KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays (31 page)

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Authors: Joel Comm,Mark Victor Hansen

BOOK: KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays
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Once you’ve built a successful Internet business, you even create an additional asset that you can market: expertise in creating an Internet business in your field.
 
Coaching is another way of delivering that information, and it’s a particularly intensive and valuable way. For the client, it can bring targeted results, and it embeds the information deeper and faster than any other method.
 
When people listen to a recording of you explaining how to earn money by uploading video clips to YouTube, some of that information will be missed. If they listen to it while driving to work in the morning, they’ll lose concentration every time they have to look at the road. If they’ve bought your e-book, they’ll dip in and out, picking up the information that they think will be the most useful—and leaving plenty of other goodies behind. If they’re reading your blog, it’s inevitable that they’ll miss some of your posts, and besides, blogs aren’t the best platform to teach a course. They provide nuggets of information rather than a clear guide from start to success.
 
Coaching allows people who want to pick up your knowledge direct access to the source. It’s the most powerful way of helping people achieve their goals using the knowledge that you’ve managed to accumulate.
 
The coaching itself can be done in all sorts of different ways. We’ve already seen how it’s possible to deliver online coaching, either by using specialized software or by creating videos that can be accessed behind a pay wall or delivered on DVD. But coaching is always at its best in person when it’s done individually, for a set period of time, or in workshops to a group of people.
 
Just as the effect of coaching is particularly strong, so the importance of that four-step sales process—know me, like me, trust me, pay me—is concentrated, too.
 
You don’t have to know people very well to start reading their blogs. You need to like them to come back, but if they annoy you occasionally, you can live with it, provided they aren’t asking you to do more than browse their content, clicking occasionally on an ad.
 
You have to like and trust people before you’ll buy an affiliate product from them online, but everything has to be firmly in place before they’ll hire you as a coach.
 
You’re going to be telling people what they’re doing wrong. You’re going to be giving them advice related directly to their life, including, perhaps, their personal life, because that’s always an influence on professional success, too. They’re going to be trusting you with personal information—their doubts, their fears, their dreams for the future—and you’re going to have to persuade them that to achieve those dreams they’re going to have to do things that they might not want to do.
 
After all, if they had wanted to do them before now, they would have achieved their success already.
 
Before people even think about hiring you as a coach, they have to feel that they know you, like you, and absolutely trust you. It’s something that can happen only after you’ve already used your web sites to broadcast who you are.
 
That identity is presented as your
brand.
 
Strategies for Branding
 
How would you describe yourself? If you had to choose three words that best describe your personality, what would they be?
 
You might say that you’re “loyal, fun-loving, and down-to-earth.” Or perhaps you’re “adventurous, creative, and caring.” Or maybe you’re “outgoing, bubbly, and thoughtful.”
 
It’s likely that you think you’re all of those things together, and if you were to describe yourself completely, you’d probably want to use all of those terms. The people who know you might agree with you, but they’d probably want to highlight one or two in particular. Your friends might find you very funny, for example. Or they might like you because they know you always listen or because you always have such smart advice.
 
When they think about you, they tend to associate you first with your most obvious characteristic. Whether it’s your wit, your big heart, or your giant intelligence, your prime feature helps you to stand out from the people around you.
 
You can think of that characteristic as your natural brand—and everyone has one. It might not be something you’ve worked hard to create. It might not be something you’ve worked at all to create. It’s just who are you, and it’s how other people have come to see you, and it’s how they distinguish you from everyone else they know.
 
When you’re building a coaching business, you’ll want to plan and build that brand deliberately. You won’t be the only person offering coaching services in your field, and you certainly won’t be the only person offering information about your field on your blog and in your products. Your brand will help you to stand out from your competitors. It will help to build a relationship of trust with your audience, and it will show them instantly what they can expect to receive when they join your community.
 
In the past, branding was mostly restricted to large corporations and specific products. Faced with a shelf full of unfamiliar fizzy drinks, all offering to quench thirst and supply bubbles, Coca-Cola’s branding power meant that customers knew what that product would do for them. It wouldn’t just refresh them. It wouldn’t just give them a sugar rush and a fizzy tongue. If “Coca-Cola is life,” then drinking it would give them an instant burst of happiness, energy, and excitement. When choosing between three products whose name you’re not familiar with and one you do recognize, you’ll choose the one you know. Because you’re familiar with it, you can trust it to deliver what it says on the bottle.
 
Branding helps customers confused by a giant range of choices to make smart buying decisions. Especially on the Internet, where the next option is just a click away, it’s an essential factor in turning leads into customers and creating a closely knit community that not only returns, but even evangelizes on your behalf.
 
In the past few years branding has changed. It’s become individualized. Now it’s possible—even essential—for people to have brands of their own. It’s something that’s come about through a number of factors. A better understanding of the way branding works is likely to have had much to do with it. We recognize the importance of brands in our own lives, whether it’s the Apple logo on our mobile phones, the Nike swoosh on our shoes, or the giant signs that follow each other down the highway. Brands have not only become more commonplace, they’ve also become recognized. We know what they’re doing. We know why they’re doing it. And we wonder if the power of branding can do something for us, too.
 
But the importance of personal branding also has a lot to do with the changes in the job market. Once, it was possible to join a company and know that you would be there until the day you retired. You’d get regular pay raises, earn the odd bonus, and leave with a gold watch and a gold-plated pension. Those days are gone. Companies no longer think twice about cutting employees loose—and the employees think nothing of quitting for another company... or setting up shop on their own.
 
That means we are all responsible for how we appear to buyers, whether those buyers are employers or customers. It means we have to recognize those positive characteristics that help us to stand out and project them so that we’re instantly recognizable and never forgotten.
 
There are two steps to building your brand: (1) understanding the elements your brand should contain and (2) creating the structure that will broadcast that brand.
 
IDENTIFYING YOUR BRAND
 
In his book
Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success,
branding expert Dan Schawbel talks about the importance of basing a personal brand on authenticity. Brands need to be real, he argues, and should be based on an individual’s true character, personality, and outlook. “Why do you need to be real?” he asks. “Because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much!”
 
Those are two good reasons, but there’s a third that’s just as persuasive.
 
Basing a brand on who you really are is the easiest option available. You won’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You won’t risk getting caught out when you talk to people at conferences and workshops. And you won’t have to wrack your brain wondering how the person you’re trying to project would behave on Twitter, on Facebook, or in your e-books.
 
You can just relax, be you... and make money.
 
Nor should you have to look too hard to find a unique characteristic that sums up your attitude. It could be your sense of adventure. It could be your head for statistics. It could be nothing more than your winning smile and your positive attitude.
 
You don’t need more than one characteristic to build your brand, and chances are, the first one that comes into your head should be the one you choose.
 
Psychologists always ask people to say the first thing that comes into their head when they look at a picture. They don’t ask for the second thing, and they don’t give their subjects time to have a good long think. They want their most immediate reaction—because that’s the one that’s likely to be the most honest. Ask yourself what you think is the single most outstanding characteristic of your attitude, your personality, or the way you do business, and your first reaction is likely to be the core of your brand.
 
Obviously, it has to be positive and inspirational. It has to be something that other people would want to have, too. But as long as it’s upbeat, fun, and exciting, you should find that it will help you to stand out in the marketplace.
 
BROADCASTING YOUR BRAND
 
Much trickier will be broadcasting that brand. This is what giant corporations pay advertising companies suitcase loads of money to do on their behalf. If you have a suitcase or two filled with money that you don’t know what to do with, you can save yourself a small headache and do the same thing. There are now plenty of small marketing and branding companies around that will be happy to help make your brand recognizable.
 
But you don’t need a suitcase stuffed with cash to broadcast your brand. One of the advantages of choosing a personal brand that’s closely linked to who you really are is that it then becomes very easy to broadcast it yourself. As you’ll see, social media has made it easier still.
 
That’s because your brand will consist of two elements: (1) a visual image that is immediately communicated and (2) a style that allows people to feel they’re getting close to you and that they know you.
 
To create the visual image, you’ll probably need the help of a professional. A photographer can shoot portraits to use in your marketing material that communicate the characteristic that you most want to put across. You’ll have to tell your photographer what you want the image to say. Find someone with the right amount of talent, and you should end up with a selection of photos that you can use for your branding.
 
Figure 7.1
“Barefoot Executive” Carrie Wilkerson is an expert on all sorts of marketing topics, but her knowledge of branding comes naturally and serves her well.
 
Carrie Wilkerson, for example, is a consultant and strategist who helps entrepreneurs who work at home to build their businesses (
Figure 7.1
). Just look at the main image she uses on her web site
BlogBarefoot.com
. She’s shown sitting on the floor, smiling and relaxed ... and barefoot.
 
That’s her brand. That’s what she’s offering to people who hire her as a coach or a consultant. She’ll help them to be professional, but in a way that’s easy, relaxed, and stress-free. It’s a message she communicates through the pictures she uses. It’s a feeling that’s summarized in the title she uses to describe herself: “The Barefoot Executive.” And it’s also something that comes across clearly in her Twitter stream (
Figure 7.2
).
 
Carrie’s tweets are inspiring, positive, and professional, but they’re also personal. They help her to communicate her brand and her personality directly to her target market, building a close relationship with people she may well be working with in the future.

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