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Proprietary Content for Coaches & Consultants

April 25, 2022/Casey Fuerst

Snap shot web designer working on office desk, Website wireframe sketch by development.

How important is it that you have proprietary content for your coaching business?

Having your own framework for why and how you work with clients is becoming an indication of whether you are a thought leader in your industry.

More and more, as the coaching and consulting worlds become saturated, having a unique framework that showcases your model for guiding your clients is an indication that you have the expertise, experience, and confidence to serve them well.

Let’s face it – there are a lot of newbies in this space, regardless of industry.

Can they do good work? Yes, of course.

Is it comprehensive and sustainable? That’s less likely — not because they are bad people or have bad intentions, but because they don’t have the years of practice that you do.

Your coaching program and consulting business have seen many clients work through many challenges. You’ve coached and guided and facilitated in ways that have taught you what works and what doesn’t. And, it matters.

The work you do makes an enormous difference to those you serve and the businesses they support. You know how to guide them to break through barriers and find a better way.

With all of that knowledge and practice, you have what it takes to create a proprietary framework that is unique to you – so that you can build your business and make more sales/money!

What it Includes

What is proprietary content?

Proprietary content is original content that you own. In order to own it, you need to have a trademark, patent, or copyright on it.

FOR COACHES AND CONSULTANTS, PROPRIETARY CONTENT CAN INCLUDE:

Business processes
Coaching systems
How we work strategies
Drawings and graphics illustrating your systems and processes
Software
Brand/program/system names
Customized programs
User interfaces and materials

Within your proprietary property, you might consider creating a framework by which you guide your clients through your coaching and consulting practices.

For example, we created this graphic for an organizational change consultant, using the areas that she focuses on as cornerstones of service.

Focus Consulting Philosophy- learn more at http://focusconsulting.net/

By doing so, she claims a collection of areas of expertise and shows her authority in guiding ideal clients through them.

This is a simple example. Moving forward, this can expand into a series of frameworks and content that could translate into online courses or print materials.

You can easily see how this simple proprietary framework can help guide the business owner to identify future services, programs, and workshops she could offer.

This simple proprietary graphic drives company sales and success!

How it is Used

Proprietary content does more than just look pretty. It makes you appear more legit. If used well, it can also attract your ideal client, feed your ongoing content creation, and drive bigger sales and more money!

Attracting Your Ideal Client

Of course, before you can determine if this is working, you need to define your ideal clients. You work with these people on a daily basis, so you need to know who these customers are and whether or not they are a good fit for you and your coaching business.

Take the time to research and define your ideal customers. It will matter to the long-term health of your business!

Website

Proprietary materials do no good sitting on a shelf! Dust ’em off and use them in your online marketing! Your custom visuals showcasing your content should live in multiple places on your website.

TRY THIS:

Create a section on your homepage, then link it to a page that goes deeper into what it all means!
Use the visuals on your about page to tout yourself as a thought leader.
Go a step further and use the content consistently in your other online marketing – especially social media. This will help you be known for this specific set of content and drive traffic to your business website.

Great content on your blog

A blog is a great way to get organic traffic to your site through search results. They are also a great way to attract prospects and current clients back to your site. When you talk about things that matter to them, you become more important to them.

Want an example? How about this post. You are here because you are either interested in the work of Tic Tac Toe Marketing or the content of this post. Either way – WELCOME! Take a look around. We are glad you are here. And, when you are ready, book a call to discuss your needs!

Another topic you might be interested in

Read the full article here!

Building Your Team

Your proprietary business content is likely to be a cornerstone of your coaching and consulting philosophies. Having this solid content wrapped in an attractive design gives you credibility and authority for more than just prospects and clients.

It can also help you attract talent for your team. We are all drawn to things that make sense and are smart. We want to be associated with high-quality, strong, and successful people and organizations.

Hiring

When you are writing your next job description or hiring ad, use your proprietary visuals to showcase what you are all about.

Spend time in the interview going over what you value and how you live that out through this powerful content. Help them understand that they would be joining a team that stands for something and that, they too can be known as a thought leader in your industry.

Specialization

When your business has a guiding philosophy and the proprietary content to showcase it, it can help guide your team into areas of specialty.

Take a look at your guiding principles or mission statement. It helps you see where you are doing well and where you need to focus your work a bit differently to achieve a higher level of success, right?

Your proprietary content can do the same.

Highlighting Your Expertise

Your unique frameworks, content, graphics, and ideas tell people what you should be known for. They give insight into what kind of a business coach, leadership coach, executive coach, or industry-specific consulting business you own.

The more specific you are, the more ideal clients you will attract, and the more money will come your way.

Case studies

Case studies are a great way to show your proprietary content in action. You don’t need many. Three to five case studies sharing a way that you use your framework, as a whole or segmented, will help your audience to imagine how it might impact them in their work.

When you can show positive ROI, you help prospects imagine what their life/business will look like after they work with you!

Tools to build on your framework

Your coaching program or consulting business is likely built with your cornerstone content in mind. When you have proprietary content and materials that align, they can drive the materials that you need to create to support the framework.

Take, for example, this client’s framework:

The Conversations That Matter Framework - learn more here - https://www.tctmtoolkits.com/

For this client, this framework guided the creation of a collection of tools that support the overarching buckets of need.

Once the framework was established, we pulled together existing tools that filled each bucket and were able to identify where we needed to create additional tools.

For The Conversation That Matter, this collection became a product offering passive income, as well as a fully developed collection of resources they can use with clients.

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Where to Start

You have all this knowledge in your head. So, how do you turn it into proprietary content?

Of course, you can tackle this yourself. It can also be good to find a thought partner to think it through with you. The curse of knowledge can prevent you from seeing obvious patterns and creating content that confuses the target audience.

First – Outline Your Body of Work

Start by doing a mind dump of everything you do on paper. If you are an executive coach, list all of the topic areas you cover with your clients.

Write down the pattern or rhythm of the work you do.

Document the primary coaching and consulting topics you cover again and again.

Make a list of all of the services, programs, and processes you work through with your business clients.

Again, if you have a partner who can listen to you talk about all of these things with fresh ears, they may be able to pull out nuggets of content that are unique to you, but that you say so often you forget their value.

Second – Look Critically at What You Do – From a Client Perspective

One of our clients does deep work with the organizations they serve. It’s transformational and so much more comprehensive than its competitors.

BUT, the clients they work with often come to them exhausted and unwilling to launch into this big process. Their competitors are winning out on the immediate business because they are offering quick solutions and immediate, but short-lived, success.

The problem is that these fast solutions are putting a bandaid on a bullet hole, and the prospects end up coming back to my client to get the longer-term, sustainable work done.

So, of course, we didn’t change the product our clients were delivering – it has amazing value!

We did however change how we talked about it. By framing the marketing language around the success that the client was seeking, we could engage them in a conversation about how our solution provides what they need PLUS so much more that will carry them into the future.

That’s the perspective you need to take when looking at your body of work.

What are your client’s pain points?

What are they looking for when they start the process?

Emphasize those things in your framework.

You can help them make the mindset shift during those early calls to talk through what you do, but create the framework around what they need!

Third – Make it Beautiful

In order to attract prospects and retain clients with your coaching and consulting frameworks, tools, and materials, they need to be attractive and easy to understand!

Consider the difference between these two marketing images.

The first is the work of a well-intentioned coach. The content is great, but it is not visually appealing.

The second uses the same content, but ramps up the attractive factor by ALOT! It’s hard to argue that a prospect would be more drawn to the first than the second.

Before/After image of some piece of proprietary content

Please, please, please – use a professional for this. If you aren’t sure where to start, set up a call with us and we will walk you through your options!

Create Supporting Tools

Once you have your proprietary coaching and consulting framework built, you can start to build a core set of materials to support it.

THESE MATERIALS LOOK LIKE:

Presentations & workshops

Handbooks

Workbooks

Powerpoint decks

Online classes

Lead generators (see next section)

Using Your Framework within Your Marketing

Once you’ve gone to all the work of creating your proprietary framework, USE IT!

We’ve already discussed all the ways that having this content can help you build credibility and authority in your specific industry.

Now it’s time to use it to sell!

Lead Generators

The #1 way to use your content is to give a small chunk of it away.

Generally speaking – give away the “what,” not the “how”!

For example, executive coaches often sell packages for business leaders. It might include an assessment, X coaching calls, and access to a set of resources.

Their proprietary framework would show that when you work with this coaching program, you will first do some self-work and dig into your communication style, leadership approach, etc.

A lead-generator for coaches like this could include:

A description of the different leadership styles and a self-assessment

A quiz to identify your communication style

A white paper on the pitfalls of assessments

You can see with these examples, that we are telling what the problem is, not how to fix it. That’s for the coach to guide them through during the actual coaching program.

When you create a lead generator, there are a few things you need to do to maximize its use.

FOR STARTERS:

First, make the delivery of it automated. You want to generate leads without any extra manual effort for you or your team. There are all kinds of internet resources that can help you automate the delivery of your asset.

Second, follow up with an automated email nurture sequence. With each email, dribble value and invite them to connect further.

Third, create marketing that drives traffic to your lead generator.

Wrapping it Up with a Bow

I hope I’ve shown you the value of having proprietary content for your coaching and consulting business.

When you create this powerful content, you not only elevate the power of the services you offer, you create a marketing resource that will help you grow your business!

Of course, if you need help, we are here. This is sometimes challenging work to do alone.

We can help guide you in creating your content, making it beautiful, and distributing it to those ideal clients you want to serve.

SET UP A CALL

TIC TAC TOE MARKETING

When we started this business, we learned quickly that there are a whole lot of marketing shops offering every possible solution to any possible challenge.

The problem that we very quickly uncovered is that all of these shops with all the latest solutions weren’t providing long-term, high-quality marketing for other small business owners. That means their unique solutions might have been making a splash, but not in ways that helped the client reach their goals. Experts in one widget or another, these other shops focused on fitting every client into the product or service they offer. We decided to do it differently.

Step 1 – find and dive deep into marketing solutions that are sustainable. Our CEO, Casey Fuerst, is a StoryBrand Certified Guide (one of the REALLY good ones). That means she has extensive, and ongoing training in creating and implementing messaging that is clear and works.

Step 2 – develop tools that create consistency and the highest quality for clients. The T3 Marketing Blueprint was a labor of love for Casey. After working with dozens and dozens of organizations to create strategic marketing plans, she fine-tuned the process to make it fun and highly impactful, then published a book to share it with the world!

Step 3 – build a team to meet the client’s needs in the creation, delivery, and tracking of all marketing materials.

We are so proud of the partnerships we have with our clients. That means taking the very best care of their businesses and earning their trust every single day!

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