I was having a conversation with a coach who is just entering the online marketing space. I’ve been a spiritual coach, teacher, and practitioner who has been marketing online for 20 years, so I offered him some words of advice. I realized you might find this advice useful too. So as a spiritual coach, teacher, or practitioner making your first foray into online marketing, here are some things you need to know.
1) Learning online marketing is like eating an elephant. Take it one bite at a time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed so the key is to go slow and don’t go in too many directions at once.
2) Pick ONE platform to optimize at a time. In other words, if you’re not on any platforms, pick ONE and get that up and running. If you’re on a bunch but they all need help, work on ONE and forget the others for a while. When you have that one up and running, then you can work on ONE more. If you try to do everything at once, you will do all of them badly and you will make yourself crazy.
3) Be careful hiring people to help you. CHECK REFERENCES. There are a ton of people who don’t know what they are doing who are selling marketing services. Don’t rely on their testimonial videos or money back guarantees. Your Best bet is to learn to do things yourself before outsourcing. Then you’ll know how to judge their work.
4) Expect that you will have to adjust your marketing every 18 months. The internet is a fast-moving space and it changes constantly. You can’t know it all. I’m 20 years in and I’m still learning.
5) AI is NOT your savior.It is still in its infancy and search engines are already discriminating against AI content in organic search.
6) Engagement is SIGNIFICANTLY more important than followers.I’d rather have a few hundred highly engaged followers than 10,000 followers who never engage. Engagement precedes purchases. So it is the name of the game.
7) Building relationships online via marketing messages is more difficult than doing it in person. Video and audio helps a lot with this, but you’ll need more interactions than you think you will.
8) Speed of response is everything online.If you don’t respond quickly, they will forget they even asked for info and report you as spam.
9) Don’t take unsubscribes personally. It’s not rejection, it’s just the acknowledgment that they weren’t engaged.
10) Be VERY focused with your messaging. Unclear messaging will cause people to cycle out of your funnel.
11) Repurpose EVERYTHING. I never do anything I can’t repurpose. Apps like SocialBee.iocan help you take the post you wrote today and repost it over and over for years to come. Podcasts can turn into snippets on social, or articles, etc. Emails, like this one, can turn into articles (which I am going to do, thanks for the inspiration).
12) You are NOT bothering people by posting the same thing over and over. To prove this, I moved to Panama last year and I had posted over 100 videos about the move when a friend reached out on social media and asked “you moved to Panama? When did that happen?” 100 videos. They saw ONE. And this was a friend, not a random person. Repeat yourself. A LOT.
I help spiritual coaches, teachers, and practitioners deepen their inner work, accomplish their mission on the planet, and make a great living while they do it. I have a free program that can help you conceptualize and market your programs – it’s called Awaken Abundance. Use the coupon code Breakthru to get your course for free.
Kelle Sparta is the Founder of The Sacred Power and Purpose Mystery School. She is the author of The Over-Achiever’s Guide to Nailing Your Spiritual Growth in Record Time, and the host of the wildly popular podcast Spirit Sherpa with over 285,000 downloads in 146 countries around the world. Her mission is to help other spiritual practitioners, teachers, and coaches complete their mission on the planet. Her almost 50 years of personal growth and spiritual study combined with her 35 years of business experience and 25 years of coaching experience make her a powerhouse of wisdom that she can’t wait to share with you. If you’re ready to step into your power and purpose as a spiritual coach, teacher, or practitioner, then set up a discovery call to learn how Kelle can help.