Most Coaches Do Marketing Completely Wrong - Here's Why

Just picture this scene for a second. Imagine if you took all of the coaches, consultants, and freelancers and the whole small business community and you lined them up on the edges each side of the Grand Canyon, and they're literally just shouting into the abyss, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. And unfortunately, that is in essence what the state of marketing is in 2025 currently. You just got all of these Business owners, small business owners globally going onto social media and effectively just shouting into the abyss because they're all so desperate to sell their products and services. So I kind of get it. You do obviously need to market yourself. You do need to be on social media. But you do have to also be a little bit thoughtful about your approach to social media. So let's continue the story. Imagine you've got all of these millions or billions of people standing at the abyss shouting into it, buy my stuff! And then you kind of glance over your shoulder and you notice that there's This guy, Jamie, who is a few hundred meters back from the abyss, from the crowd, and he's quietly holding court with 100 people. He's telling them about these stories and these amazing results which he's getting with his clients, and maybe he's actually delivering some coaching or adding some value to these people. And they are all listening intently to what Jamie has to say. And you're intrigued. You're kind of wondering, what is it that Jamie's saying? And you don't really want to miss out because there's this group of people over there that you would love to befriend. So you casually just walk away from the abyss and all of that noise and shouting. And you walk over to go and listen in to what Jamie's saying, and it's really fascinating. Everybody is really, really engrossed. And then all of a sudden, Jamie realizes he recognizes you, and he's like, oh, hey, Rob. Rob, hey everybody, this is my friend Rob. He's this amazing business coach. He talks about pricing and money mindset and packaging up your offer. Rob, come in and speak to these people. I think they'd really love to hear what you've got to say. And then all of a sudden, you have these 100 pairs of eyeballs that transition from listening to Jamie, and now their attention is on you. And you've got the opportunity to be able to share something of really high value value to them whilst they're intently listening. And now all of a sudden there's more people gradually drifting back from the abyss and coming in to listen to what's going on here where all this value is being delivered, or perceived value is being delivered. And I think there's a lot that small business owners can learn from this, especially when they're thinking about how to market their business in 2025. But it's really important to understand why we've ended up in this position that we have in 2025 and why everybody runs immediately to social media in order to then shout about their business and create and add to all of this extra noise. So Again, this is something I talk about a lot, so apologies if you've already heard this. You can skip forward 60 seconds, but it's worthwhile listening into the statistics which drive the thought process behind why we've ended up here. 20 years ago, when I first registered my business, my first business, there was only 468,000 registered businesses here in the UK. Today, there's 6 million in the UK alone. So that's 12 times the number of coaches or consultants or freelancers in your own geographical location alone, who are all competing for the same or similar amounts of business and work that is available out there. You then bring into the mix in the 2010s the advent of smartphones, of fast internet, and then of social media. And all of a sudden you get this rush of people who come online. It's really easy to build a business online, but now everybody is competing globally for the same amount of business or far less business because there are so many more businesses online. And this ultimately is what has led to all this noise. And I remember, you know, even 10 years ago marketing my business via a website and via early you know, social media, it did feel a far, you know, a great deal easier than it is today to market your business because, well, there was just a fraction of the noise out there and you weren't really shouting into the abyss. You had lots of people who were willing and ready to listen to your message irrespective of whether it was a sophisticated marketing message or not. People were willing to listen because it was novel, it was new. We're now a decade on from that and people have got far more sophisticated and so they just ignore a lot of the noise in social media which is out there at the moment. And what they're looking for these days, people especially in the B2B sector, They're looking for things of really significant value. They're looking for people who are able to elicit and deliver trust in a very quick and sophisticated way. We don't want to be waiting. We are a little bit impatient these days when it comes to making decisions about our business. There's a few tips which I've got for you in terms of how you can start to shift away from shouting into the abyss with all of those millions of other people and differentiate your marketing strategy in 2025 so that long-term you can get far better results when you actually put any effort out there into your marketing. One of the first things which I would recommend you look at is partnerships. Remember that story where I talked about Robin who walks up to this group of people and then Jamie recognizes him? Well, the reason why Robin got immediate trust elicited from that group of people was because Jamie, who'd built up the trust already, said, hey guys, you should listen to Robin. So what I really recommend is rather than just doing, you know, being on your own little mission of building your own audience and doing that Noah's Ark style, one by one by one by one, go and find partners who you can work with so that you can leverage and share each other's audiences with. And don't make it commercial. Just give without take. Make sure that you're paying into their audience and you're giving them value and you're helping out your partner, and vice versa, they will be doing the same for you. And I've just come to realize that when you pay into these partnerships, the money comes as a natural byproduct of doing a job well done, delivering enormous amounts of value with no expectation of anything in return. And from that, over time, you will get that paid back in dividends. And I've done an entire video about how to the 5-step process around how to leverage partnerships in order to bring thousands of leads into your small business. We'll share a link somewhere up here or down there in the description. Go and check that out. I've used it very effectively. It got me one podcast interview where I generated 3,000 inquiries for my business. It's got me my dream speaking engagement. It's got me onto yachts with the likes of Chris Do and Simon Squibb and these amazing influential people. And you can do exactly the same. So do go and check that video out. But those high-value partnerships where you pay into it daily with enormous amounts of value with no expectation of anything in return. You know, be intentional around it. Trust me, it works. I do it daily and it takes a 10th of the time of social media, which is a bonus as well. The second thing which I would recommend is to develop some kind of really high-value gift. These days you can create a PDF and put it in a lead magnet on ClickFunnels or something like that, and then people can download it. But from my experience, having given away tens of thousands of copies of my book, the PDF, people mostly just gloss over it or they'll scan read it, you know, scroll through it on their, their device. Whereas to have a tangible physical copy of the book which is signed by the author is a really thoughtful, high-value, high-perceived value gift, which once it's written, yes, that does take time and it can be expensive as well. But when you've got that high-value gift, it's super easy just to send out those books. I send out 3,000 copies of my book a year, physical copies of my book each and every year. And it's a really great way to elicit trust, start to build the relationship, and most importantly, start to educate people about what it is that you actually do in a very friendly, non-pushy sort of way. It's kind of like saying, you know, stepping away from the abyss and just saying to the person next to you, hey, look, I've got this gift for you. Read it if you want to. Don't read it if you don't want to. That's absolutely fine, but it's yours. Take it away. And they'll go, oh my gosh, the book's free? And you're like, yeah. And generally speaking, sometimes I know my books sit on people's desks for 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, and eventually they will then pick it up and read it and go, oh my God, I wish I'd read this when Robin gave it to me. You can all get a free copy of my book as well. Again, we'll share a link down in the description, but if you head to fearless.biz/TYS, you'll get exactly what I mean. This heavily personalized, really high-value gift— I take great pride in packing them up. I've even got one here, packing them up and then taking them down to Pauline at the post office and shipping those anywhere in the world. And I know what it feels like when you get a piece of unexpected lumpy mail through your letterbox, like, oh, this is exciting. So coming up with some kind of high-value free gift again that educates people, it elicits trust, and it builds on that engagement and relationship with a prospect before they work with you. And there's tons of different examples that you can do like this. Doesn't have to be a book, it could be a podcast which you release which just delivers tons of value, it could be a YouTube channel like this that you're watching here, putting out free content in order for people to learn from you and benefit and gain value and knowledge from your knowledge which you're sharing out there and practically apply it to their business. And lo and behold, when these tips which I'm sharing with you work and you think, oh, actually I need to speak to a business coach, who do you think you're gonna come to first? Well, hopefully it's gonna be me. So yeah, there is the further down the field, there might be some work to do together, I don't do it for that reason. I do genuinely give this value away because I want to help business owners run better and more prosperous businesses. But, you know, 90% of the effort goes into the free stuff. 10% of my audience I monetize and they become clients and we have a great relationship working together and they get great results. So it benefits twofold in terms of my vision and my mission and things like that. So the final tip which I've got for you as well is like, we've spent goodness knows how many years now gravitating into this online And I think there is a bit of tiredness, exhaustion around seeing people on Zoom, seeing people 2D on screens, and not really building personal relationships with people. So I'm of the thought process of, right, well, part of this process of building relationships with people, building partnerships with people, you've got to get out there and meet them, shake their hand, look into the whites of their eyes, tell them what an amazing job they're doing. And that sparks a conversation where you can then talk about, well, listen, how can I help you? What can I do for you? For you in order to add value to your life, to your business. And I see this shift happening in 2025. People want to get more in a room together again, and I see this appetite growing for the first time in a big way since COVID And you know, that's 5 years ago now, folks. Things have moved on. Let's go to events together. Let's hang out together. Let's share ideas, but together in person, because that meeting up with somebody in person and giving them a hug shaking a hand, looking into the whites of their eyes. For me, it goes back to that saying of a picture paints a thousand words. Well, for me, meeting somebody in person is like doing a thousand Zoom calls with them. You get that instant rapport and relationship starting to build there, and you can just have that visceral feedback. And how I know this— I recently was on a trip to Dubai, met some amazing people whilst I was out there. But a friend of mine, Matt Essam, who runs Creative Life, he invited me onto his podcast to record a second episode. Now, the first time we did the podcast, it was on Zoom, and quite frankly, I got into a bit of presenter mode. My speaker coach used to call me the Gatling gun. That was his nickname for me. And I was just blatting Matt with loads of, like, my ideas and things like that. And I remember Matt saying to me, whoa, whoa, Rob, get out of presenter mode. Let's just kind of get back to the conversation. And he was, he was absolutely right. I think there's just this tendency of how we show up online in places like this is slightly different to how we show up in person. Whilst I was out in Dubai, Matt very kindly invited me to jump onto his podcast. If you want to check it out, it's called the Creative Courage Podcast. Again, I'll share a link to the episode below in the video's description so you can go and check it out and have a listen to it if you are in that creative space. But the whole— the interaction between Matt and I when we met— I mean, we've known each other for years and we're good friends, but it was entirely different. The conversation for me, it felt like it flowed far more naturally. I could make eye contact with Matt. I was able to bat the conversation back over to Matt as well because we have that sort of interpersonal relationship, you know, friendship between the two of us. So it just felt more natural. And I think actually the podcast we ended up recording, I feel Matt might disagree, I don't know, but I certainly felt it was far better than the first episode we recorded on Zoom. Not that there was anything wrong necessarily with the first episode we recorded, but I just think there was just a far greater depth of like conversation and relationship, which you will, which you'll see. You know, if you go and if you were to go and compare them side by side, you would see massive differences to the two of them at least. So yeah, that's that. I see those as being some of the greatest shifts in marketing in 2025, certainly focusing on partnerships. Partnerships, certainly having that free gift that is of high value. It just gives absolutely everything away. And also building those in-person relationships with people as well. I think we're going to retreat back to some of that, like pre-COVID, getting along to conferences and networking meetings and having actual in-person meetings with people. And that will make a massive difference. And no longer should you be turning to social media and shouting into the abyss. Remember what I said, Create that little group, that little huddle of people having this very intimate conversation with one another and create a bit of intrigue from those outside of that circle. Make it interesting. Don't, like, shout about stuff so much. You know, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. This has to literally be, hey, I've got something really interesting to say, so I'm gonna stand on my soapbox and I'm gonna see if I can gather a crowd around me of people who would be interested in that. And now what we've got is this tight-knit community of people who we build enormous amounts of trust within that community.