How to create a kick-butt coaching brand!
What is a brand?
If you were to approach a million marketing professionals and ask them this question you’d probably get a million different answers.
You’d also get very sore feet.
I took the liberty of looking online to collect a few people’s definitions. Most of them seemed pretty incomplete. My favorite definition came from Wikipedia:
“a brand is a collection of experiences and associations connected with a service, a person or any other entity.”
Why do I like this? Well….
- It makes it super clear that your brand is very different from your service or your product. It’s an intangible, existing solely in the mind of the customer or client.
- It helps us to understand how your marketing works by positively influencing people’s associations and perceptions of your service or product.
As business owners, we want to consciously shape our customers’ perceptions of our business. Every point of contact you have with your customers or prospective customers either enhances the perception that you want to encourage, or it confuses it.
You want to be communicating consistent messages in a consistent and coherent way. This is how a brand is built. You want all your messages to work together to enhance the brand you have chosen.
This is about much more than pretty pictures, logos and cool business mantras.
As I discuss the concept of branding your business, I’m talking about setting up structures, associations and systems to ensure that all of your communication is consistent with the perception you want to encourage in the mind of your customer.
So how to we go about creating an awesome brand for your coaching or consulting business?
Easy. Allow me to run you through these seven easy steps.
Step 1: Identify with your prospective customer or client.
You want to get inside the head of your prospective customer or client and see the world through their eyes. (If that sounds like a terrifyingly intrusive process to you then I suggest that you think about this figuratively rather than literally. Yuk.)
Essentially you want to:
1. Discover how they feel:
- What are their main worries?
- What are they scared about?
- What are their passions?
Need more help? In the following article I share a great tool to help you to do this:
2. Find out how they communicate:
- Where do your customers hang out?
- What are they talking about?
- What questions are they asking?
- What language to they use with each other?
Need more help? In the following article I show you some great tips to help you to do comprehensive free market research.
Step 2: Who would your prospective customer or client like to talk to?
Think about your prospective customer or client. Think about their problems, their worries, their challenges, their hopes and their dreams.
What kind of person would your customer or client like to talk to?
Need more help? I discuss this technique in more detail here:
Step 3: Start building your brand identity around the authentic You.
As a coach or consultant your personality is going to be an essential part for your brand.
The way you are – that rocks. That’s why you’re an awesome coach or an awesome consultant.
We start our branding exercise by enhancing the qualities you already have that are consistent with the person you constructed in Step 2. Start to construct a business alter-ego which:
- is authentically YOU
- emphasizes the aspects of your personality and communication style which are most consistent with the person you imagined in Step 2.
Need more help?
Step 4: What is your core brand message?
If you could sum up the biggest unique benefit of your coaching, what would it be?
“To help people believe they are good enough to have the career they want?”
That’s a good benefit.
All your business communication will want to reinforce this message. All of them.
Need more help? Try this for some ideas…
Step 5: What emotion will your brand evoke?
What emotions do you want your client or customer to associate with your brand?
Do you want them to feel inspired, confident, challenged?
Whatever it is, you want to create this emotion on a consistent basis with all of your customer communication. You want to consistently give your customers the emotional experience they have come to want and expect. Otherwise confusion reigns. And people do not spend money when they are confused.
Need more help?
Step 6: Are all elements of your brand consistent?
It may be that your best creative work is done when you’re fired up, dissatisfied and ranting at the stars. BUT… If you core brand message is “more self-esteem through positive thinking“, then it will create an interesting, but confusing, dissonance if you start ranting and raving on your blog.
The last thing in the world you want to do is confuse people. Confused people don’t say yes.
You want to make sure that your core brand message and the emotion you want your brand to evoke reinforce one another. If they don’t then change one of them. In the example I gave above, I’d recommend that you put your outrageousness and ranting skills to use in another area.
Step 7: Respect your brand.
You have now defined the very core of your brand essence. All of your company communication now comes very easily from this place.
Write down what we’ve discussed and display it prominently.
Whenever you communicate with your customers or prospective customers in any way, whether you’re writing a blog post, writing an advert, talking to a client on the phone, ask yourself the following questions:
- Could you imagine this communication taking place between your average customer and the ideal business avatar you created in Step 2?
- Does this communication enhance my core brand message?
- Is the emotion this communication evokes consistent with my brand?
And that’s it. Easy, eh?
See ya tomorrow!
JJ Jalopy.
Comment by Lisa McLellan
2 June 2009
Ahhhh I like this! Just like April with branding yourself…. very important no matter whether it is in business or socially. Great post.
Lisa McLellan, Babysitting Services – Babysitters, Nannies, and Au-pairs
Comment by Duane Cunningham
2 June 2009
Hey JJ,
Superb article today! You are what the world thinks you are! And you better make sure that you have them thinking something thats helpful to your cause!!
Your branding yourself as the go to guy in Coaching my friend!!
Duane
Discover Secret Persuading Skills that Work Like Magic by Tapping Into the Psychology of the Mind with The Worlds Leading Persuasion Expert Duane Cunningham!
“Amazing Secrets Discovered Using Cutting Edge Research! Guaranteed To Put Money In Your Pockets, Melt Away Sales Resistance…And Slash Buyers Remorse Almost Overnight!”
Comment by John Ho
2 June 2009
JJ,
Cool & helpful contents to get one starts to be a coach!
I like the way you integrate your previous blog/articles in a new post. Likewise, the same way you come up with your weekly eZine.
Good one & keep up the good work!
A big hug to you. Remember that I said that from your birthday, I could see that emotional uplifting was essential for your success?!
John Ho
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion (WordPress Blog)
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Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion (Money Page)
John Ho’s latest internet ramble.Numerology Expert John Ho Asks You to Put His Vox Blog into Your Google Reader If You Haven’t Done So
Comment by Rob Northrup
2 June 2009
Great new material JJ!
Seize the Day,
Rob
Sales Expert For Small Business Owners
Personal Asset Protection For Small Business Owners
Comment by JJ Jalopy
2 June 2009
@ John Ho. Thanks for the hug John!
You’re totally right about me! I really do enjoy the hugs, attention, love and enthusiasm you guys offer here. It makes it easy to keep writing. Thanks dude!
Comment by Darryl Pace
2 June 2009
JJ,
Tremendous post! Great information. Very thorough.
Health, Fitness — Darryl Pace
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Comment by Steve Chambers
3 June 2009
Cool article on branding. Branding is important from both a personal and business perspective. Your advice is solid and anyone interested in establishig and improving their brand would do well to follow it.
Steve Chambers, The Sales Expert
The Sales Eagle Solution – 6 months to dominate your market
Comment by Bob Kaufer
3 June 2009
Wow packed with great content as usual, worth the $100 you charge me per month to subscribe to this blog.
Bob Kaufer
Sign Up For My Free Neuro Performance and Health? E-Course
Comment by Pam Schulz
11 June 2009
Excellent post JJ – packed with lots of really useful tips and information. I need to reread this one!
Pam
Invest in Your Future
Pam Schulz´s last blog ..The Strength of Markets
Comment by Single Boomer Dating Success Coach
13 June 2009
Well, my thanks to Lisa for connecting this to what I suggest to single baby boomers when they are seeking to do online dating as well as in person romantic relationship building.
great post, JJ.
Best regards,
April Braswell
Single Boomer Dating Expert, Relationship Success Coach
Widow Support and Bereavement Counseling Outreach Workshop Orange County, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, CA
Comment by Newport Beach, Widow Support, Bereavement Counseling, Divorce Recovery, Grief Support, Orange County, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Irvine
22 June 2009
Hi JJ,
you always make me giggle and laugh. Kickin’ butt and taking names! love it.
Well, indeed, when I’m working with groups of Grieving clients, whether another widow, like myself, or someone who is divorced and feeling the grief mixed feelings that so often follow on, it helps me that I have and continue to do the Grief Recovery Process work on myself. Branding and feeling their pains, and compassionately understanding their feelings, and then taking them by the hand and walking them through the action steps is such a huge help!
Best regards,
April Braswell
Single Boomer Dating Expert, Relationship Success Coach
Widow Support and Bereavement Counseling Outreach Workshop Orange County, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, CA
Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Orange County, Website Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Social Media Marketing
Comment by JJ Jalopy
22 June 2009
@April – It’s awesome that these concepts can be so widely applicable.
Yes, I like talking about kicking butt. It’s not very British of me, I know…