Do you want to know how Digital Marketing could be a secret ingredient for success in your coaching business?
Do you shy away from telling people or letting the world know about what you do?
Do you think that Digital Marketing is only for big businesses selling big-ticket products or services?
Well, if you have answered yes to even one of the above questions, then this article is for you.
In this article, I am going to talk about how to write better content to engage your target audience. We will talk about the fundamentals of marketing that coaches can use. This article will be useful for coaches, professionals, freelancers, mentors, and entrepreneurs in the coaching industry who have no understanding of marketing or just a basic understanding of marketing.
Let me begin by sharing my thoughts on the subject of Marketing. Being a coach working with people on mindsets, emotional intelligence, reprogramming the brain, I never understood marketing. I always felt that people will come to me if they know that I am good. However, I missed out on the point that “How will people know about me and what I do unless I let them know about the work I do? Word of mouth referrals is the best however when combined with marketing I realized that I could reach a wider target group.
I am glad that I understood this point and warmed up to the idea of exploring marketing. Being a solopreneur I didn’t have huge budgets to spend on marketing. That’s when I came across a Digital marketing internship program conducted by Deepak Kanakaraju. I was excited about this as it allowed me to implement what I learn and that’s what I was looking for. You can get more details related to Digital Marketing here – DigitalDeepak.
Education has a long shelf-life. So marketing education using my interest in human psychology and behavior would help me understand the market better. That’s the most valuable investment as it yields direct returns. I also understood that the founder should be a marketer as marketing cannot be outsourced completely. So I decided to learn marketing and get good at it. Having no background in marketing, I needed to start with the basics to understand marketing and most importantly digital marketing. Here is what I have discovered through my learning from my 2nd lesson from my internship with Deepak Kanakaraju.
Marketing Fundamentals
Marketing is based on Science and includes a wide variety of functions within organizations, ranging from the running of social media accounts to inside sales, and anything in between.
The marketing strategy of an organization reflects the firm’s ability to build positive relationships with consumers by consistently providing a high-quality product, exemplary service, and outstanding customer experience. This ability is often referred to as the firms’ value proposition. In other words, what unique offerings does the company propose to the consumer or the client to help them choose their product or service? This helped me understand that marketing begins much before creating the product, it’s about understanding the customer and their needs. It’s not just about selling, it’s about customer service by communicating with them – sending the right message at the right time. It is about building trust with your target audience #MassTrust – develop trust with a lot of people at the same time.
The purpose of marketing is to build a brand and capture the consumer’s mind by providing the best value with a high product or service quality. It is about how your target audience perceives your product or service and the value it can deliver. If consumers are satisfied by your firms’ value proposition, they will organically create a certain level of brand awareness among their peers, and ultimately inspire a certain extent of brand loyalty. Word of mouth marketing is the best channel. Advertising, Copywriting, and sales are one of the components of marketing.
Digital marketing vs. Traditional marketing
Traditional marketing is a conventional marketing strategy that uses various offline promotional and advertising methods to reach customers. It works best if a product is generic with a very wide targeting.
We come across different forms of traditional marketing every day, such as TV ads, newspaper ads, billboards, flyers, etc. This is a fantastic way to reach local audiences who don’t use the web.
Digital marketing refers to all the marketing strategies that are executed online on various electronic devices. It is currently the most popular marketing strategy adopted by large, small, and medium-sized companies across the globe. As the internet is perhaps the most common form of technology used by people, digital marketing can be used to connect to millions of potential customers worldwide. It helps to personalize the communication.
Choosing between digital or traditional marketing boils down to your requirements and objectives. If you are looking to fetch some local customers fast, who do not use the internet, traditional marketing using flyers will work well. Or, if you want to target the older generation, TV or radio commercials are effective as they are more inclined towards the television or radio than the youngsters.
But to target the Millenials or the youngsters, or a set of customers outside your local boundaries, you have to go digital. If you are a small startup looking to make it big, digital marketing is the best. It will allow you to invest your funds wisely and reach a lot of customers in no time.
For the coaching business, digital marketing works the best considering the wider reach it provides.
CATT Marketing Funnel and Framework
This concept made a lot of sense to me. Let me explain what it refers to. If you want to earn money through any business in this case it’s the coaching business you need to be clear about your niche. Your success and wealth depend on the niche you choose.
How do you select your Niche?
As you see in the above image, your niche would the area in which you have the talent, the market and you are also passionate about it. The chances of success are higher when you choose the right niche.
CATT refers to
Content – Creating useful content through blogs, posts, videos, lead magnets, live webinars, etc.
Attention – Drive attention (traffic) to your content using SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads and referrals
Trust – Build trust with your audience with tripwires, marketing automation and retargeting
Transaction – Convert your leads into a customer with natural sales methods
Integrated Digital Marketing
This refers to when we use all the tools effectively to work simultaneously and get the desired outcome.
Content Marketing – Content establishes authority, builds trust, engages the audience with the brand. It helps to build a tribe and spread the word with your customers as brand evangelists.
Email Marketing – This is marketing to the opt-in subscribers. Helps send out information about new content and follow-up with the prospects.
Social Media Marketing – It promotes meeting with a focus group, is authentic and honest with feedback as well as suggestions in a social atmosphere.
Search Engine – They rank websites according to their quality and relevancy. Is useful to find content and offers by directly searching for it. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is when ads appear to people who are looking for the products or services and is charged only when they click on it. It’s also referred to as Pay per Click (PPC). Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is used to drive organic traffic to your content.
Digital Display Marketing – This develops ad blindness as it pops up when the user is going through the content and there are tools available to disable the ads.
The integrated Digital Marketing process is like a catalyst for ads that maximizes the ROI (return on investment).
Personal Branding: MassTrust Blueprint
Personal branding is about building yourself as a brand. People want to hear from people and not from brands. The only challenge with a personal brand is it cannot be invested in and cannot be sold. The advantage of a personal brand is that it can give rise to many brands based on a person’s influence. A personal brand becomes an influencer and a brand ambassador for the companies that they run.
Evolution of a personal brand
- Learn & Understand – Learn a new skill through concepts, facts, and procedures. Understand the concepts, remember the facts, and practice the procedures.
- Work – Put your new-found skills to work. The key to success is in implementation. Implementing in the real world will give you a better understanding. It could be by doing a job, freelancing, or your projects.
- Blog – Write about what you have learned and experienced through your work. When you write you understand it better and you will also start building your brand.
- Consult – Now that you have a personal brand through your blog, have work experience, and have learned the fundamentals, start consulting other businesses instead of working for them.
- Mentor – Mentor others who want to become like you. Mentoring will help you scale your understanding to a whole new level.
- Startup – Start your product or services business with the understanding that you have developed about the market, the problem, and your skills.
Well, with the above knowledge that I have acquired in week 2 of my internship program I am raring to move ahead and implement these learnings over the coming weeks. These fundamentals apply to any business and I am excited to know more about how I can apply it to my coaching business!
