It is a common misconception that advertising is the cure for a stagnant business. Getting more eyeballs through expensive ads does not always translate into better business. Advertising is the magnifying glass that amplifies your numbers. However, before going down the ad route, a coach and their consultant should fix a few things in their digital footprint.
Advertising is an amplifier. If you have a confusing funnel, ads will only amplify that confusion. Ads amplify a broken conversion process; they don’t fix it. Here are some critical issues you must fix with your coaching website before you think about spending money on advertisements.
Focus
Many coaching websites try to appeal to everyone and miss out on potential business. Advertising needs to be targeted, and your website design and flow should aim to target the same audience.
If you focus on a few groups, such as lawyers or corporate employees, you have a higher chance of success. Instead of writing, “we are a wellness gym”, a specific group focus can lead to higher conversion rates and more revenue.
If a visitor can tell who you can help and how you can help within 5-7 seconds of landing on your homepage, that’s a problem you have just solved.
Keep the home page design and vocabulary simple. Removing friction either in understanding or on page design, helps make the path to the CTA button easier. Everyone wants a personalized experience without having to pay for one. You can provide a personalized experience via your website design. This means you can target a specific group of people, who will feel they are being given personal attention. However, you know your website design is targeted to a group of people instead of a specific individual.
The three-second rule
The three-second rule is one of the most important technical details in a website design. If all the information is not available within three seconds of opening a page, there is a very high chance of the visitor moving on to the next result.
Today, 80% of ad clicks come from mobile phones. Faster loading time is essential to target these mobile users who are more than happy to change their destination if a page does not load on time. Lowering your bounce rate should be an important metric while designing your website, or else you will lose more than half of your traffic before they even see your headline.
Minimize the number of clicks: Reducing the number of clicks to get from the ad to the booking page leads to more conversions.
Thumb-Friendly Page Design: Designing mobile-friendly webpages makes it easier for a visitor to scroll through your webpage.
Page Speed: Always aim for a page load time of under three seconds. There are several tools, such as PageSpeed Insights, that provide an unbiased review of your page load times.
High Value Lead Magnet
Providing customers with a free PDF guide through their email is a high value lead magnet. Once you get their email, you should focus on automating the follow-up system to try to get them to book your services.
First time visitors might not always be ready to buy a package. Instead, they will want to see how good your knowledge, or your reviews are. The subsequent email follow-up keeps your brand and your website fresh in their minds, leading to better chances of conversion.
Social Testimony
Any online visitor checking out a new website comes with skepticism about the authenticity and the trustworthiness of the brand. The natural instinct is to be aware of whether it is a scam or if it actually works. People often also check for the coach’s reputation online to see if there’s any proven track record.
Adding testimonials is a great way to establish your authority. If the testimonials are videos and screenshots, it significantly increases the trustworthiness of the coach. If you have been featured in any newspapers, news reports or publications, highlighting those achievements in the testimonial section is an excellent idea.
Testimonies on your webpage also often translate into Google testimonies about yourself. Since Google crawls through sections of the webpage, these testimonies can act as ads without the need to spend money.
Directional Conversion
Do not provide too many options to a visitor on your coaching website. An advertisement should not send visitors to the homepage; instead it should send them to a dedicated landing page.
The purpose of this landing page is singular – conversion to paying clients. Every single element on this page should have a focus of converting the user to a paying client.
Headline
The Headline should focus on what the client can become after booking a package – the end goal.
Subheadlines
This section includes a detailed process on how you will do it. Make sure to give just enough information to hook the potential customer without revealing everything
The Offer
Everyone loves a discount. Make an offer, often with a deadline that provides the urgency to buy the package ‘today’.
The CTA
Since the sole purpose of this page is to convert the customer into a paying client, there should be multiple Call to Action buttons. Each of these buttons should be clearly visible, no matter where you are on the page.
Less Distractions
If a customer is scrolling down through the page, the worst thing you can show him is a distraction. An about me page, external links, resources, all lead to the customer clicking away from your website. Once they leave the website, it becomes very difficult to bring them in again. You should not include external links and distractions on the page, not even on the sidebar.
Running Ads is Expensive – Make it worthwhile
Running ads is not cheap; you often end up targeting a wider audience than necessary. Finetuning your advertisement strategy takes time and by then you are already bleeding some amount of money. If you can optimize your website with the abovementioned points, it can lead to significantly higher returns on those ad spends.
Running ads before fixing your digital presence is like filling a leaking bucket with expensive water. No matter how much water you pour in, you will not get the desired result in time. Fixing the bucket first, however, can lead to miraculous results and a significantly more efficient workflow.
