Discover Your Coaching Niche

Archive for the ‘Expert’ Category

You’re a coach.

 

And you know how for many coaches, they have no automated way of bringing in customer revenue?

 

This means that they have to struggle to bring in every individual customer payment.

 

This means low revenue, and often little or no profit.

 

Worse than that, – it means worrying when the next customer payment will come in.

 

Fear that you’ll have to go back to employment to make ends meet.

 

Well on Thursday 19th May, I’ll share with you  my step-by-step, proven  system to create high value audio products.

 

Which means an automated stream of coaching income for you – while you sleep.

 

This is what I will cover:

• The 7 killer audio mistakes you MUST avoid!

• What essential audio equipment you must have  

• - and the best places to get it!

• ALL the software you need  

• - and exactly where to get it for free!

Space is limited.

 

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:  

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/127950246

 

Title: Audio Secrets Masterclass  

Date: Thursday, May 19, 2011  

Time: 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM BST

 

After registering you will receive a  

confirmation email containing information about  

joining the Webinar.

 

System Requirements

 

PC-based attendees  

Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

 

Macintosh®-based attendees  

Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

 

To your online success!

 

Alun.

 

ps click here to book:  

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/127950246

 

pps make sure you attend live – I will have a VERY special offer ONLY available on the webinar…

 

Technorati Tags: audio webinar, product creation

“I don’t need to promote my book – I have a book contract with a big publishing house.”

It often comes as a surprise to many that books do not promote themselves.  And don’t expect your conventional publisher to do that for you either.

The cold had truth is you have to promote it yourself.

And while that may be a shock at first, you are by far and away the best person on this planet to promote your book.

Just follow this list to build the elements of your book promotion strategy.

What is book promotion?

It’s raising the profile of your book in your target audience’s eyes.  You have to first identify clearly what niche your book satisfies.  And then you have to bring it to their attention.

Specifically the aim of book promotion is to take your book from being unheard of through to being a must-buy.

Here is a list of media that you should consider when creating a book promotion strategy.

•    Press Releases
•    Book Exhibitions
•    Media interviews – radio and TV
•    Getting influential reviewers to review it
•    Promotional video
•    Internet marketing
•    Social media
•    Product Launches
•    Conventional advertising in conventional media

Press Releases

You write a announcement that is released to the press that gives details of your book.  Assuming this is of interest to their readers, the release may get published verbatim, or lightly edited.

Press releases follow a fairly standard format, and adhering to this makes it more likely yours will be adopted.

As many journalists rely on online pr sites for their material, being present on these sites makes it very likely that your release will be picked up.

The material does need to be newsworthy, of course.

Book Exhibitions

The advantage of these exhibitions is that those attending are typically interested in publishing or promoting your book.  Don’t expect those attending to be your target market.  These are recommenders, and your job is to find those recommenders that are relevant to your market and your book.

Media interviews – radio and TV

For certain books with fairly wide appeal this can be a great way of getting your message out.  It’s a good idea to get some media coaching so that you know what to expect, and are able to get your points across succinctly in what can be a very short interview!

Getting influential reviewers to review it

If influential people in your industry review your book positively, it can be a great boost to your book’s profile.  Approach these people in plenty of time, and send them a copy of your book, asking what you want.

Getting to be able to reach these people of influence can be a project in itself which requires tenacity and creativity.  Always be respectful of their time and only approach them if they would be interested in reviewing your book.

Internet marketing

In internet marketing, I include email marketing, teleseminars, webinars and podcasts.  One of the most neglected means of book promotion is that pioneered by Alex Mandossian – the webinar series.  With this, you are interviewed in one or a series of teleseminars, in which you reveal the content of the book in answer to your interviewer’s questions.

These can either be free or can be chargeable – especially for a teleseminar series.  You may consider giving the book away in the package charge for your teleseminar series.

Needless to say, you should promote your book to your online list, and consider joint ventures with those people who are likely to already have your prospects on your list.

What applies to teleseminars also applies to podcasts – both yours and those of others.

Social Media

Social media can help create a buzz around your book launch and can also feed into other promotional channels.  They social media where you must have a presence for your book are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and your blog.

Consider setting up a Facebook Fan Page dedicated to your book, together with a YouTube Channel.  Create a WordPress blog dedicated to promote your book where you can easily post blog entries, short videos and audios to help with your promotion.

Product Launches

Of course conventional publishers do launch books.  But although they do this for J K Rowling, don’t expect them to put much effort into launching your book unless you have agreed a specific book launch budget and what it will contain.

If you follow the guidelines laid out for internet marketing product launches pioneered by Jeff Walker, however, you can get a great deal of the effect while safeguarding your launch budget.

Conventional advertising in conventional media

Very much bottom of the pile is conventional advertising, and the challenge for this is the relevance of your advert in a mass-market medium like a newspaper or a magazine.  While more targeted periodicals are a better bet, there is still the fact that conventional adverts are a scatter-gun approach where you really need a sniper’s rifle.  Conventional adverts are expensive and have a horribly low response rate.

Using direct marketing techniques can be much more effective.

Pulling it all together

I’ve covered all the elements that are considered by conventional publishers for promoting your book.  And I’ve added a number of others that are not well addressed by them.

Your book promotion strategy needs to be comprehensive – to be successful it must contain most of these elements.  It also needs to be planned and co-ordinated to ensure that you reach your target market and find them receptive.

Alun Richards
http://facebook.com/PublishOnKindle

Technorati Tags: book promotion, book marketing, selling your book, book promtion strategies

If you want to gain customers and you want them to come to you rather than having to chase them, then you need a specific set of strategies.

When you are recognised as an expert in your field, you will be sought out by prospects.

But what do you do to make this happen? Well, there are a number of tried and tested approaches for attaining expert status.

These include presenting material of relevance to your target market. Telling them what they can do to solve their most pressing problems. The best way to do this is via public speaking – but there are effective and ineffective ways to present to the public. How do you know who to present to, where and when?

Writing and publishing a book is high on the recommended list of strategies. It can serve as an effective business card that opens doors that were previously inaccessible to you. Many people see this as daunting, but it needn’t be.

Press coverage of what you’re doing, especially if you’re presenting in front of a relevant, high profile market can help bolster your image. As can editorial coverage via articles in relevant magazines.

But there are an equal number of online and technology-assisted strategies that have become available, or more accessible, or more cost-effective over the last few years. And these can accelerate your route to expert status.

I’ll be revealing more about these strategies over the next few weeks here, as blog postings, as audio downloads, as presentations, in teleclasses and via CD media.

I can show you how to attain expert status in 90 days. You can order my first overview of these routes to becoming an expert in your field by ordering my Achieve Expert Status in 90 Days CD by clicking here: http://Kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZSDMIP

And do watch my short Youtube video about it below.

Achieve Expert Status

This is the continuation of an interview where Peter Johnson grills Alun about how to be perceived as an expert by your target market, and hence bring in more clients.

Peter: So, you’ve been working with coaches specifically on this for quite some while by the sounds of things.

Alun: For quite a while. It also helps if you are member of a particular niche that you are serving. And for example, I’ve been a coach now probably for about 10 or 12 years, since coaching at least in the UK was in its infancy.

So, being a coach, I know what the typical problems and challenges that coaches come across. And that makes me much more able to deliver things of value to my target market, who are coaches.

Now, I am not saying that you have to be a member of a particular niche to deliver to them. Well, not necessarily, but goodness me, it helps because you have been there.

Then you have had practical experience in the problems and you can, for members of the target market, you can quickly sift the wheat from the chaff. You can give them stuff that is really relevant and valuable to them.

Peter: Yeah, so this being an expert in a field, that is the ‘why’ issue from the sound of things.

Alun: Absolutely. That’s the critical thing. You being an expert is absolutely critical because it gives you authority, because it gives you credibility. And when you put those two things together, that is like an attractive force, attracting clients into you, because they want to benefit from your knowledge and experience.

And let’s distinguish one thing here. When you are seeking out an expert, what you want is somebody who’s got practical experience of the field that you’re looking for. There are many people out there who are in academia who write books on things and the people within that who’ve done research can have some credibility.

But what you really want is people who have actually done what you are looking for. So, you actually want to follow practitioners who made the mistakes. They have seen what the problems are. They can share those and they can help you avoid those mistakes.

Peter: Right. So, they are really being bruised and battered a little bit on this journey of life.

Alun: Absolutely. They usually are. Yes.

Peter: Yes, and in some ways it is where we find that real value of people who actually have made mistakes that we can avoid by listening to them.

Alun: Indeed.

Peter: How do you know what your niche should be as an expert?

Alun: Well, in fact – I help people do this. I think there are two parts of it. One you need to look inside yourself as to what resources you bring to the party and you also need to look at what the market out there is demanding.

So, if we look at the “within yourself” part first, have at look at what your skills, knowledge, and expertise are.  And then, you go right back to your teenage years and find out, you know, what are you good at? What are you good at in your first job? What were your responsibilities in your first job, in your second job? What skills did you gain? What skills have you gained in work? What skills have you gained outside work?

A good test is to look at what people ask you about all the time. Other people who come to you because you have developed a particular skill in a particular area or particular knowledge or you are particularly experienced. They say, “How do you do this?”  If there is a pattern of people coming to you to ask you those particular things – that’s what you should specialise in.

Peter: Even though it might not be what you’re doing as a job?

Alun: Exactly. It may be parallel to that. What you might find is that you might have some transferable skills from your job to take to another domain. Now, maybe your job as well, but it might not be. But the key things are the skills, knowledge, and experience.

And look broadly with that. Don’t just write the obvious things down and you know, when in doubt, ask your friends. Ask your friends. Ask your colleagues. Ask your partner. They will know what you’re good at and what you are not good at.

Peter: I get a feeling that because you’ve been doing this for quite some while, you may well have some hidden material on this which you may wish to share with the listeners.

Alun: Indeed, I have. I’ve got a resource on the internet. If people go to http://www.nichecourse.co.uk, n-i-c-h-e-c-o-u-r-s-e-.c-o.u-k, and that’s an auto-responder-delivered course that is completely free that will allow you to discover what niche is right for you.

And it takes you through, in a bit more detail, what I have just covered in terms of your skills, knowledge, and experience. It also looks of what you are motivated by, what your passions are about, because you’ve got to have that to drive forward and stick to a particular area.

So, you need that and then it also looks at a part we haven’t covered yet and that is looking at where the demand in the marketplace is. So, that is where there is activity in the marketplace. You know, are there magazines covering the topic you are thinking of specializing in? Are there books published on it? Is there a lot of internet activity on it? It is that kind of thing. If you are going into a bookshop, is there a lot of book space in a large bookshop dedicated to your area? If there is, there is a demand. So, it’s looking at all of those things.

Peter: And yeah! That resource is free, you say?

Alun: That resource is free. Indeed.

And here’s that link again, a free course allowing you to discover your coaching niche: http://www.nichecourse.co.uk

The full 25 minute version of this interview on CD can be obtained here:
http://Kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZSDMIP

Technorati Tags: expert status, alun richards, coaching, marketing, expert

This is an extract from an interview with Peter Johnson, where Peter asks me about how to Achieve Expert Status.

Peter: Hi, it’s Peter Johnson here and I’m looking forward to interviewing Alun Richards. Alun is actually going to talk to us in some depth about how to grow your expert status in 90 days. Now, I find that incredible – expert status in 90 days!

Please Alun, just give an overall outline as to what this is all about?

Alun: Okay. Well, Peter, the way I see it, if you are working in professional services, if you are delivering professional services, whether you are a coach, whether you are a consultant, whether you are a therapist, whether you are a trainer, whether you are NLP practitioner – you are delivering personal professional services. And you need a way to attract customers to you if you are doing that.

Being perceived as an expert means that people are actually coming to you, rather than you having to go to the people. So, it’s in your interest to be portrayed as an expert within a particular field and then you’ll get people coming to you.

Peter: So, that is why we should be an expert.

Alun: Absolutely.

Peter: Now, you talk about 90 days. Now, we obviously got a journey to go through here. Could you outline some of the key steps in connection with that?

Alun: Absolutely. Now, one thing I will say before we start. It’s now possible to do that, I believe, within 90 days because you can leverage a number of the technologies that are available now, that weren’t simply available 10, 12 years ago.

So, you can leverage the internet, you can leverage personal data recording devices, one of which we are using now that, you know, simply did not exist a number of years ago. And these are increasingly affordable and accessible to everybody out there. So, I’m going to take people through what they can do in various different areas.

Peter: That would be very useful. Great. So what is an expert?

Alun: Well, an expert is somebody who has got skills, knowledge, and experience within a specific narrow field. And I am saying narrow field because, let’s be honest, unless you are Leonardo da Vinci, you haven’t really seriously got expertise in more than one or two or maximum three fields.

You know, Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter. He was a scientist. He was a researcher. You know, Renaissance, the archetype of Renaissance man. Typically, people aren’t like that anymore, but you can have specific in-depth knowledge in a narrow area and if you have that, you can be highly sought after by your clients.

Peter: That is great. So, you maintain it’s necessary to be an expert and have a niche particularly. First, explain what a niche is, a real niche, and why is it important to be an expert in this field?

Alun: Well, a niche is simply a small part of a much larger market. So, for example, a mass market might be a market for people who buy washing liquid or washing powder for their clothes. That will be a typical mass market product. Now, when you are talking about a niche, you are talking about a very, very narrow area.

For example, if I tell you what my niche is – I provide services to coaches to improve their marketing. So, it’s specifically for coaches although, a lot of this stuff works for other professional service providers as well; but I concentrate on coaches who want to find their own niche, funnily enough, and then leverage that by understanding what marketing can give them and allow them to bring in more business. So, that’s my niche.

And when anybody specialises in a niche like that, you can quickly get formal credibility and authority because of what you know and what you are able to deliver to your target market.

Technorati Tags: Expert, Achieve Expert Status, coaching marketing

Expert Audio