Coaching call: How can I market myself for my new online course?

Today I am coaching Sandra Hallnor who is a family photographer struggling to work out the best way to market her new product in readiness for her launch. How can she reach her ideal customer and what kind of content should she create that will be enticing but not overwhelming? How can she maintain consistency in content creation?

In this episode we chat about:
– How to break down the mountain of content ideas into simple bite-sized pieces that engage your audience where they are at and entice them to want more
– Strategies for audience growth through multiple cross-promotion channels where the customer can be redirected to long-form content and further nurtured
– Overcoming self-doubt mindset and removing the emotional attachment to your content
– When overthinking can lead to under-delivering….remember, any content is better than no content and all content can be edited, repurposed or even deleted as your vision becomes clearer.

 

Today, I'm coaching one of my Launch Magic students, Sandra, on how she can market herself for her new online course. She's really wanting to add a new income stream to her business with the help of digital products. But she doesn't really know how to reach those new people and what kind of content to create outside of the content that she's already creating on Instagram. 

And she's pretty keen to start maybe posting some blogs, but she just doesn't know what to write about. She's worried that she's giving away a little bit too much in her free content. So today we're talking about some of those content topics that she can share that will be super valuable to her audience without overwhelming them with the how-to when they don't have the support to implement. 

I've talked about this a bit on the blog in the past wherein a lot of the time, our paid products were not just giving them extra knowledge. We're actually also giving them the support and the accountability that they need to implement what they know. And when we give away how-to content for free, it actually can end up having the opposite effect to helping them. It can overwhelm them. It can leave them feeling stuck because they don't have the support.

 

Break down the mountain of content ideas into simple bite-sized pieces of valuable content

Firstly I want to say you don't always have to have that bigger reach and that bigger audience. You can still sell to a smaller audience by either selling a more expensive product, which I'm sure if you're solving a small specific problem, it's not going to be a more expensive product.

Or by re-engaging them time and time again, solving more problems for them, or solving recurring problems for them. So it doesn't have to be this huge, big audience. I just want to point that out. But we will look at how you can start to increase that reach. 

So you say you want to start doing blog posts. I know you mentioned in your application form that you want to do email but you don’t know what to write for the blogs or for the emails. 

Maybe let's work on pinpointing a couple of different topics that you could write about on a blog. So what is one thing I suppose that photographers think they have to do to get sharp photos, but it isn’t buying a more expensive camera and lenses? There you go. There's a piece of content. Why? Why is a more expensive camera or a more expensive lens isn't going to give you that sharp photo that you dream of? It is providing you with better possibilities to get a sharper photo, but if you don't know how to set the camera up and how to use the camera and all the extra functions, it just isn't going to help you to get the results that you want if you don't know how to use the camera. 

 

Strategies for audience growth where the customer can be redirected to long-form content and further nurtured

In that blog post though, you don't want to overwhelm them by talking about all of the different settings and how you would set that up. That is something that they will learn in the course. But you are starting to shift their mindset away from, Oh, the reason I'm not getting sharp photos is because my camera's too old, or my lens isn't good enough to them realizing, Oh, it's actually possible for me to get these sharp photos with the current equipment that I have without going and spending all thousands of dollars on all of this new equipment.I just need to learn about these settings and how to set them. 

And then the last part is editing. So I feel like they probably already think they know what to do and that's why they get so frustrated because the images are still blurry. So if a mistake they're doing, they don't know that they're not doing the right thing, if you know what I mean. So then your job in your free content is to show them what they don't.

It's not to show them how to do what they don't know, but it's to show them that they don't know what they don't know. Because until somebody says to you,  Oh, this setting matters and they're like, Oh, I didn't even know that was a thing. I don't know if that's what makes the images sharp.

But where do you stop though if you're giving advice? So you can tell them what to do, but giving them the how-to is generally going to overwhelm them in a blog post format or any kind of free content format.

It's not something that you can give a blanket statement to everybody, and it's going to solve the same problem for everybody. And if you try to do that, it's probably going to leave them feeling overwhelmed. It might lead them to want to go and buy new equipment.

So once you've started creating those blog posts, then getting that reach is a matter of getting that content in front of new people.

And that's where it might look like doing cross-promotions. So if you know somebody else who has an audience of photographers reaching out, ask them, Hey, I'll promote something of yours if you'll promote something of mine. Or offering them some kind of affiliate partnership that can help to get your content in front of them.

You could offer to teach other people's courses or other people's memberships. Teach something free, like a free workshop, free masterclass, or podcast interviews. So pitching podcasts that speak to photographers and telling them, Hey, I have these things that I can help your audience. I'd love to be a guest on the show and teach them this topic, or that topic.

Now suddenly you're in front of these new people and then you can give them that call to action to go back to your website and read your blog. Then we would be looking at how can we create short-form content on Instagram to drive people back to read that blog post.

 

Overcoming self-doubt mindset and removing the emotional attachment to your content

Could you remove yourself from the process? Could you bring in a VA or somebody else? Your VA publishes it for you. It's one way to sort of remove that emotional element of hitting that publish button.

I'm putting this out into the world because somebody else is doing that for you. Even if you are just scheduling it, instead of hitting the post button, it feels a little bit less painful. Because it's not happening right now. As long as you don't change your mind and go and unscheduled it before it goes out.

I've done that before but you know that self-doubt is really normal. It's so normal. We all worry. We want to deliver so much value. We want to make sure that we're helping people and we think, Is this going to be helping people enough? The chances are that if you're the kind of person who is worrying about that, you are going to be delivering more than enough anyway.

 

Any content is better than no content

Remember, posting anything is better than posting nothing. It's one of those things as well that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. You start to realise what content's working well, and what content is not working well.

And you start to slowly get that feedback from people and that first comment that you get or that first reply that you get that will say, Hey, this was actually really helpful. Save that. Create a little file so that next time you are doubting yourself before you hit that post button, you can remind yourself, Hey, actually this stuff that I'm posting helps people.

 

Make use of Pinterest

Something else just popped into my mind about getting that content in front of more people. I suspect that photographers probably do use it being the visual people that they are.

So that might be something that's worthwhile exploring. It's an extra step in that blog publishing process where you just create a pin and you share it to Pinterest. It has that added benefit in that it's also a search engine. So when people are searching to take better photos, for example, I don't know if that's what photographers are searching for, but if they're searching for that and you've written an article, Five ways to take better photos great. That's going to show up even if you don't have a big audience on there.

Even if it is way over-delivering, even if it's not the right topic. The only way you'll know if it was the right topic or not was to get it out there. You can't sit there and it's not something that you can solve by thinking, unfortunately. And the more you do it, the more you'll realise, Oh, oh, I wrote about that.

I can maybe tweak that. Or maybe I don't want that there anymore. And you can delete that, you can delete posts, and you can repurpose them. You can edit them. It's a great way to get in front of your target audience.

Something related to the topic of your course. So we can have in our businesses, we can have those general lead magnets, which are great. Fulfilling up our email list with all photographers.

 

Pin it?