Marketing Strategy for an Intuitive Recovery Coach
PROJECT: STRATEGY INTENSIVE
OVERVIEW:
When we first connected, Laura was just starting out with her business. She wasn’t doing too much marketing for her company just yet (she’s finishing up grad school!) but wanted to get things on the right track for when she was ready to hit the ground running. That meant developing a full blown marketing strategy that she could start now with minimal effort while also working and finishing grad school.
Along with offering 1:1 coaching, Laura also has a book and online courses. Making sure the strategy was harmonious among these 3 offerings was top of mind when creating her marketing strategy.
Because of this, I focused on digging into her industry and specific market first and then developing her marketing strategy based on what I found at each step of the process. This allowed me to completely customize the strategy to her strengths and what the market research was showing me. This allowed us to craft a marketing strategy that will grow and scale with her as her business grows.
Here’s what the marketing strategy and process looked like for Laura:
Kick-off call: Along with a questionnaire, I always have a kickoff call with clients. This way I can hear about their business and their goals in their own words. I also want to learn more about their individual strengths, weaknesses, and current and/or future time commitments. That way we can tailor the strategy to them specifically. As I mentioned, Laura is currently finishing grad school but she also works full-time and has a daughter so as you can imagine, her time is already pretty full. This meant we needed to get really creative and strategic on how we built her strategy to not overload her with too much additional work.
Market research: This is often the piece that I find clients skip but it’s the true foundation of all your marketing.
SWOT analysis: This helped us identify Laura’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Knowing all of these helps us address them in the strategy to not fall to weaknesses and allows businesses to overcome threats as well as play to her strengths and leverage the opportunities in the market we identified.
Competitive analysis & landscape: Laura was so early in her business that she wasn’t totally sure who her top competitors were. Doing some research into the competitive landscape allowed us to identify a huge gap in the market where Laura could (and was already planning to) step in.
Unique Value Proposition & market positioning: Through the SWOT analysis and competitive research, we were able to identify what makes Laura truly unique among her competitors and where she falls in the market. That way we can position the brand to speak directly to her target audience.
Target audience & mapping their client journey: Most people know generally who their target market/audience is but I like to help clients develop a crystal clear client avatar. That way it becomes really easy to map out their client journey (aka how they make their decision to purchase). Laura initially had 3 target audiences but upon further development and discussion, it became clear that one of those was going to be her primary avatar. From there, I was able to map out that particular avatar’s journey and highlight each instance they may interact with Laura and how/why they may drop off. That way we can use that information in the marketing strategy to give them what they are searching for along their journey so they can continue forward in their decision making process.
Brand identity: Laura had her foundational branding down (colors, logo, etc.) but going through some exercises helped her get much more clear on her overall brand identity including how she wants people to feel every single time they interact with her brand. This helped steer me towards helping her develop a stronger brand voice as well as the visual branding (mainly photos) she should use in her marketing efforts.
Website audit & SEO recommendations: The one piece of her business that Laura had already developed was her website. However, she wasn’t 100% happy with it so I did an audit as part of the intensive to help identify how to improve it. Through mapping out the client journey, we knew that most people would find Laura through a web search. This meant I needed to also include recommendations to improve the site’s SEO as well. The biggest recommendations I provided for the website overhaul included some imagery changes, copywriting changes to create a stronger story and help people picture themselves going through the transformation Laura provides, and some structural changes to a couple of pages to help them flow better with the new copy to give user’s a better experience. See below for the before and after of the website changes.
Key messaging & content pillars: Through mapping out the client journey and learning that Laura is a strong writer, it was abundantly clear that content marketing would be the most important piece of the overall marketing strategy. This means we needed to develop the key messaging for the brand to keep everything cohesive and harmonious and understand how the content pillars (engagement, education, connection, social proof, and promotional) will take her target audience through an entire sales funnel. Both of these are the foundation on which she’ll build her content marketing on top of.
Marketing strategy: Once we had all the foundational elements developed and clear, it was time to layout all the tactics to be used within the strategy and how each of the foundational elements works into these tactics. This included the following:
Content marketing: Using her blog as the foundation of this and then distributing this content via social media, email marketing, and video content. We identified search as the top way her clients will find her so blogging will be the most important tactic for her and the foundation for the rest of her content marketing. The plan is for her to blog on a consistent basis using her key messaging and content pillars and then repurpose that content to distribute to Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and email marketing.
Communication strategy: Establishing herself as an expert in her industry is going to be essential for gaining traction and clients. Because of this, I incorporated a basic PR strategy which mainly focused on pitching podcasts as well as a networking and partnership strategy to further reach her target audience.
Customer experience: Most people don’t include the customer experience in their marketing strategy but I personally see this as a pivotal piece of the strategy. When people have an amazing experience, they want to tell others. Because of this I think it’s important to consider this prior to even working with your first client. This also allows you to collect feedback and testimonials to use in your future marketing efforts.
Timeline & future steps: I prefer to give my clients a comprehensive marketing strategy so I layout every single tactic they should use and then provide a 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month timeline to show when they should implement and integrate which tactics. That way the strategy isn’t overwhelming right off the bat and will grow with them as they grow their brands. I also wanted to include future steps, especially for Laura since she was just starting out. This gives her an idea on how she can continue to move forward even after the 12-month strategy is in implementation.
“Working will Mallory was fantastic! She really understood the business model I was going for and helped me get a clear vision of where I am headed. She also gave me a beautiful website that I am very proud of!
I was concerned that it would be a lot of money for not a lot of information but Mallory totally delivered!”
Execution of the website redesign:
The most pressing piece of the strategy was reworking the website as well as developing the brand identify even further. Laura asked me to help implement the recommended changes to her site. That included improving the flow and user experience on the site by adding in updated imagery that evoked the brand emotions, incorporate more of a brand story and highlight the transformation clients will receive when working with Laura.
Here’s a look at the before and after of the homepage:
