Brand Excitement blog

Ok. So here’s the rant. Yet another “would be struggling” entrepreneur has hit my inbox with a “new coaching program they’ve started” so that they can “reach more people — we’ve been asking for it” and frankly, I’m a bit sick of it.

I see this cycle over and over again. The entrepreneur who’s had “relative” success in business. They want to make millions and millions of dollars THIS YEAR and in order to do so, they are told they need to coach.

Now, I’m all for packaging your services to help more people. That’s not what I’m talking about here. But I can’t even count on my hand how many “group coaching programs” have been launched in the past year where the owner saw it as a rags-to-riches easy road.

And here’s what happens. Some of those coaches do make it to six… ahem… or even seven figures. AND they walk away with a lot of disappointed clients because they didn’t deliver.

I’ve always admired the person who can “work” their craft and “teach” their craft but what I see here, what I’m talking about in this post, is the person who couldn’t “work their craft (ie, make money doing what they wanted to do) so instead they decide to teach what they THINK they know.

Kinda makes me sick.

I have always been an advocate of mentoring and lifelong learning so don’t mistake this post for an anti-coaching stance. Here’s my advice: Be sure anyone you coach with has had, and continues to have, real field experience in the industry you’re getting coached in. Otherwise, when the road takes a turn and their techniques don’t work for you, you’ll be out of money, out of solutions, and outraged. Tread wisely.

I was at a Savor The Success masterminding event last night and it was a true community affair. We took diligent notes as each person (almost) went to the front of the room and shared their best marketing tip. There were more than twenty! Then, afterwards, we broke into groups of 8 and did some personal masterminding to solve a marketing problem for each of us.

One of the women in the group has a very successful social media business. It’s rapidly expanding and she’s looking to make the leap into an office space. To be prepared, and handle the responsibility, she’s looking to take on more clients and wanted to get suggestions for some highly leveraged communication.

I told her about dedicated email campaigns and how I’ve seen such great success with them in the past, both for myself and for my clients. A dedicated email campaign is one (typically) that someone sends on your behalf, sort of like an endorsement, where the total focus of the campaign is yours. I’ve seen it used to build awareness, build a subscriber list, promote a contest or sweepstakes and of course, to open the door for new clients.

The key metrics you want to look for when considering a dedicated email campaign are the following (be sure to ask the advertiser this BEFORE you decide to move forward):

1. What is the audience list size
2. What is the typical open rate (look for at least 20%)
3. What is the typical click-through rate (varies between .01% – 3% – depending on the target and size of the list)
4. How is delivery tracked and reported?
5. How “fresh” is the list? I caution you to send to a list that hasn’t been updated recently and hasn’t had frequent communications going out
6. How segmented can your communication be? (zip code, city, etc. not required, but helpful)
7. What’s the industry, income and education demographic mix of the audience (you don’t want to send to executives if you’re looking to do business with entrepreneurs, or you don’t want a consumer audience if you do business-to-business)

That list might seem long, but it’s required up front of you making any decisions to part with your money.

Have you invested in dedicated email marketing campaigns for your business? Have any publisher suggestions? Please post them below.