A Content Marketing Strategy for Leadership Coaches and Consultants – the Trifecta of Marketing Content

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 coachesand 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.

Source: BTS

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.

Source: Wise Geek

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.