Manual prospecting is great for generating quality leads that are likely to convert into clients. It makes perfect sense. If you spend the time speaking one on one with every lead, you’re bound to have a high conversion rate.
But there are a few big problems that every coach who relies solely on manual prospecting runs into after a while.
First, manual prospecting is extremely limited. Before long, the well runs dry. We run out of people to meet in our networking circles. The fewer people we meet, the fewer sales appointments we can book. The fewer sales appointments, the fewer the opportunities to sign new clients. And, the fewer clients we have… well, you get the idea.
Also, it’s often the case that the more successful we become, the busier we get as well. That means we have less time to go around networking. To be honest, though, who really wants to spend their time cold calling and knocking on doors?
Instead of prospecting manually like it’s 1985, the alternative is to switch to automated marketing.
The Big List of “Shoulds”
The very first coach I ever worked with used an interesting tactic every time he met with a new client for the first time. He’d ask them to make a list of all the things they knew they should be doing but weren’t doing. They’d go over list and tackle each item, which kept them busy for at least a few weeks.
I don’t really think that’s the best, most strategic way to start a coaching relationship, but think about the exercise for a minute. If you made a list of all of the marketing tasks you know you should be doing, the list would be really really long.
You’d probably include things like:
- Run more webinars and workshops
- Increase desire for my sales appointments
- Follow up with existing leads
- Communicate daily, weekly, or monthly with my list
- Post more to social media
- Explore potential joint ventures
- Maximize my LinkedIn, Google Adwords, and Facebook ads
And on and on and on…
Pretty soon, you’d have a massive list of all these things you “should” be doing. The thing is, you’re only one person. You’re an amazing person, but you’re still only one person and you can’t do it all!
You’d end up “should-ing all over yourself” (as Tony Robbins says) and attempting to do it all, which leads to a lot of inconsistency in your marketing.
In marketing, consistency is key, but it’s tough to be consistent for three reasons:
1. Most coaches don’t even know which strategies work. They’re okay with the idea of building an automated marketing system to create consistency, but they don’t know which strategies to start with.
2. They don’t have time to put these strategies in place.
3. They don’t have a system for installing new strategies that run automatically every day, week, or month. In other words, even if they wanted to automate their marketing, they wouldn’t even know where to start.
Most coaches give up on the hope of marketing consistency that comes from automation and turn right back to manual prospecting — leaving them exhausted, stressed out with their huge to-do list, and desperately searching for more clients around every corner.
How Marketing Automation Changes Everything
When you decide to take the leap and automate your marketing, things look completely different.
First, manual prospecting is a lot like hauling buckets of water through the jungle. It’s maximum work for minimum return. Automation, on the other hand, is like a pipeline. You’ll do a little bit of work up front to build a marketing system that consistently generates leads and gets them ready to buy.
Second, the systems you install work so you don’t have to because it’s run by robots, not people. In the book Source Control, David Walsh says that systems are as reliable as people aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with you or your team (or me and my team) but frankly, we’re all human and we drop the ball sometimes. When we have a system that works so we don’t have to, then it runs like it’s supposed to and the job gets done right every time.
Finally, when you have a marketing automation system in place, it brings you leads and clients every single week. No more low-risk information offers every month. No more seminar or webinar promotions from scratch, cold calling JV partners, four-step email campaigns, or manually posting to social media.
It’s incredibly taxing when you do it all on your own, and that’s why we need to build an automated system to handle it for us so we can focus on what’s most important in our business — coaching clients and making an impact!
Right now, I want to give you three key principles for building an automated marketing system that actually works for you.
Key #1 — Work Hard Once
A lot of coaches say, “Building these systems will be hard work and take a ton of time!”
To a certain extent, they’re absolutely right. But, it’s certainly less hard work than running out of money, not having enough clients, and spending every day cranking out phone calls or attending ridiculous networking events.
You’re going to work hard once, not every day.
If you think about marketing automation, the ideal time to build an automated marketing system is in the past — a year or two ago, or when you first started your coaching business.
But you didn’t build it because you were too busy getting clients (which makes total sense, by the way!).
The next best time to build an automated marketing system is RIGHT NOW. Just put in a little time to build a system now, and once it’s built, it stays built and generates leads every single week.
Key #2 — Be The Architect
Most coaches are the laborers in their business, running around, doing all the marketing.
I don’t want you to do the marketing, I want you to build the marketing.
When I was growing up, my dad was an architect.I used to watch him as he leaned over his drafting table, designing buildings, hospitals, schools, and museums. It really inspired me in my business to move from being the doer to being the designer.
When you’re the architect, you’re the one with a sheet of paper in front of you, mapping out how you want the sequences to go. Then you can either install it yourself or have someone help you with it (which isn’t nearly as expensive as you might think).
It just takes a little bit of time, a blank sheet of paper, and an idea about what you want your campaign to do, step by step.
Be the architect! Design these systems right now instead of just thinking “Oh Crap! I need another client!”
Key #3 — Pave Their Path
When designing your marketing automation systems, you need to pave your client’s path.
Think about the journey someone takes from prospect to client — from when they first hear about you and subscribe to your list to when they attend some kind of conversion event to when they sign up for your program. You need a marketing system for each of these phases along the journey — automated systems to market, sell, and deliver.
9 Automated Marketing Campaigns That Turn Prospects into Clients
Market
When somebody first makes contact with you, we need a way to deliver great value and get them to buy while the emotion is hot. We’ll do that with Launch campaign — something designed to educate and motivate people to buy.
That typically looks like four videos or pieces of content — three to educate, and one sales piece — designed to get them to the next phase using the momentum you already have. Ideally, people come to your Launch campaign and then move straight to the conversion tool. That’s the goal.
If they don’t opt in for the conversion tool, the second thing you need is a Nurture campaign.
This is a long-term, ongoing educational system where every day, every week, or every two weeks you send something useful to your list that educates and invites. Think value and invitation every single time.
With a Nurture campaign, we’re just broadcasting to a list, but it’s also helpful to connect with people personally. In a Connect campaign, you might send a quick email that says, “Hey, I saw that you came by my site the other day. What’s the biggest challenge you have around growing your business right now?”
Then people reply back and, all of a sudden, you’re in a dialogue and you can move people on to the next phase.
These are the first three campaigns you should automate.
Sell
The next automated system is where you’ll sell your program with a conversion tool like a webinar. We’ll use an Attract campaign made up of promo emails and a sales page to get people to register for the webinar.
Once they’ve registered, there’s no guarantee that they’ll show up. So we need a Stick campaign to make sure they actually attend. These are follow-up emails that remind them of the event and tell them how awesome it’ll be.
When the webinar is over, they’ll either have bought, not bought, or not even showed up.
So next, we need a Clean Up campaign to get them to take the appropriate next step, whatever that may be for your program.
Deliver
Once someone’s opted into your leveraged coaching program, you’ll need a Drip campaign — a welcome sequence that runs over several weeks or months.
Next, you need a campaign for showing your clients a little love. Yep, we call it a Love campaign! These are just customer-service based phone calls and emails that check in on clients and make sure they’re getting what they need.
The last campaign we’ll use is an Upgrade campaign, where you promote the next level of your coaching program to your existing clients.
Next Steps
Want to get started building automated marketing systems for your business? Here are few pointers to get you on your way:
- Get yourself a good CRM to help you manage your list and send automated emails.
- Upload all of your contacts and segment them. At the very minimum, you should have these four segments:
- Existing Clients
- People that have been exposed to your conversion tool (had a 1:1 session with you or attended your webinar)
- People that have registered for your conversion tool but failed to attend
- Untapped people who’ve never registered
- Since you’ll be building multiple campaigns, take a little time to create a checklist to make sure you cover all the necessary steps. There are a bunch of great pre-made checklists for marketing automation for Million Dollar Coach and Black Belt members.
In the early days, I didn’t have a clue about any of this stuff. To be honest, I sucked at automation. I was pretty good at marketing but didn’t have a way to systemize, so I found myself running from campaign to campaign with a series of patchy promotion. The challenge that crept up was that we’d run out of time and that affected our consistency.
Then I got this idea that the solution was in automating, so I built a series of simple systems. Now, literally every single day, without doing any work I have people inquiring about joining one of my programs.
Take the time to build a marketing automation system and you set yourself up to win.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your coaching business:
1. Grab a free copy of my book
It’s the roadmap to attracting prospects, signing clients, and scaling your coaching business. — Click Here
2. Join the Coach Dojo and connect with coaches who are scaling too
It’s our new Facebook community where smart coaches learn to get more income, impact, and independence. — Click Here
3. Join our Implementation Program and be a Case Study
I’m putting together a new coaching case study group at Black Belt this month… stay tuned for details. If you’d like to work with me on your client-getting and scale plans… just send me a message with the words “Case Study”. — Click Here
4. Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from 6 to 7 figures… just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! — Click Here
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