Are you done listening to the same boring advice on how to market your coaching business? Then listen up, for in this article, we’re going to explore a totally new way of marketing your coaching business, that will change your view about marketing altogether.
As a coach, it’s possible you don’t like the idea of fitting into the shoes of a salesperson. And the truth is, you don’t have to.
You can market your coaching business in a way that makes you feel great about it, and something you will look forward to each day.
Now, isn’t that great news? So let’s get started!
Enter Heart-led Marketing
Welcome to the world of heart-led marketing. We can call this a paradigm shift in the way people market their products and services, and perhaps, it is the future of marketing.
The difference between heartled marketing and traditional marketing, is that, unlike traditional marketing, where the focus is a transaction, like making a sale, or getting someone to sign up to your services. The focus with heartled marketing is making a meaningful connection with your audience.
With this approach, you show people that you care more about them, than their money. And when you do this, they can notice your sincere intention of wanting to serve. And this helps them, trust you, and it is this trust that transpires into a meaningful connection, that could even result in them signing up with you as a client.
Now, to better understand this new approach, we’re going to use an example of a fake coach persona and show you how things change, when the coach moves from traditional marketing to heartled marketing.
Meet Jen,
She is a dating coach, and to begin with she is following the traditional model of marketing.
At the moment Jen’s focus is on her need to make money, by selling her services to potential clients.
With that in mind, she begins her day feeling stressed, worried as to how she can sell her services. She is feeling needy and desperate and is looking for marketing tactics to get that client.
This desperation seeps into the way she communicates with her audience, and her vibes end up repelling her ideal clients instead of attracting them to her.
Jen thinks, she is doing everything right, as per what she heard in the marketing world, she did the landing pages, the funnels, the lead-magnets, the free webinars, and yet, nothing.
She barely manages to get any clients, and those who do end up signing with her, turn out to be not her ideal clients.
The problem is Jen’s messaging is revolving around her own desperation to get clients, and the message she sends out, revolves around lack, and negativity, which gets attracted back to her.
This is why, whether she writes messages on social media, her website, landing pages, or webinars, it’s all disempowering, low vibrational stuff that puts people off.
In short, Jen truly struggles to find success as a dating coach, and is about to give up.
But to her good fortune, she comes across Succeed From The Start, a coaching business community that speaks about heartled marketing.
And from that point on she decides to embrace this new approach, and here’s what happens next.
Meet the new Jen,
She is now using the heartled approach to marketing and wakes up every day feeling relaxed and delighted to have another opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life, by helping them improve their chances of finding love.
Her focus now, is no longer her need to find clients, but the needs of her clients.
A simple shift, that makes a huge difference. She now puts her audiences’ needs first, which helps her foster meaningful connections, where she is fully focused on serving, and is holding nothing back in giving value, without worrying about where she will find her next client.
Her newfound heartled marketing approach, immediately helps her change her voice, from “I am needy and desperate” to “I am fulfilled and ready to give.”
Her marketing is no longer based on the idea of trying to get something from someone, but rather is focused on sharing her gift of coaching and giving expert advice to those in need of help.
This puts her in a powerful position, of being someone who has value to give. And when you give value, you get value back in return.
So Jen starts wring helpful articles and content across the board, everywhere from her website to social media, and uses every speaking engagement to deliver value.
As Jen puts more and more value out there, people start becoming aware of her work, and she finds more and more clients, who are willing to receive that value, by giving something of value in return, often in the form of money.
For it’s not lack meeting lack, but abundance meeting abundance.
Heartled marketing helps you shift from lack to abundance. And abundance attracts abundance.
And the value Jen now receives is not limited to money, but she gets more in the form of being able to connect with amazing people, getting client referrals, being able to experience the joys of service, and the love she receives from her community. This abundance, also transpires and goes viral into her life, affecting every aspect of it.
This is heartled marketing!
Now, tell me, would you waste a single minute in the traditional model, when you can embrace the power of heartland marketing in your coaching business?
But we’re not going to stop here. There’s a few more things, you need to become aware of to successfully incorporate heartled marketing in your business.
Knowing the 4 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey
Stage 1: Identify the Need
This is the stage where all your clients are at at the beginning; they have a need. It is your work, to learn about this need, and know it in such depth, that it may even surprise your ideal client, in terms of how well you get them.
As a coach, you need to understand your ideal client’s needs clearly. It’s not just about what they say they need, but you also have to know why they need what they need, what outcomes they are looking to accomplish.
This involves going deeper into understanding them, and just being sensitive enough to tap into their desires.
Just like when you meet someone, who really gets what you need, even when you may have not been able to clearly articulate it.
When your clients go like, “Wow, she really understands me.” That’s the kind of position you want to be in, where you know your ideal clients needs even better than them.
You can then craft a service or a product that meets exactly that need, and it will be like selling water in a desert.
Stage 2: Spread Awareness
Once you’ve clearly established a need for your services, it is time to spread awareness of the same.
This is the stage, where most people make the mistake of trying to sell their services, when all they need to do is make the right people, (your target audience), aware of your services.
But here’s where most people stumble, they think just because they have clearly identified a need, and have presented it, people will come and buy.
However, that’s now how it works, people still need time to review your services, and we’ll cover that in stage 3.
Your work during the awareness stage is like holding the light, so those who need it, will be drawn to you. You don’t have to do anything more than that at this stage.
You are only to make people aware of you and your services.
Stage 3: Help Them Consider Your Services
As I said earlier, people need time to review your services even after they have become aware of it. Which is when they move into stage 3 which is the consideration stage, where you have to help them get more acquainted to your work.
There’s no set time for how long an individual will be in the consideration stage. This is where heartled marketing approach is hugely beneficial, because, you are focused on putting valuable content out there, that your ideal client will take notice of.
And when they see that you are consistently putting efforts out there to serve your tribe, that’s one major factor that helps them consider you.
The second thing is, social proof. They will look at what others have to say about you and your work.
The last factor is cost.You also have to help them decide, that your pricing is fair and reasonable for what you have to offer.
The consideration stage is a crucial stage in the buyer’s journey, and this is where heartled marketing proves truly beneficial.
Stage 4: Timing
At this stage, you know well that your ideal client needs your services, you have given them social proof, and all the necessary information they need to consider your services, and now it is time for you to help them make a decision.
Most traditional marketing techniques use FOMO, which is fear of missing out, to create a fake sense of urgency to get people to buy their products. But we don’t use this approach in heartled marketing.
What we do instead, is help people ask empowering questions to themselves.
Example:
Now that you are aware of [Benefit of Signing up with a product or service] I’d like to encourage you to ask yourself this empowering question: “How long do I want to wait to take action towards my desired goal? Next year? Next month? Tomorrow? Or Now?
And then let them decide for themselves.
All you do, is let them know that whenever it is right for them, you’ll be right there!
This positioning is the final stage in being totally in sync with heartled marketing.
So much that, if you see that what you have to offer isn’t right for them at this moment, you help them decide against signing up with you as well.
This is total integrity! And this is what makes your ideal clients go WOW!
To sum it up, you can say goodbye to the traditional techniques on how to market your coaching business, and embrace a new heartled marketing model, that helps you build trust, authority, and create meaningful connections with your audience. More importantly, it helps put you in a position of abundance, of having, which creates more abundance for everyone including yourself.