Have you seen these products and freebies that offer a FREE template for your marketing? Sometimes it’s a sales page or a follow-up series. They include all the graphics, html and promise of a successful campaign that will get you all the clients you can handle. Have you seen them? I have and they absolutely drive me crazy.

As a coach, especially, you need to be smart when it comes to templates. You can buy them, download them and use them. However, I would recommend at least tweaking them if you want to keep increasing your trust factor with marketing. Here are some reasons why.

1) Design - If the design of your sales page or e-mail looks different than the rest of your marketing materials, then how is anyone going to know it’s YOU who created and is selling that particular product or service? They won’t! So there’s no trust factor increase. They are starting from scratch. If you do nothing else, at least change the banner out and add a logo or banner from your website.

2) Language - Copy is extremely important. Usually, these templates have some great suggestions on what type of information is needed, how to lay it out most effectively etc… What they don’t know is your particular marketing style and voice. Would you trust someone who sounds different every time you talk to them? That’s what it’s like when one page has language that’s different from the rest of your marketing. Please change the copy to include your marketing message and voice.

3) Differentiation - Templates give you generic information. None of it is differentiated for your particular business. People trust you more when they know exactly what you offer and how you are different than everyone else who offers the same thing. Make sure you add differentiation into the materials.

I think it’s important to educate yourself on what needs to be in your marketing materials in order for your readers/viewers to be willing to take the next action step you suggest. At the same time, if you are going to use a template, make it just the start of your marketing materials. Add in your differentiation, voice, and branding.

Kristen Beireis, Trust Marketing Expert

It’s true!!  Potential clients don’t know if they can trust you.  Why is that?  Because they don’t know YOU, yet.  People don’t automatically trust you the moment they see you, your marketing materials or your brand.  Trust needs to be earned.  It doesn’t grow on trees.

Ok, I can just hear you now.  “I’m trustworthy and I exude trust.”  Well, I’m sure you do.  Even the most trustworthy person with the highest level of confidence in themselves doesn’t earn trust instantly.  They still have to prove it.

Guilty until proven innocent.

Yep, that’s the case here.  No one is trustworthy until they have proven they are trustworthy.  I’m not saying that everyone looking at your marketing is thinking; “I don’t trust this person.”  That’s not true, but subconsciously they are looking for reasons to trust you.

I’ve said it a hundred times.  Potential clients won’t trust you with their challenges, life dreams, and goals without first knowing you  can be trusted.  I’m not talking about trusting you to keep their comments confidential.  That’s a given.   There are a lot of trust factors your potential clients are looking for.  Below is a list of just some of those factors.

Your potential clients need to trust that you:

1) Won’t judge them. Especially if they don’t truly understand what coaching is.  If they’ve never had a coach, they have no idea how non-judgmental a coach can be.  They are surrounded by people who constantly judge them (or, at least, they THINK are judging them).

2) Will be able to solve their challenge. Just because you say you can help them, doesn’t mean you can.  Here’s why substantiation is so important.  Your potential clients want to know that you are experienced with their particular challenge.  That you really GET what they are going through and can successfully help them overcome it…and maybe even get more than they originally planned for.

3) Will really HEAR  them. Every potential client who is looking for a coach wants to be heard.  They want to be deeply understood.  As a coach, you can most definitely provide that.  At the same time, do your potential clients know that?  Do you express that through all your marketing materials?  Do you say things that directly relate to them?  Think about it.

I already know what coaches can do.  I’ve experienced coaching from several different coaches.  I know what I’m looking for when I’m shopping for a coach.  I’ve had great success with coaches, but I also know the horror stories of people who have worked with coaches who didn’t quite have it together.  So, I am skeptical.  You’ve gotta work REALLY hard to convince me that you are trustworthy.   Regardless of their training, their title, or their specialty, the above three things are a MUST if you even want to be in the running.

The best way to combat skepticism is to prove you are trustworthy.

How skeptical are you when it comes to hiring a coach?  What do you look for?   Have you proven you are trustworthy in your marketing materials?

Kristen Beireis, Trust Marketing Expert

Find out how well you are building trust with the FREE “Trust Marketing Manifesto” at http://www.coachesmarketingsource.com.

As some of you know, I am a singer.  As a singer, I am addicted to American Idol and watch it every year…okay, I skip the auditions and sometimes don’t tune in until the top 12.  I just can’t stand to watch people make fools of themselves and contort their voices to do things they shouldn’t even be trying to do (that’s a whole other topic though!).

I was watching American Idol a couple weeks ago and it hit me.  The entire process of American Idol is an exercise in differentiation!  If you watch the progression of each contestant through to the finale, they learn where their “place” is in the music world.  They are forced to try different genres for a reason.  It gives them the experience to find where they fit and stand out in as many places as they can.

A few will know what their differentiation is going in.  Adam Lambert was one of those people last year.  He finished 2nd, which is an honor and got him some huge exposure to producers who would’ve never seen him otherwise.  Why didn’t he finish on top?  Numbers.  There weren’t enough of “his people” in the audience to vote for him, but you can bet his albums will sell within his target market. He’s already been at the top of the charts (above Kris Allen, the winner) several times since his album came out.  He differentiated and it got him noticed by those who really want what he’s selling.

One of the things I find most interesting about the process of American Idol is that in order to find out where they fit in the music world, the contestants have to find who they are.  The ones who aren’t secure in who they are usually get voted off quickly.  So, there’s an inner knowing and confidence that’s required in order for the contestants to stand out.  It’s not just about having the best voice.  People vote for the contestants they can relate to.  Just listen to Simon.  Usually his negative comments challenge the contestant to own up to who they are.

I find the same to be true in the world of coaching.  A coach who does the work and finds out who they are, owns it, and creates differentiation based on that will find themselves with a stream of clients coming in.  Clients that are the right clients.  Their people.

Those who are unsure, hesitant, or don’t quite know who they are as a coach yet will flounder and run around in circles trying to get clients that trickle in.  In a world where there are more and more people hanging out the “coach” shingle every day, you’ve got to stand out and find something unique about what you offer.  The unique piece comes from who you are.

Oh, and by the way.  When you offer something that no one else in your field is offering, it raises the amount of trust a client is willing to give you right off the bat.

So, what can we learn from American Idol?  Own who you are and differentiate around it.  If you do, you’ll be the next Coaching Idol to take the stage.

What are your thoughts?  I’d love to hear from you in a comment.

Kristen Beireis, Trust Marketing Expert

This post is all about me, Kristen, walking my walk, practicing what I preach and all that jazz.  You see, I’ve been doing some serious soul searching and some business development.  I’m sure you know how that can bring about some major changes.  Well it certainly has brought some major changes for me!  As a result, you might start to notice some changes on this blog.  The biggest of which will be a discussion around trust marketing (building trust with potential clients and your community).

When it comes to maintaining trust with your community, it’s important to keep them informed.  So, here I am informing my community of the changes that are taking place on this blog and in my business.

With the help of a mastermind group, I discovered that I have completely removed myself from my business and I have no focused “expertise” that I’m known for.  Hmmmmm….how can I be a consultant without an expertise? So I’ve spent the last 8 weeks learning what makes me (specifically me) special in my industry.  In the process I discovered that everything I do and have done in my business (I mean EVERYTHING) goes back to trust marketing.  All the processes I’ve set up for my team to follow, all the little details I focus on with my clients.  It all leads back to building trust with their potential clients.  It’s just something I automatically do.  Not something I was ever aware of.  Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I totally see how it’s what I’m all about.

So, I’m standing up and owning the expertise I’ve had all along.  I’m owning my differentiation and I’m standing on a platform that finally feels like I belong here.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to veer away from internet marketing tips for coaches.  In fact, the internet is a great way to build trust with your community.  So, I’m going to continue to give technical and strategical tips on internet marketing for coaches.  I’m just going to be adding in the piece about how to build trust with it.  As I go back and look at my past blog posts, all of them can be connected to building trust with potential clients…I just didn’t point out how.  Now I’ll be pointing out how.

So things around here are changing for the better.  I just wanted you to know so you aren’t surprised when the content of this blog has a new slant to it that it never had before.  I want to keep your trust.

I would love to hear your comments, thoughts and/or questions.

Kristen Beireis, Trust Marketing Expert for the personal transformation industry

I actually enjoy football.  Hubby and I enjoy watching games together, so we watched the superbowl on Sunday.  It’s usually a great game, so I was excited to see what happened this year.  As with every year, I’m always excited to see what creative ideas come through in the commercials too.  I’m a marketing expert, how can I not?!

To be perfectly honest, as a woman, I felt very alienated by the commercials this year.  Yeah, that sounds like my “stuff” coming up, but did you pay attention to the content of the commercials?  Now, I know it’s a mans game and I expect to see very masculine commercials.  That’s not a big deal!   I see them all the time during the season.  This year, I would say 75% of the commercials either made fun of women or degraded them.  Am I the only one who saw this?

From a pure marketing standpoint, I get what they were after.  The target market for the commercials is men.  So, they created masculine commercials that appealed to men.  I get that. That makes sense.  Did it go too far?  It’s a major social event each year, a lot of women DO tune in to watch the superbowl.   Many of them watch FOR the commercials even.  Then there are those women, like me, who watch their favorite team throughout the season that still enjoy the final championship game.  So, I would say the audience watching the commercials during the game could be 30-40% women. Oh, and studies have shown that women still make the majority of the buying decisions in the household.  Hmm….so, why would you alienate us?

This is where I think things got mixed up.  The commercials did a great job of appealing to their target market of men.  At the same time too many didn’t consider a large part of the audience that would be watching those commercials.  Here’s where some balance is needed.  Yes, we always want to create marketing that appeals to our target market.  In fact, those are the people we want in our business the most.  At the same time, we need to consider who is going to be stumbling upon our marketing and make sure we don’t alienate them…especially if they are part of the decision making process.  You can be considerate to one group at the same time you are being attractive to another, right?  YES!  That’s the goal.

Think about it like this.  As someone in the life changing field, you need to build a HUGE amount of trust with your audience before they buy from you.  Will they trust you if you alienate their counterpart?  Up front, maybe…but once they go to making a decision and they bring that counterpart into the decision-making process, it’s a whole new ball game.  So, be aware of who you are speaking to and who might be an integral part of the decision making.  Make sure you don’t alienate in your marketing.  Be considerate and you build trust.

What are your thoughts on this?