The basic challenge is that when you appear to be “the solution” to more than one group, your prospective clients will instinctively think that you cannot be so good at any one of them. Whether you are or not matters little. It looks like you’re not.

If the two groups have similar challenges, your struggle will be less. For example, the two groups; chronically disorganized and people with ADHD, both struggle to focus and keep order in their lives.

It’s easier to find one good niche or target market, and hone in on that one group.

Nonetheless, if you’re aiming for two or more groups, here’s what you can do on your website …

Create a main link for each. In your main website navigation bar (often across top or down the left), create a link for each group. For example, if you work with both Lawyers and Doctors, your navigation bar might look like this:

Home | For Doctors | For Lawyers | Services | About | Contact

Create a page for each. Create a page for each of your target groups as well. On that page outline the ideal client profile, the challenges you help with, and the results you help attain for that group.

In this example, Mary, a branding coach, helps both employed professionals and entrepreneurs brand themselves:
http://www.yourcareerbydesign.com/

Create a lead-in for each group on your home page for each group. On the home page, prominently, create boxes to clearly lead each group towards their respective areas on the website.

For example, on Renee’s website, she has three targets: Individuals, Businesses, and Coaches:
http://www.coachnetwork.com/

Create a separate coaching program/service for each and lead them to that. For each group, create a separate service designed for that group. For example, for a relationship coach, “Revitalize Your Love Coaching” for doctors, and “Love and Order Coaching” for lawyers as each will have their unique nuances.

In conclusion, bear in mind that it will be tough to communicate when trying to speak to different groups (niches, markets, audiences). Consider honing in on one market first – there’s often more than enough business to keep you busy and profitable. If you choose to approach multiple niches at the same time, clearly direct those groups to material specific to them.

What if you’re a health coach and you don’t want to rule out “wellness” ?  But hey, you’re also holistic too, so how about “Holistic Health and Wellness Coach?”

While from your point of view, the title “coach”, “health coach”, “business coach” encompasses what you do. But from your client’s perspective, these kinds of titles don’t do much but give them a point of reference.

I’ve got a different angle for you to consider to make good use of your title.

Remember, in addition to being a “coach”, you are also a marketer.

And as a marketer, part of your job is to motivate your potential clients towards their goals.

And, your professional title is an opportunity to help you market.

What would happen if you called yourself something that gets prospective client’s juices flowing? Something that WOWS them about your ability to help them?

For example, if you’re a career coach who helps women in finance starting their own consulting business, then instead of “transition coach” or “career coach”, how about “Finance Business Success Coach?”

Say you’re a health coach, and you do a lot around helping people lose weight. You could title yourself something like, “Weight-Loss Coach.” Or, if you’re working with athletes, then “Iron Man Coach” might do the trick.

If you’re in nutrition, then “Nutrition Expert” would work.

This helps your clients think bigger. And, it helps align you to loftier heights.

Your title also helps brand you.

It helps you stand out from other people who serve your clients.

It makes you memorable.

A client of mine calls himself The Boomer Strategist. It’s getting a lot of attention.

Your title also helps you be bigger.

If you call yourself the “Double Profits Coach,” you’ve got a name that will get a lot of attention, AND you’ve got some great things to live up to. Motivating!

How can you find a snazzy name?

First, list out some things in great detail:

• The top 10 challenges/situations your clients have
• The top 10 goals/desires/end results they’d love to achieve
• Subject areas of coach on

From these lists, you ‘ll see lots of buzzwords, phrases, and words to spark ideas.

Combine some of those phrases with words like guru, expert, specialist, king, pro, wizard.

Try http://www.thesaurus.com for more ideas.

You will want to do a search on the name you come up with to confirm it isn’t being widely used by another professional. That could cause some confusion for your market and legal issues.

Here are some you might have heard of:

• The Interview Coach (helps people land the job)
• The Ezine Queen (marketing coach using ezines)
• The Fat Loss Coach (helps you shed pounds)

In conclusion, remember that you’re a marketer and clients want to be motivated to improve their situation. Make your professional title something that will inspire them (and you!) to great heights.

Your list is precious, and arguably the most valuable asset in your business. Your list contains people who said, “YES, I want to hear from you. Yes, let’s stay in touch. And, Yes, I want your help and one day I might buy. ” It’s gold.

Without a list and a good invitation, most of your visitors will leave your site and never to be presented with the opportunity to buy from you again.

So, here are five tips to get them to sign up right away with no hesitation.

1 - Give away value for signing up. This could be an ebook, workbook, report, tip sheet, recording, video, or anything creative THAT ties into value for the visitors (e.g. helps them overcome a challenge).

2 - Let them know their email address won’t be abused. Say something like, “I won’t give/rent/or sell your email address to others, and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.” This helps remove resistance to signing up.

3 – Make your invitation prominent. Put it at the top of your site. Yes, it’s that important.

4 – Ask for the minimum. Unless your giveaway is mailed, or super juicy, or you’ve got some client qualification process in place, stick to just name and email address. The more you information you ask for, the less people will sign up. Why ask for phone number unless you’re going to call them?

5 – Create an opt-in page. Make a page specifically designed for inviting people onto your list. Include the sign-up form, a list of benefits for signing up, the giveaway, and some testimonials. And then, in your outreach efforts, like submitting an article online, link to your opt-in page to lead people to your list.

Remember, your list is gold. Without it, people will just fall to the wayside. With it, you can sell more products, sign up more clients, get more referrals, and help more people.

That stinks.

There’s a big chance that your site wasn’t properly planned. That is, you may not have taken key preliminary steps to ensure people will be excitedly ushered TO your site, THROUGH your site and onto BUYING from you.

If the graphics are clean and the pages load fast, your problem is probably lack of attention in these three preliminary pieces of building a website.

1. Getting juicy words
2. Planning how to get traffic
3. Creating a site selling strategy

1. Getting Juicy Words

In short, survey your market. Ask them question about their challenges, nightmares, biggest fears, deepest wishes, etc. They will give you great words for your copy.

For example …

Your target market is super-busy women in the work force and they wish they had more time for family. They may say their biggest nightmares are missing their kids growing up and getting a divorce due to fizzled love. They may say their biggest wishes are to work half as much, rekindle the fire with their husbands, spend five more hours a week with their kids, and take more bubble baths.

Your website might feature a give-away short report called, “How to get back 10 hours a week  – for romance, soccer games, and that long overdue bubble bath.”

Juicy!

But, what do I see coaches do?

They will do something like, “Work-Life Balance” or “Happiness with Your Family.” My gut tells me those titles won’t be as juicy.

Go get coffee with your market, whoever they are. Ask them what’s going on and let your pen go crazy.

Coffee on you!

2. Planning How to Get Traffic

Websites are useless without traffic.

And, when new sites go up, they come with no traffic.

Just the same, as a new coach, finishing school, you’ve got some skills developed but without people knowing about what you can do, there will be no coaching.

So, you and your website need a traffic – or, what I like to call it, a visibility plan.

Some examples are:

• Giving a talk at a gym if you’re into health coaching.
• Emailing everyone you know for a limited time special coaching package as you open up shop.
• Going to a writer’s association online and offering to write articles for that market – say on “Getting More High Paying Writing Assignments,” if you want to coach around business development for writers.

Oh, and doing a newsletter is not a visibility plan. But finding a strategic partner who will share your newsletter with her list IS a visibility plan (it gets you in front of people).

Nor is writing blog posts a visibility plan. But, if you submit your blog online to blog directories, target your article’s keywords to topics that people are searching for, and submit your website to search engines, then you’ve got a visibility plan for getting traffic.

You’ve got a visibility plan if a human being will make that first contact with something that gets them aware of your coaching business – oh, and a handy link to your website.

3. Creating a Site Selling Strategy

Ok, so let’s say you’ve got ideas for #1 and #2 above, juicy words and visibility plans.

Your next must-do-before-building is to create a selling strategy at your website.

By selling strategy, I mean a series of steps the visitor can take that ends in a sale (whether today or some time in the future).

For example:

1. You write a blog post with specifically chosen keywords (and you’re blog is already being visited by search engines).
2. Search engines catalog your blog post and associate with those words.
3. People find your blog post when searching, click to your site, and read your blog post that invites them onto your email list.
4. You send a follow-up email five days later offering them your ebook on say goal setting.
5. They buy it.

You’ve made some money. They’ve gotten some good coaching value. Good job.

Be intentional about what you want to sell, and lead visitors to end up doing that. Remember, you’re a coach who has great things to offer people. Make it easy for them.

There you have the three do-before-building keys:

1 – Get Juicy Words (ask your market!)
2 – Devise a visibility plan (help them encounter you!)
3 – Create a site selling strategy (make buying easy!)

Once you’ve got those answered, you’re website will do a helluva lot more for you.

1. Think about a challenge your client faces from their perspective.
   ex: A parent’s child suddenly gets poor grades in school
2. Think about keywords this parent might use to search for help.
   ex. my daughter is suddenly getting bad grades, my son’s grades started getting worse
3. Choose a title that solves the problem.
   ex. How to Parent a Teen That Suddenly Gets Poor Grades
4. Write the article and post it to your blog using the various keywords in the article.
5. Wait for search engines visit your blog. If you’re blog is new, get your blog linked from another site that search engines already visit. (quick and easy: comment on another popular blog)
6. Search engines catalog your blog post into their database and determine which keywords to associate it with.
7. A searcher types in “child getting sudden poor grades.”
8. Search engines show your blog post title to searchers with a bunch of other possible titles. Here’s where a good title makes you stand out.
9. Searchers click to your site to read the blog post.
10. At the end of your blog post you ask them to take action like get on your email list, or sign-up for new teen parenting coaching program.

We discussed many of the key components: building a list, giveaways, service offerings, and such. But what I want to comment on is a very handy freebee at her site, “The 13 Essentials Checklist for a 6-Figure Coaching Business.”

I’ll give you the link in a minute.

Here are two comments I want to make about that checklist:

First, my second favorite item on the list is #12: Systemise and Outsource.

When you put systems in place, however small, they are powerful productivity propellers.

For example, when it comes to your web marketing, if you intend to write, you could have time-consuming tedious tasks done for you such as:

• Posting articles to your blog
• Sending article headlines to your social networks
• Sending newsletters to your list
• Sending articles to any online discussion you participate in
• Having your articles sent to any offline publications you write for

Your website, technical tricks, and a good VA can get much of these thing done for you without using your time.

On a side note, many coaches resist getting an assistant thinking it’s costly and that there needs to be a lot of work to hand off. Not true. Starting small is a good way to get in the habit of delegating.

For example, you could hire an assistant at $5/hour from ODesk (affiliate) to simply take an article you wrote (say you like writing in MS Word) and post post it to your blog, then submit it online to a website like SelfGrowth.com.

Secondly, my favorite item on the checklist was a part of #1

Item #1 on the checklist is about niches. But one part of it really stuck out for me – have a compelling story to connect you with your clients.

One of my clients works with the families of a loved one in addiction treatment. My client, herself, has been through the challenges of having a loved one in treatment. You can imagine how her story can really resonate with her audience.

And when woven into your website, a good story can really get prospects excited about working with you.

I’ll let you discover and check off the other 11 items in her list as you grow your business.

You can get the 6-Figure Coaching Checklist at Renee’s website: Coach Network (affiliate).

You should back your website on some regular basis, especially if you’re continually adding content.

Why?

• Websites can get hacked. I have heard it.
• Hosting companies can goof-up. I’ve been there.
• You and/or your designer can goof-up. I’ve been there.

The result: lost website.

While your hosting company probably has your website backed-up on premise, you can easily set up something simple to eliminate the risk.

How to do it? Some ways:

• Ask your web designer to do it and send you a zip file (use www.yousendit.com for big files).
• If you’ve got no designer to do it, then your hosting company should have instructions on how to access and download your website files.
• If you use an online site builder of some sort, check their FAQ and/or ask customer service about getting a backup of your website.
• If you have a WordPress blog or a site built on a WordPress platform, you’ll want to back up both the website pages (which present your content) and the database (which hold the written content).
• With WordPress you can have your database emailed to you weekly using a plug-in called WordPress Database Backup (WP-DB-Backup).  This is automatic. Ahhh!
• Your web designer may also know of other possible tools to help you automate the backup process regularly. Ask.

The most ideal situation is to create an automated process. Even if it’s as simple as telling your VA to log into your hosting company, download all the files, and zip and email them to you once a month.

What are you doing to backup your website? (I won’t even ask about your computer!)

However, most coaches don’t do this very well – by far.

Whether you have a great website, or a lacking one, you can boost your business with mini-sites.

Mini-sites (similar to micro-sites, squeeze pages, landing pages, sales pages, slide pages) are small websites, often 1-pagers, that are designed to get visitors to perform one task, such as:

• Getting someone give you their email address
• Getting someone to buy a product
• Getting someone to sign up for a service (coaching program)

You’ve seen them. They can feel very wordy, a bit salesy, and often long winded IF you’re NOT the person for whom this page was targeted.

BUT, and a huge BUT, if you are in the target market for this mini-site, then this wordy page will feel very compelling, very motivating, and stir up a lot of emotion in you.

Mini-sites can be very powerful.

In her book, Coaching Millions: Help More People, Make More Money, Live Your Ultimate Lifestyle(affiliate), Milana Leshinsky, highly successful mentor coach, talks about how she used mini-sites along with various other web strategies to grow her coaching business. This is a great book for coaches looking to make 6-7 figures.

Mini-sites work well due to less distraction – just one action on the page.

However, a mini-site is at the mercy of copy. Without compelling content, they won’t do much.

Some keys to successful mini-sites:

• A headline that literally mesmerizes your visitor.
• Great sales copy. Some basics for sales copy include: testimonials, benefit statements and handling resistances to taking action. To learn more, do a search: how to write a sales page
• Use longer pages if you’re asking people for money. Shorter for asking for an email address.
• Have only one call to action and spread it through the page so people can easily click when ready.
• Target your mini site to a specific audience: ex. Real estate investors as opposed to “people who want change”
• For building a list, be sure to give away juicy freebees.

So, for example, if you’re looking to build a big list of prospective clients, a good move for just about any coach, create a mini-site with a list of reasons why to signup, a gift (audio, video, or ebook), and an easy to access sign-up form.

Here’s a mini-site I use for building my email list:
http://www.websiteahas.com

Should you use mini-sites?

Probably so, but what were your goals again? Don’t want to build a list? Just a few clients on the side? An endless supply that pay well and passive income?

(you may need to enable images if you’re getting this by email)

Noteworthy:

• That is rose hips tea. I’m exploring its benefits and enjoyment.
• You see mango, papaya and celery. Papaya is tasting better and better to me. At first, it was a bit bland.
• Those little rocks are from the beach – Jones Beach. I’m a beach-lover.
• That ear piece was working well with Skype. Something is amiss with the connection recently. Technology – heh!
• On my screen you’ll see I’m working with one of my developer’s Mike (in the Philippines) using Skype.
• Also on my screen, you’ll see a recent website I’m polishing up of a client who, interestingly, recently ran his second 100-mile ultra marathon.

Where does this kind of stuff fit into marketing?

The hands-down most powerful motivator that signs clients up is when clients feel you can help them reach their goals. Thus, content like this should not be on the frontline of your communications with your clients. It’s better left to be discovered on the background in case someone is digging. Many heavy duty marketers avoid this kind of stuff altogether.

What’s one personal type thing that you have on your site that may seem cool, but perhaps it shouldn’t be on the forefront?

What kind of stuff should you be putting on the forefront?

I’d love to hear. Please comment below.

Here’s the essence of it …

There was a village that needed water, and the nearest spring was quite a walking distance.

Carrying buckets took a lot of work. One person could carry 10 buckets full over five trips and then be tired.

Creating a pipeline would take a week or two to build, but once in place it could bring 30 buckets every day and only require maintenance of a few hours per week. Much, much better.

The same goes for getting coaching clients.

Here’s the bucket way (very simplified for example purposes):

1. Go to 3 networking events in a month (9 hours including commute time and getting dressed)
2. From each event, you walk away with three leads for total of nine (pretty good)
3. Of those nine, six lose interest or magically disappear (this is the reality)
4. You continue to follow up with the remaining three (say five hours of calls and interactions)
5. Of those three, one signs up as your client

That’s about 14 hours to get one client to sign up in a month. To get ten clients, that would be 140 hours over 10 months. And, those clients won’t stay with you forever. You’ll need to go replace them as they end coaching.

Here’s the pipeline way (again, very simplified):

1. Research and choose a group of people to work with
2. Creating web marketing systems for automated follow up with those people
3. Write articles, give talks, or attend network groups
4. Direct people to your web marketing systems
5. Out of the many come, the ones that really need help will call you

This may take 50 hours to get into place, but would only take 10 hours of work each month to keep going.  And, a system like this can get you as many clients as you can handle.

Bucket method: 140 hours to get 10 clients. If you need 30 clients over a year, that’s 420 hours.

Pipeline method: 50 hours start-up plus 10 hours per month marketing for endless stream of clients. If you need 30 clients, then that’s 170 hours for the year.

Do you want a small handful of clients over the short term, or a big supply paying you well over the longer term? What are your goals?