Creating a content marketing plan is a very specific skillset.
In fact, marketing your coaching business as a new coach may seem like a daunting task.
If you don’t first learn how to market your business, you may end up burning through a lot of money.
Your money is always best used to reinvest in your coaching businesses.
This is why at the start (or the end) of each calendar quarter, I get the same questions about which content to create and how over and over again.
I’m also asked how a content marketing plan can lead to increased revenue.
So, in the above video, I discuss a content marketing plan that you can create in your own coaching business.
I call the plan, a content blitz because it focused on releasing different pieces of content to different audiences over a 90 day period.
Before you create your content marketing plan, however, you must understand the difference between long-term and short-term strategic planning.
You must also understand the different between strategy and tactics.
After reading through the rest of this blog post, be sure to watch the video above.
In it, I explain how to create a content marketing plan for the launch of your coaching programs.
Long Term Versus Short Term Strategic Planning
What is the difference between long-term planning and short-term planning?
There are some businesses that don’t consider 12 months as long-term.
They instead count 12 months as short-term.
There are some businesses that view ten or five years as long-term planning, and count one to three years as short-term planning.
Your coaching business is in a rapidly-changing industry.
You’re an online entrepreneur, which means you will gain the majority of your business through digital marketing.
I teach my clients digital marketing.
The online space changes rapidly.
For that reason, you need to be able to quickly adapt.
I consider one year in the online space as long-term and 90 days as short-term, as far as planning goes.
For example, the primary tool that I use in order to reach my audience is social media.
If I’m not able to use social media my business structure could potentially change.
With that in mind, I’m going to share with you a few things that I use in order to create my own 12-month and 90-day content marketing plans.
Understanding Strategy Versus Tactics
Let’s begin with strategy versus tactics.
What is strategy?
Strategy encompasses the big picture.
The big picture includes considerations like revenue projections, reach and influence, and overall growth.
Your long term strategy for your content marketing plan has to have specific numbers attached to each objective.
You should be able to answer questions such as, how much do I want to earn from my content marketing efforts?
How many people are required to see my content using my content marketing plan efforts?
And, what percentage growth do I want to attain in each of my important categories within my content marketing?
We call these important categories key performance indicators or KPIs.
What are tactics?
Tactics are the actions we take in order to make the strategy work.
Examples include doing a live stream, hosting a webinar, or going to a networking event.
Each tactic should tie into your overall content marketing plan strategy.
The issue with taking action without direction is that you could find yourself doing tactics with no idea whether or not these tactics are actually leading anywhere.
I hear this often from new online business owners.
I ask, “What are you doing for marketing?”
They respond, “Well, I’m posting to Instagram.”
That’s not a marketing plan.
That’s a tactic.
Step one to creating a solid marketing plan is understanding the difference between strategy and tactics and planning accordingly.
Understanding the difference between long term and short term and strategy versus tactics is very important.
You use strategy to create a content marketing plan and tactics to bring your plan to life.
How to Create a Plan to Get More Clients Faster
1. Begin with the end in mind
Start with your annual goal by determining your desired annual revenue.
When I create my 12 month plan, I start with my annual revenue goal.
I ask myself “How much do I want to earn in the next 12 months?”
This is step one.
Start at the end, then figure out the strategy that will bring about this end and the tactics will support your strategy.
This is something that I covered on a special training called Backing into The Numbers of a Full Time Coach. You can watch my ‘Backing into the Numbers’ training here.
How to Determine Your Annual revenue
Let’s say your annual goal is $68,000 and you’re a website designer coach who helps freelance website designers determine their rates.
Let’s further say you have a design package priced at $1,500.
The pricing can change based on the results you provide.
Charging $3,000 versus $1,500 allows you to reach your annual goal much quicker.
With a $1,500 package, you will need 45 clients to reach your $68,000 goal.
However, if you price your service at $3,000, now you only need 23 clients.
Raising your prices essentially divides the effort in half.
How to Determine Your Offerings
Going back to the pricing example, you then have to determine the packages you plan to offer.
You might have a design package at $1,500, but you could also have another package priced at $3,000.
There are certain customers who will accept the $3,000 offer and others who will go with the $1,500 offer.
Pricing for the Right Client
Often what I hear from new coaches is, “I’m scared to charge that much.”
What they really want to say is, “No one is going to pay $3,000 for what I offer.”
It’s important to remember that there is a type of client who always prefer to pay more for a website design package.
This type of client will spend more because they are buying your confidence.
They’re buying the idea that higher prices equal getting what they need done right, the first time.
These types of clients do not like wasting time.
Think about the psychology of the client you’re trying to attract.
If you’re not satisfied with your current clientele or you often hear potential clients saying, “Oh, this is too much money,” then you probably need to raise your rates.
Your want to attract the right people or change your messaging so you can speak to the right client.
Your offer is going to attract your ideal client.
Get Clear on Price to Acquire a Customer
Many new online coaches start a business while working a full-time job.
Though they want to see the business quickly succeed, they don’t know how a business actually grows.
A business has expenses.
An important expense to calculate is the cost to acquire a customer.
The more you can afford to spend to acquire a customer, the faster your business will grow.
When you run your business online, there are free and organic methods you can use to drive traffic.
However, you cannot control the free and organic stuff.
It takes time to build it and then wait for it to bear fruit.
I have people who find me on YouTube, come over to my email list and eventually make a purchase.
But, I cannot control that.
I can’t directly control how many people find me on YouTube every day, if I don’t run YouTube ads.
But, I can control actively going out, searching for the type of people that I want, and purchasing that customer.
This is how I was able to grow my coaching business very quickly.
Creating Ads to Purchase Customers
If you need 23 clients, and you can close about one out of every four, you only need to take 90 phone calls.
At $3,000 per close, you’ll easily reach your annual goal.
Here is the fastest way to get those 90 phone calls, assuming you build an email list from your content marketing plan efforts.
When you send out a compelling about your services and how you can help, about 5% of your email list will call you.
So, if you can spend about $100 a week on ads to supplement your content marketing plan efforts, you can easily get you to your goal.
That’s only $5,400 for the entire year to make $67,500.
That’s an 8 times return on investment.
In order for advertising dollars to work, you have to have a specific process that works to turn a lead into a client.
When they first submit their email address, you should follow up with a piece of relevant content that will help them in your area of expertise.
Then, in follow up emails, you include a call to action.
It would share details of how they can work with you one-on-one.
You are inviting them to sign up for a phone call right away, sending an email that says, “Hey, I’ve got a couple of spots open tomorrow. I’d love to chat with you.”
I sent an email just like that and booked $10,000 from that one email.
It’s very powerful.
The Faster Way to Hit Your 90 Day Goals
Having a specific repeatable process is key to any sustainable marketing plan.
After a potential client meets you, do you have a process for turning that lead into a client?
Does that process run automatically?
If you don’t already have a process then I would encourage you get three things.
- An email list provider
- A landing page software to capture emails
- A phone call booking software to easily schedule calls.
I help my clients create these three items and more.
And, I’ve been helping clients hit their 90 day revenue goals in just weeks instead of months.
We do this using my Client Gaining System to Get Coaching Clients that I call The Path to 6 Figures.
In The Path to 6 Figures, we leverage paid traffic to get phone calls and clients booked.
To see more details and the program overview, visit the Path To 6 Figures course page.