Building An Online Mentoring Group

Hi there, it's Mark Wickersham here. In an earlier video I shared with you a new business model for the forward thinking firm of the future accountant. The idea of running an online mentoring program. In this video I want to give you some thoughts on how would you build one of those. How would you build a group of business owners that you work with every month and help them improve their business, improve their lives? So I'm going to share with you in this video seven ways that you could promote a group once you've started to build it. How do you attract more clients, prospective clients, to join your online mentoring program? So here's seven ways. The first thing is make sure that you have it as part of your standard agenda for all of your meetings. This is something that you're in a fortunate position. I don't use this technique myself to build my mentoring groups because I'm not fortunate to have regular face to face meetings. My business is online. But you have meetings all the time, every week, I'm guessing you're meeting a business owner. So make sure that on your agenda, you do have an agenda for meetings, don't you? If you, if not, you should. And on your agenda make sure you have a standard item where you talk about your online mentoring group. So make sure you systematically tell people in your face to face meetings, both existing clients and when you visit prospective clients. Next, use social media. Social media is so, so powerful. You absolutely should be using it. You should be joining, for example, groups of business owners, the sorts of people you'd love to get as clients. And you should be joining those groups on LinkedIn, on Facebook. Figure out where your ideal clients hang out and then start adding some value and telling people about your mentoring program. Number three, you could bundle it in with other services. So for example, if you had a service for, let's say, business startups, you might decide that you have a bronze, a silver, a gold package. And you might decide that for your gold package and perhaps even your silver and gold, you bundle in and include access to your mentoring program, which is a great way of encouraging people to spend more money and buy a bigger solution, whether it's your business startup, your management reporting or, or whatever.

Video marketing. Video marketing is undoubtedly the most powerful form of marketing today. So you should be thinking about doing videos. If you're not already, you should be. And if you're doing some videos, make sure you turn your camera on and just like this, and do a video to tell people about your mentoring program. Next, make sure that if you ever do Any live events or any webinars. For example, make sure you promote your mentoring group as part of live events. It's what I do. If I'm running a live event, I will invite the entire audience to come along to a free session. Number six, create a guest invite system. And this is how it works. Very simple. Create a standard offer an email. And whenever you're in correspondence with a client or potential client who you think could benefit from your online mentoring program, invite them to come along to the next session completely free of charge as your guest. And then explain to them that is completely free. And at the end of it, you will ask them if they want to join the group. That way they get to see the value first. And what you'll find is that every month as you run your mentoring, you will keep topping it up with one or two guests every single month. And what I found is when I invite guests to come to mine, something like four out of five then say, yeah, that was so powerful. How do I join the group permanently? And finally, and this is the one that's the most powerful for me is, is the launch event. And the launch event is essentially doing effectively a webinar or an online meeting. The whole purpose is to promote the mentoring program. So if you're into webinars, then that's a great process to use. How do you find out more? I have created a complete training program where I take you through everything you need to know and all the resources you need to build your own highly profitable and highly valuable mentoring program. You'll find somewhere below is a link where you'll find out more information. So go and click on that link. Now go and find out about what I can teach you through the training. And if you like this video, just so I know, please hit the like button too. I'll see you very soon on another video.