So you’ve written a great blog post…and now what?
As a coach, you need to give away a *lot* to your potential clients for free before you sell anything. You know how important it is to share the value of our services through free content, either through your blog, Facebook page, or through newsletter, to build trust and show that what you can offer to your coaching clients is really going to help them, whether in business or in life. But the common scenario for a lot of coaches at the beginning of their career is that their content – no matter how valuable it is – is not really converting the readers into paying clients. The chance is, you are not making most of your blog due to the missing email marketing funnels.
Whether you are at the beginning of your coaching career, or you already have a massive following and a long list of clients, you could make your blog posts work a lot harder for you. I am going to show you how you can use email marketing to set up email marketing funnels at the end of each blog post that is going to help you convert your content readers into paying customers a lot more effectively than content alone.
I remember my frustration when – after getting 48 shares of my Facebook post and heaps of encouraging comments – I still got no emails with quote requests. The situation persisted for a while until I reached out to a more experienced coach I was following (a coach getting a coach, fancy that!) to ask for advice on what I was doing wrong.
A few hours and $ 200 later (yes, she *did* charge me for her advice, and I was happy to pay for it – I will tell you how she got me to pay without second thoughts a bit later!) I got a response: there was nothing wrong with my content! In fact, she complimented me on some of my posts and said they were ‘really inspiring’! The problem was: there simply wasn’t a clear monetization logic between my content and my paid services.
Monetization logic? Dan Norris in his book ‘Content Machine’ defines monetization logic as the relationship between your content and your paid products/services that makes your readers want to buy from you on the basis of what they’ve read.
Let’s have a look at an example of a good monetization logic:
Blog post: ’10 foolproof ways of improving your subject lines to increase your open rates by 30% – the ultimate guide for restaurant owners’
Product: Exclusive template of 20 customizable subject lines + FREE! 5 email templates for your restaurant business for just $ 4.99
Can you see the monetization logic between the blog post and the paid service here? It worked because the service was perfectly aligned with the audience that was *interested* in this very narrow, highly specialized service.
The beautiful thing about writing your own blog is that you can write content that will be logically linked to your specific services. By choosing to read the specific post (like the one about subject lines for newsletters in the restaurant business) that states a problem and solution the readers have already indicated they *may have that problem* to you with their attention. If you include a sign-up form at the end of the post promising them a customized solution to that problem, you convert your readers into *very* warm leads.
Don’t sell snow to Eskimo
Source: https://gph.is/YCfPKJ
In order to convert those warm leads into paying customers you need to (obviously, but…not so obvious as it turns out) offer them something that they really want. If the client comes to you to buy a blue dress but you offer them yellow trousers, do you think they will buy it? So: if you’re writing a blog post about blue dresses, don’t cool down the warm leads who have signed up to read more about blue dresses by offering them yellow trousers! I often find that coaches offer very broad services while their blog posts focus on very particular problems. Why not break down the offer into smaller (and cheaper) products/services? (It can be done so easily, especially with digital products!)
Of course, you can’t be salesy and simply ask your readers to buy a related product at the end of your post. That would be like proposing to someone on the first date.
So, what can you do?
‘You need to set up some email marketing funnels at the end of each of your posts ’ – said Linda, my coach.
Email marketing funnels?!
I wasn’t even doing any email marketing at that time! Little did I know that was about to change very soon and that I would soon become pretty obsessed with my little email marketing funnels.
’Yes. I will walk you through setting up email marketing funnels *that sell*. Please go to my signup page to enroll on the course. I am sure you will be able to make at least $500 from those funnels within a month or I will reimburse the course fee in full’
Needless to say, she totally sold me on the idea of signing up for her email marketing course. I have been using and perfecting the strategies I have learned there ever since and I am going to walk you through some of them in a nutshell below (completely for free, don’t worry.)
An email marketing funnel is a sequence of emails that leads the reader through some free content from the sign-up form (here: at the end of your blog post) to the checkout. It substantially increases your chances of converting your readers into paying customers. What Linda did to me is a very good example of a marketing funnel. Email funnels are basically like dating. You need to woo your customer with several emails before they say ‘yes’ to your proposal (to buy your product or service). Let me show you how.
Why emails?
Before we get to the nitty-gritty about how to set up a good email marketing funnel – let’s make one thing clear – you really do need email marketing. Even if you think you don’t. A lot of my clients initially object to using newsletters in their content marketing strategy. ‘I have 13,000 engaged followers on Facebook, I don’t need a newsletter!’; ‘Nobody reads emails these days!’ Well, nobody reads *boring* and *unimportant* emails these days, but if you make your emails valuable and important, I can assure you that your readers will be waiting for that ‘You got mail’ message.
The best thing about email marketing is that it creates a bridge between all your content marketing channels. You can ask your 13,000 engaged followers on Facebook to read your blog posts but you need to attract them with *something* there first. And once you have visitors to your specific blog posts, once you have comments under your Facebook posts, what do you do with them next?
– Nothing.
Oh blimey. A lot of really great coaches with fantastic content do not collect data (or act on them) or follow up on their blog post visitors.
If you do not follow up on your blog post visitors, you are basically leaving money on the table.
Breadcrumbing your way to success
Breadcrumbing may have some bad rep as a term for nasty behavior on dating websites, but I like to use it to describe – very graphically, you must admit – a technique of feeding your readers small pieces of valuable content and creating suspense by means of ‘cliffhangers’. Cliffhangers are unfinished stories, statements that make the customer wait in anticipation to open the next email. By building this anticipation you build a relationship with your readers, and you build trust – so by the time they get to the checkout they should be literally opening their wallets for you (if you get it right – you can read more about how to get it right below).
Email sequences are a perfect way to do that in a way that is non-intrusive and that allows you to stream your audience and target the right services/products to the right leads.
Have a look at your services and your blog posts – say, you are selling advice on email marketing. This is a pattern of an email sequence beginning from a related blog post and ending with a checkout with your service:
| Blog post | Sign-up form at the end of the blog post | Email 1 | Email 2 | Checkout |
| ’10 fool-proof ways of improving your subject lines to increase your open rates by 30% – the ultimate guide for restaurant owners’ | Do you want to get free templates of emails for the restaurant industry that will help you attract more clients? Sign up with your email address here and I will send you a little piece of magic that will increase your newsletter open rate by 30%! No spam, promise!
[e-mail] |
Woo-hoo! Thanks for signing up! Are you ready to kick-start your email marketing campaign? Check out these two templates for the next week – all you need to do is to customize the content with your own photos/venue name/menu and you’re ready to go! I promise it will increase your open rate (and the number of customers!) this week already! | Happy Monday George! Hope you are resting after a busy weekend in your restaurant…Here is another template you can use in your email marketing campaign:
How is it going so far? Let me know if your open rate has increased! Do you want to get more templates like this? Check out my customizable Email Marketing Strategy for Restaurants Template [URL here] and set up your whole email marketing campaign for your restaurant in minutes for just $ 4.99 |
Get the exclusive
template of 20 customizable subject lines + FREE! 5 email templates for your restaurant business for just $ 4.99 |
Stream it baby!
Your newsletter content should reflect that individualized approach too. By setting up separate sign-up forms at the end of each post, you can stream your subscribers and divide your list into sub-lists according to their main interests. You should then tweak the emails to each list accordingly, to make sure the content really solves *their* specific problem – not the problem of their neighbor!
Conclusion
It may all sound like rocket science now, but once you have looked at your services *and* your audience (which of your blog posts were most popular? This is a good indication of what your audience really wants from you!) you will be easily able to differentiate your message and diversify your coaching services to reflect your readers’ needs. Email automation strategies (which I’m explaining in another post) and differentiation templates will make it really easy, quick, and pain-free to set up too.
Need some help with this? Join our Email Marketing Master’s Academy Course for free!
So – I’m going to do what I preach now: if you found this post useful, I have an exclusive invitation to an Email Marketing Master’s Academy Course for you! Together with some top coaches, we will be teaching an extremely practical and actionable course to live in our Facebook group this May. In the course, you will learn all you need to know to develop a successful email marketing campaign for your coaching business – and we will help you grow your list to 500 subscribers. The course is completely free and all you need to do to get the invitation to the group is leave your email here.
As you may have guessed from what I’ve written above, I’m not a spammer and I know that sending you salesy copy is just a waste of our time – both your time and my time! (More on that in my next post on how to write engaging newsletters so stay tuned!) So don’t worry – I will not send you anything that you are not interested in and I will only use the email you have provided to send you the invitation to the course and the course materials (worksheets that will guide you through the process of collecting your first 500 subscribers, crafting a powerful and coherent email marketing strategy, etc.) Sounds like a good start? Happy to meet you. Tell me more about yourself and your business needs in the comments below or write to emilia@getanewsletter.com
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