No matter how competent you are as a coach, if you cannot convince your target audience that you’re worth the time, then you’re as good as invisible.
They may not have told you this in your coaching certification program, but embracing branding, marketing, content creation, and sales is essential to establishing yourself and building your coaching practice.
Despite the hundreds of offers you receive in your LinkedIn Inbox that claim otherwise, any brand claiming they have the magical solution to all your problems in businesses is not honest with its customers.
Any successful coaching venture requires effort and perseverance, but most of all, it needs careful deliberation.
As your guide, I will lead you on a proven process to define a meaningful offering for both you and your clients. The result is an ownable, proprietary coaching program that the wants and needs of a particular audience. And this methodology will never result in allowing you to be “everyone’s coach!” because when you try to be all things to all people you dilute your impact and effectiveness.
Every one of my programs starts with my four-step Discover Your Brand Methodology. I ease my customers into their dreams by following my personally curated ‘Find Your Why’ methodology built from my experience of nearly twenty years in Corporate America. It carries an entrepreneurial spirit combined with the power of networking, technology, and trust.
- Step 1 –Your core values – Who are you? We all have principles that define and guide us; I can help you reify them into core values to build your brand identity.
- Step 2 –Your simple marketing promise – Brands need to connect emotionally with people to establish a relationship of trust between them.
- Step 3 – Your purpose, way, impact – What is your purpose & process, and what impact will both have?
- Step 4 – Your story brand -What story will you tell your customers?
Brand coaching is about self-reflection; it urges the client to introspect and define how they envision their brand.
Once you are comfortable with your philosophy, vision, and approach we move to the specifics of how you will go to market and kick ass!
- Step 5 – Your coaching offering – We will take all we have learned throughout the process and define a specific and unique coaching offering for your particular audience. What do you offer? What does it cost? How do I buy it? Where? When? We will answer all these questions together.
- Step 6 – Your Coaching Roadmap – Once we have defined your practice, your story, and how you will go to market, it is time to work through how you will attract and retain customers. We will do a short and long-term roadmap together.
- Step 7 – Your Coaching Promotional Plan – I will get you out of your comfort zone and help you grow your audience. We will discuss and implement promotional tools and tactics to pay off your strategy.
This entire plan takes eight weeks to come into effect. But for some reason, if it takes a few more weeks, that’s ok too because I don’t charge by the hour, and what we are working on together will be complicated and is sometimes not linear. Throughout the process, I am your sounding board in your journey, and if there is something on your mind that’s not in the curriculum, we will coverer it, whether or not it is during a session.
I am not afraid to call out when you come up with something that is not unique differentiating in the marketplace, and if that takes us more time than anticipated, so be it.
The above is so effective because you are doing the work, the soul searching, and you aren’t just thinking; you are documenting and refining unique positioning that only you can deliver. And when this process is complete, I have a talented and trusted team I have been working with for years that can help you bring it all to life, including.
- Sales Promotion -Promote your brand to the right people following the right strategies. But let’s go beyond tactics to look at the bigger picture.
- Branding – Your product/service is a microcosm of your philosophical outlook towards life. We help create the difference you wish to make through your brand through imagery, logos, words, and actions.
- Content & Social -Increase your online presence with search engine optimized content and interactive social media engagement.
- Web Design – Your brand website introduces your clientele to your vision for the world. I work with experienced web designers and developers who understand your brand’s voice and ensure your website exudes clarity and coherence.
I understand the struggles of this profession and advise accordingly. Given my profession as a coach, my approach tends to resonate with other coaches. Feel free to check out my website for case studies, stories, and other content to help you on your journey. You can also schedule a free first session to make sure we are a fit together. And I will tell you if we are not a fit too!
Jay Mandel is Your Brand Coach and is a marketing and branding consultant and adjunct professor of Marketing. This post expresses my personal views, and my personal are directly connected with my employer because it is me 🙂
