Copywriters don’t like to admit this, but there are some things that are really hard to sell. My billboard top five list of those things currently would include both life coaching and social media coaching. Now, this isn’t because these people are evil or anything. We work with a lot of people who do both of these things, and they are uniformly fantastic at their jobs, and are helping people do real things and make real changes in their lives and their businesses.
Here’s the problem: when both of these things came about, they were new and exciting and lots of people jumped on the bandwagon. Like any popular industry, people got burned. I’ve seen some posts on Twitter where people talk about social media coaches like they’re a bunch of witches from Salem, which is unfair. Like any industry, you have to do your research and separate the good from the bad. The awful economy has done a lot of this for us, and the people leftover are generally a good bunch who are struggling to sell a product that is perceived as both expensive and slightly sleazy. It’s also useful for a hell of a lot of people and responsible for changing lives.
Sorry guys, I love you, but that’s the marketing reality.
However, that doesn’t mean all is lost; the trick is marketing things the right way. If you’re in an industry that is a hard sell, you need to figure out your emotional benefits. Truthfully, everyone needs to do this, but entrepreneurs in more crowded industries live or die by this rule. So today, I’m giving out some pretty specific tips for life coaches, since I’ve been consulting and writing for lots of them lately and I’ve come up with some theories.
First, another reality check: writing an honest sales page full of truthful emotional benefits is both a difficult and potentially painful experience. If you’re a life coach, you probably became one for a reason. In fact, I’m willing to bet that you had some kind of negative experience that changed you profoundly. Everyone has something in their past that put them on their professional path, and for many of us it isn’t a neat and pretty experience. The advantage that most of us have is that we don’t have to talk about it if we don’t want to. If you’re running a life coaching business, you do.
Imagine the kind of person who googles your website, or stumbles across you and stays. What kind of emotional state are they in? I’ll give you a hint. If your copy is full of your professional credentials, your shining success stories, and your perfectly designed coaching packages, that’s not what will sell your services. The people who are finding your website are there for a reason; in many cases, that reason seems so catastrophic and overwhelming that they can’t read your shiny professional credentials through their tears. Perhaps they feel so engulfed by the problems in their life that they can’t imagine how the people in your success stories could possibly ever relate to them. They could be so scared of the idea of asking for help that the more professional you seem, the further away you seem to be.
Your access point for these people is the part of your life that you don’t want to talk about. At some point or another, you knew exactly what they were feeling and you felt like that too. To get them to read all of the stuff that convinces them that you are professional and affordable and helpful, you need to make them feel safe.
Safety, when it comes to life coaching, is the reigning value in copy. Understanding is pretty damn close to it. Convince people that they are safe with you, and the sale is yours every time.
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