Marketing Myths

Harvard Business Review reports that coaching is a 1billion a year industry in 2009. Fast forward to 2013, Sherpa Executive Coaching reports at the 8th annual coaching summit that the perceived value and the credibility of coaching are now at an all time high.
While sharpening coaching skills and getting yourself equipped with coaching methodologies are important; marketing for coaches is an area that is often neglected or left up to the last minute for graduating or budding coaches.
Coaching is now called upon to help executives in organizations as well as small business owners deal with the demands of a complex and  fast changing world.
This post is dedicated to taking a closer look at marketing for coaches (life coaches or executive coaches, certified or not).  In order to help and reach more people coaches will need to start paying more attention to marketing and promotion.
We will discuss 2 common myths about marketing for coaches here. For a more indepth discussion, you can refer to the full article here.
Myth #1: You invest in marketing after you have had a few clients under your belt
Realitity: The most common reason coaches do not pay enough attention to marketing is the perception that they need to have enough businesses and clients before it becomes justifiable to invest in marketing efforts. The question to ask here would be: so how will you have more clients if you don’t promote your services?
If you are familiar with the stages of business growth, you would know that the bulk of the investment, both in time and resources, are at the startup and growth phase. It is when the business is new and relatively unknown to the market that you would need to make your services known. Businesses that want to hold off marketing effort until they have enought clients need to reframe their perspectives.
Myth #2:  You can scale back from marketing efforts when your business starts to take off
Reality: The rationale here is that once you have had a few clients you’ll be able to get referrals through word of mouth. This is assuming that your clients will recommend you and that you will be content to remain where you are without wanting to acceledrate and ride on your business growth.
I believe you would want to build a healthy base of prospects because clients come and go, no matter how good your services are. Not because they do not like you or your service but because they may have new priorities, new life styles, or some may relocate, get new jobs and others may want to take a break. It is only natural and prudent that you keep marketing as an on-going part of your business to ensure that you’ll always have a healthy base of paying clients.
While it is tempting to sit back when you have established a good footing, it is unwise to think that you can scale back on marketing. People and business go through cycles and changes, clients’ needs change and businesses need to keep an attentive ear and know how to solve relevant problems for their clients. Not to invest in research and active promotion will leave you far behind your competitors who are paying close attention to their clients’ needs. More marketing myths discussed here.
If this is making sense and you’ll like to know how to market your coaching practice then feel free to get in touch and we can set up a short call to understand your unique challenge and offer you one strategy that you can use right away so you create more effective marekting for your coaching business.
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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles