Are you in the process of creating a Marketing Plan for next year for your service business? If you are, you are probably wondering what you need to include in your plan. Here are four tasks that you must include in your marketing plan to grow your business:

Grow Your List

Building your list is the most important item to include on your list of tasks to do in 2010. A list of your potential clients, waiting to hear from you, is your most important asset. When you have 1,000 or more of your potential clients on your list, waiting to hear from you, you will be able to get more service clients and more product sales whenever you need.

How do you grow your list? Commit to taking at least one action every day in 2010 to build your list. Doing this will help you get more people on your list much faster.

Create A Brand New Gift (Or Update A Current One)

Giving a valuable gift in exchange for subscription to your newsletter will help you grow your list much faster. If you do not have a gift that you are giving away, one of your first actions of 2010 must be creating one.

Even if you already have a gift that you are giving away, don’t let it go stale. Update a current gift or even create an additional brand new gift that you can give away in a different campaign.

A new or updated gift will create more buzz and excitement, and, as a result, you will get many more subscribers for your list.

Update Your Web Site

If you haven’t updated your web site in the past few years, take the opportunity in 2010. Search engines love new and updated content, and so do people in your target market. Also, chances are some things have changed in your business. You may not be offering some of your products or services any more. You may have new articles that you want to post to your web site.

Create New Products

Creating your own products has always been extremely important, but now it is even more important than ever. The reason is that in today’s economy a lot of people are saving money. And because of this they do not have enough money in their budgets to pay for your services. But since your products cost much less than your services, many more people in your target market will find your products affordable.

There are many different products you can create – a membership program, e-books, home study guides, audio recordings, reports and many more. Make sure to include creating of your own products into your marketing plan for 2010.

Ready to create your marketing plan for 2010? Join me for the How To Create A Winning Marketing Plan For 2010 Teleseminar this Friday to learn how to create a marketing plan for 2010 that will grow your business. Register now at http://www.marketingsalad.com/your2010.html

Many of my clients come to me with almost exactly the same complaint. “I am spending 4-6 hours a day marketing, and it feels that I am just spinning the wheels, but I am not getting anywhere. I have been doing this for months and have no client to show for it.” - said a life coach to me recently.

I find with many of my clients that when they tell me that they feel like all they are doing is marketing, but they are not getting any results, they do not have a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is essential for your coaching business - it tells you what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

Here are some things to include in the marketing plan for your coaching business:

Decide on your target market for your coaching business

An effective target market usually translates into a profitable coaching business.

One of the most effective ways to market is to market to groups of people at once. If you are a parenting coach and your target market is parents, a great way to market is to speak to groups of parents.

If you are a dating coach and your target market is women in their 30’s, then single women groups on social networking web sites will be a great place to promote yourself.

In fact, knowing your target market will make marketing MUCH easier. And we all want to simplify our marketing, right?

Start building your list

People won’t buy from you the first time they encounter you. And if you don’t have a list, your first encounter will also be your last.

With the list, you will be able to keep in touch with your prospects, build relationships with them, and convert them into clients.

Find marketing techniques to use, and use them effectively

First, decide on which techniques you want to use. Social networking, article marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, etc - there are many.

Learn exactly how to use them and learn which outcomes you should expect. Randomly posting blog posts, writing articles or posting on Twitter on Facebook will not bring in results.

Knowing exactly which results to expect and how to use marketing techniques to get these results is what will help you get more coaching clients.

Make sure to create a plan for all of this - you will spend less time marketing, while getting much better results!

Need help marketing your coaching business? Get the FREE Report, How To Get Coaching Clients Online

Biana Babinsky

Lately I have been hearing from many coaches asking me how they can use Twitter to gain more coaching clients. In fact, I have talked to quite a few coaches who told me that Twitter isn’t working for them as means for getting coaching clients.

One life coach told me that she has been offering her free coaching session on Twitter for months, and no one has taken her up on her offer. She decided that Twitter wasn’t good for promoting her coaching business and decided to move on to other online marketing techniques.

Twitter and other social networking web sites are great for promoting a coaching business. However, just offering your free session is not the best way to use those social networking web sites. You need to have a plan for how to use social networking to promote your coaching business.

Here is what you must include in your plan:

Know Who You Want To Meet

You must have a profile of people you would like to connect with a twitter - your potential coaching clients, potential JV partners, etc.

If you don’t know who you want to meet, how will you meet them?

Once you know who you want to meet on social networking web sites, you can look and connect with these people, instead of connecting with people randomly. Just doing this will dramatically improve the results you are getting from social networking.

Get People Interested

Have a good mix of twits - something about you, something that gives back (retweeting others), something that helps others (tips, articles, ideas) and something that promotes your business.

It is about having a good mix and sharing what your followers enjoy.

Social Networking Web Sites Alone Are Not Enough

You need to have a way to invite your followers to take the next step with you - subscribe to your newsletter, attend a teleseminar, etc.

Once people who meet on social networking web sites are subscribed to your newsletter, you can continuously build a relationship with them and introduce your products and services to them.

Use Features Available To You On Social Networking Web Sites To Let Others Know About Your Coaching Business

Learn different features available to you on different social networking web sites to promote your business. For example:

- Use Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog posts to Twitter

- Use Facebook Events to promote your teleseminars and webinars on Facebook

- Use applications on LinkedIn to automatically post your blog posts to LinkedIn

There are many different tools available for you. Learn about them and incorporate them into your overall social networking strategy for your coaching business.

If you are not getting the results that you are looking for from the time you spend on social networking web sites, stop and create a plan. Your plan will help you spend less time on social networking web sites, while getting better results.

Need help creating a social networking plan for your coaching business? Join me for How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Social Networking Training

Biana Babinsky

Many coaches have told me that all they wish for is a full coaching practice. This was also what a client of mine, Linda, really wished for. She mapped out exactly how she saw her full practice - 25 clients, each one signed up for her 2-sessions a month package.

After creating a marketing plan, and diligently using it to Linda got her wish. She had 25 clients she enjoyed working with, each one was signed up for her 2-sessions a month package.

But, she was still having some issues:

- She wanted to coach only three days a week and spend the other two days on in-person networking events, marketing and spending time with her family. This proved to be impossible, because she could not coordinate the schedules of 26 people (25 clients and her) to fit all the sessions into Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. As a result she didn’t have the free days to do her networking and marketing that she originally thought she would.

- She didn’t have time to market and network - because she didn’t have her free days, it became hard to fit her marketing and networking in-between her client sessions.

- After some time of working with 25 clients she became tired and overwhelmed She hired an assistant to schedule and re-schedule clients and take care of all the admin work. While doing that definitely helped, she was still feeling overwhelmed.

- She wanted to work with more people, but she could not physically take on any more clients.

She started not enjoying her work as much as she used to - she was tired, overwhelmed and she knew that she was not doing some of the things she needed to do. She wasn’t able to help everyone she wanted to help, she had no time for marketing, and, most importantly, she started not enjoying her work!

Be careful what you wish for. One question that I ask my new coaching clients is: “If I could grant any wish for your coaching business, what would it be?” Many coaches that I have worked with told me immediately that their wish would be for a full coaching practice. Many coaches believe that the only way to have a successful business is by having a full practice. And this is not true. There are many different ways to have an extremely successful coaching business:

- Some coaches don’t have to work with one-on-one clients at all. Some coaches I know only work with clients in group settings.

- You can offer create a very successful coaching business by helping your clients with information products. Teleseminars, audios, e-courses, ebooks, study guides - you can offer these information products in addition to your coaching services. That way you will be able to work with very few clients one-on-one and you will be able to help many more clients with your products.

There are many more ways to structure your coaching business. You could membership web sites to offer different levels of coaching programs. You could offer a group coaching program and give your participants an option to buy a few one-on-one sessions when they need additional help. You are only limited by your imagination!

You are running your own coaching business, which means that you set the rules. If the current coaching business model that you have isn’t working for you, map out the coaching model that will fit you better and then create a plan to achieve it!

Linda in the example above decided not to take on any additional clients until she was down to 15 clients. So every time a client graduated, she didn’t look for a replacement, but instead used the time she had freed up to market, build her list and create information products. Later, she decided that her ideal coaching business was a mix of 10 one-on-one clients, teleseminars and a membership web site.

What is a model of YOUR ideal coaching business? Post a comment and share with us!

Biana Babinsky

P.S. Learn how to create your ideal coaching business at the online business mentoring web site

Lately, I have been hearing from many coaches, asking me to teach them how to get results with social networking. Here is a typical email I receive:

“Biana, I have been reading on many coaching lists and forums about social networking. I jumped in a few months ago, created accounts on Twitter and Facebook and started using them. I typically spend 1-2 hours a day on Twitter and Facebook. It has been three months since I joined and I have nothing to show for it except all this time that I have spent there.

Help! How can I start getting coaching clients from Twitter and Facebook?”

First of all, I don’t recommend jumping into social networking without a plan. If you want to get social networking results, you must have a plan for what you want to accomplish with social networking and how you want to accomplish it.

If you want people who you meet on social networking web sites to immediately become your coaching clients, you will be disappointed. People who you meet on social networking web sites are not there to buy - they are there to learn, communicate, share and promote themselves. Because of this, it is much easier for you to get leads (newsletter subscribers) than clients on social networking web sites. Once you have them on your list, you can communicate with them, continue building relationships with them and turn them into clients. But first you must get them on your list.

But even before that you need to do some prep work. Until you know who you want to connect with and have a specific landing page for your social networking efforts, you are not going to see good results. So let’s get started with your prep work:

Decide Who You Want To Subscribe To Your Newsletter

Before you can get good leads, you need to know WHO they are. Who do you want to subscribe to your newsletter? You always want your target market to subscribe to your newsletter!

Create A Landing Page For Your Social Networking

Now it is time to think about a web page where you are going to send people you meet on social networks. This is the page that you are going to include in your social networking profiles, so that people you meet on social networks would visit it.

This page is extremely important, because it is going to turn people you meet on social networks into leads. This means that the only action that people should be able to take on that page is subscribe to your newsletter.

Many people think that if they offer more option on this landing page, then more people will be able to pick the option that they like and use it. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true. The more options you offer, the more confused people become and the more likely they are to just leave the page without taking any action.

So if you have a page on which you give your visitors many choices, change it! Give just one choice - subscribing to your newsletter - and you will get more results. A page that gives just one choice is called a Squeeze Page and I discuss how to create Squeeze Page for social networking in the How To Create Effective Squeeze Pages Study Guide.

Now you are prepared to use social networking! Start networking with your target market by answering questions, sharing useful tips and information, sharing links to helpful articles and blog posts and adding value. When your target market sees that you are an expert at what you do, they will visit your profile and click on the link to your page and subscribe to your newsletter!

Biana Babinsky

In the past year I have trained many coaches on how to use social networking and social media to promote a coaching business. As I did this training, there were many questions that were asked over and over again. I wanted to share the three most popular questions (and answers) with you:

1. How can a life coach(business coach, career coach, etc) find her target market on Twitter?

Here are my two favorite tools for doing Twitter search:

search.twitter.com searches twits, the actual things that people say. Use it to search on things that your target market would talk about.

For example, if you are a life coach and your target market is looking for more balance in their lives, chances are your target market is talking about “being tired”, “not being able to do everything”, etc. Search for what your target market likes to talk about and you will locate your target market on Twitter!

twellow.com search searches twitter members’ profiles. So if your target market identifies itself in their profiles, use this search tool to search for them.

For example, if you are a business coach for speakers, search for speaker, and it should give you the results you are looking for.

2. In addition to using social networking, a coach also has to work with clients, lead calls and create new products. How can a coach not spend too much time on social networking?

Schedule your time! Only spend time that you have on social networking. Only have 20 minutes in one day? Spend the 20 minutes on social networking and then go on to your other commitments. Don’t make your client work or marketing activities suffer because of social networking.

Don’t borrow the time that you do not have to use social networking. Do allocate some of your marketing time for social networking. Use that time wisely.

3. How can a coach get clients on Twitter?

This is probably the most popular question I receive from clients, colleagues and people I meet on social networking web sites.

Before we talk about how to get clients on Twitter, you should really understand the difference between leads and clients. Have you seen anyone take out a credit card and give out the credit card number on Twitter to buy coaching services? Neither have I. This means that you are going to get leads, not clients on Twitter.

What really happens on Twitter is that you start building a relationship that you can continue in other media. People you meet on Twitter may become long-term readers of your blog, newsletter subscribers, etc. As they read your blog or newsletter, they get to know you better and will become clients.

Want to learn more about using Twitter to get coaching clients? Get the How To Promote Your Business With Twitter Home Study Guide.

Biana Babinsky

A long time ago I met a life coach, let’s call her Ann, who charged $20 for a life coaching session. She told me that she used to do coaching for free for a long time, and started charging $20/session recently. She was considering going back to offering free coaching, because she said that “charging money for coaching makes her uncomfortable.” She didn’t feel that it was right to charge people for helping them.

She has a full-time job, and was coaching during evenings and weekends. She also told me that she didn’t like her full time job and wanted to do coaching full time. But she could not possibly do that, because the money she made by charging $20 for a coaching session wasn’t enough to cover even half of her mortgage.

Ann is a classic example of what I have seen with many of my clients. Many life coaches are afraid to charge what they are really worth, because they don’t think they should charge people for helping them. As a result, they severely underprice their services and are not able to make enough money with coaching to support themselves.

I have seen many life coaches staying in a full time job they hated, because they were afraid to set their rates high enough to be able to support themselves with their life coaching business. They thought that by keeping their rates low they could help more people and make coaching affordable. Unfortunately, that was not the only thing they were doing.

Here is how not charging what you are worth is holding you back:

When You Are Not Charging What You Are Worth You Cannot Take Care Of Yourself

When you keep your coaching rates low, you are not able to take care of yourself. You do not make enough money to pay your mortgage, buy food, take care of your family or go on vacation.

And because you don’t make enough to cover the basics, you must…

You Must Do Something Else - Take A Second Job, Work Full Time, Etc

Since the money isn’t coming from coaching, it must be coming from somewhere else. Many life coaches I have worked with had to supplement their income with something else - a second job, a full time job, etc.

Now your time and your energy is spent on your other job, instead of spending it on sharing the gift of coaching with your clients.

And as a result:

You Are Not Fully Present With Your Clients

If you have to work 30-40 hours/week in addition to coaching, you are going to be constantly tired. On your job you will be thinking about coaching. And during coaching you will be thinking about how much you hate your other job.

With all this going on, you will not be fully present with your clients and will not be able to help them as much as you could.

You Will Not Work With Your Ideal Clients

We all want to work with our ideal clients - those who pay on time, respect our expertise, are always on time for their appointments, rarely re-schedule and do their homework.

Many life coaches think that if they keep their rates low, their ideal clients will come running in. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is true. The lower your rates are, the fewer ideal clients you will be able to attract.

In fact, Ann from the beginning of this blog post, told me that the reason she started charging $20 per session is because the people who signed up for her free coaching offer weren’t keeping their appointments, made her wait by the phone and never did their homework. She told me that the same was true with the $20/session clients - it’s like they weren’t invested in their coaching relationship.

Truth is, your ideal clients will show up when you increase your rates. When your clients are invested in your coaching relationship, they are on time, they value your expertise, they do their homework, and they put a lot of effort into coaching - they want to see RESULTS.

I am sure you know by now what I recommended to Ann. I recommended that she increase her rates, so that she can work with more of her ideal clients and so that she is finally able to quit her job and concentrate full-time on her life coaching business.

In the next blog post I will be talking about how to change your mindset and increase your rates. Make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to be able to read the next blog post!

And make sure to join my business mentoring program to get help with getting clients for your coaching business!

I have been a member for a few coaching groups for a very long time and some of the most common questions I have seen there are about coaching training.

What Kind Of Coaching Training Do I Need?

Which Life Coach Training Do You Recommend?

What Do I Need To Do To Get My Coach Certification?

All these are the questions that I have seen many times on quite a few coaching forums.

The goal of the coaches asking these question is to create a successful coaching business, but they are not asking about that. Many coaches just assume that once they do their coach training and become certified coaches, clients will just come to them.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. I have worked with many coaches who have gone through coach training, but could not find any clients for their coaching business. Truth is, you can be the best coach, but if you don’t know how to market your business, you will not get any clients.

In fact, one of my clients a few years ago was just like that. She paid a lot of money for her coach training, but she could not get any business and was ready to throw in the towel.

She is a great coach, the issue was that she did not know how to market her coaching services. She was waiting for clients to find her, but that just didn’t happen. Together we created a marketing plan for her coaching business and she was finally able to share the gift of coaching with the clients who love working with her.

So if you are a great coach, but are not able to find clients for your coaching business, what kind of training do YOU need? Here is what I recommend you do:

Define Your Goals

Do you want to create a successful coaching practice? What does successful coaching practice mean to you? It means different things to different people.

Do you want to only work with clients one-on-one?

Do you want to design a new program for your clients?

Do you want to write a book?

Do you want to give speeches?

Do you want to create your own products?

Do you want to …. ?

The sky is the limit, but before you move forward with your business, you must know which way you are going.

Write out what you are looking for and where you want to be a year from now and 3 years from now.

Get Training

Based on your goals above, get business and marketing training. No one marketing training is right for everyone. Take a look at a few different programs and decide which one is right for you.

You can join a group program or hire a mentor to work with you one-on-one. You can read marketing books and ebooks, attend teleseminars or read articles and reports on how to market your business. There are many possibilities and I want to encourage you to pick one that is right for you.

Take Action!

The journey of ten thousand miles begins with the first step. Take one step TODAY - write out your goals, create a plan to market your business, take one marketing action that will help you bring in clients.

Bottom line: Even if you are the best coach in the world, you will not get clients unless your potential clients know about you. And you MUST market in order to let your potential clients know about your business.

And join MarketingSalad.com, the online business mentoring program to learn how to get clients and market your coaching business online.

Biana Babinsky

Welcome to the Coaching Kitchen! Pull up a chair and sit down. This blog is all about going-ons in a coaching kitchen - the heart of a coaching business.

We will talk about everything that goes into creating an extremely profitable coaching business - selecting a niche, doing marketing, attracting clients, teaching groups and teleseminars, creating information products and much, much more!

So subscribe to the feed and visit us often - we have lots of interesting things planned!

Got suggestions for our future topics? Post a comment and let us know!

Biana Babinsky