It's one thing to write a business plan or marketing plan, but quite another to follow through with it. Be honest, when did you last look at your Marketing plan?
Do you even have a Marketing plan?
If like most coaches, you're leaving a job to become a coach or you're becoming a coach after taking a break from work, it's easy to forget that you're starting your own business and that the buck stops with you.
There's a world of difference between thinking 'I'm a coach' and 'I run a coaching company'. And the difference is in your attitude.
Often the people who think 'I'm a coach' concentrate all their efforts on being a good coach. There's a tendency to think 'If I'm a good coach, people will come to me'. If you're in this frame of mind, you could find yourself thinking that to go out and promote yourself is somehow 'pushy' and not in line with 'being a good coach'.
When we're coaching our clients, we often say to them along the lines of: You are the master or mistress of your own destiny. You make your own luck. If you want something to happen, you need to take positive action. You can't blame other people for your life not turning out the way you want it. The future is yours alone. You should set yourself goals and work out the steps you're going to take to achieve those goals. And to do that you might need to stretch your comfort zones and learn new skills.
The people who think 'I run a coaching company' are the people who take responsibility for the successes and failures of their practice. They accept that in running a company, there will be things that, though they might be uncomfortable at first, they have to do in order to build their company and get clients. They don't sit back and wait for clients to come to them. After all, if you're coaching from your spare bedroom, you don't exactly have any passing trade, do you? How will clients find you if you don't make yourself known?
To win clients, you need to follow your own advice and set SMART goals:
S - specific
M - measurable
A - achievable
R - realistic
T - timed
And even though all coaches know that setting clear goals is important, very few set themselves goals for things like how many clients they want to have or how they want their Marketing to consistently deliver those clients to them.
If you're absolutely clear about the results you want your Marketing to generate and how you're going to get those results, it's easy to monitor how you're performing against those targets. If your goals are a bit more vague like "I need to get more clients", then it's easy to get distracted and to waste time and money on
projects that don't move you any closer to your goals.
For example, you could waste money on advertising to the wrong type of people or investing in offering services that your customers are unlikely to want or promoting yourself in all the 'right' places, but with the wrong message - one that your clients either ignore or think isn't relevant to them.
When I worked as Marketing Manager for Laura Ashley and as Head of Marketing for Tempo, we used to get our Marketing calendar worked out about 12 to 18 months in advance. This would show month by month the types of products we'd be promoting and how we were going to do it. We'd set specific goals and sales targets. We'd work out how much money we needed to spend on our Marketing to hit those targets, and (this is the crucial part) what sort of profit we'd make. Why did we start working on it so far in advance?
Well, there were a number of reasons:
1. The buyers needed to make sure that they had the stock in at the right time
2. The merchandisers needed to make sure that the right amount of stock was
where it needed to be
3. The store managers needed to brief their staff so that they could promote the
products and offers more effectively to customers
4. And the marketing department needed to get everything in place to drive
customers into the stores to buy it. Since we were also trying to get as much
editorial coverage as possible to promote our products, including captions on
the front covers, we had to work to the journalists' deadlines to ensure that
a) it could be done and b) no one else jumped in and pinched our position!
As a result we usually had to start the ball rolling with them at least 8 months
in advance.
Now, if you're running a coaching practice, you're probably thinking that this doesn't apply to you.
But remember that YOU are the buyer, the merchandiser, the sales staff and the marketing team all rolled into one. Even though the product you're selling is your skills and experience, you still need to plan so that you're in the right place at the right time, that the right people know about you at the right time and if you want to get yourself featured in the press, you'd better start planning ahead.
Think very carefully about how you want to people to perceive you, who you're targeting and how you'll get that message across to them. And set yourself some clear, measurable goals!
Contact:
Agbolade Omowole
nigeriaslifecoach@gmail.com
+2347064649978
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