Many coaches aim to sell themselves by saying in their marketing materials they are an expert. In prior articles on “Marketing Coaching & NLP Services: Transparency and Accuracy”, I outlined more tips on marketing and coaching yourself.
Expert inside a niche market
Today’s blog post assumes you are actually an expert through practical knowledge, experience and/or education.
I always advocate seeking a niche market, and in that advise you to be an expert, instead of a jack of all trades! You can’t be everything as a coach. Few are experts at life, but you may be a weight loss expert where it comes how the mind operates around food and exercise. It still surprises me how few coaches put their resume online, or offer real references of not just former clients, even former employers! If you are truly an expert with decades of invaluable experience you should be willing to do so. Linkedin may be a perfect solution, as it is also a (social) networking tool.
How do you establish yourself as a coach expert?
But there are other ways of establishing yourself as an expert. Give some case studies of clients you have worked with, and successfully guided towards change, pair that with their testimonial! A video testimonial even better!
I have yet to see a coach offering an accurate count of how many clients, or coaching hours they have completed. Which is interesting…
Most experts, have been published on the details on what they offer coaching in. And with this I don’t mean a marketing advertisement on your company in the local paper. That does get your name out there, but doesn’t establish you as an expert. What does is, an article offering helpful information on the topic the reader doesn’t know or gets them to think. Show up as a keynote speaker on your topic of expertise somewhere. Host a support group or gathering. Host a message board, forum, facebook fanpage online, or jump into an existing message board offering expert advise and ideas. Not based on your company name, but the specific to topic of expertise. From child bullying, to how to build the perfect body, to living with a phobia etc.
Write a book on the topic!
Become a board member of any good cause, institute, society, federation, organization that deals with your specific topic. Be careful in starting your own, that you do so fairly not as a giant marketing ploy only. It has to be a real body that offers resources, advise, information, services, maybe even fundraising for the good cause.
Other ways to establish yourself as an expert
Teach a (college) course or workshop on the topic.
Network as an expert. What groups or individuals are or should be involved with your client. PTAs, cops, personal trainers, food experts, financial experts, psychologists, doctors etc. And of course your client, the target market at hand, you need to be where they are! You need to be speaking to them, speak or at least be at their conferences, provide workshops etc.
Through the tips above do you not only establish yourself as an expert, it also provides you with opportunity to meet your target market, and build up a referral base.
