Make It Visible
You’re full of amazing coaching skills, ideas, and a desire to make a difference, but marketing your coaching biz isn’t your thing?
Meet Michelle, your business bestie who knows exactly how to help coaches like you get seen, get heard, and get paying clients.
No more feeling invisible. Let’s make marketing easy-peasy and magical.
Make It Visible
#197: How to Create a Signature Coaching Program That Sells
If you’ve been struggling to showcase your unique skills and attract your ideal clients, this is the episode for you!
We’ll talk about the essential elements of a compelling offer, how to communicate the transformation it provides, and tips for pricing and promoting it with confidence.
Ready to craft an offer that makes you the go-to expert in your niche?
Key Points:
- The importance of having a signature coaching offer to differentiate yourself in a crowded market.
- Key elements of an irresistible offer, including a clear transformation, ideal client focus, and your unique process.
- Strategies for pricing, packaging, and promoting your signature offer effectively.
-----Free LIVE Visibility Marketing Bootcamp ---
3 Steps To Get Seen, Get Heard, And Get Paying Client
https://members.elevatelifecoaching.org/VMBSept2024
-------More Ways To Learn With Michelle-----
Learn With Me: https://www.elevatelifecoaching.org/learn-with-michelle
--------------------- Who Is Michelle Kuei ---------------------
Hey There! I’m Michelle! Your Visibility Marketing Coach, content and Email Marketing Strategist, Motivational Speaker, Author (…And soon to be your new business bestie!)
I help female coaches to simplify marketing so they can get seen, get heard, and get paying clients (..even if you work a full-time job!)
My job as your coach is to:
- Help you build a one-of-a-kind personal coaching brand with you so your business stands out and position you to be the authority within your coaching niche.
- Teach you how to develop marketing strategies that is aligned with your vision and value with the RIGHT brand messaging to attract your dream paying clients.
- Develop a simple and easy way to market your coaching business without being overwhelmed and burnout.
- Help you develop a course and membership...
Welcome back to Make it Visible podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, michelle Kui, and today we are going to talk about something that's a hot topic for a lot of coaches. And when you're first starting out, especially in that first and third year in your coaching business, you're probably thinking about exactly Michelle, what do I offer my clients and most of us, sometimes a lot of coaches I work with there's this concept of I'm going to offer them, like maybe one session, one session at a time, which the idea behind that one session at a time, it's, great, it's. You come out from a hard center place where you're thinking about well, I'm still new, I don't have a lot of experience, I'm just going to test out the water and just offer a lot of my people because they can't really afford coaching. But I want to help them, I want to make it as affordable as possible for everyone. So you end up somehow convincing yourself to charge your clients one session at a time.
Speaker 2:Now that model has a problem and has its shortcoming right, because once someone book a call with you, you give them one session and then you run into the situation where you have to figure out like, where do I get my next client and if you keep offering these one session at a time, you'll notice that the quality of the client that you're going to attract is also very minimum. So exactly how do we create a signature coaching offer that would actually stand out in a crowded market, so that you don't feel that you're lost, you're just another coach within this whole big industry, and so this episode is going to help you to kind of create and having that mindset and also having the strategies of how you can come up with your own offer that will actually showcase your unique skills and also speak directly to your ideal clients.
Michelle:If you've been waiting for the right moment to take your coaching business to the next level.
Speaker 2:This is it. Building a business that attracts paying clients is the most important step in your coaching journey. It is more important than getting another certification to hang on your wall. It is more important than perfecting every session plan and finding the perfect tools. It is also more important than trading services with a fellow coach or working for free. The truth is no marketing, no paying clients. The good news is I'm hosting a free three-day visibility bootcamp from September 20th to 22nd, and I'd love for you to join me. Over the next three days, we'll dive into how to market your coaching business in a way that truly attracts the right clients. How to confidently answer what you do and who you help. How to keep a steady flow of paying clients by avoiding these common pitfalls that we all experience. This bootcamp is designed to help you to stand out and connecting with the people that you're meant to serve. If you're ready to stop feeling invisible and start building a business that is not only to thrive but also feel deeply fulfilling, this is for you. Head over to visibilitymarketingbootcampcom. That's end this year, your year to break through in your coaching business.
Speaker 2:Hey, you're listening to Make it Visible podcast. I'm your host, michelle Kuei. I am a visibility marketing coach and soon to be your business bestie in the coaching business world. Not knowing how to connect with your audience, grab people's attention and get them excited to buy from you should never be the reason you give up on your dream to become a full-time coach. I'm all about making marketing the easiest part of your coaching business, so that you can turn a passion for coaching into a visible and profitable reality. So buckle up, ladies, let's get started.
Speaker 2:Okay, so when I first started out, I felt I needed to offer everything to everyone. So I was stuck in thinking that my offer was not good enough. My one-on-one coaching was not good enough. I need to jam-pack with all these different extra bells and whistles into the program. I need to have a program, and what I noticed is a lot of newbie coaches. You're struggling with just coming up with the name of your coaching business and coming up with the name for your program, and so the program name gets you stuck forever trying to come up with designing that signature offer and you're not even quite sure exactly what are you offering. And that really comes down to the fact that a lot of time, when we're first starting out, you probably don't know a whole lot about your client's specific needs, and which is why which is it makes perfect sense what you're feeling stuck on discovering your niche right, they're all tied hand to hand together. Once you have your niche, you probably will have some idea about what is that transformation that you're helping them to accomplish, and from there then you can further understand what is exactly my client's specific need and what is it that I'm helping them with, so that you can create an offer that will focus on addressing their need.
Speaker 2:So if you're someone who's still trying to figure out your I help statement or what is your niche, then chances are your offer is going to sound pretty general, and there is nothing wrong with being general at first, right but you want to have the messaging that would help you to sell that general offer. And so once I figured this out right, once I figured out that I need to have some type of specifics enough, but while keeping it general then I can talk about this general thing that I'm offering to people. And so one of the things that I came up with because I look back to my own personal journey and one of my biggest struggle was this body image, and I was doing. I was a notorious negative self-talker and if you go back to some of my podcast episode way early on on this podcast, you're going to hear a lot of that personal development journey centered around that negative self-talk, and so that was what I was struggling with. And so, in order for me to create a general offer, I wanted to focus on anybody who have this negative self-talk and, as you can imagine, it's not a super specific niche, right, I basically cover everybody who identify themselves as negative self-talker.
Speaker 2:But if you can narrow down, if you want to keep it general and this is something that you're struggling with what you want to do is you want to identify that identifier. Right, everybody has an identifier. I identify myself, as he, as she, her and them, right? So we all have these identifier in our mind that we go around and we have stories and narrative that's in our head how we, how we believe we are, and so when you have this identifier, then you'll be able to tap target in terms of okay, so these are the general identifier. Then what are some of the things that this group of people or this community of people are struggling with? And so, when you start from that approach and thinking back, what are some of the things that I was struggling with. Then it'll become easier for you to actually create that offer that will resonate with your ideal clients and that's going to help you to set yourself apart from all these competitors and, yes, some of my community inside the iPad coaching I graduated from iPad coaching there is no competitor, right, we're all in this together.
Speaker 2:While that is noble and that is highly conscious and that's a great way of thinking that we as a whole, as all the coaches, coming together as a collective, when you're in the marketplace, right, and you're running your coaching business, I would encourage you to think of it as your competition. We're competing to become better version of ourselves. So you want to look at your competitor, what are they doing and what are they offering? But you wanted to keep it in the competitor in the sense that how can I make my program even better because they're already doing that? So how can I make myself even better, so that they become an inspiration to me, right, and it can create something even better. So, yes, in the sense that competition it's not negative until you give it a negative meaning, right? Competition itself is neutral, but it's how we perceive it, the energy that we carry behind the competition. That makes a whole lot of difference. If I'm seeing a competition as inspiration, then that's only going to inspire me to design my program better, so that it's going to help my clients even transform better.
Speaker 2:So what you want to do is you want to look at your competitors. What are they doing, what are some of the packages that they're offering and what is their unique style of how they stand out in the market? And what is it that about you that you can offer? You have your personal touch that they may not have right. So we all have our secret sauce and, starting from this moment, I want you to think about yourself, as you have that secret special sauce that nobody else has, and a lot of it has to do with your personal branding, your personality, how you show up for your audience, how you show up for your client, the way that you show up for your client. All this matter and all this is going to highlight your signature coaching offer. So the coaching offer, it's not just well, how many packets do I have, how many sessions am I offering, how much is it and how long is the session going to be. That's just the logistics of what you're offering them, but you know, there's also the other, invisible package that you're delivering, which is how you deliver it, the way that you deliver it and the personality behind how you're delivering this signature offer.
Speaker 2:So, with that being said, I think I spent the last 10 minutes talk about what makes you different and how do you start right. So I wanted to give you some tangible steps that you can take to actually create this signature offer, couple of things that you wanted to focus on, especially when you're just starting out. Right, let's backtrack a little bit and talk about why this signature offer would be something important for you to consider. Now, if you think about all these other coaches, your peer coaches, who's offering maybe four sessions, or five session, or six session, seven session, whatever that number is right. It could be a three months package, one month package, however, that you want to begin, and there's no right or wrong of how many sessions you start with, typically with my clients, because they're still fresh, still new, and so one of the things I help them to design is they have a three-month package and they also have a 30-day package. Okay, and the reason why I help them to create the 30-day package is because some of your clients they may not be ready to commit to a three-month program. Now, if you think about all these people who's not able to, who doesn't trust you enough to commit to a three-month program and all they need is a little taste and appetizer to get started, and if you don't have a 30-day program to offer them, it's like just saying well, you know what, if you can't afford my three-month program, I don't want to work with you. That's great that you're setting yourself on a high level, right Three months, but if you think about all the things that you haven't been able to do you don't have the online presence, you haven't built your credibility, you haven't built your authority these will take time for someone to trust you right.
Speaker 2:When we look at all these different coaches there's so many different coaches, I think. The last time I checked on the ICF coaching federation data, I believe it's 14,000 coaches alone like certified right Certified under ICF data. Now there's other coaches who's not certified under the ICF credential. Then you can imagine it's a huge bucket of coaches who's competing doing the same thing as you do. Now, it's great that you start with the three months, but there's all these people who don't trust you yet because you don't have that credibility, because you don't have that authority. And so you wanted to build on that authority. And as you're starting to build it, that authority, that credibility, that name is going to be more established. You're going to collect more testimonial, you're going to have more social proof, right, that's going to help you to establish that three months, six months, then 12 months program.
Speaker 2:So when you're first starting out, you're starting new and you don't have a lot of credibility having a three months program. It's like a hard sell. It's hard to sell a three months when nobody knows about you, right? So what I suggest is a lot of my client, they would start with a three, they would have a three months and they also have a 30 days.
Speaker 2:Okay, and how do you decide which one to offer? That's something that's a conversation that you do on a discovery call, on a sales call, right, you get a sense of what is this person looking for. Is it a short-term support or is it a long-term support? Do we want the appetizer or do we want the meal? Which do we want? Right? And then you can decide okay, so that's start you off on an appetizer and that's one workout way to the meal, right? So if you think about that, that's your sales process. That's that's how you lead someone from from a cold audience who doesn't know much about you. You give them a little test, test drive, right the appetizer, and they warm up, they trust you, they know the value of how you work. They're giving you a testimonial and then they actually want that three months program.
Speaker 2:Or they're telling their friend about your three months program and so you gotta start somewhere, and that somewhere you don't want it to. It's great, and I encourage every coach to have a three-month, six-month program. You know, in the long term I do want you to have a 12-month program, but initially, when you sell right, especially if you're new doing live coaching, I would encourage you to have two different package 30 days and a three months. Let's start from there. Once you build your authority, you know your messaging, you have nailed your niche and you know exactly what your client is struggling with, what their specific need is and your marketing is on point and you have the system in place already, then by then, if you're not actually offering a long-term support, I would be coming to your house and I would drag you out of the house, right? So, to that point, everybody starts from somewhere, and that somewhere typically starts from something small that you can build your reputation and you can slowly transition into a long-term success. Okay, you can slowly transition into a long-term success, okay. So that's why it's important to have a signature program. But you don't necessarily start by saying, well, here's my signature program and this is what you can through your messaging.
Speaker 2:But that initial signature offer, it takes some time to actually craft it, to test it, to validate it, in order for it to really shine, to really be something that is people, absolutely once you wrote it out, everybody wants right, and it takes a couple of different elements to make sure that these elements are in place when you design your signature offer. So what are some of the elements that you need to have? Number one is you need to have a clear transformation right. What will your clients achieve by the end of the program? You want it to be very specific, you want it to be measurable and you want it to be relatable to what is it that they actually need? And this is what people will actually take out their wallet and pay you to work with you. So number one step in creating that signature offer is you need to have that clear transformation. What is it that you're helping people with and how is their life going to be super different from where they are now? Right, that would be your compelling messaging that you want to use in your marketing.
Speaker 2:Element number two is you want to make sure that you know exactly who your ideal client is their pain, their struggle, their frustration, and what is it that they want. So earlier I talked about what the clients need, and typically, when you're first starting out, you probably don't know much about exactly what they need, right? You would think that this is what they need, but a lot of time, what you think they need, it's not what they want, right? So this is where the marketing comes in, so important, and this is where I shine, because I am here to tell you that, yes, it's great that you think that this is what your clients need, but I'm here to help you to know right, showing you the blind spot of what your clients actually want.
Speaker 2:And we need to talk about your clients want rather than offering them something you think that they need, and this is where a lot of coaches fall short in terms of their marketing strategies, or having any type of marketing strategy at all, is that they sell people. They sell their clients based on what they think they need, but they don't really sell on what their clients really want, right? So if you have to go back and rewind and listen to this part, please do go back and listen to this part, because this part is so important and I've worked with so many coaches inside my Profitable Coach Formula and this is something we talked about all the time, especially in module number two, where I walk them through exactly to discover what is it that your clients actually want. And you should be on the coaching call, because the coaching call is always very active and we talk a lot about how a lot of coaches have this mindset of this is what they need. And they come to me and say, michelle, this is what my clients need. And I'm like, do you think that's what you think they need, or is it something that they told you? This is what they want? And oftentimes I have my client go back and work on their homework and come back the next week and be like, oh, that makes perfect sense, I'm doing it wrong, and so you definitely want to make sure that one of the elements about your signature coaching offer is that these need to be client focused, right?
Speaker 2:What is it that they want, not what you think they need, okay, and then the third important element inside your signature coaching offer is your unique process, like, what is that framework or what are the steps that you walk in? You walk in your potential client from zero to 100, right? So how do I, how do I get someone to overcome this negative self-talk? What is my step number one? So in the past, I had created a judgment detox program and so, basically, it's about identifying your current beliefs, right, your current negative self-talking, your narratives, and how do you walk someone into the absolute, 100% confidence and knowing that, whatever is going on in their mind, they don't identify themselves with that narrative inside their head, that negative self-talker. So you create this, so I created this judgment detox, where I help people to overcome that negative self-talk. So that could be your unique process of how you help someone and that could be your framework, right, step by step. Maybe it takes three steps, maybe it's five steps. How many steps does it take for someone to achieve the desired goal? And that desired goal comes from that clear transformation that we were talking about earlier for these three elements of the signature coaching offer.
Speaker 2:So, just to sum up, the first signature offer element is to have a clear transformation. What is it that your client's going to be able to achieve at the end of your program? And you want to make sure that whatever that you come up with this coaching offer is client focused. It's about what they want and not what you think they need. Right? And number three is your unique process how many steps? And this reminds me of those of you who are like Gen X or maybe in the early Gen Z era. You might have seen this lollipop, this owl with the lollipop commercial, and there's a kid asking the owl how many bites does it take to finish this lollipop? And the owl will go. Let me see One, two, three. So your signature offer kind of needs to be like that. Right, it needs to be like three steps or five steps or however many steps that you lay out. That could be your unique process. Okay, so once you created this unique coaching offer, then you can look at the pricing right, and pricing is also something that we talked about a lot in module number three, when we inside the profitable coach formula where I talked about.
Speaker 2:How do you create this offer and what would be a reasonable price to to tag on, to give? And it's often based on. It's often based on your market price, right? Your audience, what their spending habit is. I mean you don't want to charge someone outrageously large number when you know that this population of people, their spending habit, is not within that. That's way above their budget, right? No matter how how great your coaching offer is or how expensive it is, if it's outside of someone's spending ability, then it doesn't matter how great it is. It has nothing to do with fear. It has nothing to do with the mindset of how we spend money. It just happened having to do with fear. It has nothing to do with the mindset of how we spend money. It just having to do with the reality of our finance situation for a lot of your audience that you're serving, right. So you want to look at the market, you want to look at the audience that you're serving and you want to look at also your competitor how much they're charging or what is the value that they're delivering it, right. So all this needs to be taken into consideration and we won't have the time to talk about it in this episode, but if you're interested, just comment down below this episode and I will go ahead and create another episode for this topic. Just on the pricing Okay, so we talked about why it is important for you to have a signature offer so that you can stand out.
Speaker 2:We also talked about the three elements inside how to create the signature coaching offer and we touched on the pricing a little bit. Again, you want to look at your market. You want to look at your competitor what are they offering? And you also want to look at you know, what is it that my client, my client, clientele, population what is their spending, spending habit and how they spend, what do they spend on? All these requires a little bit of research, and which is why I actually create a whole module on this individual module in the training module inside the profitable coach formula. Just on this topic, okay, all right.
Speaker 2:So now that you have your signature offer, your next step is actually to sell it. Right, and this is where a lot of coaches struggle with. You may come up with an offer, a coaching offer, that you would like to test it out. We're not even talking about signature offer yet, because you're probably still too early to decide on what the signature offer is. You might be in a place where I just want a couple of clients in so I can test it out. I can test out my offer. I can know more about exactly what my clients want, what they're struggling with. So you might be in that early stage of I just want to sell my 30-day package. How do I do that? Right?
Speaker 2:So, even though this topic is, this particular episode is talking about signature offer. But if you just throw away the signature and just think about offer, what is the most important thing in your coaching business? Well, your most important thing in your coaching business is to be able to sell your offer or to market your offer, to be able to talk about your offer. What is it that they're struggling with? And it comes down to your messaging, your marketing be able to talk about your offer so that it makes it so compelling that someone who's reading your social media copy or who's listening to your podcast or watching your video, they're saying, oh, my goodness, yes, this is exactly what I need and I need to sign up with this person. I don't care if they have a signature offer or not. I need to talk to this person, right? And that's where I started. I was negative self-talker and all I did was I offer nine session. It was nine session for a total of eighteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 2:Okay, eighteen hundred dollars was the starting price that I started with my life coaching and mindset coaching business, and people were signing up and they I had clients who found me on internet. I had clients who found me through social media. I had clients who found me through social media because they're connected to me on social, and so I built my business a hundred percent remotely, online. And how did it work? It was the messaging that sold them for me, right? I didn't have all these like different network or pocket of people. I didn't have time to do that. As much as I want to do network, I just didn't have time because I was still working a full-time job, my hours are limited, and so in order for this to work, I need something else. I need my messaging, I need my social media, I need my blog posts, I need my video or podcast. I need those to sell for me.
Speaker 2:This is the reason why I am offering a visibility marketing bootcamp. This is where I'm going to show you exactly how to get your business, how to get your coaching business seen, heard by your ideal clients, so that you can save time and you can actually build this coaching business while you're working a full-time job. You're going to learn how to market your business, how to market your coaching business, how to narrow down that messaging so that you can sell your offer and, most importantly, I want to teach you a system where you can be somewhere else and you can be in your sleep. As a matter of fact, you can be in your sleep and your content, your messaging, is still going to sell for you, okay. So this is a good starting point, especially if you're just in your first or third years inside your coaching business and you're still struggling to get that traction, to get any coaching clients and you've been doing a lot of the freebie work and you're done with the freebie work, then I am going to invite you to come and join me.
Speaker 2:The Visibility Marketing Bootcamp is starting this Friday, on September 20th, at 3 pm Pacific time. We're going on day one Visibility Marketing Bootcampcamp and you're going to learn exactly how to use your messaging to actually sell for you and how do you market your coaching business and a lot of the things that we I talked about on this episode. You're also going to hear more about it inside the bootcamp, so I would encourage you. If you have not saved your seat yet, go ahead and grab a seat at visibilitymarketingbootcampcom and come join me this Friday at 3 pm Pacific time. We're going to talk about marketing.
Speaker 2:I know marketing is such a there's such a feeling and negative energy behind it, and you might have heard of different tactics, strategies from all these marketing gurus, but I can tell you, what makes me really different is the fact that I was a life coach. I was a mindset coach first, and all the things I have done inside my own mindset coaching business and life coaching business this is what I'm teaching you. This is what I'm teaching you because I have been using it for the last six years, and this is how I'm teaching you. Okay, this is what I'm teaching you because I have been using it for the last six years and this is how I have done it, and I know that you can do it too, and many of my students. I have taught them the exact same formula and that I'm going to also to show you inside the Visibility Marketing Bootcamp, so go ahead and grab a seat and I will see you inside the bootcamp. All right?
Speaker 2:So next week we're going to talk about storytelling. Now, one of the big things a lot of you might not know is that I started out the business as a storyteller and I am such a big fan of storytelling marketing. So next episode, I'm going to talk about how do you use storytelling marketing to actually use your personal journey to connect with the clients on a deeper level, and this is moving forward in 2025. This is something that you don't want to miss and it's going to make a big comeback. As a matter of fact, a lot of big names and coaches have already started using this, and you'll hear this term over and over and over again on internet. Storytelling marketing is huge and you're probably already doing it, but that's bringing it inside your marketing strategy so that you can actually make your marketing even better, so that you can have more paying clients. I will see you in the next episode.
Michelle:Thank you for listening to Make it Visible podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevatelifecoachingorg and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever, without wasted time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to ElevateLifeCoachingorg and grab a free strategy audit today.
