In this blog post we’re going to talk about the coaching apocalypse.
Let’s talk about something that’s been going on in the coaching and online course space for quite a while.
I was just on a call with an awesome expert today and she was running a webinar funnel that did great. She was running Facebook ads directly to a webinar and she was making really good money from that. That was the bread and butter of her business for a long time. But after a while the advertising costs increased to the point that the webinar wasn’t profitable anymore. It didn’t work anymore. She was putting in money and losing money from her ads. So, she had to turn off her ad campaigns and as a result, the whole revenue of the business collapsed. She was doing good and then her revenue dropped to a pretty low number, because she didn’t have anything else in place. She was just relying on that webinar.
More and more people are entering the coaching space
Now, what this shows you is that something has been happening in the coaching, consulting and online course space in the last couple of months. And this is only the beginning of what’s going to happen in the future. A lot of my friends are calling this the “coaching apocalypse”. What that means is that more and more people are entering the space. And a lot of these experts entering the space, a lot of these coaches aren’t necessarily legit. They are not necessarily real experts. There are some programs out there that literally pump out fake experts by the hundreds every single day. People who are entering the market trying to make a quick buck, trying to build a business but they don’t necessarily have real expertise. They’re trying to enter the coaching space as opportunists. Because they see this as a business opportunity.
The market is becoming more saturated and people are competing for the same attention
Now, what then happens is that more and more people are now competing for the same attention. The market is becoming more saturated as everyone is making similar claims. A lot of these new fake coaches or experts are essentially carbon copies of each other. Everyone has the same types of offers, the same messages, the same promises, the same claims. What happens because of that is that consumers are becoming numb to those claims. And that happens when markets become more saturated, that’s the case in e-commerce but also in the coaching space. It doesn’t matter what type of market it is. As markets mature and become more saturated, people become more numb and consumers become more cynical.
If you really want to survive the coaching apocalypse in the future, you need to have certain things in place. You need to have a competitor proof positioning, you also need to have a combination of organic marketing and paid advertising and you need to have a marketing ecosystem versus just a sales funnel.
Read More: 25 Best Sales Funnel Templates
Let’s talk about these one by one.
Work on the fundamentals and dial in your messaging and positioning
The first thing you need is to work on the fundamentals and dial in your messaging and your positioning. Because fundamentals and foundations are more important than ever before. Especially when markets are getting more saturated. You know, foundations are not always the “sexy” topic. People like to skip this. But if you get your foundations right, if you dial in your ideal client, if you dial in your positioning in the market and your messaging, that’s going to make all the difference. That’s what’s going to allow you stand out in the market.
We use a simple framework with clients, called the M.A.P. framework. That’s stands for unique mechanism, unique audience and unique promise. Most people have dialed in their audience, some people have dialed in their unique promise, but rarely do people have all three. If you really want to survive this saturation process that’s happening, you need to have all three dialed in. Otherwise you won’t be able to cut through the noise that’s going on in the coaching space. So that’s the first thing you need to dial in: your M.A.P.
You need a combination of organic marketing and paid advertising
The second thing that’s important is that you need a combination of organic marketing and paid advertising. So, in the example that I mentioned in the beginning of this post, you can see what could happen if you only rely on paid ads. If you only rely on paid ads and your ads stop performing or your ad account gets shut down or something like that happens, you can go out of business pretty much overnight. And you will not have a backup. The proper and sustainable way of launching and scaling a coaching business is by having this combination.
You want to have a strong organic marketing strategy in place in your business. This is going to give you peace of mind, because that way you’re not dependent on just paid advertising. You never want to build your business on just one pillar, that’s very risky. You want to have multiple pillars in your business so that even if one or two pillars go away, you can still generate revenue and maintain your business. So, having a combination is where it’s all at. And your organic marketing and paid advertising should work together as one unit.
Organic marketing gives you a buffer for paid advertising
When you have your organic marketing dialed in, it also gives you a buffer for paid advertising. Because if you only have paid ads in place, you will always feel worried and stressed about the money that you’re investing and you won’t have a lot of room to test your campaigns. If you have a comfortable buffer, you’re generating good revenue organically, you can set aside a certain amount of money to invest in paid ads. So, you can test and you’re not going to freak out and it’s not going to be the end of the world if your ads aren’t profitable right away.
You want to have an interconnected marketing ecosystem where everything works together as a unit
The third thing you need is a marketing ecosystem. If you don’t know what that is, I have a separate blogpost on what exactly marketing ecosystems are and how they’re different form sales funnels. Because having one single funnel isn’t going to cut it anymore. Like in this example I mentioned here, you can have a sales funnel, a webinar, that’s working well today, but if you’re only focusing on trying to convert customers and clients right away and you don’t have a strategy to convert the 90% of people who will only be ready to become customers and clients in the next 30 to 90 days or even in the next 6 to 12 months, well you’re playing the short-term game. You’re going to be losing, you’re walking on thin ice.
You don’t just want to have a sales funnel or a webinar or any linear type of sales process in general. You want to have an interconnected marketing ecosystem where your organic marketing, your paid ads, everything is working together. And you have a strong retargeting strategy in place, you’re building a real brand and when you combine all of this with the M.A.P. framework with good positioning and messaging. That’s how you will be able to survive the coaching apocalypse.
Being a real expert is not enough anymore
Just being a real expert is not enough anymore. I wish it was. But so many new people are entering the space. You need to actually be a real expert, who can help people, who has a real coaching program that’s transforming people’s lives and that works. And then the second thing you need is all the things we talked about in this blogpost: competitor proof positioning, a mix of organic marketing and paid advertising as well as a marketing ecosystem versus just a sales funnel.
If you implement all of this, you’re going to be ahead of most coaches, consultants and experts. And you’re going to be in a position where you’re not only going to survive the coaching apocalypse, you’re actually going to thrive. You’re going to do great if you implement everything I talked about in this post.
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