There was a time when small independent businesses rarely spent money on advertising. Being in direct sales or network marketing was truly a word of mouth business. Times have changed and along with that new opportunities are available along with the potential to spend a lot of money with no net results. Our goal for a coach in their first 6 months is to build a foundation that will serve them in the future if they decide to attract new contacts through advertising.
MARKETING STRATEGIES
Let’s look at a spectrum of activities listed below that can lead to building your customer base. They are ranked left to right based on the net results of effort/cost verses return. What has been proven on this scale of options, is that you can expect the best results from Direct Contact and Follow-up. Hands down, this is the best use of your time and money. Moving across the scale, a small decrease but still productive is networking and referral building, because it’s always good to get out and in front of people. Public speaking seems to lead to quality leads but the opportunities are rare and it requires special skills. Writing and publicity adds credibility to you and your business and attracts customers who can find your content. Promotional events will give people a reason to connect with you, but the cost and production of events can be major. On the other end of the spectrum, and of course the least results come from advertising.
This has been statistically true for business building strategies for centuries, and advertising was only considered by large companies who could afford to do it…until social media was born. Now the small business entrepreneur has awesome opportunities to get in front of new people at a reasonable price. There is a catch to having a solid advertising campaign - You don’t want to rely on it alone. To avoid the risk of your entire business being tied to one marketing plan, you want to choose other activities and have a balanced way of connecting with people.
When you look at how you spend your time reaching out to people, notice if there’s balance. Maybe you haven’t considered some of the other options yet? As you learn more about coaching, you will start implementing new activities that you enjoy and will continue to build upon it.
STEP ONE: Set yourself up to benefit from advertising?
- Complete your coach account and profile set up in your Coach Office. Customers may navigate their way to your coach profile, websites, or shopping cart. Make sure you are set up for business.
- You want to have your Instagram account set up so that you can post interesting messages there and forward them to your Facebook Business Page
- Set up your Facebook Business Page up with 10 posts or more and ask some close friends and family to become followers.
- Create a Private Group for your VIP Customers from your Business Page and add your close friends and family to the group to get started.
- Read and review the the Coach University Social Media lesson to help you craft some posts for your audience. Don’t worry about being an expert, just be yourself and share tips, ideas, ask questions, and tell stories that your tribe cares about.
- Be patient and consistent with your posts, invites, and engagement. It’s okay to take a few weeks to build a history of posts, add people who will like your Page and customers who want to join your Group.
STEP TWO: Become a Social Media Advertising Student
The steps to take to actually run ads are changing daily, so we can’t give you those specific steps in this Coach University. We can however, give you our top resources to begin the journey of learning how social media advertising can work for the non-expert Solopreneur.
- We believe that Instagram is trending as the top way to attract new contacts through social media. We recommend connecting directly to the Instagram Business Blog for the hottest new tips and announcements. - CLICK HERE TO CONNECT -
- We have researched many agencies who work in the social media space and one of the most generous in providing free valuable content is AdvertiseMint. We don’t suggest you hire them as their clients have substantial budgets. But why not learn from the best? Especially when they offer so much for free. You can also subscribe to their newsletter. - CLICK HERE TO CONNECT -
- We also really like the layout and information provided by Iconosquare in their Essential Guide to Instagram Advertising.
To wrap this up let’s refocus on what matters right now. Think about your overall strategy for connecting with new people. Is it balanced and are you set up to receive new contacts and inquiries? Then become a student of social media advertising and start thinking about what message, offer, or item of value you would like to put out to your community.
We typically encourage our Coaches to explore testing ads some time in their 6-12 month from launch. We know many of you are curious and want to learn, so we are setting the course for you to become successful once your business has some solid roots in place.