There are three key things to know in any marketing and that includes your website.
- How many people see it;
- What Percentage of those that see it actually act on it;
- And How many did you want to act on it.
Statistically over 99% of all websites don’t deliver what you, the coach, running a coaching business, wanted…..more clients.
The reason is very simple: very few manage the key measurements, How many see the website (your traffic); What is the conversion of the website (the percentage that are COMPELLED to act, to call you, to sign up, or whatever the action you designed…or did you design it?); And how many you wanted to call you each and every week. By the way, did you know that you COULD design your website, or any marketing for that matter, to deliver exactly what you wanted each and every week? Well you can….if you manage those three key measurements.
Do you have any idea why it hasn’t worked up until now? I mean, after all, didn’t you pay some web developer a lot of money to make that happen? Or did you do it yourself? The results are probably still the same….zero clients (or very very few anyway) from the website.
Let’s say, just for the fun of it, that you want 10 calls a week for your coaching. And, let’s also say that you close 50% of those. That would be 5 coaching sales a week. By the way, do any of those numbers sound familiar, or achievable? Maybe you’re doing something wrong, or ….not even managing the numbers?
If you want 10 calls a week, and let’s assume that your website converts 5% (do you even know what your website conversion is? Or are you managing it so that you get something like that? I’ve seen some websites hit 40% when they work on the conversion. In any case, 5% is our current target.) Wanting 10 calls a week, and with a 5% conversion, that means you have to deliver 200 people, your traffic to your site. So, how do you do that?
Let’s start with: Do you know how many people are looking for your coaching services every week on the internet? Go to http://inventory.overture.com , type in your type of coaching, and find out. (By the way, that site has a LOT of traffic, and may time out just waiting for your turn. If you get a “website not found” warning, or something similar, just keep trying. It will come up eventually. This is a very popular site.) The results your see will show you how many people are searching for that search phrase in a month on Yahoo. If you want to know how many are searching on Google, it’s approximately 2 times as many. So, the totals for the two most popular search engines are apprxoimately 3 times the numbers showing.
Here are some examples (just for Yahoo):
- Business Coach 5,487
- Life Coach 16,174
- Career coach 2,508
There are a lot of other types of coaches, and different ways to search for each type of coach, so play with the search terms to see how many people are looking for you in what way. It might be a pretty big eye opener.
Now, let’s pick Life Coach with 16,174 people searching in a month. Let’s say that when those 16,174 people search they come across your listing on a major search engine, and if you are on page 1 of that search engine you get 5% of those searches, that’s 808 that end up on your website. And, if your website converts at 5%, that’s around 40 people giving you a call a month. Neat huh?
Do you come even close to that? Don’t forget that whatever you found, multiply that by 3 to get how many are searching on both Yahoo and Google.
There are lots of ways of capturing that 16,174 people, or at least directing them toward your website. Search engine optimization (consciously writing your website correctly so that the search engines put you on page one….not as hard as it may sound), using pay-per-click (sponsored advertising), article writing on ezines (you’re reading this aren’t you…that’s how you got here, and there’s a link at the bottom of the page to my website…see it does work!), and lots of other ways.
In any case, let’s look at a formula that explains this.
# people who see website X Percent converted = # calls, leads or whatever you want to call them.
You can either just wait for something to happen, which most coaches have been doing, or you can actively manage the three numbers to deliver exactly how many calls, or leads you want each and every week or month.
How?
For number of people seeing your website — actively work on search engine position, start up a pay-per-click campaign (only after making sure you have the conversion on the website), start article marketing campaign, and lots of others. Make sure you track the actual traffic to your website weekly, and manage it to get the results you want.
For Conversion – Write the website content that is targeted on your target audience’s pain or problems. Most coaches make the mistakes of “selling coaching” when the prospect is only interested in “do you understand his pain and problems” and “do you have a solution”. Therefore, when the website starts out: “I am a coach. Been in business 20 years.” or Company name, logo all at the top it takes 3 seconds for the prospect to flip to another website because he didn’t see anything about his pain, his problem, his solution. Notice the use of HIS here. It isn’t about you, your coaching, or anything about you. It is ONLY about your client’s problems, pains, solutions, results. They’d better be the first and only thing he sees in that first 3 seconds…..or he’s gone. In any case, measure your website conversion weekly and manage it to get 5% or greater conversion. If you’re not getting that, and most coaches report zero traffic and zero conversion to me before they start.
For number of leads or calls you want – Well … manage the other numbers. You can literally design the system, your website, your traffic, to deliver exactly what you want, and sometimes the surprise is that there are so many people looking but finding no one, that your chances are pretty good…..only after you start managing these key numbers.
So, coach, are you getting the potential calls per week or per month from your website?