NCCA Meeting

8 March 2006

Attendees

• Susan, Robin, Carl, John, Sue
• Karen and Jim Day

Announcements

• Next meeting April 12th, Pat and Lloyd on Coaching Life's Lessons - with a demo and some how to's
• We have open slots for a Membership Coordinator and Director of Fun, and we'll have elections for new officers in May.
• The ICF overhauled their website, you now have to log in using your e-mail address of record (the one the ICF knows about). It's slow, but it will then log you in automatically
• From Margaret Graham: "I looked at Dawn Duncan's space for rent this week, and I'd love to snag it, but I need at least one other person to share it with me. If you're interested, would you contact me? I'd like to set it up to accommodate both individual consultations and groups of up to 8-10 people. Margaret Graham, 215-6003."
• We got a message from the ICF that we can e-mail our reports rather than sending in paper.

Intros

• What have you done with your website and have you gotten any business?
• John - I have a website but it's not that appealing and I don't know that it's ever brought in any business. My challenge is to marry my energy for building my business with building my website, I'm not sure if I will.
• Sue - I did my website with the intention to have something to refer to, to give an air of credibility. It was hard to converge on the original design, and I'm reasonably happy with the look. I got a couple of referrals but haven't put work into generating passive income. My designer was good at the ease of use, but not so much on the marketing.
• Susan - I put my website up a year ago, the intent was to get something up there. My expectation was that it would take a year to get much traffic. It's a struggle that there's so many "Susan Grahams" which are famous. My biggest concern is the content and developing products, to have stuff which will draw people. I haven't found a picture that I liked, so I haven't put a photo on there.
• Carl - I use my website to sell my book, but haven't sold too many copies from the website. I've managed to achieve high Google rankings, but haven't spent enough time on keeping it up to date and adding content.
• Robin - I don't have a website and am a little deterred by the amount of work that I'd need to put into it. I'd like to find out more about the return on this investment.

The Spotted Zebra Phenomenon - Karen and Jim Day

• Slides for the presentation: click here
• "Spotted Zebra Phenomenon" handout for the presentation: click here
• Karen Van Cleve - a coach in Denver who referred Jim and Karen to us, based on work they've done with her.
• Jim and Karen own Jasgraph www.jasgraph.com
• Many web developers are divided into techies and graphic designers. You need both of those areas of expertise, as well as marketing.
• Objectives
  • How to differentiate yourself
  • Getting more comfortable with website being in control
  • Leveraging expertise of other professionals
• Unique Selling Proposition
  • "Personal Coach" in Google gives you 24 million responses
  • What's unique about what you offer relative to your competition?
  • What things you do are most important to your clients?
  • What's hard for your competitors to imitate?
  • What's most easily understood by your clients?
  • What's your memorable message?
  • What's the best way you can communicate your message to your prospective clients?
  • It's important to stay away from phrases which have been commoditized - that are so over-used that they no longer have credibility.
  • Back up your claims with proven performance - how have you actually DONE it? Coaching is fundamentally about trust.
  • Only 12% of website accesses are through search engines - think about the other ways that people will reach it!
  • The more specific you can be, the more powerful your message will be and the more authentic it will come across.
  • Blogs allow people to respond to you, they're more interactive than newsletters and e-zines.
• Gaining clarity - branding
  • A logo is only a symbol for a brand
  • A brand is not a product, it's much less tangible:
  • "A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or company. Why? Because we're all emotional and intuitive despite our best efforts to be rational. When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand. So - a brand is not what YOU say it is, it's what THEY say it is." - Marty Neumeier
  • Can people identify why you're a coach that's useful to them?
  • Example - www.karenvancleve.com
  • What will make you more unique than just offering a complimentary coaching session?
• Using graphics
  • Graphics are quite troublesome - they aren't accessible to all search engines and browsers, and can get in the way of overall usability.
  • Photos can help clients to relate to you as a real person
  • Graphics and colors can help you to convey the emotional aspects of who you are
• Truly useful information
  • Home page should include a little bit of information about how you do what you do - as pointers to follow-up pages
  • And convey your primary messages in a prominent way
• The call to action!
  • Every website needs a call to action
  • They encourage your visitor to move further into the sales process