What is a Marketing Coach?
Do you have a Marketing Coach? I’m not talking about your personal coach at your local gym. I’m talking about a coach similar to an athletic coaches. There are all kinds of coaches out there: relationship coaches, executive coaches, business coaches, management coaches, career coaches, business opportunity coaches, and among a host of others. And then there is the marketing coach, like me.
I am a big believer in coaches and being coached. Our flagship product is my Principle-Centered Marketing Coaching™ Program. I make my living coaching. And that’s why I’m writing this article because the truth is there are so many people out there claiming to be coaches when they’re really not, that they’re destroying a great profession.
Unfortunately, most of the coaching programs I see aren’t really coaching programs at all. They’re more like cheerleading programs. And most of the coaches are more cheerleader than coach. There is no real certification program for coaches although two main groups who claim to do this.
Coaching has become a “dumping ground” for anyone who wants to get paid to give advice. Maybe they want to be attorneys or counselors or psychotherapists, without having to get a license. Maybe they just don’t want to be called consultants. But just because they call themselves coaches, doesn’t make it so. Be sure to ask about the results the coach’s clients are getting with the coaching.
Too many of these so-called marketing coaches and their marketing coaching programs consist of a series of sessions where the coach asks the client, “Well, what do you want to accomplish?” The client answers and the coach basically winds up saying, “Well this week, go Brand Cialis out there and get it done.”Of course they ask more than that and say more than that. I mean there are more words, but when you boil it all down, that’s what you get. It is not strategic and a logical path with building blocks to ensure your success.
What is a marketing coach?
A marketing coach is both your best friend and your worst nightmare. Your best friend because he or she tells and shows you exactly what you must do to achieve your goals. Your worst nightmare because, once shown, your coach makes you work, practice, Tadalis SX more practice, build skill and actually do! Just like an athletic coach does. It is all about winning the game of market share and increasing sales the easiest, most cost-effective way there is…
Good coaches don’t make it up as they go along. Good marketing coaches have a program, systems, content, disciplines, exercises, drills. viagra for women online Good marketing western union pennsylvania ephrata coaches make you work, critique your efforts, make you work some more, make you do it over until you do it right.
Good marketing coaches are prescriptive and specific. I am firm believer in do it right the first time then you don’t have to continue to work at it. Not that you get it right the first time. On the contrary, focus and do it and have it critiqued and re-do until you and your target audience are happy with it then use it, test and revise as necessary. Then move on to the next task at hand.
Fortunately, there are good marketing coaches – very good ones – out there. I’m one of them. How do you know? Because I guarantee results to the tune of at least 400% of what you pay me or your money back. I have learned that if a vendor will not guarantee results I will not do business with them because there is a high likelihood I will not get the results I want.
In the business world, I would say that is one of the measures of a good marketing coach. Is he or she willing and able to guarantee results?
Want to know what else to look for in a good marketing coach? Here are the rest of my criteria…
Your coach must be knowledgeable on two fronts
What to do and how to do it. What to dos aren’t enough. generic Viagra online levitra You can get most of that from books and tapes. How you do the whats can have an exponential impact on the results you get.One of my clients, a retailer in Ann Arbor, recently sent out a postcard solicitation.
At my direction he tested two different postcards. The pull-rate was very close on both. But one cost less for him to produce and fulfill. Without my how-to-do-it instruction, this client wouldn’t have been able to figure that out. Still not fully satisfied, we tested a third postcard, developed with heavy instruction from me. The third postcard out-pulled the other two by nearly two-to-one. I told him both what to do, and how to do it, and it paid off in spades.
Your marketing coach should walk their own talk. They should have their own marketing coach and be coached on a regular basis. There is always more to learn and more to test in the marketing world. A senior or lead marketing coach is functioning at a higher level but even the best of us are sometimes too close to the obvious that a newbie may pick up on faster than us.
Your coach must be capable of analyzing your work and giving you the proper feedback. Generalities aren’t very useful. Pats on the back, encouragement, and motivation are all great. But you can get those from your mother. If you want quantum leaps in any aspect of your life, your coach must be able to help you build skills. That takes an ability to see what can be improved and the ability to instruct you specifically on how those improvements can be made.
Your coach should be on the same or a similar level with you. Far too many of these so-called coaching programs employ college kids or rookie grads, or stay-at-home moms, or people with a proven, losing track record in business, to talk you through cookie-cutter processes with scripted procedures. In most of these cases, they don’t have online pharmacy real-world experience themselves and they wouldn’t know buy amoxicillin how to deal with a challenge that’s even slightly “off the page.”
Make sure the coaches you select have real-world working expertise in the area they claim to be coaching you in. (In no aspect of business or life is this more important than in marketing and advertising. These guys cannot be slackers, slouchers or amateurs. They’ve got to know their stuff, or not only will you be wasting money on them, you’ll find yourself wasting tons of money on marketing campaigns that won’t or can’t work. It could and likely will sink your ship.)
Which leads to the next qualification… flexibility. Yes, a good marketing coach has a system, complete with specific processes, lessons, instruction, exercises, etc. But the coach also has to be flexible. Good marketing coaches can adapt to the needs of the situation. That may require doing lesson 16 in session two. It may require coming up with a whole new idea, approach, lesson or recommendation, when the results you thought you would get don’t come rolling in. That takes real skill. Cookie-cutter coaches can’t pull that off.
The wanna-bees and pretend-to-bees are ousted when these circumstances poop up. Just like the coach of a football team makes adjustments according to the real-time challenges his team is facing on the field, your coach should be perceptive and skilled enough to make specific adjustments and recommended changes, based on the specific circumstances and challenges you’re facing at any point in time.
A good coach has got to cost you enough. Generally people get paid what they’re worth. If your coach isn’t charging you enough, he or she probably isn’t good enough. This is one area where you can determine, at least to some degree, quality, based on price. The higher the price, the better the quality, as a general rule. Believe me, a good marketing coach is worth what you pay, and no matter how good the bargain, a bad marketing coach is a waste of money, time, effort and emotional energy.
So be careful about a marketing coach and all kinds of people claiming to be coaches without guaranteeing results. If what they’re doing for you should be done by a licensed professional, such as an attorney, psychologist or therapist, go to the real professional and forget the coach. If the help you seek really is within the scope of a marketing coach, use these criteria to make sure you get a good one or wait until you can.
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