Episode 17
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarf, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years, I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach, and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups, and more.
and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveler, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent, and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses.
The executive coaching business is tough. And I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. [00:01:00] You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable, and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are.
I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context, as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, Then this is the place for you.
Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. Today I want to bring you a short and sharp and very practical episode that is really intended to give you, as executive and leadership coaches a few ideas of marketing strategies that you may not already have in place. And they're ones that I believe can be used.
Pretty well in coaching businesses as sort of a next step or an advanced step. So if you've been doing your own [00:02:00] marketing for a while, you may have a lot of the basics in place. And if you have pushed yourself, you might have some of these already. So these ideas are really for people , who already have the basics down or who want to learn what else is out there.
So it's just a few ideas that you can consider. So three ideas. The first strategy I want to share with you is that I think it's a great idea for you to create a newsletter and an email list. So why, why should you create a newsletter and an email list? The first reason for that, and this is usually the reason that's given by marketers as to why.
Any, any sort of business should have an email list is that you don't own your network or your followers or your connections on any of the social media networks that you are present on. Now, typically for executive and leadership coaches, we're talking about LinkedIn. So you don't own your network on LinkedIn.
You don't own your network on Facebook. It is [00:03:00] always, always an option that you get kicked off. That the platform shuts down. That you lose all your connections. This is absolutely possible and it, and it does happen. Hopefully not too frequently, but it is something to bear in mind. On the flip side, once you have people signed up to your mailing list.
That is an asset that you hold within your business because you have permission to contact them. So that is, that is the, why the other reason for having an email list is that it is a way to nurture your leads. And what that means is that it is a way to take the cold or the colder leads that you have.
So that maybe the people in your network who, you know, you have connected with, but you don't really know. So your email list is a way to warm them up into being. People and contacts who feel like they know you. And if we think about [00:04:00] connection and the importance of connection, when it comes to marketing newsletters are a really great way to do that because in our newsletters, we tend to share our stories or what we should do, and we tend to be a bit more personal now.
A lot of coaches, when they start, they want their newsletters to be very academic. In fact, we know what works better is if you can tell a story or a personal anecdote that brings those theories to life. So still share all of that great theoretical content, but bring it to life for people. Like, how have you seen that play out?
So newsletters are a way to build connection through telling your stories, showing them about yourself and sharing what you care about and what you believe. Newsletters are also a way to stay front of mind. So very practically, it's good to stay front of mind so that when something does come up, you are the person that they think about.
And this works particularly well if someone and most organizations are like this, they [00:05:00] have coaching engagements, they have opportunities for coaches, but it doesn't happen every day. And so what you want to be sure of is that if they already know about you as a coach, or if they've signed up and so they're aware of you as a coach, that when they have a real opportunity, you're the person they think of.
Also beyond that, in fact, our newsletter can be a way of helping them to see that they may have opportunities that they hadn't thought about. If we're talking about things like the sorts of challenges That they might be experiencing where coaching would be appropriate. So there's lots of, lots of opportunities for the content of your newsletter also to, to build opportunity in newsletter is also, I guess this is related.
It's a way to build your credibility through what you're writing and yes, credibility in terms of, , the academic content that you can present, but, but more through your understanding of the context of the [00:06:00] organizations and the clients and how that is in real life and why coaching or how coaching can help in that context.
So I think you build credibility through showing that, you know, what you're talking about, and more importantly, that, you know, what you're talking about. In the context that they are experiencing. So related to the challenges that they're experiencing, the, the goals that they might have. So all of that is, is a really important thing that you can do with your newsletter.
And also finally, a newsletter is a way that you can make offers, which is to say, you can sell things. Occasionally, So if you think about it, you know, what they say is that you should present sort of, you know, 70 to 80 percent value in your newsletter, which gives you permission to sell, you know, 20 to 30 percent of the time.
So for me, I launch open doors or launch my coach collective roughly once a quarter, [00:07:00] although I'm sort of playing with that idea, which means that there's a week each quarter where I'm going to send a lot of sales emails. And the truth is people do unsubscribe during that time. And in fact, I've grown to think, oh, that's, that's okay.
That's actually really great because these are not people who are going to become my clients anyway. So what they're doing is they're telling me that. And that is really helpful for me. So you can use your newsletter also as a sales tool. So long as you're adding value a lot of the time. Yeah. And so that's what I am for.
So how do you go about setting up a, an email newsletter? The first thing you need to have is a platform or a tool that can help you to allow people to opt in to gather their email addresses and to provide all the backend functionality that you need to have that will allow them to do things like subscribing.
And opting out and, you know, maybe you having some tools at the [00:08:00] backend so that you can send, you can tag people depending on how they signed up and you can send certain groups, certain things. Now, there are a lot of tools that are out there. Your web hosting provider. So for example, I have a client who has done this recently.
She has hosted her website on GoDaddy, and they also have a tool that you can use for the newsletter email function. I always recommend MailChimp as a very simple tool that is specifically for that. And I use Kajabi. So Kajabi is more of a multi use platform, I guess. So its primary function is that it hosts all of our digital course content, our, you know, our community.
All the recordings of all of our masterclasses for our members, all of that sort of thing. And it also hosts our website, it hosts my podcast. It also serves as our CRM. And so, you know, I use Kajabi is, is our email marketing platform as well. [00:09:00] And it does a great job of that. Now, if you are ever interested in that, I have a link that can get you a free trial.
So just drop me a message. I'll have a look in the show notes. You know, Kajabi is probably a tool that if you don't want to have a podcast Or a digital course or a membership. It might be too much, although I think it is a very easy tool to use in terms of designing your website and doing your email marketing and all of that.
I think it's great for that particularly for creating, you know, things like sales pages and opt in pages, but it's probably, you know, it's, it's had a higher price point than something like a MailChimp, which you can just plug into whatever tool you have. So, so you need a platform.
You're also going to need to have an opt in page. It's where people give you their name and their email address and they consent actively to being added to your, your mailing list.
And also then, has the unsubscribe function attached to it. So I've mentioned that, but that's really important. And the reason we go [00:10:00] through. A specific service provider is so that it has all that functionality that is in fact, the law. So you've got your email. You've got your opt in page where people can opt in, you have that linked to your website and you also have the link that you can post on your LinkedIn page, or you can add to various assets.
And then the final thing that you need to do with your newsletter is actually consistently use it. So you need to be sending out content to your newsletter. And your email subscribers on a regular basis. So whatever cadence you choose is up to you pick a cadence that you think you can maintain. And so that might be monthly, it might be fortnightly.
It might be weekly, whatever you pick, just make sure you can stick to it. And I would say when it comes to writing. Don't overthink it, which is very difficult. And most of the people that are in my impact coach collective do overthink [00:11:00] their content. But one of the things that I've learned is that it is much better to get something out there, even if it's not perfect.
Even if you look back over and go, Oh, I would have added this. I would have rewritten it this way. Just get it out there. People want to see what you have to say. They want to connect with you. And they're okay to connect with you, how you are, you don't have to be perfect. And that is a message that I am reiterating quite frequently to our members as well.
So just make sure you're doing it consistently and you're doing it a cadence that you can maintain. So the second advanced marketing strategy that you might want to consider is using something called a lead magnet. Now you may say, what the heck is a lead magnet? Well, it's exactly that. It is a tool that.
Attracts so magnetizes leads. So that's new people into your world to you. And specifically in a marketing context, what a lead magnet [00:12:00] is, is some sort of digital asset that is of interest to your target market and is interesting enough that it incentivizes them to give you their email address. So that you can communicate with them further in exchange for sending them that asset.
Now, the sorts of things that people use as lead magnets are guides or checklists, cheat sheets. It could be videos. It could be mini training, recorded training sessions can be white papers. It can be recommendation lists. The, the sorts of things you can come up with are endless. You can be super creative.
But the things that tend to do well. Things that solve a small problem in a, you know, in a really comprehensive way. So a tiny piece of a puzzle and give them a really helpful tool for that problem. So why would you use a lead magnet? So the reason you use a lead magnet [00:13:00] is very simply to get more people.
More leads added to your mailing list so that you can communicate with them and warm them up to become a warm leads through the connection, through all those things that we mentioned in the strategy for the newsletter. So. Yeah. The strategy for why you would have a lead magnet is just why have an email list at all.
And then the lead magnet is the way that you get more and more people onto the list. Because sadly, just telling people that you have a newsletter and asking them if they would like to sign up for that is, is not that effective. So how do you create a lead magnet? So there are three key steps to do that, to, to make a lead magnet and make a lead magnet connected to Add people to your list.
The first one is that you need to create the asset itself. So when you're creating the asset itself, the first thing you need to think about is who you want to add to your list. So what sort [00:14:00] of person would be of interest to you would be a good buyer of your services that you would like more of.
In your network. Once you know who that person is or that type of person, then it's easier for you to identify a resource that is helpful to them because you can do research into what their typical challenges are. You can look at what their typical KPIs are. So for example, if you wanted to build your client base in say the mining and resources industry.
You might prepare a resource that is meant to be helpful for HR team members, right? And so, for example, you might have a guide titled five ways leadership coaching can help embed a safety culture, because we know that safety culture is super important in reason, in the resources industry. And it's often a KPI of HR team members, and we want to connect those dots to leadership coaching, which is obviously what you do.
And that's the sweet spot. [00:15:00] Another example might be if you wanted to run more leader as coach training sessions in professional services firms, you might create a worksheet for Leaders to take coaching notes and, you know, to facilitate their coaching reflections. So or you might create a values checklist or, you know, the options are literally endless.
So examples of what I've done is I've created guides like a guide to using AI to save time to save time in your business. I've created checklists. I've created mini courses. For example, where. The people who signed up would receive an email with a very practical tip every day for five days.
I've had masterclasses and masterclass recordings specifically. And all of them work for people to get people signing up and added to your list. Now, if you wanted to go to the next, next level you can run [00:16:00] ads directing people to those resources.
So as I said, for lead bangers, the first step was to create the asset. The second step is that there is actually a bit of technical infrastructure that you need. And that usually includes, you need a page, a landing page where people will opt in to get that resource and to be added to your list. You'll need a thank you page where they're redirected after they opt in and sign up.
And then you need to have an automation that says that once they sign up, they get an email that actually sends them that resource, or you could have it directly there on the thank you page. So there's a couple of ways you can do it. And then you might also want to automate a series of emails so that they get a chance to learn more about what you do and who you are.
And so that might be that over the course of a week, they receive three emails. That's about, you know. Who you are, what you do, and you know, maybe something about what you [00:17:00] believe about coaching or an helpful tool. So once you've created that technical backend, the third step for creating the lead magnet is that you actually have to promote it.
And this is probably the most important and the hardest part. And without it, it really, you've wasted your time. So generally you'll be promoting your lead magnet all over your pages and your social network, so at least LinkedIn and on LinkedIn. What I, what I think you need to do is I think you've got maybe three things that you need to do.
You need to post about it, and you need to post about it repeatedly because no matter what you think, people are not gonna all see it. People don't, not everyone in your network will see your content. So post it repeatedly over a series of days or weeks. The next one is to put links to it in things like your about section, you might put your banner you know, with some sort of imagery and A link to it.
Of course, you can't link in the banner, but you can write the link [00:18:00] and people can copy it. And then finally, I think the most effective way of getting people to opt into your lead magnet on LinkedIn is through direct outreach. And what that means is doing a search of your existing LinkedIn network.
So you know, maybe you have 500, maybe you have a thousand people. Identify through downloading your list. I've got a free master class, which I'll link to in the show notes that shows you how to download your LinkedIn list as an Excel spreadsheet, figure out who are the people who are relevant or in your target audience and send them an individual message saying, Hey you know, make a personalized connection, talk about something you have in common, refer to, you know, what, what is your connection?
How do you know each other? And then say, Hey, I've I've also just created this free resource that I thought you might be interested in it's called this, it does this, and this is who it's relevant to. If you'd like to, if you'd like to download it, just here's the link to download.
Thanks. Love to hear your feedback. [00:19:00] Really simple. So I think that that is going to be the way that gets you the most people opting in. And it's also really good practice doing some warm outreach. And so doing the warm outreach though, with something of value, and that makes it so much easier. So yeah, so make sure you are posting about it.
You could also try and enlist other people to help you promote it. So that might be anyone whose content you could promote. Who has a similar audience, but is not directly competitive. And they might be willing to share yours either in the newsletters, for example, or or in, in, on their, on their feed.
So, look for that as well. Okay. The third strategy for marketing in your coaching business that you may not have considered is content batching. Now, as you get used to the visibility of being a coach and you are trying to be consistent with your posting on LinkedIn.
So you might be posting a few times a week by this point. And maybe you have a [00:20:00] newsletter going out every week or fortnight or month. At this point. If you aren't getting ahead in your content development, you can start to feel a little bit overwhelmed. It can feel like you always have to be writing a post or writing a newsletter.
And I get that. Like I, I feel that sometimes. And so enter the idea of content batching. So content batching works for some personality types and it doesn't work for others. So if you're someone who thinks better on the fly, who likes the creativity of the spur of the moment, who needs the pressure, this may not be for you.
But if you're a person who feels better when you have a buffer and you're ahead and you like to get in the zone, then content batching is for you. Now, I would say I'm kind of both. I work better under pressure. I like being creative on the spur of the moment, and I'm certainly a lot more efficient when I do it that way, but it also, that can stress me [00:21:00] out.
So I also really appreciate being able to get ahead and the sort of the sense of peace that that brings to me. So content batching is something I do, but I don't always stick to it. And I also allow myself, if I'm sort of struck by You know, some sort of creative, creative spark, then I'll let myself be flexible with that.
So what content batching means is that instead of writing your LinkedIn posts every day, as you post them, writing your newsletter, the day that you're going to send it, we would put aside bigger chunks of time, less often to churn through more volume of these things. So for example you might spend a day each month planning out your posts for the month, writing them and preparing the graphics or imagery, and then throughout the rest of the month, you just post them.
So you've got them saved. I use my monday. com tool to, to save them and to Canva. And then I [00:22:00] just post them as the day comes alternatively. Or as well, you might say, okay, I'm going to spend half a day a month writing for newsletters. And then I only do it once a quarter or once a month, depending on what my frequency is.
And so what that means is that you're much more efficient because you can get in the zone. You'll be really motivated to get it done. If you set yourself a target for that time and you get ahead. And it's also really important to get ahead because you will have a buffer in case of those times that just happen where you get sick or you get really busy with client work or your kid gets sick.
There are endless reasons why we get derailed and what having a buffer means is that we get to be consistent and keep rolling. Even though these things are happening. So we're showing up consistent consistently, regardless of what's happening. And you know, for just on, on a side note, I'm in the process of developing a [00:23:00] very small product that is going to be a year of LinkedIn post prompts.
For executive coaches. So it will be a list of ideas that you can post about so that you can then take the idea and make it yours. So if you are batching, you would get this guide and you would say, okay, well, I want to write four weeks of posts. Let me go through. The four weeks of prompts in, in my my planner and I'll think about, Oh, what image might, might I bring to it?
What story do I want to tell about this prompt? So you can just burn through the writing and you don't have to do that really tricky. What on earth should I post about thinking, which is often the thing that stops us from starting. So how I like, anyway, sorry, I should say watch this space for that product.
Give me a few weeks, but it's coming. How I do this in terms of content batching myself is that I like to batch my podcasts monthly although guest episodes kind [00:24:00] of throw that out and I just, you know, do those when it, whenever it is convenient. So I like to do that monthly. And I also, for, for my LinkedIn posts, I like to create a monthly monday.
com board. So monday. com is the tool that I use to keep everything in our business organized. And on my monday. com board, what I'll do each month is I'll go through and I'll actually plan out what I want to post about. And then I'll work my way through and I'll write the post or the caption, and then I'll jump onto Canva and I'll do all the imagery.
So it may be that it's just a photo, or it might be a, a tile that's got something written on it, or it might be something a bit more complicated. But then I'll have all of that. Put together now, because I post most days of the week, this is quite a big piece of work every month. So I sometimes need more than a day to do that.
Especially if I'm not hyper productive, which is known to happen. [00:25:00] So. Okay. I hope that these three ideas have been interesting, whether or not you want to use them all or use one of them, or it's just something that's going to help you to think about what is, what is possible for you. I would love to hear from you.
So which of these ideas do you already use? What do you think you could try? What other ideas are you considering? Please do also let me know if you have any questions. I would love to answer if you've got any, you know, want to know more about the practicalities of any of these ideas do let me know on that note, have a great week and you know, I'm very excited that next week I'll be bringing another brilliant interview to you.
So I look forward to catching up with you soon.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the business of executive coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful [00:26:00] also if you would leave a review on Apple podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us.
This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics, and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses, and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found at elliescarf.com. Have a brilliant week, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
