Have you ever lost a potential client to the competition? You knew you could help them, they may have seemed excited about your program, but in the end, they hired someone else. It’s discouraging. You wonder what you could have done differently to get the potential client to say, “Yes!”
If you want to stand out from the competition, the answer may be branding. Most coaches just starting out don’t understand what a brand is and why they need one. So it’s something they put off to do “later.”
In this article, I’ll help you create a branding message to make your marketing easier and your services irresistible to potential clients. And if you’ve been struggling with creating your own brand, you’ll find the following tips will help you get unstuck.
Here’s my top 3 branding secrets for coaches and consultants to help you stand out, beat the competition, and attract more high-paying clients.
Branding Secret #1 – Your Brand is the Transformation You Deliver
This may come as a surprise, but you already have a brand for your coaching business. It’s who you are and what you do. This isn’t rocket science. Your brand is the promise of an experience.
When someone decided to hire your competition instead of you, they were buying into the promise of the experience that the other coach was selling, instead of your promise.
If you’re having trouble standing out from all the other coaches in your niche, then your current brand probably isn’t clear and specific enough. So let’s fix that right now.
Coaches don’t sell “stuff”. Coaches transform people’s lives. So what is the transformation people get when working with you? What is the breakthrough they achieve? Make it as specific and clear as possible.
For example, helping people feel better or make more money is not a specific enough transformation for great branding. Helping young women who are burned out on dating find their soulmate and life-long partner is a transformation that is clear and specific.
What if you help people achieve a lot of different transformations? How do you brand yourself then? The answer is that you don’t. If you’re too general, you won’t be able to create a magnetic brand and stand out from the crowd. You’ll have to narrow down your ideal client and niche, first.
Another option is to focus on a broader transformation that encompasses smaller transformations (or results) within it. For instance, if you’re a fitness coach your clients may achieve results such as feeling better, looking great, increased self-esteem, losing weight, etc. So pick one specific transformation that can encompass all of those benefits, like helping busy professional women over 40 feel sexy again.
Branding Secret #2 – Market Your Brand Consistently
One of the biggest marketing mistakes I see coaches and consultants make is with inconsistent branding. They give one marketing message in a flyer, another in a live talk, and still a different one on their website.
Since your brand is the transformation you deliver, be consistent when telling people what that transformation is. You can’t stand out from the competition if you are marketing three different branding messages. Worse, your potential clients will be confused and not hire you.
Be clear and specific about the transformation you help clients achieve. Then consistently give that message with all your marketing. This will attract more ideal clients to you, and help you stand apart from the competition.
Branding Secret #3 – Use Your Brand Everywhere
Get excited about your brand. Be proud of it. After all, this is a transformation (or breakthrough) that changes people’s lives for the better. Announce your brand everywhere so people start to associate your business with a specific promise of an experience.
Your complete brand can include a combination of things: your name, an image, business name, colors, logo, tag line, product series name, a style of font, and much more.
Here are just a few places where you can start using your brand:
- Offline: business cards, printed ads, stationery, over the phone, printed on products, brochures, and more.
- Online: website, email signature, search engine listings, article marketing, video marketing, podcasting, ezines, RSS feeds, blog commenting, etc.
- Social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google Places, Vimeo, Squidoo, online directories, social bookmarking, etc.
Summary
The first time I heard about branding, I thought, “I won’t need that until my business is bigger.” I really didn’t get that my brand was my ticket to standing out from the competition. And as a result, I played small and struggled to get clients.
Then when I tried to put my brand together, I got stuck for months. Nothing I came up with resonated with me. It was like being in high school and trying to figure out what I wanted to major in at college. I had lots of ideas but nothing captivating.
Then I discovered the three branding secrets above. I used the first to quickly figure out what my brand was, the second to get more sales from existing marketing, and the third to attract a lot more ideal clients.
You, too, can use these branding secrets to help you stand out from the competition and get more clients. You’ll love how easy marketing becomes once you have an ideal client, a niche, and a great branding message.
Leave a comment below and tell us what your brand is. What is the transformational experience that you promise?
Hmmm, okay the transformational experience I offer is: helping women heal their digestive pain and bloating. So my brand is digestive wellness.
That’s definitely a specific transformation. I’ll suggest, though, that you may want to try wording your transformation in terms of benefits people will immediately resonate with. If someone is healed of digestive pain and bloating, what does that mean for them? Does that mean they can start eating their favorite foods again? Have energy after a meal? Eat like normal people and still feel great?
What is the BIG benefit they get when the pain goes away? The one thing that will really grab their attention? Now make that the experience you promise. See how powerful that is?
Wording your transformation in terms of benefits is one of the branding secrets that will really optimize your marketing efforts.
Wishing you the best!
Karen Brunet
Online Marketing Consultant
The transformation that I deliver is helping professionals who have found themselves “stuck in a rut” (whether it’s to do with their career, relationship, personal development) to get “out of their rut and back into their groove”.
My brand is getting people out of their rut and back into their groove.
Really make sense and I did learn from that! Becoming a client attraction magnet is probably the ultimate dream of every businessman. I totally agree with you that branding plays an important role in making your clients trust your company. Just be consistent and believe in your potentials so you can easily achieve your goal.
Website a work in progress. I have a lot of re-branding to to.
Overall I want to guide young women to reconnecting within and creating a beautiful life without!
Amen sistas,
Thank you for the article.
Katie X