While all marketing plans have the same core elements, I will be focusing on a marketing plan for online coaches, healers, and creators.
Sound like you? Let’s get started. By the end of this article, you will know how to create a sustainable plan that fits your energy and your personality. You can get to work implementing your plan, or work with me directly.
👋 A short blurb about me so you know who you’re listening to instead of just consuming random internet information. My name is Miles, I’ve been doing marketing stuff for 5+ years (director of marketing for multiple companies, freelancer, business owner, copywriter, web developer, branding/design, funnel building). I’m a highly sensitive person and easily get overwhelmed. I crave simplicity. I get super turned off by narrow-mindedness, inauthenticity, templates, and anything with an ounce of bro marketing. I really dislike clichés and avoid them at all cost. I love exploring new ways of marketing that feel good. I believe that energy is everything, so if your marketing plan doesn’t align with your energy and who you are, it won’t sustain. Okay, that’s me. Although I’m somewhat introverted, I love connecting with people. I’d love to get to know you. DM me on IG.
What’s a marketing plan and why do you need one
I’ll skip the detilas…you know what a marketing plan is. It’s a plan….for your marketing. No need to overcomplicate it.
To take it one level deeper, you need a plan so that you’re not shooting in the dark. It’s a loud, overwhelming world out there (especially online marketing and business).
A plan will give us things to do, but more importantly, it will give us boundaries (masculine energy). If we try to do everything, we will fail. This plan will show you what NOT to do as well.
What’s wrong with traditional marketing plans
Traditional marketing plans were made for traditional ways of doing business. They were often more of a formality. “Look we have a plan, we’re legit, invest in us.” Marketing plans likely collected dust and weren’t revisited often.
What’s wrong with newer marketing plans
Newer marketing plans, fitted for new-age online business are better, but they are still flawed in my opinion. They’ve become tremendously shorter (thank god), but don’t sit well with me.
For example: “The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd” by Allan Dib.
The brevity of the plan is awesome. But I returned this book only 25% of the way through. It felt like every other marketing / business / advertising book I’ve read. It perpetuated the same bro marketing vibes that are running rampant in this space.
I’m not saying it’s a bad book, it’s got great ratings, but it didn’t sit well with me.
Prerequisites (don’t move forward until…)
Wait wait wait…I don’t want to misguide you here. A marketing plan must come after a few things are already in place. One of the most common mistakes (✋ guilty) is jumping ahead to early.
Check out the branding checklist.
You first need to have clarity around…
- People (Who do you want to serve, where are they?)
- Message (What words do you use to clearly deliver the big idea?)
- Offer (What’s the offer?)
Once that’s in place, you can start to put together a marketing plan which will connect the right people with you and your offers….sustainably.
Let’s get into it.
Client Journey / Ecosystem
At its core, business is simple. You help people with something. But you can’t help anyone if no one knows about you.
You need sales, which means you need people to invest. We can build a really simple funnel to support people through the journey of awareness –> to clients –> to advocates.
You’re likely familiar with a funnel…it’s become a huge industry now and there’s endless info about funnels. If you have a bad taste in your mouth around funnels, that’s okay. I do too thanks to bro marketing. But funnels (done right) work really well. Here is what the heartfunnel looks like.
Your marketing plan will help you with all of these stages. How will you drive people to your funnel. Why should they stick around (subscribe). How do we connect with them and build the relationship? And how do we invite them into our offer?
After that, we take care of them. Give them a great experience and deliver on what we promised so that they can make the decision to continue working with us in another offer (if that makes sense), and tell people about our work (thus becoming your best sales people).
The 4 Key Shifts
Think about the last investment you made (over 1000). You likely checked a few internal checkmarks first (consciously or unconsciously). Here are the 4 key internal shifts that someone must go through before consciously buying your offer.
I’ve found these to be the main shifts that people need before moving forward.
Creating Your Boring AF Marketing Plan
I like to call it a boring AF marketing plan because at the end of the day, this stuff is really simple and doesn’t take long. Humans love to complicate things.
Your going to be so bored once you realize how short and simple this stuff is. Ugh….I’m bored just talking about it!
FYI, I have a series called ‘Boring but effective marketing tips‘ on IG.
💡 Below are some simple questions that will shape your marketing plan. I will skip the strategies in this post to keep it lean. But you’re likely familiar with all the different strategies out there. Remember, there are no secrets. Simply answer these questions then stick to the plan.
Answer the following 6 questions
[Aware] What am I doing to regularly put myself, my value, and my brand in front of new people?
It’s a loud world out there. How will you speak directly to your people. You don’t need to speak over others. Nor do you need to speaker louder or more often. You just need to be clear on your message and your people so it lands with them.
Find out where your people are and which platforms you want to be one. If you despise Facebook to the point where it will take every ounce of willpower to be consistent, pick a different platform!
I want you to go a mile deep not a mile wide. So pick 1-3 platforms that you enjoy being on. Then put together a simple content strategy, try some things, look at the data, and keep evolving. Think where you could be in a year.
Some ideas
- Social media (FB, IG, LI, Clubhouse)
- YouTube
- Website optimized for search (SEO)
- Podcast
- Collaborations
[Connect] What am I doing to build a stronger relationship with the people in my ecosystem and am I helping them go through the 4 shifts? (Trust, Relevancy, Authority, Self-belief)?
Once people have entered your sphere, it’s up to us to show them why they should stick around. This is where we get to build the relationship with them and guide them through the 4 key shifts.
Your superpower here is to double down on you! Your youniquness is what allows you to stand out and be sticky. We want people to store us away as the “xyz” person so that when they’re ready, they come to us.
Most of us aren’t reinventing the wheel with our work. But we are reinventing the way we interact with it.
For example, relationship coaching isn’t new. It’s been around for a long time and there are some big names in that field that you have no chance “competing” with (at least for a while).
But your unique experience, story, philosophy, messaging, energy, and offerings are 100% unique. That’s what we want to leverage in order to stand out and attract in the right people. This is an important part of the connect phase.
Ideas
- Email marketing
- Podcast
- Facebook group
- Social media
- YouTube
- Clubhouse
[Convert] What am I doing to share my offer with people who are ready to invest?
Another common mistake we make when marketing ourselves and our business, is forgetting to invite people into our offers. Many coaches, healers, and creators who don’t like the idea of markeing, selling, or talking about themsleves, undersell. Or, we promote our stuff once and expect it start raining clients.
Then we feel like we’re not cut out for this whole online business game…
Well cheer up buttercup! It’s all part of the initiation process. And if you’ve already got momentum, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.
In this part of the marketing plan, we need to have a way of inviting people into our offers (free and paid) that aligns with our brand and our energy. Don’t overthink it. I like using email marketing, IG, and FB to invite people into my offers. Simple!
Wherever you’re creating content, you’re going to want a certain percentage of it to also have a call to action. So for example, about 50-75% of my social posts have a call to action. The rest are for building the relationship, reaching new people, getting feedback, and having fun!
Ideas
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Podcast
[Excite] What will I do to overcome buyers’ remorse?
You’ve got a new client or customer! Yeee! That’s great. One thing to keep in mind is this thing called buyer’s remorse.
I recommend you read the book “Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days” by Joey Coleman to learn more about this idea.
There are some really fun things we can do to ensure the client is happy and gets results.
Ideas
- Sending a letter or gift
- Giving them some bonuses
- Setting expectations
- Setting them up for success
- Welcome video
- Awesome onboarding process
- Gathering more intimate info
[Transform] How will I deliver the transformation?
Alright, it’s time to deliver the transformation. Whether it’s a 3 month 1-1 program or a short course, it’s your job to make the information easy to access and digest.
Ask yourself, how can I deliver the transformation in it’s simplest form?
There are so many cool tools out there that lead us to forgetting how simple it can be. In fact, an over designed members area or client portal can take away from the transformation.
So be careful and keep it light.
Ideas
- Voxer /slack
- Google drive
- Phone / zoom
- Vimeo
- Shared trello board
- MemberVault
- Teachery
[Advocate] How will I encourage testimonials, word of mouth, and referrals?
At the end of the cliet jourey, you hopefully have a happy client that would be thrilled to share their wonderful experience with the world.
Our job here is to support them in doing so. If you have 10 happy clients, that’s potentially 10 of your best sales people. If those 10 tell 10 more people, that’s 100 more people that could work with you. And the best part is, most of those people already trust you since they trust the person that referred you.
Ideas
- Simple video testimonial outline/instructions
- Incentives for referrals (bonuses)
- Sharable social assets (IG story about your client that they can share)
Alright, that concludes your marketing plan! I told you it was simple. To wrap up, how can we now use this plan to build a sustainable business?
How to implement your marketing plan
Great job! Now comes the most important part –> consistent implementation of your plan.
Some next steps may include…
- Build the infrastructure needed to support this plan (a simple funnel, email sequence etc)
- Set up a simple workflow you can follow (for example: I use Trello for my content mapping)
- Experiment with things inside your plan (For example: IG polls, stories, REELS)
Track your experiments to see what works (cut the fat & double down).
For example, REELS work really well for me so I now do at least a weekly reel (I’m going to up that to 2 soon).
My Tiny Training Emails performed way better than other emails so I stopped sending Thinkful Thursdays and focused on one awesome email per week.
This plan is dynamic. Add details as you learn, but always aim to keep it lightweight. If something is draining your energy + producing little to no results, consider dropping it.
Find things that work for YOU…no one else. Go a mile deep, not a mile wide.
Stay consistent, get into momentum, and have fun!
Next steps
I wrote this article to demystify marketing for you. If you’re anything like me, you get overwhelmed by all the info out there. This leads to stagnation. But it doesn’t need to be complicated!
If you want to work with me, I invite you to learn more about BrandBox. You can DM me to see if it’s a good fit.
Have a beautiful day/night/life.
– Miles
