Have you ever been intimidated by the sheer size of the internet?
Even if you’re not new to marketing your coaching business online, it’s easy to feel like an incoming freshman in a big high school… in a town you just moved to. Getting noticed and gaining acceptance can be a struggle.
But there’s another challenge. Imagine this school is for extremely near-sighted people—no one will see your striking good looks from across the cafeteria. If you’re not right in their faces, they may never see you.
So, how do you overcome the faceless anonymity of the online world?
Over 99% of the time, this is a multi-step process. It usually takes work! There are no silver bullets or red Easy Buttons.
Marketing yourself starts with who you are. Before you start thinking about tactics, concentrate on developing your unique value proposition. You actually have to be the person you’re trying to attract clients to.
Presenting yourself as something or someone you’re not is not a good plan. Neither is promising or promoting something that you can’t deliver.
There are two absolutely indispensable characteristics coaches must possess: expertise and trustworthiness. Of course, you already have both of these traits by the bucketful. The first battle in your war with anonymity is putting them on display for the people you want to reach to see.
Simply stated, the first thing you have to accomplish to defeat anonymity is what Aristotle would call ethos: to be worth the attention you’re asking for.
Robert Collier once said that There is just one reason why anyone ever reads a letter you send him. He expects a reward. That is the key to holding his interest. The only reason anyone will visit your site, buy your product or hire you as their coach is the expectation of reward.
What reward are you offering your desired audience you want? There should be something about your character/personality that makes others confident that you have something relevant and valuable to offer them.
On the internet, that probably starts with providing helpful information
Thats the reason you call a doctor when you’re sick or a plumber when your pipes are clogged. Or why you call a friend when you feel down in the dumps. You know they are specialists in areas you need help in right now.
Expertise and trustworthiness go hand-in-hand. People trust experts. What are you doing to show off your brilliance?
- Write detailed articles dealing with specific issues that the people you want to reach care deeply about or are very interested in. Solving specific problems they’re actively looking for relief from is always a good one.
- Blogging is can be very effective. You still have to concentrate on rewarding your readers with valuable insights, resources they can use, etc. It’s your blog, but it should not be about you, per se.
- Audios and/or videos: interviews, podcasts, on-demand presentation recordings. On top of being quality content, people connect more deeply with you when they can hear your voice and see your face.
The common thread here is content. You want to recreate who you are as a person and as a coach online. You can’t jump into the computer and live on a server, but you can share some of what you know through content.
When it comes to establishing on online presence, people think about a lot of stuff which is secondary in importance. Start by building a strong foundation on the unique value you can add to the lives of those you come in contact with. Worry about tactics later.
In the next installment in this series, we’ll discuss ways to get in front of your target audience, who we earlier likened to extremely near-sighted students. You won’t want to miss it.
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