A Plunkett Research Study shows that consulting and coaching is a $460 Billion a year industry in 2016.
Yes, you read that right. That’s a mind-blowing 460 with 9 Zeros next to it.
Yet a common theme I keep hearing from coaches and consultants is the need to get more clients and make more money.
All that while maintaining a healthy work-life balance and without having to work long hours every week.
And you might want that too…
The truth is, most coaches and consultants do what they do because they have a genuine desire and passion for helping others using their skills and expertise.
Right ?
But more often than not, you’ll find that “I just want to help people” isn’t enough to keep your business going and growing in an increasingly crowded market.
Nor “Working more hours” is a valid option.
Because we’re all bound by the finite number of hours we have each day (That’s 24 hours a day btw. No lifehacks around it yet.)
And more importantly, working crazy hours to reach our goals beats the purpose of the entrepreneurial freedom that we all seek by being coaches and consultants in the first place.
So … What can you do ? After all, there’s only one of you !
While sharpening your skills and getting equipped with coaching techniques is important; marketing for coaches and consultants is an area that is often neglected or left up to the last minute.
And I totally understand that.
You’re a coach, not a marketer.
So In this article, I will show you 3 proven ways that I use to help coaches and consultants generate more money in their business while keeping their working hours constant – or even less (shhh)
I want you to take them and apply them in your business too. They will get you great results.
Here we go …
1.Build a Qualified Email List
First things first, you have to exist online in a way that allows a large number of people to find you and learn about your coaching services and programs.
But … just by existing online, having a nice website, a beautifully written About page and some great blog posts is NOT enough.
The fact is that 98% of visitors to your website leave WITHOUT converting into customers.
Without opting in for your email list.
Or worse, without even returning to your site.
Yep, that’s 98% of prospects who showed some kind of interest in you and your services are gone …
Forever…
What you need to do is capture their contact information in a savvy way so you can get their permission to reach out to them in the future.
This gives you the ability to
- Get them back to your site to read more of your content
- Connect with them more often and stay on top of their minds
- Make them aware of your coaching services
- Let them discover more about your products, programs and offers
You need to connect with them time and time again before they even consider asking for your help or handing you their money.
Building a qualified email list allows you to communicate with your audience and build a relationship with them.
And that’s gold. The relationship you build with your list is THE most valuable asset in your business and that’s where most of your sales and clients are going to come from.
In fact, Email is the strongest and most profitable marketing channel – by far – for getting clients and selling products.
You might be already building your email list but it’s worth mentioning again that it’s one of the most fundamental assets in your business.
So you have to keep your focus on growing it and nurturing it.
Now, we said before that you have to capture the contact information of your visitors and get their permission to reach out to them.
One of the best ways to motivate people to willingly give you their email address is to offer them a Lead Magnet. (AKA Ethical Bribe or Freebie)
This Lead magnet truly is an ethical bribe in exchange for the email of your visitor.
It could be in a form of a free ebook, a checklist, a report, or a small guide that helps your prospects get one step closer to their desired goal in return for their email address.
Here’s a Great example of a lead magnet from Business Coach & Mentor Michael Hyatt:
Here’s another good example by my friends at Social media Examiners
It’s a simple exchange of value in return for their contact information.
But it’s very important not to misinterpret the importance of this exchange.
This is the very first exchange that occurs between you and your prospect, even if it doesn’t involve any money.
The ethical bribe you offer should have a high perceived value that you could easily put a price on if you wanted to.
It should be nothing less than something you would genuinely sell at a high monetary value.
You want your prospects to think: “Wow. In exchange for my contact information, I got so much value from this coach, I wonder how much help I could get if I give them my money”
Many coaches and consultants mistake this first transaction to “just a simple transaction to collect emails”.
What they’re really missing out on is a unique opportunity to make a great first impression in the mind of their prospects and position themselves as authority.
Another common mistake I spot right out of the gate when I start working with a coach or consultant is that their Lead magnet is not REALLY related to the service or products they offer.
For Instance, if I’m a life coach and I decide to offer a lead magnet that gives people tips on how to be happier and live fully then I’m probably broadening my targeting too much.
This kind of Lead magnet will most likely attract MANY people that aren’t necessarily my ideal client or people I want to work with.
It will clutter my Email list with unqualified prospects that will not become my clients nor purchase my info products in the future.
This is one of the most common mistakes I see coaches and consultants doing when it comes to their lead magnet.
So make sure you don’t fall into the trap of creating a lead magnet that appeals to the general public.
Make it very specific.
Let it appeal directly to your ideal client. Let it talk directly to them and only them.
That way, you will one, have a more qualified list that is packed with potential clients and two, they will be more excited to hear from you when you email them.
So, so sum up, focus your efforts on building an email list of quality prospects and develop a relationship with them because your ideal clients will definitely be on that list and that’s where more clients will come from.
2. Treat your Coaching Services like a product
This is one of the most overlooked marketing approaches for coaching and consulting services.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Most of the coaches I’ve seen or worked with do this mistake: they think that their services are different from a coaching program or an info product.
Well, let me give it straight to you:
Your service IS a product.
So market it like one.
Focus your efforts on building content that educates people and encourages them to become your clients.
Demystify all the myths and misconceptions about your coaching services and remove all objections they have for becoming a client.
Analyse where they’re at in achieving their goal and how their life will improve if they could move forward.
Provide them with great content that delivers real solutions and results on simple problems that are holding them back to demonstrate your value as a coach or a consultant.
You can use content, email and sales pages the same way you would promote an info product or an online program.
Your coaching service is a valuable program after all and getting a client involves the same process of selling like anything else.
For instance, many coaches and consultants do not use urgency to promote their services the same way they would use urgency to limit spots on their program.
While creating urgency for your services isn’t about telling your prospects that they have a limited amount of time to buy, you should still deliver natural urgency by telling them why NOW is the right time they need your services. Why they shouldn’t postpone that to the future.
Creating urgency for your services is about articulating their needs and desires better than they can explain it to themselves.
Then, you offer them a solution they can get right now by becoming your client.
Ultimately, people will take you up on your services when they get to a point of no return. And trust me, at that point, they will.
They will when they have a strong desire or a frustration in their lives and they’re willing to get your services to help them get where they want.
So show them you understand them, tell them the stories that you know are playing out in their lives right now. (and in their minds)
Make it feel like you’ve torn out a page of their diary books.
Explain the vision you have for them and how your coaching will take them from their current state to their desirable new goal.
3. Put your business on autopilot (Build Automated Campaigns)
One of the most effective ways to grow your coaching and consulting business while working the same number of hours and keeping your sanity checked is to automate your marketing efforts.
Creating effective systems for your business is what allows you to get new clients and coaching sessions and scale your business properly.
You need to develop an effective sales funnel that takes your customers on a journey with you, from opting in for your ethical bribe, to purchasing your programs and services.
The main principle of building an automated system here is to work hard once.
Putting the hard work once in order to build a solid system that runs forever gives you a massive return on your monetary and time investments.
A powerful automated marketing system will work for you day and night without you touching it.
Its job is to automatically turn new subscribers into warm prospects excited about you and your brand. And then turning those warm prospects into clients for your services or products.
Below are my top three favourite automation campaigns.
These are some of the campaigns I personally use to help coaches and consultants create a strong relationship with their prospects and get more sales and clients on autopilot.
1. Miniclass Campaign (Launch Campaign)
This campaign is a very powerful – money generating – asset that can educate your prospects and increase your sales by many folds.
I’ve launched over a dozen of these campaigns and the results were amazing every single time.
Best of all ? It’s Evergreen.
The goal of this campaign is to generate a massive amount of goodwill with your audience over 3 part video series. After that, you introduce them your info product or service and give them an irresistible offer that runs for a limited time period.
Your offer will be irresistible because it will have some kind of discount or some extra bonuses that aren’t usually included with your original offer.
Note: It’s important that your irresistible offer is for a limited time only (5 to 7 days). Scarcity plays a huge role here.
A chunk of the people who went through your training will find a huge benefit in what they’ve been through and will want to actually get on board for the full experience and benefit fully from your product or service.
2. Webinar Campaign
The webinar campaign is another very powerful campaign especially to get high ticket sales for coaching and programs.
Similar to the Mini class Campaign, the Webinar campaign aims at educating your prospects and offering tremendous value in the first 45 – 60 minutes of the live webinar.
After 60 minutes, you transition into your offer which can be your coaching services or your info product.
When structured properly, the webinar can generate sales right on the spot at the end of the webinar.
Following up with webinar attendees over the next few days will generate a big chunk of the profits from the webinar.
If you’re not creating webinars for your business then I strongly suggest you start doing so.
I’ve had coaches that had so many new clients from a single webinar that they had to turn down or postpone many of the clients.
This campaign can also be evergreen by using some automation tools like everwebinar that allows you to record the webinar once and continuously run it to your new leads.
3. Goodwill Campaign
The name of this campaign says it all. The goal of this automated campaign is to generate a great amount of good will by sharing content that will help you build a relationship with your prospect, create trust, and establish authority.
Creating effective goodwill campaigns will turn your prospects and leads into followers that listen to you and your teachings. This relationship is key to every coaching and consulting business.
This type of campaign is what keeps you ahead of your competition and get people to come to you first when they need a solution to their problem.
Implementing several goodwill campaigns in your business along your customer journey will make your selling process much smoother and remove major sales resistance.
Automated campaigns should be at the core of your business. Set them up once, and let them work for you and generate you new clients and sales on autopilot.
So sum up, these 4 marketing strategies and business models are proven ways you can boost the revenue of your coaching and consulting business and take it to the 7 figure level.
You don’t have to apply them all at once, start by building them one after the other
Building each one of these will prove to be a valuable asset for you and your business over time. I’ve seen them work over and over again and used them to help several businesses increase their revenue and help more people simultaneously.
Over to you. What do you need to grow your coaching and consulting business?
Let me know in the comments below …
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