The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

5 Social Media Tactics for Coaches and Consultants in 2024

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 16

Share episode

In this episode of "The Social Media Takeaway" podcast, I break down five practical social media tactics designed specifically for coaches and consultants aiming to scale their business in 2024. These 5 tactics are designed to establish coaches and consultants as trusted experts and achieve real growth in their businesses. We'll explore the unique challenges of marketing services compared to products, emphasizing the critical role of the service provider in delivering quality. Tune in to gain practical insights to help you navigate the changing world of social media and succeed in your coaching or consulting business.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

And please connect on social media and let me know what you thought of this episode!

LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
Facebook Group

Check out my 2024 Social Media Content Planner & Guide on Amazon (Amazon UK) (Amazon USA)

Welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host Louise McDonnell. And today I'm going to be speaking about five social media tactics for coaches and consultants. And these are tactics which are really relevant in 2024. So before I get into the show, I would like to start by thanking all the people who've been tuning in and listening to my podcasts. This is a fairly new podcast. I've only started this year in January towards the end of January. So it's been, it's been a real, Great journey. And thanks very much for everyone for supporting me. And can I ask that if you're enjoying this show, I can ask you to do a favor, please, for me, if you wouldn't mind going and subscribing to the show and maybe giving it a five star rating, I'd be really, really happy. And again, if you want to reach out, and if you have any feedback with from any of the shows that you want to, you can find me on LinkedIn, or you'll find me on Instagram, you'll find me on Facebook, whatever platform you're into. Feel free to seek me out and to give me whatever feedback that you'd like to give to me. I'd also like to thank my guests on the show. I've had some really, really interesting guests. And as you can guess at this stage, the podcast is all about offering advice for coaches and consultants. And so that advice, we've covered topics like email marketing, like social media strategy. We've talked about wellbeing. We've talked about wellbeing in the workplace. We've talked about mental health. We've talked about so many different topics that you know, I think the show is varied. And again, there's always some advice and that that's the whole thing about the show. It's what you can take away and what you can implement yourself again, to help you get better at your social media marketing. So anyone that's tuning in, that's a coach, a consultant, or anyone selling a service, You'll know that selling a service is different. It's different from product marketing. And I would say it's more difficult because a service is intangible. You can't see it and you can't separate the service from the service delivery. And so that means if you're delivering that service, that people are buying you, or if you have a team of people delivering a service, well, they are buying from those people. people. And so in order for that service to be considered good, well, then the person delivering the service has to deliver a five star service. Anyone selling services will also know that you can't just go onto social media and advertise those services. It just doesn't work like that. And this is more true if you're selling a high ticket service. So anything that's Over 2, 000 would be considered high ticket. So if you're selling a program or some consultancy that's starting anything from 2, 000 upwards, what you'll find is that if you go on and you just promote and running a program to sign up, You'll find that that approach does not tend to work. And that's why I decided to record the show today, just to share with you five tactics that will work for coaches and consultants. And I know this because I have a social media agency and I have an academy. So I see what's happening. I've been working in social media since 2009. You know, I see what works time and time again. And sometimes you'll have fads, you'll have. You know, things that will be in and tactics that will go in and out of fashion for the want of a better word. But this five tactics that I'm going to share with you in this show are what works all the time. And so, if you want to give me some feedback on any of them, feel free to come back and let me know. So for anyone who is selling a high ticket offering, right, in order to get somebody to buy. from you. There's a few different things that must happen. So to get somebody to buy a high ticket offering, there's three things that really needs to happen. And the first thing is, they must have a problem that they want solved. So they must be aware of this problem, okay? So first of all, they have to have the problem. second of all, they need to know that they have the problem and they want to solve it. And, and third of all, they have to believe that you are the person who can solve it for them. If they know they have the problem, but they don't believe that you can solve the problem for them, well, they're not going to buy from you. So as a service provider, you need to do three things. You need to offer services that solve the problem for a particular set of people. So you need to know what their problem is, but you also need to know how that shows up in their everyday lives. So what is the pain behind that problem and how does that affect the people that you are targeting? The second thing, service providers need to be able to do is they have to be able to communicate to their target audience that they can deliver the solution. So not only do they have to deliver the solution, but you have to be able to communicate it to your ideal customer. Because again, as I said, if they don't believe that you actually can solve the problem, well, they will just seek another solution to their problem. so the third thing that service providers need to do is they need to build a relationship with their target audience because your target audience need to know like and trust you before they're going to buy from you. And that's where social media can play a really important role because this ability to build a relationship with people online, really, really comes to play. When you use social media. So the more that you show up on social media, the more people see you, the more that they, you give them advice, the more they will trust you. The more that you share a little bit about who you are, what you believe in, what you stand for, the more they will like you. And the more that you can interact and grow trust. with people through social media, the more likely they are at some stage in the future to reach out to you and to do business with you. So that's the three things service providers need to do. They need to offer a service that solves a problem. They need to be able to communicate that to their target audience and their target audience must have know like and trust them before they will hand over certainly higher ticket items. So before you can sell something that's a few thousand dollars. So the five social media tactics that I want to share with you for success, for coaches and consultants in 2024 are these. Now the first tactic that I would say coaches and consultants need. to work on is the clarity of what they want to achieve. So clarity of your goals. Why are you using social media? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to sell? When do you want to sell it? What's the start date? What's the end date? So that absolute clarity on what you're selling. So, if you are not 100 percent clear on what you want to achieve, well, that is when you will find that you can just be on social media for the sake of it. You could be on social media creating content, but there's no real purpose behind it. I think that's where people can tend to get lost down a rabbit hole or waste and put time or put a lot of effort into something but find that it actually doesn't give them any results. So when you're not clear on what you want to achieve your goals, when you don't have that clarity, you can also lack direction and you'll just find that you can meander along. You could be using social media for weeks or months or even years, but you never actually achieve what you want to achieve because you're not clear on what that is. The first thing I would say is that you need to be absolutely clear on your goals. once you have the clarity on the goals, That's going to help you determine everything else in your campaign. It will have an impact on your messaging. It'll have an impact on your content. It'll also have an impact on your lead magnets. It'll have an impact on whatever actions you take throughout the campaign because the goals will be dictating everything. So if you can be really clear on what you want to achieve, by when. set smart goals, goals, which are specific and measurable, achievable with realistic timeframe, then you will find that clarity will really help you move forward. The second tactic, which is really important specifically for coaches and consultants is to be clear on your messaging. If you're not clear on your messaging, you may end up confusing people. So to be clear on your messaging, first of all, you must know exactly who your ideal customer is. if your ideal, if you don't have a clarity, if you haven't researched your ideal customer, if you haven't thought in great detail about their problems, their pains, what life looks like for them, the words that they're using. If you don't know that, you won't be able to be clear on your messaging. So you have to be clear on who your ideal customer is. They're pain points, but then you also have to be clear on who you are as a service provider and why somebody should buy from you and how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors you need to be able to communicate to them clearly why they should pay attention to you. So being clear on your message involves you understanding not only your customer, but also why you do what you do. And once you are clear on that messaging, then you can communicate it effectively time and time again. So that would be the second piece of advice that I would give to be clear on your messaging Because Once you're clear on your messaging, what you need to do is build in your core messages that you repeat time and time again. And so when somebody reaches out to you, you should nearly recognize your messaging in what they're asking you, because that's what they will associate with you. Okay. Now here's another thing that people miss out on. And it's the third tactic I want to share with you here today. And that is that you need to show up consistently. So you need to show up consistently with your clear messaging. Okay. Because I think what happens people sometimes is that they don't realize how long it takes to build traction on social media. So if you have not been using social media at all, or if you've been having a kind of a stop start approach, or if you've been on social media, but your messaging hasn't been clear. So it's been a bit confusing. So people don't really know what you're about. Well, if you started from today and you were really clear on your messaging, And you started showing up consistently, I would tell you it's going to take two or three months in order to build up some traction in the marketplace. Now, that's a generalization. So it's difficult to generalize, of course. So if it's a case that, you know, you have been around for a long time and your messaging wasn't too bad, okay, you might find you get results a lot faster. But if you've never been on social media Don't show up and create three posts and then expect that you're going to get leads coming in straight away because it just doesn't work like that. It takes time and what you'll find on social media is this. if somebody notices you, what they may do first of all, is they may notice a social media post or maybe even a paid promotion. And what they'll do is they might connect with you or like or follow you or like you or whatever, whatever, depending on whatever social media channel they're on and they will just lay low and they will just watch for a while. So when you're looking up your social media insights, look at things like reach of posts. Look at things like people checking at your profile as a result of having seen the posts. You can see that on Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn. You can see it across most social media channels. So look for that because that's when you know that you're having an impact. But somebody who has noticed you and then they go and they check out your channel and they may follow you or they connect with you, they're going to lay low for a period of time. Really depends on how urgent they need to solve their problem and how much belief they have in you. But they're going to lay low and they're going to just watch your social media posts for a while. that's why it's important to show up consistently and to be clear on your messaging and to be doing that consistently week in, week out for two or three months. So that's the third point is that you need to show up consistently. And the reason I suppose I share that is that I think what happens with many people when it comes to social media is that if they don't start seeing results. instantly, then they just assume it doesn't work. And they assume that it's not going to work and they stop. And I think that's, that's the big mistake is by giving up too soon. Okay. So let's just review those three tactics so far. Number one, going to get clear on your goals. So you know what you want to achieve by when. Two, you're going to get clear on your messaging so that you can communicate clearly to your ideal customer that you are the person who can solve their problems. Okay. And three, you start showing up consistently with those core messages being repeated time and time again, across all your social media channels, across your landing pages, across your website, across your emails. Okay, across your posters, your pull up banners so that when people come across you, they know who you are, what you're about, what problems you solve, and if you are the person who's going to solve their problem. So that's the first three out of the five social media tactics. The fourth tactic is you need to be reaching enough people. Again, if you're starting out on social media and you have no followers, when you create content, you're not going to reach enough people. Equally, let's say you've been active on social media for quite some time and you have 5, 000, 10, 000, maybe 20, 000 followers across all your social media platforms. Organic reach is so low now that You know, you, you could be creating amazing content, but it could be reaching very few people. So if you're using platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can use the Facebook and Instagram ads really effectively now to make sure that you reach the people who are going to want to do business with you. On Facebook and Instagram, the algorithm, the retargeting possibilities that automatically happens now within the Facebook ads means that if you're creating, if you're running promotions all the time and people start to notice them and interact with them, well, they will in the future automatically be delivered your new promotions. So that's a great way to build a relationship with people who aren't your followers yet. And maybe when they notice you, that's when they will follow you. And that's how you will grow your followers. If you're using platforms like LinkedIn, LinkedIn, the organic reach possibilities within LinkedIn are still really good. In fact, it's my favorite social media platform at the moment. There are so many cool. Features that you can use now on LinkedIn, that if you have a good social media content strategy, if you're clear on your message and you're clear on your goals, you can use LinkedIn really effectively and still get really, really decent organic reach. If you're using TikTok, You can, you can achieve a really good organic reach on TikTok and the TikTok ads are really good value for money at the moment. So that's the fourth thing you need to be reaching enough people because the click through rates on social media posts are so low. You're talking about maybe 2 percent give or take a few percentage. If you want to reach people, you've got, first of all, you've got to, you've got like milliseconds to get their attention. You have to communicate authentically and effectively to, to them in order to get them to stop scrolling so they, so that they read your post and they understand what it's about. again, reaching enough people is, is something that you need to be keeping an eye on. You should know, you should be checking in week in, week out, how many people you are reaching across all your social media channels, and how many people are engaging with your content, and how many people are checking out your profile. I know on LinkedIn, I could tell you any given time, how many people have, will have checked out my profile, what the reach is on my posts and how many people have just searched for me. So those, those statistics are, or those insights are all there. If you click on LinkedIn or on Facebook or on Instagram. So again, this is another good way that we have to make sure that we are on track, on to achieve our goals by using social media. So that is the fourth tactic you need to be reaching enough people because even if you're showing up consistently on message, if you're only reaching a few hundred or not even a few hundred people, you will find you just won't be reaching enough people to achieve your goals. The fifth tactic is when it comes to social media marketing, you must have a lead generation strategy.- So, on social media, we don't own our followers. If whatever social media platform that we're into disappeared in the morning, or if, for whatever reason, we lost access to our accounts, we would not have access to our followers anymore. So in that instance, what we need to do is to create a lead generation strategy, which is integrated with our social media. So when someone goes to check you out and there's a link in their bio, what do you have in that link that is going to get them to want to share their email address with you? So what you can do is have some kind of a free download where maybe it's a guide, an ebook maybe it's a check sheet, or maybe it's a free video. There's lots of different options you can select. But what's really important is what is the topic of that free lead magnet that you're going to create, because that must be the first link directly to what you are aiming to sell. So there is no point in creating a lead magnet. That's, I'm just going to give an example now. So like anything to do with AI is of huge interest at the moment on social media. So yes, I could create a lead magnet in the morning about, you know, here's my five chat GPT, best prompts, best performing prompts. But if that's not going to attract the people who are going to want to do business with me, then what is the point of me creating that lead magnet to create, to grow an email list of people who are not going to be potentially my customers. So that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see when people are creating lead magnets is that they go for the topics that Are going to maybe be popular at that time or they don't put enough thought, into what the lead magnet is going to be. So what we want to do is have lead magnets which attract our ideal customer and which are related to the problem that we're solving and pain that they have. And so once then you have your lead generation strategy. in place and you're reaching enough people and you're showing up consistently and you're clear on your messaging and you're clear on the start and the end dates for your campaigns and what you're going to achieve by when. That is when you're going to start seeing results. Your marketing should be easy. If your marketing's not easy, if you find it's just too difficult, every time you think about it, it just drags you down, you need to change what you're doing. Marketing should feel easy and sales are a byproduct of your marketing. Sales will come when you have your tactics aligned and an alignment is hugely important when it comes to getting results by using these tactics. Because of the five tactics I've just talked about there, if any one of those tactics was out of alignment, then your marketing won't work. So let's say that you clear on your goals, but let's say your messaging is poor Okay So your messaging is a bit confusing. You're not clear on your messaging It's not communicating effectively what you want to communicate to your ideal customer So you're clear on your goals. You're showing up consistently. You may be paying to reach enough people. You may also have a lead magnet, which is there, but if your messaging is out of alignment, then your marketing won't work. Okay. Another example. So let's say you are clear on your goals. You're clear on your messaging. You're showing up consistently. You're reaching enough people, but let's say you have the lead magnet, which is just not going to appeal to the right audience. Again, you will find that your marketing will be out of alignment and it will not work. So marketing should feel easy. Marketing should be aligned. And when it is aligned, sales are a by product of marketing. And here's an also a very interesting fact to consider if you want to outsource your social media marketing, you must be very clear on the five tactics that I have just talked about, because if you're not clear, How on earth are you going to outsource it to somebody, maybe it's somebody on your team, or maybe it's a freelancer or a virtual assistant or even an agency? If you are going to outsource it, you need to be able to communicate effectively with that person who's going to be working on your social media, the five tactics I've just talked you through. Otherwise what's going to happen is they're going to create content which will not be related to your goals, which will not be aligned with your messaging. And even though you may be showing up consistently and reaching enough people, it won't work. And so that's why we have to be very careful about even the use of AI because AI makes it very easy to create content on social media. AI makes it very easy even to create lead magnets and ebooks and guides. But if the content. isn't aligned with our messaging and aligned with our goals, and it's not going to appeal to the people that we want to reach, and it's not going to convince them that we are going to solve their problem, then your marketing will not work. So that's it. Thanks very much for tuning into the show. There is my five social media tactics for coaches and consultants in 2024. If you have any feedback for me, please feel free to seek me out. You'll find me on LinkedIn. You'll find me on Instagram. You'll find me on Facebook. You'll find me on Tik TOK. You'll find me on YouTube. So you'll find me everywhere when it comes to social media. And if you'd like to reach out and let me know what you thought of the show, I'd be delighted. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. And if you like, enjoy the show, please give me a five star rating. I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone. And I wish you every success with your marketing, with your social media marketing in 2024. Thanks for listening to the social media takeaway podcast. If you loved this episode and want deeper support with your marketing, head over to sell on social media. academy forward slash hello.