Are You Taking the Lead with Your Health Coaching Clients?
If you’ve ever taken a ballroom dance class, you know the importance of having a strong lead. In dance, the lead is taken by the male partner. In your health coaching business, the lead must be taken by you.
A strong leader knows what steps they’ll take next, and confidently guides their partner to move with them. The results are beautiful and the dance feels good for both partners.
Without a strong lead, the partnership fails.
In marketing your health coaching business, you must take the lead.
Starting with your first contact with a potential client, through the trust-building process, the breakthrough session, the payment process and in your coaching relationship (and beyond).
One place where too many health coaches fail to take the lead is on their website. It’s important to remember that your potential clients are just as over-stimulated as the rest of us. If and when they find your site, they likely have a number of other browser windows and tabs open at the same time, and so you have only a few seconds to capture their interest, and begin building a relationship with them.
If your website overwhelms them, and leaves them with more questions than answers, they’ll move on. If it’s unclear what you do, who you work with or how to get in touch, they’ll keep looking. Don’t be vague, don’t hide behind generalisms.
How do you capture your ideal client’s interest quickly?
With your words. You must let your ideal client know she’s in the right place. You must write in her language (not the language of your teachers and fellow health coaches) and you must demonstrate that you “get her” and that you’re the right person to partner with to solve her current challenges.
Get clear on who your ideal client is. Be as specific as possible. Design your homepage as a personal letter to your ideal client. Have her feel welcomed and understood with your very first words. Speak to her pain using emotional language, relate to her, and show her how you can help.
Review the first words of your health coaching website’s homepage. Do they speak directly to your ideal client in her language?
How do you begin building a relationship with your ideal client?
By leading her experience on your website and throughout every aspect of your health coaching business. What happens when your visitor reads to the end of your homepage? Are you guiding her to take an action?
Think of each page of your website like the page of a book. If you’re reading a book, you know what to do next: turn the page. On a website, it’s less obvious. Does your reader need to scroll all the way back up to your navigation menu and pick another page to read?
Or have you made it very clear at the bottom of EVERY page of your website what action you would like your ideal client to take next? This is known as a “call to action”.
Your “call to action” can be:
- a link to purchase and schedule a Breakthrough Session
- a link to join your ezine list and get a free gift
- a link to “like” your Facebook page
- a link to email you directly
- a link to visit another page (from the home page to your services page, for example)
- a link to your latest blog post
You can experiment to find what works for you and your ideal clients. The key is to be clear what action you want your ideal client to take, and make it very easy for her to take that action.
In most cases, the action you’ll want your ideal client to take is to purchase and schedule a Breakthrough Session with you. You can also have two “calls to action”: one to schedule and one to join your list (“if you’re not ready yet”) or to visit your Services page (“if you’d like to learn more”). More than two choices may lead to inaction. Keep things simple.
It’s essential not to leave your ideal clients hanging. Always give them a clear, easy way to take an action – on every page of your website, at the bottom of each blog post, in your newsletters, on your Facebook page, at the end of your speaking events and teleseminars, etc.
When you’re clear who your ideal client is, and you create products and services to serve her needs, follow through with good leadership to build your health coaching business and do the work you care about.
To your awesome biz,
Heather
