Ugh -- Does Marketing Have to Be So Manipulative?

This morning I read a squeeze page* for a copywriting workshop. The longer it got, the more nauseated I felt.

No question this guy is a brilliant copywriter. He knows all the psychological hooks into the subconscious mind that create the urgent, even desperate, desire to buy whatever can be sold. To borrow a phrase I heard on a tv show, he could sell you the clothes you're already wearing.

Counselors, coaches and naturopathic doctors who try to emulate these types of sales letters for their websites will likely turn off more clients than they attract. It's the type of marketing we all hate, feel slimed by, that makes us want to run away screaming from the computer straight into the shower. UGH!

But, what can we learn that we can ethically use? Here are a few tips I'm translating from his tactics:

• Individuals in your target niche will be at various stages of readiness for your services. It's wise to have different methods for speaking to each level of readiness, and keep providing more and more useful help until they have decided to hire you to help them.

• More than touting your unique selling points -- a concept from the 1940s! -- is needed. We have to match a specific USP with our ideal clients' level of perception of pain or problem and their timeline of readiness to hire.

• Your website home page will work best if it follows the AIDA format: grab attention, connect with self interest, speak to your prospective clients' emotionally compelling desire, and use a motivating call to action.

• Tone, tempo and pattern in your content is important. Use them to create a sense of safety, rapport, trust, and confidence that you are the right person to help them resolve their pain or problem.

This stuff really isn't as hard as it appears, but it is a skillset that isn't as developed as it needs to be for most solopreneur counselors, coaches, and NDs.

I'd be happy to help you learn to use the marketing tricks that work AND are ethical for our professions.

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*A squeeze page is often a very long, one page website that pushes a single product or high ticket conference in a way that manufactures need, installs a sense of fear of losing out if you don't buy now, like it would be a bad decision to resist and affect your life or your business for years down the road. Usually the cost involved is not given until the bottom of the page, sometimes not even until you press the shopping cart button.

Free First Appointments vs Paid Initial Sessions

I attended a workshop the other day where I learned these useful facts in the context of coaching:

• paid intro sessions produce a higher conversion rate -- more prospects become clients
• paid intro sessions produce higher retention rate -- more clients stay with you longer
• paid intro sessions produce higher sales rate -- more clients buy higher priced packages

In contrast, I also had confirmed what I already believed, that:

• free intro sessions can solve too much -- immediate solutions create no incentive to pay for coaching
• free intro sessions tend to attract non ideal prospects -- fewer people ready and willing to hire you
  
• free intro sessions set clients up to undervalue you and your services -- retention rates are lower

Despite these facts, verified by the experience of most coaches with six and seven figure incomes, many new coaches succomb to offering the trial session as a way to "educate the prospective client about coaching." (hint: they don't really care, they just want a solution to their problem).

New counselors also are tempted to try the free first appointment strategy, although few have sustainable success with it.

There are, however, a couple hybrid models for first sessions that intrigue me. One is a type of donation basis strategy, while the other is a type of time control or end-now-or-pay-for-more strategy.

Intro sessions for both coaching and fee-for-service counseling can be offered with the understanding that the client will be asked to pay what they can, or what they feel the session was worth. Personally, I think the cleanest way to do that so that the client doesn't feel pressured to negotiate with you is to direct them to a Make a Donation button on your website, or send a button link to them in an after-session email. Another option is to direct the client to add an extra amount of their choice to their initial required payment for further work.

With a time control strategy, the idea is to provide 15-30 minutes for free, then let the client know what the fee is if they'd like to continue. This should be discussed in advance when making the appointment so that the client doesn't feel tricked by a bait and switch ploy.

Either way, coaches and counselors need to get comfortable talking about their fees and "closing the sale" when talking to prospective clients.

10 Reasons Counselors, Coaches & NDs Need Good Web Presence

Marketing online is perfect for introverts and those solopreneurs who suffer insecurity, low confidence, shoestring budgets, and greater than normal risk aversion when it comes to self and/or business promotion. But more than this, web marketing is a business success necessity in the 21st century.

You may be surprised at these facts:
1. More than 90% of households with computers in the US use the internet to find health care providers

2. The top search in Google is for health and medical related services, products, and information

3. More than 75% of the 78 million Boomer generation research for their needs and buy online

4. 73% of people aged 45+ say that shopping online is a favorite activity

5. Traditional advertising is declining in credibility and increasingly ignored among internet users -- consumers want to be in control of when and how they learn about something they are in the market to spend money on

6. Word of mouth marketing can be more quickly successful in the era of social media than old school referral systems

7. Social networking increased a whopping 774 % from 2006 to 2007 -- yup, that's seven hundred seventy four percent

8. People who buy from email links spend 138% more than those who don't

9. In 2006, e-books (which are gaining favor among internet users) generated $20 million in sales

10. Web marketing is cheap, flexible, easily correctable, low risk, with potentially high return on investment

In short, marketing is no longer about persuading the unknown masses to have interest in your product or service, convincing them that they need it, and relentlessly pushing them to buy it right now.

It's about being where your specific clients are already looking for what they already want, and becoming a familiar and trusted entity to them by providing enough immediate help to engage their natural desire to want even more and be willing to pay you for it.

Following Expert Advice May Be Harmful to Your Business

What?

Perhaps I need to clarify that headline.

Trying out the advice of too many experts at once, without actually following through on any one process or system, will likely be harmful to your bottom line.

As valuable as the advice from different sources no doubt can be, employing a smorgasbord approach to your marketing -- sampling a little of this and a taking a tiny bite of that -- without setting SMART goals and following a coherent plan in a daily, dedicated manner, is not only time consuming, expensive, and effortful for you, but potentially confusing for your target market.

Every client attraction coaching program, teleclass, self-help book, membership club, or home system is going to offer the same basic information for making your services more visible and desirable. The packaging may be different, but the nuts and bolts are the same. Hey, even rocket science and brain surgery have set formulas. You tinker with those protocols at your peril.

What makes you successful in marketing your practice is accountability to your own intentions. Plain and simple. Your clear-mindedness and a persistent, determined, daily pursuit of what works best for getting clients in your door are the most important qualities necessary to start doing really well, as opposed to just scraping by.

Now figuring out what you need to do, and how to do it -- well, stick around. That's what I'm here for. :)