#138: Under the Hood: Your Marketing Engine & How It Works

Hello there, health coaches. We're back and it has been a mighty busy couple of weeks over here in my business, also in my personal life. So, I hope when things get busy for you, you're able to step back. You're able to look at the big picture. I know this morning, I felt like I had 1 million things on my plate. Things that I had to take care of today, but first there is yoga, right? Because in the big picture, if I don't take care of myself, nothing else is going to get taken care of. And today I want to share another sort of big picture idea with you about how marketing actually works to generate clients. I'm going to pop open the hood, so to speak. I'm not good with the car metaphors. I think there's going to be a lot of metaphors today. So, hang in there with me.

I'm going to pop open the hood so you can look inside and see how all the different parts work together when it comes to your marketing or at least how they can work together or how they should work together. They're not always working together. And hopefully by the end of today's episode, you will better understand how to do this in a more effective way. To create... What are we trying to do here? We are trying to put money in your pocket. We're trying to earn a salary, doing the work that we love. Yes. Okay. Hands up. If that sounds good to you. And by the way, that reminds me, I have a suite on demand training. That's available to you about how to make a full-time salary as a health coach. In this training, we literally do the math. It's very logical and show you how your different activities can add up to bring in the income that you want to make.

Anyway, you can access that free training at healthcoachpower.com/earn that's healthcoachpower.com/earn. Okay so, when I talk about a marketing engine, what I'm seeing in my head and what I hope you'll be able to envision with me here is this giant funnel. And, you know, the big part of the funnel is at the top. And the small part of the funnel is at the bottom. And there are three layers within the funnel, like a layer cake, like the layer cake that I made for my son last weekend, it was his 10th birthday. So I went all out, you guys. I made a huge cake. It's actually four layers. And I called it a piñata cake because there was a surprise inside when we cut it open. But that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about real cake where you're imagining a funnel shaped layer cake with three layers.

Got it? Okay. So, at the top, at the widest part of your funnel, that's all your outreach. That's getting yourself in front of new eyeballs. That's things like social media, holding workshops, making guest appearances on podcasts, writing blog posts for other people's blog, contributing an article to your local newspaper. When you're a guest on the morning cable show, whatever it is. It also includes things like blogging. When you're writing content, that's going to get found when people do a Google search, right? Or if you have your own YouTube channel and same thing, people are going to be searching for topics and they find you that gets you in front of new eyeballs. So anything that you do that gets you in front of eyeballs, that's at the top of the funnel, we're going to call that the eyeball layer. Okay. And so, I want to answer a couple of questions from our health coach, power community members, things that came in over the last week or so.

And I'm going to start with questions that relate to this eyeball layer of activities. So, here's one from Merly. And if for those of you that are here, live, if you have questions for me, go ahead and put those in the comments as well. But Merly said, what is everyone's best day and time to go live in their Facebook groups. So what I will always say to questions about when do I do the thing, is you should do it at a day in time. That works best for you. First and foremost, I have traditionally done these Q&A's every week into our Facebook group, Tuesdays at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Now it has sometimes changed based on my kids' school schedules and things like that. So again, it has to work for you first and foremost.

Beyond that you would want to consider your target market and what works for them. Do they have a baby napping at that time? Do they have to go pick up the kids from school? Are they at work right then? And not able to watch Facebook from their cubicle? Okay. So you just want to think about what time works best for you first and what time works best for your target market second. Good question Merly.

What's another top of funnel activity. Another something else that lives in the eyeball layer. Here's something from Gina. She said, does anyone have information on pitching a podcast, maybe a skeleton format. So Gina's looking to be a guest on other people's podcasts, which is an awesome, awesome way to get yourself in front of new eyeballs. Gina, I'm so glad that you're doing that. And there's no one way to go about pitching a podcast. There are actually agencies out there. I get stuff from these agencies all the time saying, Hey, we've got this guest and they'd be so great for your show and blabbity, blah, blah, blah.

I usually just hit delete, but there are agencies out there that pitch like this, and you can also sort of cold call by sending emails to whoever's running the podcast that you want to be on. Tell them why you're so great. And you know, sometimes people just need guests, especially if they rely on having a guest every single week, you never know. But what I like to do when I want to be on somebody's podcast is actually not make it a cold call. I want it to be a warm contact. So I like to actually listen to the show a couple of times, follow that person on Instagram, on Facebook, join their Facebook group. If they have one that goes with their podcasts and show up a little bit, make sure they have seen your name. They've seen your face, you know, maybe send them a direct message, engage a little bit over their content, tell them how much you like that show that you listen to.

And then you might ask if they're looking for guests, sometimes they actually will have an application. If you go to the website associated with the podcast, sometimes it says guest application, and you can just fill it right on out. And if they're interested, they'll get back to you. But even if I was going to do that, I would still warm up my relationship with that podcast host first, cause you're always going to get a better response that way and probably have a better interview because you will actually know them better and they will know you. So good luck with that. I think it's an awesome way to get yourself in front of new eyeballs. Here's a question from Amy. Amy's talking about her personal page on Facebook and she says, I try to keep my personal page separate from business as I have kids and a family.

And I have privacy settings for friends only when and how do we use our personal page to draw more people into our business page or to our private group. Also, I've made it a habit to not accept friend requests from people I don't really know in groups because it clutters my personal page. And I end up seeing posts from people that I don't even know. Is this going to backfire on me? I don't want to be antisocial to colleagues, Amy. It's hard, I think for all of us to determine where our boundaries are with personal and business, you know, within social media. So let me answer the first part of your question. Really your personal page on Facebook is not meant to promote your business very much at all. There are a few key places that you should mention it, right? Like under your name, when it says what you do, who you are, you're going to want to mention exactly what you do there and provide your URL for your website.

But short of that, it's not like you should be posting things about your business all day on your personal page. Facebook actually doesn't allow that now, are they policing it? No. So if you do it once or twice, no big deal, but you should not be using your personal page to drum up business. The other area that you can consider on your personal page to help is your cover image. I find that when I'm inside a Facebook group, that is not my group, but somebody else's group you're in there as yourself, you are represented by your personal profile, usually inside of a group. So if I'm engaging with people inside of a group and they click on my profile, it's nice. If what they see is a cover image on my personal Facebook page, that reflects what I do for a living and maybe even suggests to them, hey, join my Facebook group.

Or Hey, like download my thing or hey, go visit me on my business page. So there are ways to use your personal profile to support your business efforts on Facebook, but I would not lean on it and actually use it for hard hitting promotions. That's not what it's there for. As for accepting people as friends, I agree with you. It gets weird when your so-called friends on Facebook are people that you don't even know at all. And at a certain point, you can't add any more friends there there's a limit. So I like what you're doing, where you're actually only accepting someone as a friend, if you are friends with them, but keep in mind that it is a social platform and it can be a way to make friends. So if I have any sort of one-on-one interaction, I know who the person is. Sometimes I very well will friend them on Facebook because it's a way for us to get to know each other better. And for me to see what they're up to and vice versa, and that can be helpful in the future for your business, but all good questions. And now we are going to move down. Down to the next layer of our cake or cake funnel or funnel with a cake inside.

Anyway, remember the funnel. It has three layers. Top layer is the eyeball layer. That's when you're getting yourself out in front of new people, the middle layer, the next thing that happens is that people who have now seen you on TV on a podcast, they read your blog posts, they saw you on Instagram, whatever it is down. Down we want to get them down to our mailing lists. And that's sort of the middle section of this, this engine or this funnel that we're talking about today. So we want to gather an email address from as many people as we can within our target market and make sure that they're not just following us on Facebook. They're not just listening passively to our podcasts, but that they actually join our mailing list. And then you want to have regular email communications with them.

This is the part that most health coaches miss you think, Oh, I'm going to go into some Facebook group where people are having health problems or I'm going to go on Instagram. And I'm going to find people who are having some health problem and bam, I'm going to find clients probably not. I'm just here to tell you, probably not maybe occasionally, but it's sort of like expecting that you're going to get married to someone just because you see them every day in your college dorm, right? Like you've never actually been on a date, but like, yeah, that person's going to want to marry me. Ah, maybe typically you have to build a relationship first. So even if you see someone, even if you overheard them talking, whatever, even if you strike up a conversation with them, one time, the way to create the relationship, that ongoing relationship is to capture an email address.

And then you will be able to be in direct communication on a weekly basis. Hopefully you are nurturing your email list. That's how you go from someone who's just wandering around in a social setting to someone who actually knows you and likes you and trust you. And that's going to have to happen before you get married or before they give you a whole bunch of money to become their health coach. Okay. So we're going to call this middle layer of the funnel, the heart layer. It's the relationship layer, right? So eyeballs on top heart in the middle. I don't even know what's going to happen. Like as this metaphor unfolds, as we move down the funnel because I'm kind of making this up as we go along.

But anyway, here's a question that came in about the heart layer. The many of you may be wondering about, so listen up. This came from Jessica and then Carol piped in and said she had the same question. So I just wanted to give you both a shout out. And Jessica had written, she wrote, I missed the list building event. And I'm wondering if that is still available. She's referring to the event that we did last December. It was called multiply your mailing list. And so Jessica and Carol, I am sorry that you guys were not around for that. That event is over your mailing list. However, still super important it is that heart layer as we've been talking about. So I'm hoping to bring that event back in some way, shape or form in the future. But I can tell you, in the meantime, we have lots of podcasts episodes about this topic of building your mailing list. For example, episode 91, build your audience episode 96, starting your email list, episode 108, how to majorly list build. And there are more so go search through the archives on iTunes, on YouTube or at healthcoachpower.com/podcast.

It's like a freaking treasure trove and you will find lots and lots and lots of information there. Okay? So once you have eyeballs on you and then you capture the email addresses, so you can build your list and you can nurture a relationship, earn that trust. By the way, I teach all of this inside healthy profit university like in depth, but today is not about going into the nitty-gritty details of all of these different tactics today is like the big picture. So we're just going to keep moving so that you could see how all the parts go together. If you're moving down the funnel, if a person comes into your world, let's say through social media, now they're on your mailing list. The next place that we want them to go is the bottom layer of the funnel. And this is where you convert people who are on your mailing list to paying clients.

I want to say that this is where we concentrate the relationship, but then I don't really know what to name that layer because it's getting a little bit like not PG rated anymore. So I'm just going to move right along from that thought. And let's just say, this is where business gets done. Okay. So to successfully convert your mailing list to paying clients, you need to know what you're offering. You need to know what your price points are. You need to then be able to communicate the value of your services inherently. Nobody wants a health coach or health coaching. No, one's like, Oh gosh, I hope I can spend a lot of money on health coaching today. It's not like that. And it's not even something that people necessarily know that they need like a mortgage lender. So, we need to really be able to verbalize like the value that someone's going to receive by working with us, how we're going to help them solve their problem.

You're either going to be selling by phone often. Um, it's going to be some sort of one-on-one sales conversation, or if you're selling, let's say an online course or a product of some kind, then you may actually be selling with a button that lives on a web page, right sales page. But either way you must be very, very clear about what you're offering and the value that it provides. So I have a couple of questions here about bottom of funnel operations or the business layer. So let's get to those here's one from David. He says when to start coaching clients, I'm a new health coach in training two months into a six month program for certification. And I'm wondering how soon to start finding and working with clients. I've worked with a business coach who trains other coaches. And he has said to start immediately.

He says, I already have enough knowledge to get started. He is not a health coach. Well, David, you know what? Um, I am also a coach who trains coaches and I am a health coach. And I would give you the almost exact same advice because number one, even when you are at the six month Mark of your program, so many health coaches say this, I have graduated, I have my certification, but I still don't feel ready. And the truth is you're never going to feel ready because it's not something that you've done before I went to college for my undergrad degree, I went to Northeastern university. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Northeastern, it's up in Boston and it's co-op school. And that's like one of the best things about it. If I could redo my life all over again, I would definitely still go to a college that offered co-op programs because I had to go work starting freshman year.

I had to go work in the field that I was majoring in. And you know what? I ended up changing majors because when I was working, I remember I was a physical therapy major. And I was now working in a physical therapy clinic and I hated it. I hated it so much. I loved the classes. I love the theory of love learning anatomy and all about health, go figure. But I did not like actually working in that setting. It's actually changed my whole, my whole trajectory changed from there. So anyway, that's the power of doing early on is you will learn so much. You'll learn what you're good at, where you're bad at what you don't like, what you do like and where you want to go from here. So, David, I would absolutely start working with clients as soon as your school says it's okay to do so.

When I was a student at the Institute for integrative nutrition, way back in the stone ages in 2008, it was a year program. I believe it's the same way. Now we're halfway through the program. They said to us, okay, you're ready to go get your first clients. And I did. I'm so glad that I did for lots of reasons, including the fact that then I was able to like repay my tuition. By the time I graduated, I broke even. It was awesome. But besides that, I, I needed that experience. I needed to be able to say to people and you can do this, Hey, I'm still in school. Um, but I'm ready to start taking clients. I'm offering, you know, you can call it whatever you want to call it. A friends and family package, a beta program, an intro rate, something like this. So, they get the impression that they're getting a deal.

And also you're getting very needed, you know, very valuable experience from them. So it's like a win-win. I would absolutely encourage you to do that. As soon as possible, there is nothing that you will get from waiting. I promise you are not going to feel more ready a month from now or two months from now, because if you've never coached before, you have never coached before. If you've never asked anyone for money before, you've never asked anyone for money before, and you need to go through all of those steps and it's going to be a little shaky at first, you know, but that's okay. And then as you do, you're going to gain the skills that you need to do it better and better and better as a professional. So I hope that is helpful. David, go get them.

I have another question here from Bridget. So again, this is a question about the bottom of our marketing funnel. We have people in our world, they're on our mailing list and now we need to sell them something or they want to buy something from us. They want our help. They have a problem and we can help them solve it. So, maybe you're going to be selling private coaching, like what David was talking about with his question. And that's what most new health coaches are doing. And I think that is the best place to start for various reasons. Don't just jump into an online program. It's not going to sell very well if you're just getting started and you don't have that much of an audience anyway, there are other ways to make money though. It's not always just going to be one-on-one coaching. And so, Bridget asked a question that illuminates another income stream that's possible for all health coaches.

And this is what Bridget wrote. She said, does anyone here offer a service where they go into client's homes and help them or view their food choices in the refrigerator and pantry, and maybe clean up and organize their kitchen. I don't do this, but I have a current coaching client willing to pay me to do it and ask for it. If you've done this before, what did you charge? How long did you spend and what of things did you focus on in their kitchen? I feel a little, like, I don't know what I'll be walking into exactly, but there's really no way to know that ahead of time. Any tips appreciated. Okay, Bridget, I like it. I like that. You're trying new things. You're thinking about new things. This what you're describing, we usually call a pantry makeover or a pantry. Clean-out, it's very common for health coaches to offer this type of service.

And I've seen coaches do it for years and years and years. I have done it myself, exactly one time in the very early years of my business. And so I figured I would tell you about that experience and then just kind of point out some of the things to be aware of. So I remember it was a colleague of mine. I used to work in advertising and so this was, a work colleague and she was interested in what I was doing. I think she was not interested in giving me the $1,200 that I was charging at the time for my six month coaching program. Also. I'm pretty sure I was not communicating the value of it to her very well. I was just saying, yes, I will be your health coach for six months. And we will meet every other week and it costs $1,200.

And she was like, ehhh. All right, what if I told her instead, um, I'm going to help you solve that big health issue that you just told me about together. We are going to reduce your symptoms. We're going to find ways for you to feel better, fast, right? That's a totally different way to communicate the value, but I digress anyway, she didn't want to pay for that. So she asked me something similar. Could you come over? Could you help me just clean out my kitchen? I feel like I just need a fresh start. So I was like, yeah, sure. Back in the day I would do anything anybody asked me to do. And that is not what you want to do in your business. But I believe we all start there before we draw some boundaries and we figure out where our time is really best spent.

So anyway, of course I said, yes. And I got my car that day and I drove for 30 minutes to her house. And then I parked up the hill and I walked to her house and then I spent about an hour or two with her and her husband. And then we, you know, went through the whole kitchen. I drove back home for 30 minutes. And at the end of the day, I had earned about a hundred dollars and it had taken me two and a half hours of like hard time spent between the travel and the time at her house. Plus any time that I used, you know, in advance to prepare what I was going to do. So, as you think about pricing, something like this, make sure that you're considering not only the time that you're there, but the time that you might be traveling and any preparation that you need to do, it can really add up.

So if I had been thinking about $100 being worth two and a half, three hours of my time, uh, maybe I would have said, I need to charge more. Okay. So, this is the thing with pantry clean-outs it requires your in-person time, you know, if you're going to be going to somebody's house and it requires that, um, anyway, and we'll, we'll talk about an alternative to that in just a second while I was there at her house, it was interesting on one hand it was very intimate because you were like literally going through people's closets or in this case, their cupboards. And it was a little embarrassing for her. I could tell she's like, Oh, we only have that because the kids like it or, Oh, that, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. I never used that. You know? So anytime that something came out of her cabinet that looked like junk food or something very processed.

I think she felt embarrassed by it, even though I wasn't saying a word. Um, so I thought, huh, I don't know if I'm really like this. On one hand, it was very, it was very up in her stuff. You know, on the other hand, I didn't have the opportunity to do a full intake with her. I didn't actually know about her health history or anything that was going on. We had no plan for what she was trying to achieve. So doing like this one-off pantry makeover really did not feel like it made sense to me. And that's probably why I never did it again. But anyway, it was fine. And what we did was we separated everything in her kitchen, into the keep pile and into the get rid of, or replace pile and talked about, well, instead of vegetable oil, you know, you can cook with butter or Ghee or coconut oil.

You know, we talked about all different replacements for what was in her pantry, whether or not she actually followed through and replaced those items, I don't know. Usually people don't like you to take their food and put it directly into a garbage can, even though that's what I kind of wanted to do. So anyway, that's what you can expect once you get into somebody's house, if you're going to do this, and I just wanted to give you a heads up about that. I do think that it's best packaged within a larger coaching service. And I will add onto that, that especially these days, maybe not 10 years ago, when I was starting my business, it really wouldn't have been possible back then. But now that everything is happening over zoom, I would recommend you do it that way. That way you're not actually reaching your hand into their sort of personal space, you know, the back of the pantry, let them do that.

And you can go through the whole kitchen with them via zoom. That's also going to save you any travel time. You could also do these in a group setting where you're talking to multiple people at the same time and saying, okay, pull out all your oils. Let's talk about oils, pull out all your flowers. Let's talk about flowers, stuff like that. And that way you could earn more money with the same amount of time. And it might just be a more efficient way to do business. I would want it to point that out to you. Okay. I hope that was helpful. We went through again, very, very high level, the three parts of your marketing engine today who can remember them. What's level one. That's the eyeball layer. That's your outreach. Hey, look at me. Hey, Hey, I'm a, I'm a person in health and wellness, right?

You get people to look at you and your stuff in that middle layer, you convert them to your mailing list and you nurture a relationship with them. And then finally, after that, you can make an offer. You can ask them to marry you. You can ask them if they'd like to sign up for a free consultation or, Hey, I'm doing this pantry makeover or Hey, if you're David, you'll say I'm brand new to coaching. And I'm looking for my first three clients, that's where you make your offers. And they're more likely to succeed when someone has gone through that process with you now sometimes will you just bump into someone on the street and after five minute conversation, they're handing you a check and saying, I absolutely want to work with you. Yeah, that happens like 1% of the time. So if you have a story like that, it's not that I'm saying that can't work. It does work, but it's unpredictable at best. So, I encourage you to build out the steps that we talked about today, so that when you're doing something in your business, you know, which part of your marketing engine you are working on and how all the pieces fit together.

Okay you guys thank you for being here. We will be back next week with more. And in the meantime, please ask all of your amazing, important, thoughtful questions inside our Facebook group at healthcoachpowercommunity.com have a great one.