A marketing coaching program can feel like the title states, “a roller coaster.” One minute you are feeling on top of the world, your sales are skyrocketing, income is flowing in and it is boom time for you. The next minute, it seems like everything is crumbling and you are scrambling to find your next client and paycheck. As a result, you ask yourself, ‘what went wrong’?
For business owners to find themselves in this type of situation is not unusual. Certainly, there are rosy times when everything seems to be going well. You keep landing more and more consulting projects as a coach and generally you are pretty much excited with the way business is turning out for you.
However, the moment comes when everything seems to be winding down and you become pretty anxious and fearful for the next line of action to take to make things bounce back to normal.
Marketing Coaching Program Feels Like a Roller Coaster
Maintaining a regular and sustainable lead is definitely the aim for marketing for coaches as this automatically translates into more conversions and profit. Moreover, it is quite disheartening to see already generated leads drop, or seeing a fluctuating figure in the number of leads generated by a business.
There are a number of reasons why this happens. Like I stated in my previous article, “a solid strategy should always form the foundation of any marketing tactic or idea you have” as this helps connects businesses (you) to customers and vice versa, thus generating more leads for the business.
1. Lack of Proper Niche Specialization
As a coach you need to find your niche and target the people that make up your niche. Are you attempting to generate leads by marketing to everyone with the assumption that they will use your product? If so you are missing the link when it comes to marketing and you probably won’t be able to generate leads sufficient enough to grow to business.
You probably must have heard over and over “do what excites you. This is not just mere talk. It is very important that pick an area in coaching you are really passionate about.
Specializing in different areas is just like having a taste of every item on a buffet and not having anything in particular to settle for as a meal. This presents you as a jack of all trades and a master of none in the minds of you audience.
With the ever increasing competition in the coaching business clients are more likely to move towards a marketing coaching program with an area that specializes in providing solutions to all the help they want, rather than having to settle with one who does a little of everything and having no major in one.
2. No Online Presence
Today, there is so much more information available to us through the internet. Researching about a business, and deciding who to work with is far less complicated now than ever.
Everyone these days seem to have access to the internet, and they can be easily found across a plethora of various online social media and business platform. This has made traditional advertising a little outdated.
With traditional advertising, your business goes in search of customers. With internet marketing, companies don’t search for customers. Instead, they give customers the information they seek and the ability to find them quickly.
When you think about it, the thinking has shifted in the world of marketing. Now companies with a robust online presence consistently generate leads. Moreover, finding new customers in more significant numbers than their competitors who don’t have a strong presence online.
As a result, not having an online presence, and especially a presence on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or even a website could prevent you from meeting potential customers or sustaining the already existing ones you have.
Creating the right type of online presence where you can find and keep in touch with your audience, doesn’t take more than some work and follow through and can be easily created without the concerns of exorbitant costs while creating the community every business needs to thrive.
There is no excuse for marketing for coaches not to have some online presence these days. If you aren’t up and running online, you can be sure your competitors are, and they generate leads instead of you.
3. Poor Budgeting 
Poor marketing budgeting can affect your lead generation which will affect your conversion rate and probably lead to an eventual failure in your business.
One of the biggest reasons for this failure is they don’t understand gaining customers is an investment. They don’t go about the process of acquiring customers the right way.
As a coach, it is essential that you understand the running cost of your business and know how to allocate your resources appropriately for your marketing campaigns.
For instance, a business coach running on a low budget and using a traditional major media advertising like television or radio will definitely run at a cost deficit. A better option for you would be the internet, because one of the cheapest ways to buy customers today is through social media. As a result, marketing for coaches doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive but the smart allocation of your budget will help determine your success.
That’s not to say that television or radio ads aren’t useful. They can be when done correctly but, the risks are far higher for a business coach with a smaller budget.
For instance If television advertising costs $4000 for 30 seconds, but it brings you, 100 customers, who spend an average of $100, it makes total sense, doesn’t it? Of course, it does, you’ve doubled your investment.
But if that same ad is only bringing in 50 customers that just spend $50, that campaign is not working and should be stopped immediately before the costs sink the business.
Too many companies try to capture customers using a platform far above their budget. Above all, to avoid this as a coach, it is wise to plan your budget according to the size and fund generated by the business, this will help you appropriate your fund according to the right platform suitable enough for your budget to handle without facing the risk of folding up.
4. Not Using Referrals
In today’s world of slick marketing and misleading advertising, people trust their peers more than they trust traditional ads. It is no longer enough to talk at the consumer hence the need to make use of referrals or user generated content.
The best way to generate leads is to use the customers that already buy from you. You could train team members who would focus on knowing how each customer feels after they have done business with you and making sure it is a positive experience for them, then rewarding them in some way at the very least with a personal thank.
Referrals are very important to any successful business, and if you develop a follow up strategy, that you can turn your most profitable customers into raving fans. This goes a long way to ensuring the long-term viability of your business and more lead generation for you.
User generated content are also great for lead generation. These kinds of contents are generated by consumers for their favorite brands. Furthermore, they help translate the business message from “come buy from me” to “see how it worked for someone like you.”
When one of your clients is pleased with their experience of your company, what are they likely to do? They spread the message by telling their friends, who will tell their friends, who will then tell their friends and so on. Hubspot has some great methods for getting high-quality leads here.
5. Poor Service Leads to Failure
If their experience of your service is terrible, you begin to lose those customers. Guess what those customers will do? Tell their friends, who will tell their friends and so on. The result when this happens is, you have and unstable flow of leads and low return on investment for your effort into business.
Shared contents from satisfied clients such as “what a great seminar”, “I learned so much” posted from satisfied attendees from a live event you organized or an event where you were a guest speaker, could serve as good user generated content that you could share to promote your brand as a business coach and gain more leads in return.
Other reasons why marketing for many coaches feels like a roller coaster include:
- The time interval between finding a new project. In other words the cost of inaction. Within this time you spend more money in the business with no new clients coming in.
- They don’t use strategic business niche partners.
- Email deliverability problems that could prevent your audience from getting you messages such as spammy messages, hard or soft bounces, blacklist appearance etc.
Sustainability is Key
In short, gaining sustainable leads is very vital for your marketing coaching program but generally for anyone who wants to make and headway in business. Without them, I do not see the reason why a business should exist because they form the foundation of any business idea generally. Where there are no target audience what then is the need for a business to exist.
Again, “a solid strategy should always form the foundation of any marketing tactic or idea you have” as this helps connects businesses (you) to customers and vice versa, thus generating more leads for the business. This is how you build regular and sustainable leads.
Also, simply avoiding the reasons stated above and applying the solutions given will help you as a coach generate the leads you expect for your marketing coaching program, increase your number of clients and return on investment with a better chance of growing your company and give you the future you desire.