Two Keys to Driving People to Your Coaching Site

New coaches and new website owners, after being online for a few months, come to discover that websites need traffic. The “build it and they will come” idea doesn’t quite work when it comes to websites.

They originally hoped that by putting up a good site, people will, somehow, find it and contact the coach for help. They may have heard stories of overnight success or fell victim to a marketing ad about instant overnight success.

In the ideal world, you put up a site, put effort to traffic-building, and get plenty of visitors and new client leads from your site (or sales, subscriptions, etc, whatever you’re trying to get people to do).

Here are two keys to driving people to your site:

Key 1 – Knowing where your buyers (market, clients) hang out.

Simply put, you should spend some time figuring out where your ideal clients are hanging out online. Think hard about the traits and characteristics of ideal clients (income, age, sex, occupation, more) and then seek places online where those kinds of people gather.

Here’s a quick story:

I brainstormed with a client of mine about her ideal client. She ended up shifting away from massage therapists and shifted towards top-level women executive assistants as they were more ideal – mainly due to income.

My client (the coach) wanted to work one-on-one with her clients using a high end pricing model. If my client had stayed with massage therapists, she would have had to go with a group coaching model to accommodate their typically lower income.  She didn’t want to do group coaching.

After knowing this, her approach to finding ideal clients became focused on seeking ways reach corporate offices.

The point here is to know about your market and especially where they hang out. Knowing where they are will help you find ways to get in front of them.

Key 2 – A compelling reason to go to your site.

Now that Key #1 gave you a sense of where your ideal clients may be, next you’ll need a compelling reason to get them to your website.  People don’t just go to sites to “check them out”, even if you invite them to do that. Even your best friends will fail to visit you because just being a friend is not enough of a reason (sadly). People need a motivator – so you must give it to them.

Since we are on the Internet, a medium for delivering “information”, our motivator must be an information piece like a video, text document, audio, tip-sheet or diagram. You can get creative in how you send information. A text document in the form of a pdf works excellently.

For this information piece to work, it will need to be packed with value. If you create an info piece like “how coaching works” or “why you need a coach” you’ll get so-so attraction. Those reasons aren’t very exciting for people to get. Better info-pieces hit on more specific concerns like “recover from divorce and create a new amazing life” or “lose weight, boost energy, and feel great”. These are big motivators!

My point here is that when you need to give people a compelling reason to take action now to come to your site.

Want to make headway? Here are your actionable steps:

Action step for key 1: Make a list of 10 traits your ideal clients possess and then think of professions, activities, or roles people with those traits hold.  Where are they online?

Action step for key 2: Think about your big benefit. Think of three of them in fact. Then think of 5 things that your market must know/learn/realize in order to achieve those benefits. Package those 5 ideas into a document and title it “5 Keys to Benefit 1, Benefit 2, Benefit 3”. And there you have a compelling thing you can post to your site.

A quick example.

One of my clients is a health coach. After brainstorming with her about who her ideal website visitor / client would be we found out it was someone in their 30s or 40s, with aging parents and who were big into new age health. Given that, we were able to revamp her free giveaway to speak to that audience who are more concerned about getting diseases like cancer and diabetes. Her message is now stronger, clearer, and in time, we will have to see how well her motivator attracts.

Wuddya think? What have you learned? What can you do to start driving people to you website? I’d love to hear your thoughts, comment below! (Kenn awaits …)