Coaches often think that their marketing can only fall on one of two sides of the value spectrum.
On one side of the spectrum, there’s no-value/all-pitch. Coaches think that if they want to have a chance of selling their program, they need to focus on a sales pitch instead of giving away loads of information.
The other side of the spectrum is high-value/no-pitch. They want to engage their prospects by providing useful information, but they have a hard time fitting in an offer in a tasteful way.
The solution isn’t to one side of value spectrum for your marketing content. The solution is a strategy I call Soft Teaching.
Soft Teaching is useful AND entertaining to prospects. It gives them a small taste of what you can do for them as a coach, but doesn’t give away your entire coaching system.
If you do it right, the “taste” you give them is so good they become engaged and want more. You want your prospects to become addicted to your marketing content.
Story-Selling: The Foundation of Soft Teaching
The best way to get people engaged with your content is to tell a story. The moment you start to tell a story, people can’t help but listen in. We’re all trained from childhood to pay attention to stories and ignore facts and figures.
For example, someone recently asked me, “Can you remember the top three things you learned in high school?”
I drew a bit of a blank.
Then he asked, “Ok, can you name three characters from Seinfeld?”
I immediately said, “George, Elaine, and Kramer.”
See how easy it was? We forget facts and figures but we remember stories. Watching episode after episode of Seinfeld created a connection. The stories and characters are now ingrained in my memory – much more so than my high school classes filled with facts and figures.
We want to story sell instead of fact sell.
Story-selling is more than story-telling. We want our prospects to be engaged, but we also want them to take action.
The framework for story selling is simple. We’ll use the acronym SLO.
First, we’re going to tell a story.
From that story we’ll pull a lesson. This can be the moral of the story, a business lesson, etc.
Then we’ll make an offer that gets our prospects to take action towards you.
Just stating fact after fact in your content marketing won’t prompt your prospects to buy from you, and it definitely won’t make them hungry for more. Facts and figures may play a role in a sales appointment, but they shouldn’t be the foundation of your content marketing.
Remember, the goal of Soft Teaching is to provide both useful value and something entertaining that leads to engagement and action.
Story selling makes this happen.
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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