Tic Tac Toe Marketing – www.tictactoemarketing.com/contentmarketing
Let’s talk about a content marketing strategy for leadership coaches and consultants – the trifecta of marketing content!
As the number of coaches and consultants in the leadership space continues to grow, it is harder to stand out with an average set of marketing content. In fact, there are more than 55,000 coaches and 734,000 consultants in the United States, with disciplines ranging from life coach to executive coach to leadership coach to {insert your industry} coach. Now that relationships can be built globally, we really ought to be considering all of the coaching and consulting companies in the world, not just the U.S.
Frankly, it’s hard for the average business professional to know what they need in the coaching and consulting space, let alone find them easily.
You need to create content for your coaching/consulting brand that speaks directly to your ideal clients. When you create marketing content that positions you as a thought leader, shares the services you offer, and offers support for the problems your reader is facing, you will gain more traffic to your website and more clients to your business.
Let’s Be Clear – What is a Leadership Coach and Consultant?
Leadership Coaching is a developmental process where a leader gets tailored help from a coach to help them achieve a goal and become a more effective leader. … The coach’s role is to help remove the obstacles that stand in the way of the leader attaining their goals.
Leadership consulting is a business service that engages in the evaluation of current management and supervisory strategies and assists the corporation in developing inherent leadership qualities among both managers and employees in general.
Of course, these definitions differentiate you from the countless other types of coaches and consultants. It’s also true that most professionals in the leadership coaching and consulting industry provide some combination of assessments, training, development, networks, and resources for those who wish to grow their leadership acumen and experience.
Why is it Important to Stand Out?
In the coaching and consulting world, most business comes from relationships and referrals. Let’s face it – the price tag of your services makes it rare for a prospect to find you because they simply happened across your online marketing content and brand, then signed up.
However, as the industry grows – online shopping like this is happening more often as a starting point for relationships. It’s exciting — especially if you are already creating online marketing content.
Before you can determine if executing a digital marketing content strategy is right for you, let’s talk about your goals?
Do You Want to Grow? By How Much?
If you have all the business you want and can continue to stay at this level without an online presence, quit reading.
Still reading?
That must mean you want to keep growing and the sales funnel you have isn’t as full as it could or should be to reach those goals. In this case, you need to create content that attracts the right clients in the right ways.
Defining Your Audience
We’ll create another post in the future about defining your audience. For now, it’s enough to say that you need to have an ideal client avatar, and you need to build and nurture relationships with those professionals over the long-term.
Once you have your client avatar, you can start to build a list of potential clients – either as a generally defined unit or a specific list of company names and contact information. Frankly, most leadership consultant firms can get away with creating a top 100 list and marketing directly to them.
Why Should They Choose You?
When you think about this audience, understand that they have a lot of choices. What would make them want to choose you?
Your specific offerings
Your price point
Your geographical location
All of these things are important. However, more than likely they are going to ask others in their professional ecosphere who they might recommend. Those recommendations go a long ways toward getting you the job even before you talk to the prospect.
In fact, Facebook has, for several years, competed with Google as a leading search engine. That doesn’t mean I am showing up on Facebook and typing ‘plumber near me’ into the search wizard. It means I am asking the question “who do you recommend for a plumber” and trusting the recommendation of friends.
This shift from the yellow page searches to Facebook recommendations has happened relatively quickly. It’s important to note that those who are still exclusively using the yellow pages as their marketing medium are losing out big time.
Adding to the list of reasons clients choose you and your services:
• Recommendation from a trusted source
In addition to a direct recommendation, it is also considered a recommendation when mutual friends or current customers comment on your website post, share your email content, or like a social media resource you share. When a prospect sees a trusted source take these actions, they trust your coaching/consulting practice a little more.
Building Authority
When you show up for a prospect in multiple ways, your credibility increases. As a StoryBrand Certified Guide, we call this part of your messaging your ‘authority.’ Long gone are the days of hanging a sign declaring “#1 IN THE BUSINESS” and being believable. To be a credible source these days, you need to have the collateral to prove it – certificates, degrees, awards, statistics, and — most important — testimonials.
It also builds your authority when you are sharing high-quality marketing content online.
If a prospect wants to learn more about your coaching/consulting services, they go to your website or existing social network. When the website includes resources, data, ideas, and case studies that speak directly to their needs, you become a trusted source for them.
Prospect Research
Having marketing content that stands out in search engines is critical. This speaks directly to new customers who are searching specifically for what you offer and find you online. Most likely they will still need to hear from others that your business is legit (which can be at least partially accomplished through website testimonials).
Beyond just posting content, there is a trick to using this type of content value. It has to be optimized. Anyone can write blog posts. We’ve all seen the crappy content that is out there. Optimized marketing content means that it has the right balance of length, number of headings, paragraphs and images. It needs to have key phrases in lots of places and the quality of content has to be high. UFDAH (spoken like a true Minnesotan) – how does the lay person do this? If you can master this type of online content, you will generate more leads than ever before. If this is a foreign language to you and/or you need help, let’s talk.
Online Connectors
Now-a-days, the real heroes of the day are the connectors. You know the type – people who collect other people and share their connections freely. Example—you are at lunch with a friend and share that you are struggling with a gap in your staffing structure. You don’t have the right person on the team to fill the gap, you don’t have the capacity (time or money) to create a new position to fill it.
The connector, of course, knows the perfect contractor with the exact services you need to fill the gap. Because you trust the connector, the introduction is a quick start on getting a contract going and the gap filled.
Online content works in the same way. When your content offers value, it becomes sharable. That sharable content works like a warm introduction and can generate leads while you sleep.
Retaining Clients
Having consistent, trustworthy, thorough content marketing available online can also increase the quality of the customer experience for those you already serve. Because they can access your collection of content marketing materials, they can more easily be reminded of the principles and practices you teach. These differentiated experiences can be powerful tools in retaining those ideal clients!
How do you Stand Out?
When you create high quality, optimized digital marketing content, you will stand out online! Yes – there are a LOT of coaching and consulting practices and firms that are creating content.
Yes, it feels like you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a new blog these days. BUT, most of those are not optimized for the specific customer avatar you have created.
The best content marketing strategy acknowledges your coaching and consulting clients’ needs, tells them how your services solve their problems, answers questions that they are asking, and does it all in a way that makes Google happy so that you rank higher in search results.
The Trifecta — Your New Content Marketing Strategy
To move from passively creating and distributing content marketing to executing a comprehensive content marketing strategy requires that you choose the right marketing activities.
This digital transformation doesn’t need to be painful or use every medium available to you. It can be as simple as creating amazing content and repurposing it for three global network channels – blog, email, and social media.
Blogging
Blogging is a great way to share long-form content marketing that answers the bigger questions that your prospects and clients are asking about your business. When a coach or consultant can share ideas, concepts and stories unique to them and tie them in with bigger industry knowledge, the post has even better potential.
When you start to think about what you might include on your blog, ask these questions:
• What are my ideal clients wondering about?
• What have our coaches and consultants been thinking about or working on more lately?
• How can we support those that we serve with powerful content?
• What is the market we serve talking about?
• What are companies struggling with?
• What are executives staying awake at night worrying about?
There is an amazing book by Marcus Sheridan called They Ask, You Answer. In it, Sheridan easily convinces us that marketing has shifted from ‘don’t answer the question or they will do it themselves’ to ‘give them all the knowledge so they will trust you’. Don’t be afraid of loosing business to DIYers or your competitors stealing the knowledge.
Adding a blog to your website can be a powerful way to own industry content. Put your name on it. Copyright it. Own it and share it. The value of those bylines will get you amazing attention and set your company and coaches up for great success and more money!
Let’s look at some blogging data from 2021:
• 77% of bloggers report that blogging drives results.
• Bloggers took 67% more time writing each post in 2021 than they did in 2014. The average time spent on a blog post is 4 hours.
• Bloggers who invest more time get better results.
• The average blog post is 1,416 words. This numbers is getting bigger each year.
• Bloggers who publish more often get better results, but the average posts per blogger has held steady.
Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – these are the four main channels that have potential for you.
However, just because these are options doesn’t mean you need to use them all. In fact, it is better to join one or two channels and show up consistently with high value content, than throw basic, boring content on all of the channels.
Choose the ones that reach your ideal customers and use a content strategy that works with that platform. Remember – leading brands aren’t showing up everywhere. They are showing up on relevant networks and reaching their prospects and clients where they already are. The content they create is good, consistent, and relevant.
Let’s look at some social media data from 2021:
• 82% of Americans used social media in 2021. This is a slight increase over 2020.
Here’s where the real magic happens. Effective content marketing strategy is not picking and using one channel then rinse and repeat. It’s the creation of amazing content marketing then repurposing it for all three channels.
Not only does it make the work more efficient and affordable, the repetitiveness of the message helps to improve your ranking and brand recognition. Digital marketing isn’t rocket science – it’s as simple as maximizing your core pillars of content and using it in really smart ways.
How will you Know if Your Efforts are Successful?
Content creation is most effective when it is optimized. And, the only way to track and measure the results is through advanced analytics.
If you are a DIYer, consider simple and free analytics tools like Google Analytics. If you are working with a marketing agency, they likely have more advanced tools that can show you the data that matters.
Here are a few of the things you want to see growth in:
• More leads
• More clients
• Media attention
• Organic website traffic (overall and specific pages)
• Lead generation increase
• App Downloads
• E commerce increases
• Social engagement measures – clicks, likes, comments, shares
• Business buzz – from public relations sources, clients, prospects, customers, and friends/family
• Your unique measures of success – consider what your business measures and how these activities might show improved results
• Content focus and alignment with how your team talks about the business
What Will it Mean to Your Business if You Break Through the Clutter Online?
The above analysis is just the start. When these things happen consistently over time, you become a trusted source of industry know-how.
• You get tapped to be a speaker at events.
• You can transform your content into a book. This along with e-commerce becomes wonderful passive income streams within your niche market.
• Creating online courses becomes easier and more profitable.
• Your coaches and consultants are in higher demand.
• Your business grows.
• Your customers become raving fans.
• You make more money.
What’s stopping you from going after this now? It’s just a matter of time before the competition beats you to the punch.
It’s time to ramp up your marketing efforts and put together a content strategy to illustrate your operational excellence. It’s time to gain more clients. It’s time to focus your marketing dollars on the things that matter.
How Can You Make This Happen
Do you have a marketing team at your company? If so, you may already be well on your way to executing an amazing content marketing strategy! Talk to your managing director. If your team needs support in creating a content strategy, building a blog, optimizing content marketing, or content creation, we want to talk to you. This is our JAM – especially within the leadership development space!
Perhaps you already work with a marketing agency? Do they have content marketing strategies in place for you? This is a great question to ask. If not, it’s worth exploring the options they offer as well as another marketing agency (wink wink – like Tic Tac Toe Marketing!).
Your body of content isn’t going to get built overnight. Just get started! As you do more blogging, emailing and posting, you’ll start to see trends in what is working and what falls flat. Of course, A/B testing content is always a good idea, but if you don’t have this level of capabilities, don’t worry. Just keep putting out high quality, consistent content and you will see engagement grow.
A Note about Measuring Growth
There are lots of tools out there to help you see your online engagement. For DIYers, stick with Google Analytics to start. If you want more in depth tools, let’s talk!
Repurposing Content
Here’s an insider tip — every piece of your content doesn’t not have to be unique. When you create a business blog post, you can repurpose it for your email and social channels. Better yet – if you create a video, which we haven’t even talked about here, you can convert it to a blog, pull out a half-dozen 10-30 minute segments for social, and use the same content for email.
Your audience needs to see your content consistently and repeatedly. Saying the same thing through multiple channels reinforces your message.
If you are worried about being too repetitive, add layers to it. For instance, a blog post might highlight services you offer, like coaching or consulting. In an email, you might write an opening that shares third party stats that reinforce your ideas, then link to the blog for more information. Your social posts could highlight customers who have had success in these service areas. It all reinforces your core business messaging and helps others to know you for the thing you are uniquely capable of doing.
For DIYers, you can absolutely use content you find online. Just make sure you give credit to your original source. Be sure to add personalized commentary to make it more unique.
A Note About Video
You may have heard that videos are king. It’s absolutely true. If your business has the time and money to create regular videos, it can add a whole new dimension to your marketing presence online. If you go this route, there are lots of changing best practices for length, closed captioning and content.
What Working Together Looks Like
At Tic Tac Toe Marketing, we are client-focused, results-driven, passionate and fun! We work best with learners, innovators, and leaders. Our results show up in qualitative and quantitative ways. We are proud of the partnerships we have created and pour our time and expertise into our partners so that they reach their potential every day.
Creating and distributing the trifecta of content marketing is our sweet spot and we are seeing amazing results for the clients we serve – both qualitative and quantitative!
If this sounds like something that you would like to explore, let’s connect.
During that call, we want to get to know your business and you. Based on the challenges and goals you have, we’ll share what can do for you and create a custom content marketing strategy.
If your goals align with our capabilities, we’ll put together a proposal and contract to start our work!
It doesn’t stop there. When you work with our team, you get regular consultation and strategy calls, content approval and reports on metrics that we determine are beneficial to understanding our wins. If the marketing activities we are doing aren’t getting the results we need, we adjust!
