This week:

Have you forgotten the key elements of your coaching training? In this week's tip Hannah McNamara gets you thinking about one of the key skills you learn as a coach - rapport - and why you need to brush up on that skill in order to improve your marketing for your coaching practice.

Transcript:

Hi I'm Hannah McNamara from marketing help for coaches dot com.

Rapport. As coaches it's one of the first things that we learn about when we do our training. We're taught that we need to match and mirror our clients. We should pay attention to speed, tone and body language. We know that we have to notice the words that people use and reflect them back to them so that our clients feel understood.

So why does all that training fly completely out of the window when it comes to marketing?

People are people whether we are coaching them or we are informing them about our services and what we can do for them. We have to listen to what they are actually saying, not what we think they are saying so that we can talk to them in a way that connects.

Here's an example:

Coaches talk endlessly about coaching and what coaching can do for you. The problem is that clients aren't actually looking for coaching. It's not the experience they're after (although most clients really enjoy it!) -- it's the results.

So when potential clients are looking for help online, are they typing in 'life coaching'? Maybe, but usually that's what coaches type in when they're looking for information about other coaches. Take a moment now and really think like your clients. What would they search for if they needed help and didn't know coaching existed? Would they be looking for things like Time management tips? Or how to set goals? Play around with it. When you come up with your list, check out your website and see whether those words appear on your website or blog, because if they don't, your site's never going to come up when people are looking for those terms.