If you’re a coach, consultant, and/or service-based business – this post is for you!
Likewise, speakers, authors, teachers, and entrepreneurs in the business of selling themselves can also glean insights from this post!
It’s the most comprehensive marketing strategy post you’ll find on the Internet, I guarantee it.
Whether you’re trying to develop your marketing strategy or you feel like you’ve got things figured out, I recommend giving this post a gander. I’m sure I’ll shed some light on areas you haven’t even considered.
To help assist you, I’ve put together a fill-in-the-blank document that can be downloaded by clicking the link below:
>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format
Let’s get started.
The Master Plan
This is the master blueprint we’ll be following to build your marketing strategy.
I urge you not to skip ahead to the “cool” stuff that involves automation, tracking, and other nifty tools. Yes, that stuff is fun; however, if you don’t build a solid foundation, you’ll wind up spinning in circles and produce minimal results.
So, please, take the 60 minutes to define your customer and your business before moving forward!
Scenarios
I’ll be using a couple model businesses in order to provide examples:
Business #1 – Offers digital products, coaching, consulting, and services – ie. Crazy Eye Marketing
Business #2 – Offers digital products and services – ie. a financial advisor
Business #3 – Only offers services – ie. a dentist
As we get into the “Business” section, I’ll discuss the particular offerings of each model business.
Customers
If you’ve read anything on marketing strategy in the past, you’ve likely come across articles about your customer and the importance of “defining” your customer.
This makes sense. If you’re not sure who your business is for … then, what are you doing?
More than likely, you already know who your ideal customer is; however, you probably haven’t truly defined them.
I understand, it can take a lot of time to develop a full fledged customer avatar or marketing persona … and, quite frankly, it sounds kinda boring, especially when there are a bunch of tools and fancy automations to get to!
But, here’s the deal – having a more defined ideal customer does two things:
Helps you find them
Helps you connect with them
Two really important factors that help alleviate potentially HUGE problems!
If you can’t find your ideal customer, you won’t be able to attract them.
If you can’t connect with your ideal customer, you won’t be able to do business with them. People they know, like, and trust. If you can’t get people to know, like, and trust you – your business will struggle.
To save you the time of going and filling out a customer avatar worksheet, simply answer these 5 questions:
What’s your ideal customer’s name? You need to give them a name!
Dave
Marshall
Jenna
Where do they hangout? / How can you get in front of them? Online, offline, particular websites, forums, Facebook groups, etc.
Facebook groups, forums, marketing/small business websites
Newspaper, home, travel websites
15 mile radius, schools, libraries, grocery stores
Where are they in the journey of life? Baseline demographics, thoughts, desires, fears, etc.
30ish years old, young family, starting a small service-based business, trying to make things work, wants to support their family.
Retirement age, ready to stop working, wants to travel the world, wants to maximize time with family and friends.
Stay at home mom with young children, wants to take care of her kid’s health.
How do they see themselves? / How do they present themselves?
I’m relatively smart and hardworking – more so than the average Joe. Can do anything I put my mind to, sky’s the limit!
I’ve done my time, I’m now a world renowned adventurer ready to conquer anything!
A good mother, first and foremost. I’m the caretaker of my family.
How well do they know your products and industry? Do they “live” it, are they “new” to this world, etc.?
Semi-new to the business of digital marketing (~ 6 months). Has some basic concepts down, but hasn’t quite pieced it all together yet.
Understands the very basics of wealth management. Put money into their 401k their whole life, has invested some on their own.
They know about teeth cleaning and basic dentistry work as they’ve been going to the dentist their whole life.
See, it doesn’t have to be too difficult! Your answers should simply be a stream of thought.
Just by going through this process you’ll develop a new frame to look through as you produce your content and message.
Customer FAQ:
Q: I have more than one ideal customer, how should I handle this?
A: Yes, you likely do have more than one ideal customer which is great. Ask yourself the same questions for each customer. However, I have two recommendations:
1) Make sure they’re uniquely different. Make sure where they hangout is different, where they are in the journey of life is different, and how they see themselves is different.
2) Start with your top 1 or 2 ideal customers – 80% of your business. You can always add more “ideal customers” later on, and I recommend getting the low hanging, obvious fruit first.
To Do
Answer the questions above.
>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format
Business
There are three core aspects of your business to define before moving forward:
Why you do what you do
Who you/your business are/is
How you help your customers (products and/or services) / What you do
If you’re well-established, you can likely easily answer these questions; however, you probably haven’t really “defined” them and mapped them out. I urge you to take the time to do this as it’ll make the sales funnel development much simpler.
Why You Do What You Do
Why do you do what you do?
What’s your mission?
Most people don’t start a coaching, consulting, or service-based business accidentally.
What makes you leap out of bed in the morning? Is it to talk to clients? Help people? Make money? Is it creating or building?
What is it?
This doesn’t have to be an official statement that you’re going to put on your website. No one else is ever going to see it (unless you want them to).
It simply serves as a reminder when times get tough and helps you make decisions that align with your purpose.
It makes life easier.
Who You/Your Business Are/Is
There are other people and businesses that do what you do.
This is a good thing. If other people are having success doing what you’re doing – that means you can too.
It also means you have competition and need to figure out a way to stand out.
The best way to stand out? Your personality or persona.
Being generic will not work in this day and age.
“Different is BETTER than better” – Sally Hogshead
Where Will This Persona Be Used?
This persona will be used in the content you produce, the correspondence you send, and across your entire business.
If your persona is fun and outgoing – everything about your business should be fun and outgoing.
This persona will be the “face” of your business.
How To Figure Out Your Business’s Persona
If you’re a solopreneur, this is an easy one – you are the persona.
Being a coach, consultant, service-based business, speaker, author, etc. – people need to know, like, and trust you.
Let your freak flag fly! You’ll attract those that connect with you and repel those that don’t.
If you’re a business with multiple employees, there are a few ways to decide on your business’s persona:
Assume the personality of the owner/founder/CEO
Develop a business persona that will connect with your ideal customer
Have multiple personas. It’s certainly acceptable to have multiple personalities, especially if you operate with a large team. The overall “feel” should be similar; however, each team could have their own persona for how they connect with customers.
Your Products And Services
The products and services you sell essentially translate to, “How you help people”.
Knowing what products and services come next in your customers’ lifetime will help you deliver more value, which means increased revenue for your business.
Most of the time, coaches, consultants, and service-based businesses offer a wide array of products and services. This is great because you have a lot to choose from; however, so do your customers and if they don’t have a clear path toward success – they’ll get confused and choose nothing.
You need to take the time to map out your products and services to give your customers a clear path to success.
The Value Ladder (“The Map”)
The concept and implementation of a Value Ladder is what propelled my personal coaching, consulting, and service-based business from break-even to profitable.
It’s simple, but powerful.
The idea is to offer products and services at varying levels of price and value while having each tier lead into the next one. Thus, over the lifetime of a customer, they’re “ascending” your Value Ladder and you always have something to sell them.
The break down:
Lead Magnets are usually freebies (coupons, videos, checklists, etc.) that attract and qualify leads
Initial Offers are lower-end products/services that are ideally “too good to refuse” and get people in the door
1st Tier Offers are usually your core product or service and bring in about 80% of your sales
2nd Tier Offers are the “next” level up from the 1st tier
Top Tier Offers are the best you have to offer, the full shebang!
Being that most coaches, consultants, and service-based businesses offer a wide array of products and services – the Value Ladder will be a bit more “advanced”:
Yup, Value Ladders inside of Value Ladders!
This will be explained through several examples.
Crazy Eye Marketing (digital products, coaching, consulting, services)
Digital Products
Lead Magnets: Checklists, videos, trials, discounts
Initial Offers: “Cheaper” products and courses
Top Tier: The Sales Funnel Training Vault
Coaching (Group Setting, Recurring)
Initial Offer: Monthly package
1st Tier: 6 month package
Top Tier: Lifetime coaching package
Consulting (Private)
Initial Offer: 1 hour
1st Tier: 4 hours
Top Tier: Custom
Services (Done For You)
Initial Offer: Small, simple, one-off jobs
Top Tier: Custom
Financial Advisor (digital products, services)
Digital Products (SaaS service similar to Mint and/or Wealthfront)
Lead Magnets: Trial
Initial Offer: Self managed
Top Tier: Professionally managed
Services
Lead Magnet: 7 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Financial Advisor
Initial Offer: Free 15 minute Q&A
Top Tier: Investment management, retirement planning, college planning, estate planning, debt reduction strategy
Dentist (services)
Services
Lead Magnet: Free teeth cleaning
Initial Offer: Teeth whitening
1st Tier: Cavities, fillings, and other minor fixes
Top Tier: Braces
Recurring: 6 month appointments
As you can see in the examples above, some Value Ladders have several tiers while others only have a few.
The take away is you offer different products and services at different price points and value that ideally “ascend” individuals to the next thing you offer. However, there are instances where they may skip a tier or two in the process, for example with the dentist – a person doesn’t need a cavity before they can get braces. Likewise, with Crazy Eye Marketing – someone doesn’t need to hire me for coaching before I will do a custom job for them. That would be silly!
To Do
Write down why you do what you do
Write down Who you/your business are/is
Map out your Value Ladder(s) – How you help your customers (products and/or services) / What you do
>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format
Delivery
The “Delivery” simply represents the way in which you deliver your products and services.
This obviously depends upon what you offer. For example, the dentist will need a place to see clients – he can’t offer virtual root canals.
However, in this day and age, most coaching and consulting can be achieved over the Internet from the comfort of one’s home.
So, it really depends – but you’re an adult and I’m sure you know what you need in order to deliver what you offer.
Make Sure You Own It
I will say this – make sure you own your method of delivery.
For example, you wouldn’t want to run your entire business off Facebook. What if Facebook decides you broke their terms of service and locks your account? What would you do then?
Another example, a lot of coaches run their business on Udemy. I’ll agree, Udemy is convenient and brings in new customers; however, Udemy controls pricing and how you can engage with your customers. You can’t email them whatever or whenever you want. You’re at the mercy of the Udemy gods … which isn’t a place you want to be.
A final example, many businesses are dependent upon Google and SEO to deliver their traffic. But, what happens if Google changes their algorithm and your business falls off the front page? Could you survive? Do you have a backup plan? If you own an email list, know how to grow it, and know how to sell to it – you won’t need Google.
You need to have your own website, your own email list, your own setup. Something no one can take away from you.
Of course, use the other platforms and tools available in order to build your platform, but never be dependent upon them.
My Coaching, Consulting, and Services Setup
To give you an idea of how my business is setup, I’ve listed the key components below so you have some direction. If you’d like more details or specifics, please let me know.
NameCheap: Domain registrar.
a2Hosting: Managed VPS, Prestige+ package. Hosts my website.
WordPress: Content Management System. “Is” my website. [course]
Avada Theme: Page builder and general look of my site.
MemberMouse: Membership plugin that handles digital product delivery and coaching packages.
Gravity Forms: “One off” payments and contact forms.
ActiveCampaign: Email automation.
Thrive Leads: Opt-in forms and lead capture.
Stripe: Payment processing.
Vimeo: Private, members only video hosting.
To Do
If you do not already have a method of delivery or you’re too dependent on a 3rd party, take 10 minutes to think about your business and what you need to take control over how it’s handled.
Write down your thoughts.
>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format
The “Meat”
The “Meat” is simply a fancy name I came up with to define all the content within your sales funnel. This includes everything:
Sales pages to landing pages
Ads to emails
Blog posts to YouTube videos
Social media shares to podcast interviews
and beyond!
It’s how you communicate with your customers.
While there are a million and one ways to strategize and handle all these aspects – they all have one thing in common, they need to drive action.
What do I mean by “action”? Mainly purchases, but this also includes things that lead up to the purchases like clicks, phone calls, foot traffic, etc.
All the things you need for your business to be successful.
Now for the question, “How does one drive action through their content?”
Copywriting.
You Must Learn Copywriting
What’s copywriting? Well, this is probably the “most fun” explanation; however, it’s a combination of art and science paired with the written word, video, images, etc. that motivates an individual to take action.
Being that it’s both an art and a science, it takes years of dedicated study to fully master.
Having said that, I know you’re a business owner and entrepreneur and likely lack the time required to fully master this skill; however, you should pursue every avenue possible to become a better copywriter.
Here are 4 tips that will make your copy better, instantly:
1) Write As Your Business’s Persona
We talked about your business’s persona above and hopefully you took the time to define it. That exercise will come in handy here.
Use pronouns like I, me, you, we, he, she, etc.
Use slang, jargon, market specific terminology, and inside jokes that your audience will connect with.
Write like you talk. Use bold, italic, and underline.
Remember, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. If you don’t write like yourself, they’ll never get to know you.
2) Write To Your Customer
Inline with tip #1 above – write to your customer.
Consider your writing a private letter to your ideal customer … a dear friend.
What would you tell them? How would you explain things?
Write like that.
3) Use Bullets and “Which Means”
People don’t read on the web – they skim.
Bullets are easily skimmed and are therefore consumed much more easily and readily than paragraph content.
So, how do you write great bullets?
Simple, follow these steps:
Write down a feature of your product or service
Write the phrase “which means” directly after the feature
Tell the reader what that feature means to them
Repeat steps 2-3 until you have a few alternative definitions
Consolidate into 1 quickly consumable bullet
Example:
Includes 9 fill-in-the-blank email series which means your email writing is essentially done for you which means you can implement autoresponder series faster which means you can make more money which means you’ll live a great life!
You’ll start living the good life faster than ever before after implementing our 9 fill-in-the-blank email series!
4) Use Copywriting Formulas And Frameworks
There are a lot of copywriting formulas and frameworks that can help you focus your efforts. Here are a few popular ones:
PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve): The problem defined. The feelings, emotions, pain, and agitation caused by the problem. How to solve the problem (your product/service).
BAB (Before, After, Bridge): The individual’s life before your product or service enters the picture. How great their life is after your product or service. The bridge (your product/service) that connects the before to the after.
AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action): Grab the reader’s attention, usually via the headline. Pull the reader in with an interesting story and connect with them on a deeper level, show them what’s possible. Make them desire what you presented as the moral of your story by showing them they’re capable of the same thing. Give them a place to take action and fulfill their desire (ie. a sales page or order form).
Want more? Click here for 27 copywriting formulas.
The “Other” Stuff
If you learn how to write great copy, the “other” stuff (pages, forms, ads, emails, etc.) becomes technical constraints that can be easily overcome.
There are tools for everything imaginable with new ones coming all the time.
As long as you can master the creation of action driving content and develop a baseline understanding of the tools to facilitate the spread of that content – your business will thrive.
Learn everything you need to know about the “other” stuff by joining The Sales Funnel Training Vault!
To Do
Focus your efforts on developing great content that follows the art and science of copywriting.
Revisit your sales pages and offers. Are you using paragraphs in places you could be using bullets? Are you writing to your customers as yourself? Are you utilizing sound copywriting formulas and frameworks in your writing?
If not, launch a split test with your old page vs. your new one utilizing the copywriting techniques outlined above.
>> Click here to download the Marketing Strategy for Coaches, Consultants, and Service-Based Businesses Worksheet & this post in PDF format
The “Simple” Sales Funnel
The “Simple” Sales Funnel, sometimes referred to as the “Straight Line Sales Funnel”, is simply a fancy way of saying email autoresponder series.
An email autoresponder series is a series of emails automatically sent to a subscriber.
While email autoresponder series and automations can be very complex, as you’ll see in the “Advanced” Sales Funnel section, we’re only going to talk about sending emails in a straight line, in this “Simple” section.
Here’s an example:
The Purpose Of A “Simple” Sales Funnel
There are a few reasons for this “Simple” Sales Funnel’s existence:
This email series automatically builds and maintains a relationship with your leads and customers while simultaneously converting them to your way of thinking
This serves as the backbone for more complex email automations we’ll later build on
Your personal understanding. If you have trouble making emails trigger in a straight line, when we get into more advanced topics you’ll really struggle
How Many “Simple” Sales Funnels Should You Have?
Most of the time, you only need one. The type of content you send in this funnel is interesting to people interested in your type of business or industry.
For example:
People who are interested digital marketing and sales funnels
People who are interested in taking care of their personal finances
People who are interested in maintaining their family’s dental health
There are a few instances where you may need 2 or more, for example if you’re a lawyer and you have two facets to your business: legal counsel for clients and consulting for other lawyers.
In this case, your customers are tremendously different. People seeking legal counsel have very different interests than other lawyers seeking advice. In this case, you would likely want 2 different “simple” sales funnels.
If you have more than one “Simple” Sales Funnel, you need to segment individuals at the very beginning by asking them “who” they are.
What Type Of Content Should You Send?
Remember, the point of this particular sales funnel is to build and maintain a relationship and convert them to your way of thinking.
To accomplish this, send 3 types of emails:
Educational – emails that teach people how to do something, about the market, about what’s happening, case studies, etc.
Entertaining – emails that are “fun” like stories, case studies, testimonials, inside jokes, critiques, events, etc.
Earning – emails that remind people you offer various products and services.
I’ve aptly named these emails the “3 E Emails”.
Now, this doesn’t mean an email can only be 1 of the Es at a time. Like, you can only send a boring how-to tutorial, or only send a silly cat video. That’s not what I mean. Your how-to tutorial should be entertaining and can even sell your product at the end. That’s like killing 3 birds with one stone!
However, each email should have 1 core focus.
Is the primary aim of the email to educate, entertain, or earn?
Educational emails tend to build relationships while converting people to your way of thinking
Entertaining emails tend to build and maintain relationships
Earn emails tend to ring the cash register
Examples:
Crazy Eye Marketing
Educational: Send a link to a video showing how to add an opt-in form to a website.
Entertaining: Share a case study where we split tested several opt-in forms and were able to increase the conversion rate by 57%.
Earn: Send a 10% off coupon for our optimization course tteaching, step-by-step, how to split test and optimize your opt-in forms.
Financial Advisor
Educational: Explain the differences and how to get the most out of the various retirement income streams: annuities, social security, pensions, etc.
Entertaining: Share the story of a successful client that has been with you for the last 10 years, gone through multiple trials and tribulations; however, finally retired and is now traveling the world!
Earn: Click here to schedule a free consultation with me!
Dentist
Educational: Share a list of 7 strategies for getting your children to brush their teeth for the appropriate amount of time.
Entertaining: Send a cute video that shows various animals getting their teeth brushed and enjoying it (my son would love this!).
Earn: Did you know? We offer free checkups for walk-ins? We do! Visit us today and make sure your mouth is in good shape!
Where Do You Get Content?
Being that you’re a coach, consultant, or service-based business and people need to know, like, and trust you – you need to create your own content.
You can’t outsource this.
Sure, there are people and businesses that can help you come up with a plan, piece it together, and write the “connecting” material (that’s what I do <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/1f609.png" alt="