Sitting down to write a sales letter often strikes fear in the heart of many coaches and information product producers. Even many savvy marketers dread the process of writing a sales letter. Well, just stop it because writing a sales letter can be fun and easy when you break the process down into steps.

Any task that seem large or difficult can be conquered by breaking it down and working on one step at a time. This is the way I suggest you approach a sales letter. If you just work on one step at a time to the best of your ability you will soon have a completed product with all the necessary components done to you highest capability.

Step 1: Research
People are more motivated to avoid pain than they are to seek pleasure so to be effective in converting people to coaching clients you must know what their pains are. Far too many marketers seek to tell clients about all the nice things that will happen when they get coaching rather than pointing out the pain that will continue to run their lives if they don’t get coaching.

The first thing you want to research is the pain your target coaching niche endures and is desperate to relieve. You want to know what causes them fear, frustration and anger. Go to groups and forums and observe what the members talk about. What do they complain about, get upset about, get frustrated with and mad about? Take notes on what people in the forums are writing about and what their pains are so that you have real world data to use in your copy.

Put the pains, angers, and frustrations in order according into how important they are to your potential coaching clients. Give each pain, frustration or anger a ranking from highest to lowest for creating pain in the life of your target coaching niche.

When someone is in pain they will desperately seek a solution to that pain. The one thing that is better than having a solution to your client’s pain is painting a picture of what that solution with look like and feels like for the client.

Feeling the pain motivates a person to find a solution and imagining the relief that solution will bring motivates that person to take action. Imagining the relief creates hope in the mind of your client and without hope it is impossible to move forward. 

The process of feeling the feeling that will come with a solution helps to get the subconscious mind working toward that solution because it helps establish the beliefe that a solution is possible. The idea that something is possible and the belief that it can be done is the beginning of all great accomplishment.

The four pillars for creating a thriving coaching business online are article writing and marketing, blogging, social networking, and teleseminars. I have built my business online using those four pillars and I make sure I do something involving at least three of them each day. Here are some steps to get started marketing your coaching business in a systematic fashion.

Set your intention. You must set your intention for your business, income and lifestyle firmly in your mind in order to make it real. Your results will be far better if you have an intention set in your mind and you can visualize the results of that intention. Take time to visualize achieving your goals and feel the feelings you will feel when you have accomplished each step of the way before you actually reach the goal. This will help to manifest your desires and goals.

Create an irresistible offer. What are you going to offer that is of value to your potential coaching clients in exchange for their contact information? This irresistible offer is also a way to give before you ask while letting potential coaching clients get to know you and how you approach coaching. Think of this offer as a sample of you and your coaching. You would not walk up to a stranger and ask them to coach with you right off the bat and you don’t want to do that on the internet either.

Begin searching for the words potential clients will use to search for you or a solution to their problems on the internet. Keywords are the words someone types into a search engine when they are looking for someone to help them with their specific problem. These words are very important and will be used in your articles, titles, blog posts, business name, and website URL if possible. Keep a list of these keywords in sight so you can use them when you are writing blog posts and articles. Knowing and using your keywords is crucial to the success of your online business.

Once you have completed these steps you have set the foundations for a great marketing effort. You have a goal and intention, you have an offer for potential clients, and you are making your site easier to find because you are using the keywords that a client will search for. Now that you have the basics cover you are ready to begin to market to your target coaching niche and get more coaching clients.

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of internet marketing yet it is often overlooked by many people. Many people know what the term keyword means but they do not do the detailed research necessary to find the best keywords and often they do not know how to use the results most effectively.

Keyword Search Tools

There are many keyword search tools available to help you with this task. When you put your keyword into a keyword research tool, you can quickly learn how many users are conducting searches for that keyword term or phrase and other important statistical data. Each keyword research tool provides different keyword data possibilities in addition to how many people are searching for that term. Many of the search tools will also suggest other possible keywords and phrases that you would not have otherwise thought of.

There are several keyword research tools available some are free and some charge a fee. Google keyword tool, Wordtracker, and Overture Keyword Selector are a few suggested tools. Each tool provides slightly different information and features so check each one out and use the one that works best for you.

Narrow the Field and Make Your Choices

Now that you have a large keyword list it is time to narrow the field and find the keywords that will be most effective for your site. To begin the process of analysis I suggest that you create a spreadsheet to evaluate the search volume, conversion rate, and competition for each keyword term. All of these figures will be provided by the keyword tools mentioned earlier.

Begin by going through the long list of keywords and highlight the words that most closely describe your site, services, and products. These will be some of the terms you will want to hang onto. Get rid of the words that do not fit your site or that you do not have content that is relevant to the keyword term.

Be sure you are using both broad and narrow keyword terms that are relevant to your site. For example if you are a coach that helps women in transition from divorce then you may want to use the term “relationship coach” but you will also want to use a more specific term like “women’s relationship coach” or “divorce coach for women”.

The closer the relevance of your specific keywords to the actual content on your site the more Google will like it and they will see the relevance resulting in a lower advertising rate. Google wants search terms to be as relevant as possible to the actual content on the site. The more relevant the sites content the less Google charges advertisers. Conversely the less relevant the content the more Google charges advertisers. So it actually pays you to do a good job of matching your keywords to the content on your website.

Narrow you list of keywords down to about 10 to 15 keywords that best fit your site content and have adequate search volume. Check these keywords against those you find in the source content of you strongest competitors and make sure you have higher ranking keywords whenever possible.

By doing your keyword research and being diligent in utilizing the results, you will rank far higher than your competitors with the search engines and your site will be found by more potential coaching clients.

An effective marketing campaign can be the boost your coaching business needs to dramatically increase your bottom line and help you make a postivie effect in many lives. Avoid common pitfalls and your advertising will be the effective tactic you desire. Your advertising should provide you a high return on investment. Let’s talk about several deadly mistakes that you should avoid.

Making Your Marketing Message About You

It amazes me to see how many coaches feature all their credentials, education, and history at the top of their website. Get this statement perfectly clear, it is not about you!

Your website is there to share with clients and potential client how you can help them. You want to share your knowledge, skills, and experience with them to help them. Your website is not a platform to brag about how great you are because they don’t care.

Clients have a problem they want you to help them solve and all they care about is how you are going to do that. Your qualifications only matter to the client if they are part of your reasoning for how you are going to be the best fit to help them overcome their challenges and solve their problems. Make a list of the most common problems, goals and challenges your potential clients have so that you can develop system to help the client discover options and a solution.

If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It

That is an old Texas saying but it is not true in today’s modern electronic world. You have to be ahead of the curve and doing things the way you always have done them is not going to get you where you need to go.

Sure there are tried and true ways to do things but in marketing you need to do more and do it better than the other person. Innovation and progress is more favorable for a new business. Try things you have not ever done before. Give a seminar, hold a workshop, give a teleclass, use Google Adwords, write articles, get a blog talk radio show, or hold a webinar.

Do everything you can think of to increase traffic to your website and increase the number of people on your contact list. Albert Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results so do something different if you want better results. Do three things that you have not done to market you coaching business and you will see positive results.

Try new things to market your coaching business and make sure that everything you do focuses on how you can better help and support your clients.

Have you ever noticed that if you have an hour to do something that will take fifteen minutes it suddenly fills the hour. You are not alone this happens to everyone so you must take steps to make sure that you do not fall prey to this challenge.

The same principle holds true in reverse. When you are about to go on vacation you do a weeks worth of work in one or two days. Or when you are faced with a deadline shorter than you think you should be able to make but must you always seem to get everything done.

This is the value of setting a time limit, creating a plan and sticking to your plan. Once you know what the challenge is then you can develop a strategy to overcome the challenges.

Set a Time Limit

Set a time limit for each task you are trying to accomplish. Break your projects down into smaller blocks of time anywhere from 15 minutes to one hour. Set a timer and achieve the task in the allotted time then take a sort break and move your body then move on to the next task.

By setting a time limit you ensure that you complete each element in the goal within a reasonable period of time. Any task will fill the time allotted for that task so setting a timer and accomplishing one task at a time in a set timeframe ensures that you are efficient. It also gives you the chance to improve your confidence and faith in your own ability by celebrating each step on the way to completing your major goal.

Stick with Your Schedule

Make sure you stick with your schedule and don’t allow distractions to get you off schedule. Once you break your momentum it is far more difficult to get back on track. Place you goal in a position of priority in your mind and in the mind of those around you. Don’t let other people or situations distract you from achieving your goal.

The more you focus on the outcome of achieving your goal and the results you are going to get the more established the priority is in your mind. Focus on the results and make your goal a high priority.

When you focus on what you want to happen and what does work you will find ways to change the things that are not working now. When you establish a time frame for doing something you complete the project much more effeciently. All of this adds and builds your self  esteem which makes you happier and more successful.

Begin Working on Your Internet Business by Starting a Blog

Blogs are a great way to share valuable information with your potential coaching clients and give them an opportunity to see how you can help them.

Blogs are superior to websites because you can update them with new information frequently drawing the search engines to the blog and improving search page rank.

It is essential that you get you information out to the public so that potential coaching clients can see that you have some solutions that will meet their needs.

A blog is a central point of contact for your potential coaching clients. This is the place they can go to gather information and to communicate with you. You can promote and give access to your coaching and products on your blog. Essentially your blog will become the hub of your business wheel that will soon have many spokes providing multiple sources of income to your coaching business.

I suggest Typepad for a blogging platform because it is inexpensive and easy to use. The blog you are reading right now is Typepad.