, launch your list, and run ads using this formula.
These tactical approaches can be very attractive when you are starting, they are easy to do and they get you busy quickly, so you feel like you are doing something. There is nothing wrong with these tactics, but you need to understand that as a coach, you will mostly get clients in three ways: Relationships, Referrals and Reputation. Tactics can only help you reinforce the 3 golden R's .
When you are the expert, selling professional services, your clients simply need to trust you. They need to trust that you will execute a good diagnose and provide a good solution that is in their best interest. You need to earn this trust.
Furthermore, there is information asymmetry - you simple know more about the work in hand than you clients do.
Think about it when you are the client. Let's say you need a baby-sitter, how do you go about finding a good one? Do you ask a friend? Do you think of who you already know? Do you Google 'Best baby sitters in town'?
Relationships, Referrals and Reputation are just ways on which trust is transferred from one person to another.
REMEMBER: If there is NO Trust, there is NO Transaction.
Here are some immediate mindshits and tactics that can help set your marketing in the right direction:
No agency and no formula will guarantee the success of your business, there is not get-rich-quick proven steps. The role of digital marketing is to support relationship building, creating reputation and putting together a referral strategy. Below are some high-level ideas on how digital marketing support the 3 R's.
Relationship Building:
Referrals
Protect and build your Reputation: