“Who are your clients?” I ask.

“We can work with absolutely anyone,” they reply.

This is Massive Marketing Mistake Number Four – thinking that everyone will want to work with you and trying to persuade everyone to do so. You need to specialise and focus on targeting specific clients and that’s what we’ll look at in this fourth blog in the series.

Massive Marketing Mistake Number Four – Trying to Work with Everyone

If you’ve been following this series and avoiding the Massive Marketing Mistakes, you’ll know what makes your coaching business different and you have some clear goals for your business. You even know how you’re going to reach those goals. Now you need to look closely at the clients you really want to work with, who really want to work with you. If you think anyone could become your client, you will waste your precious marketing budget and time in chasing people who don’t actually want to work with you.

Ideal clients are people who are attracted to working you. They are happy to pay what you want to charge. They respect and value your experience and expertise. They love recommending you to potential clients. Don’t they sound like wonderful people to work with?

Non-ideal clients don’t pay what you want to charge and they pay late. They don’t listen to your advice. They don’t recommend you and they’re always complaining. Why would you want to work with people like that? And yet far too many small businesses waste their resources in going after these people. Stop it!

How do you avoid Massive Marketing Mistake Number Four?

Focus your attention and your marketing on finding ideal clients. Work out what makes them tick and what makes them nice people to work with. Decide what they’re allowed to expected from you. When you’re clear on this, non-ideal clients will stop calling you and ideal clients will find their way to you. Here’s an example of how this works:

One of my clients had been chasing all sorts of potential clients. Her coaching business was new so she thought she should work with anyone who showed a slight interest in her business. She found that many of the potential clients were messing her around, taking a long time to decide whether or not to use her services. They didn’t want to pay her full fees. Then they didn’t pay her on time and they were always asking for more. I showed my client how she could find much nicer clients to work with, by looking at the type of person she was. She realised that her ideal clients were people just like her. They share her values and beliefs. Now she only looks for people who see the world as she does. Now they come and find her and her marketing is much more targeted and much cheaper!

Who are your ideal clients? What makes them tick? What do they believe in and stand for? How do you want to them to treat you? There is a great process that you can go through, to find out exactly who your ideal clients are. I’ll be covering in week four of the four week course that I’m running from 4 August 2020. It’s called Clients4Coaches and is designed to get clients for coaches! Every Tuesday afternoon for 4 weeks I’ll guide you through the four biggest marketing mistakes that most coaches make and show you, instead, how to build a really successful coaching business. Click here to find out more and book online – there are only 4 places available – or call me on 07773 252 744.