Branding Basics for Coaches   by Dr. Gary Arnold

in Marketing / Brand Marketing    (submitted 2012-01-24)

How can you make your name and coaching services valuable in the eyes of the potential client? How can you create and build your brand? Your brand is the sound bite you carry with you so that others can recognize you in a picture, logo or a few words. Your company, you, yourself, and your coaching services are all interrelated by your branding effort. In the consumer's mind everything is lumped together, your services, you and your company. You want to make sure that your brand stands for something that is uniquely you.

Branding helps the prospect prospective client simplify their buying decision with the picture your brand portrays in summary form. Your brand should be easy to remember, easy to recognize, different from your competitors, reflected in a very few words, original and easy for your customers to repeat and talk about. You want to build trust and recognition and perceived value. You want to simplify and accelerate the shopping experience for buyers so they can compare and select the best service that meets their needs.

The value of your brand is in the mind of the consumer, and is determined by how your services interacted with them in the past, what needs your services met, and how well your services lived up to their expectations. The goal of branding is when a prospect or client sees your name or service, desired value comes to mind.

There are so many paths that you can take as a coach. You can be a business coach, a life coach, a coach for young people about to embark on higher education. You can provide coaching services for military personnel reentering civilian life, you can offer coaching to the elderly as they make life changing transitions. The list could go on and on; you get the idea.

As I said, the purpose of your brand is to give you an identity and a sound bite. It's to portray your expertise, flashed into the mind of your client or prospect so that you become strategically aligned, in one step, as the expert in your field.

Starbucks did it with coffee. In 1971 they had one store. Today there are over 6,000 stores in 30 countries. All it took was one logo, one name, great service, great coffee and persistence. Your brand and your reputation will be built up and expanded the same way whether you have one service in a small niche, or a thousand in a global market.

About the Author

For over 25 years Dr. Arnold has been CEO of Windhorse Corp., where he assists the nation's top speakers, coaches, authors, entertainers, business owners and sales executives. He is the author of "How the Top 1% of Speakers and Coaches Do Internet Marketing".
His mission is single focused: to help his clients learn the insider secrets how the Top 1% of Speakers earn massive amounts of money with their speaking career in the most direct and easiest way possible.
To get more tips you can use immediately to improve monetizing your speaking, presentation, and coaching skills, sign up for Dr. Gary Arnold's monthly e-newsletter by visiting http://www.6figureSpeakers.com and entering your email address. http://www.windhorse.org