Hello hello coaches!

I hope you’re having a FANTACTIC day! Omg, I was out walking my dog earlier today and I passed a school. The children were having recess and on the little grass hill out front, I saw 5 boys sitting, legs crossed and their thumb and pointy finger making up a circle. They sort of held their arms up like that – at the same height as their ears. And around them there was this girl, same age, walking around them, encouraging them to stay in position and keep their eyes shut as she held something over their heads. It was SO funny to watch. All the other children ran around doing their own thing, but these 5 boys obeyed this girl’s instructions to sit in lotus position. I had to force myself to not look for too long. I’m terrible like that. I will get totally sucked into whatever’s happening and don’t realize I’m staring. I suppose I need to work on that…! Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you. Ladies, there’s NOTHING wrong in having the men in your life doing a bit of meditation!

Marketing is a SKILL

ANY WHO, so today, I’ve got FOUR words for you – that you need to never forget. And that is: marketing is a SKILL. That’s right. You have to DEVELOP IT!

Everything we know how to do in life is a skill. We learned the skill of speaking words and sentences around the age of two. As we’ve practiced, we’ve gotten better and better at communicating with words. Some have really MASTERED it through their profession, and others are naturally inclined to have a way with words. But it wasn’t always like that. They weren’t born speaking in a sophisticated way even though they have a natural knack for communication.

I need you all to remember this! Marketing IS A SKILL! Repeat after me – even if you’re just lip syncing to the sound of this podcast – say Marketing Is A Skill! Well done! There are certain elements that, if you implement, you will do better in your marketing. That being said, if the words you use in your marketing comes from a certain intention, a certain energy, a certain belief system, people will magnetically be drawn to your message. IF any of these are off, it will have a somewhat repelling effect.

If you’re in the more spiritual circles, you’ve probably heard quotes such as “energy don’t lie”. It’s the same thing for marketing. People feel the intentions and energies behind our words – they just do!

AND:

It’s a skill that you have to hone to get better and better at.

That’s not to say that, if you’re just starting out marketing your coaching practice, that you won’t be able to sign any clients. That your marketing isn’t good enough to attract people to work with you. Because you absolutely can. AND; you can get better and better at communicating how you help people, so that more and more people want to get your help.

One of my previous clients is a coach for artists, and she had such a good way of talking about art as a skill – not talent. I remember she was so over people who just rejected the idea of creatively express themselves through the visual language, saying that “oh, I don’t have the talent – and I’m just not creative”. As my previous client explained; painting is about techniques, learning how to use colors, learning how to do good compositions, learning to use shades, contrasts and so on. Being able to paint amazing paintings is a skill that anyone can learn – AND there are also people who intuitively just understand a lot of this stuff without having to explicitly be taught how to do it.

It’s the same thing in sports, driving a car, building a website, singing, marketing – and anything else in life! I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it on this podcast, but I dated a top athlete for 6 years. He first played rugby for a state in Australia and then went onto play for the national team. I remember him talking about people being talented, but that the players that did really well was those who were willing to perfect their game, the ones who would stay in the gym when others went home, the ones who would “make it hard for themselves” as he called it. He explained that you could always make a training easier for yourself by not doing things properly, but only when you do the exercises hard for yourself on purpose, do you take yourself to the next level. And, that’s kind of true in marketing as well. When you go all in – and don’t try to do short cuts or hide behind the screen doing back-end work – that when you see rapid growth. When you’re willing to exercise emotional bravery and put some things on the line, get coached hard and then go again. THAT’s when your marketing start paying dividends so much faster.

Even if you haven’t understood what works in marketing intuitively, the skills can 100% be learned. And it’s not hard! Once you know the principles, you will do SO WELL! And, for the record, I’m not talking about all of the technical stuff in marketing – like complex sales funnels, ads or search engine optimization. You don’t actually need that – ESPECIALLY not when you’re just starting out. I know, I know – your inner perfectionist is probably gasping for air right now. I know you want it perfect from the beginning (been there)! But all of that will actually SLOW YOU DOWN in the beginning. Just trust me on this one! Hiding behind learning to build a website or doing technical marketing will not have more people know that you can help them – OKAY? Your face needs to be out there, your voice has to be shared and your offer has to be known to have people starting to ask about working with you!

Alright, so again, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this on the podcast before, but even if I have, it’s worth mentioning one more time:

Three Aspects of Marketing

In conventional marketing, there are two main points of focus: Technology and Consumer Psychology.

Technology = the medium you use to communicate

This could be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, podcasts etc. The technology is just the container where you show up and interact with people.

Consumer Psychology = what makes people buy

This is about what to say or write, your actual copy, what CTAs (call to actions) to use and how to position the offer based on the demographics (age, gender, profession etc.) and psychographics (their interests) to make people buy. There can sometimes be an underlying vibe of persuasion and manipulation …which is probably one of the reasons why you might dislike the idea of marketing. Also, in this digital age, humans have been reduced down to mere likes, engagement rates, number of followers and general data points for data driven ads. Then, conventional marketers use these data points to create more desirability in their marketing. This can also feel repelling, not to mention; complicated! It’s a sharp contrast to what we coaches are about; to have our clients be seen, heard, understood and work WITH their humanity – not against it.

This is one of the main reasons why I didn’t want to work in marketing anymore. I didn’t want to be a part of this dehumanizing practice. It just felt dry and… wrong in a sense. It actually started to feel more like accounting than the creative, fun part of marketing that I was initially drawn to. It didn’t feel in integrity with what I’m about or what the world needs right now.

So, that brings me to the next point in marketing – which conventional marketing doesn’t account for. YOUR Psychology. This is the SECRET SAUCE that I help you with in Holistic Marketing.

YOUR Psychology = the energy driving your marketing

Technology and consumer psychology becomes secondary if you get this piece right.

If you don’t think that;

1. You are THE BEST coach for your people
2. That YOUR coaching offer is the best for your clients
3. That your people don’t want to buy your offer
4. That they want it NOW…

…then people who interact with your content is not going to think so either. They won’t reach out to work with you. Our subconscious beliefs seeps through our marketing and content – and people pick up on that shit.

BUT! When you get these four belief aspects right… You become MAGNETIC! People come out from everywhere asking to work with you.

Think about coaches that you are drawn to, that you maybe kind of look up to, that you might want to hire… what is the ENERGY behind their words? How would you describe their presence? What feelings do you about them?

You probably pick up on their confidence in themselves and what they do. You might feel like they exude a sense of authority or being an expert in their field. I encourage you to really lean into this and explore the energy you get from the coaches you’re most drawn to.

The Point of Marketing

So, before we get into more of the details around skills in marketing. Let’s first look at what the point of marketing really is:

1. To make people aware that the product or service exists
2. To compel people into buying the product or service

That’s the basics. Anything you’ll ever do in marketing can be boiled down to one of those two steps.

Here’s where the skills come in. Knowing the foundation, we can now look at what skills to develop to get more and more sophisticated in our communication and marketing.

The most important aspects – that will make you so much better so much faster is the age old principle of “as within, so without”. If you’re drawn to mysticism, you can read more about this principle in the book, Kybalion. But, you don’t have to be into ancient mysticism to get the logic of this. The principle relates to whatever’s going on inside of us (meaning our thoughts and feelings), we’ll see a direct reflection of in our external reality. That’s literally how the model works, right; what thoughts and feelings we have will create our results. For those of you who may not know what “the Model” is, it’s a tool that you learn at The Life Coach School.

Okay, so for example, if we think that we don’t know enough about marketing to attract more clients, we might feel insufficient. Meaning, that we don’t know enough yet. We’ll then go onto listen to a ton of podcasts, follow lots of marketing gurus, maybe sign up for a course, work on our website, marketing funnel and freebie. We’ll scroll on Instagram or TikTok, telling ourselves that we’re doing research and getting inspired. We’ll be doing a LOT of behind the scenes work on our business… and a lot of procrastination! What’s being reflected in our reality will be that we’re not actually attracting any more clients. Remember the first step; “To make people aware that the product or service exists“. There won’t be a lot more people knowing about our service when we think and feel that way.

On the contrary, if we believe that we can FOR SURE help people reach their goals through coaching them, we’ll feel sufficient. Meaning, we have confidence that we already know enough RIGHT NOW. We will talk about it effortlessly with people we interact with. We’ll show up on social media without sounding convincing or preachy. We’ll talk about what we do and how we help people in the most natural way. We’ll feel at ease on the inside and we’ll project a sense of ease on the outside. This makes people curious about your offer. They start to feel more and more compelled to take you up on the offer – because your whole vibe emits a sense of confidence, certainty, sufficiency and expertise.

Remember, as with everything, our thoughts are ALWAYS the first domino to fall in creating the results that we want.    

So, in your marketing, coming from a place of confidence and sufficiency, here are the skills that will make your marketing more and more successful – more and more effective:

For the 1^st step; To make people aware that the product or service exists; how can you get creative? How can you make yourself known to people in new ways? In FUN ways? In ways that you lean on your personal strengths? How can you leverage the platform that you use to get in front of more people? How can you create synergies with others to reach more people? This step doesn’t require a whole lot of skill. But it does require that you’re willing to try a bunch of things. If you’re feeling resistant to for example going live on Instagram, question that. What are you afraid of – deep down? For everything you discover that you hold resistance to, you have an opportunity to grow and take one more step towards the version of you who has the business that you dream of creating. So, if you find yourself having a lot of excuses; that you procrastinate whenever you intended to put yourself out there, get coaching on that FOR SURE! If you don’t have a coach, I’d love to help you out.

Okay, so step two. This is where we really get into the skills within marketing. The 2^nd step being “To compel people into buying the product or service”. So, for your coaching business, that literally just means; help people see the value that you bring and make it easy for them to see that working with you will help THEM, specifically, reach their goals by working with you. This step includes BOTH creating content AND sharing your offer. This is just two sides of the same coin really.

I used to think that creating content was FOR my followers, and that sharing my offer was FOR me to get something back – which made me resent sharing my offer. It felt sleazy and graspy. BUT, when I came to realize that the MOST value you can EVER give to your client are actually through working with you on a personal level – everything changed. Reading quotes, tips and hacks on Instagram may provide new perspectives and mini transformations for people. However, it CANNOT compare with the transformation that someone gets when they actual IMPLEMENT and APPLY those things into their actual life. Understanding something intellectually in one thing. LIVING it, is a whole other thing. Cannot compare. So, to loop back in from my passionate side track here… Compelling people into buying coaching is done through offering free value (aka help) in your content AND offering them the REAL deal, the deep transformation to work with you and get those results that they are longing for. If you’re interested in learning more about this – more in-depth, listen to my previous podcast episode on people focused vs offer focused marketing).

So, the main thing that I see most coaches failing at in their marketing, is that they focus on the logic and the process of coaching AND that they’re being too general. Bear with me, I’m going to explain this so that you really get it and so that you can improve your marketing times a hundred!

Be SPECIFIC!

What I mean by focusing on logic and process is probably best described though examples. So, a typical coaching niche would be for example: “Empowering women to live with confidence and purpose” or “Navigate your trauma healing” “Live with self-love and more mindfulness”. These are some actual Instagram bios. There is nothing wrong with these and I’m not here to throw shade on them, and bios or elevator pitches are the generalized header of what you do. In your continuous marketing, through your content, you need to get SPECIFIC!  

What I mean is; nobody wakes up and obsess over living with confidence or thinks to themselves, “I want to navigate my trauma today”. The subtle difference between average and amazing marketing, is the application and specificity of how that message is communicated. WHY would people want confidence? What do people wake up and long for – which, might be a RESULT of being confident? Maybe it’s getting a pay rise? Maybe it’s daring to stand up for themselves? Maybe it’s breaking up with their toxic partner? Maybe it’s setting a boundary with their mother-in law, maybe it’s daring to reach out to that hot person that they secretly have a crush on? The better you get at coming up with relevant and SPECIFIC situations that your people LONG FOR, the better your marketing. As you can see, this is a skill. It requires you to test a hundred things, tweak, iterate and try a hundred more ways of saying it. Remember that people are bombarded with information all day every day, that people understand things in different ways and sometimes are open for input and other times they’re not. Therefore, the PRACTICE of putting your message out there, honing the skill of being specific and CLEAR in how you can help, will take your marketing to a whole other level!

I also mentioned that a lot of coaches make the mistake in their marketing that they talk about the process and logic. Very often we can talk about improving our mindset and doing the work – I sometimes do it as well. But, what will ALWAYS be more effective, is to focus on the RESULT. The OUTCOME that people want in their heart of hearts. How it will have a DIRECT impact on their lives. 99,999% of people who considers buying coaching have a life that includes stress, overwhelm and too much on their plate. They don’t want more WORK. They DO however, want results. I’ve mentioned this quote before, but here it is again; sell people on what they WANT (aka the desired, specific results) and give them what they NEED (aka coaching with you and working on their mindset).

How Our Brain Works

Remember that our brains have three main focuses;

1. Avoid pain
2. Seek pleasure; and
3. Be efficient (preserve energy)

Our brain LOVEs to generalize, because it requires less energy to do that. However, our potential clients also have brains who loves to preserve energy, so if they don’t recognize what you talk about as directly applicable to their lives, they’re going to filter it out as not important. However, when you intentionally use your brain FOR them, that you use your brainpower for them to easily digest your content – and talking about something that’s directly related to what they want… Your content will be magnetizing!

Okay, so to summarize. Marketing has two main elements; To make people aware that your coaching service exists AND to compel people into making the investment to work with you. The first requires creativity, willingness and courage (courage before confidence).  The second is where you really get to hone your skills. Through your free content and through talking about your offer, you help people see the value of coaching. You also need to be specific and focus on the OUTCOMES that people truly want.