by Erik Bowman
You became a coach to help other people. But what are you doing to help yourself succeed? Today, there are well over 10,000 coaches working in the United States alone. Standing out from the crowd is your key to success. The most important thing you can do to differentiate yourself is by creating a credible platform.
What’s your platform?
A platform is how you market yourself, your specialties and coaching services. It’s what you use to promote your coaching practice. The challenge with marketing coaching services is that we all have unique skills and styles. This makes us great coaches, but it also makes it difficult to create a platform that reaches our ideal clients.
Here are six steps you can use to build your platform:
- Define your message – This is what makes you unique. It encompasses your specialty and how you want to be perceived.
- Define your goals – Do you want to earn a living, become wealthy or become famous?
- Define your market – Do you want to work with women, men, teens or specialized markets like chiropractors or moms?
- Package your brand – Write a book, create a logo, build a website, write a blog, get active on social networks and/or post video and audio.
- Execute on your plan – Visualize, build and live your brand every day.
- Market your brand – Continue online marketing through SEO, writing articles, asking for referrals, giving presentations, etc.
Most coaches build their platform from the ground up. If you have the time (it generally takes two to three years) and money (some coaches spend up to $100,000) to commit to this process, it can be very successful.
Another option is to build up your coaching through leveraging. Leveraging is a cost-effective process where you use someone else’s existing platform to gain instant credibility through your association with that brand. Coaches get exposure for their business in exchange for paying a licensing fee.
Whether you choose to leverage an existing brand to boost your coaching business or you build a platform from scratch, remember that even the best marketing must to have something of value paired with it – a great service, blog, public speaking skills or something else.
Erik Bowman is a bestselling author, Executive Director of the Guanzi Institute and creator of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp® program. The Entrepreneur Boot Camp® brand and curriculum provides a platform for coaches to stand out in a crowded coaching marketplace.
IAC members get $100 off Entrepreneur Boot Camp® Certified Coach and 1-month free use of the Entrepreneur Boot Camp® License with a 12- month agreement.
