Is a Marketing Coach Right for Me?
Marketing coaching can be one of the best ways to turn around your business because it addresses an area that most small business owners don’t understand, or don’t have the time to learn. When hiring the right marketing coach, you’re adding someone who will quickly learn your business and evaluate what you can be doing to improve your online and offline presence.
The best marketing coach will take a look at your digital footprint, your website, your social media accounts and will ask you to send them brochures and other print media you have created. This will give your coach a full understanding of what your baseline is.
Once a marketing coach understands what you’ve been doing, they can see the gaps and help guide you to some quick wins and coach you through the longer strategic process of implementing for long-term growth.
If you’re on the fence about whether it’s time to hire a marketing coach or not, there are few questions to ask yourself to determine if marketing coaching is going to be a good fit:
- Am I open to other viewpoints?
Before you say, “Of course I am!” Be honest with yourself. How do you feel when someone contradicts your way of thinking? Do you lean in and ask questions or do you bristle and brush off that view as wrong, silly or irrelevant?
If you really aren’t open to other viewpoints, you aren’t ready for marketing coaching, because any marketing coach worth his or her salt is going to present ideas to you that you’ve never heard before and have never tried before. If you’re not going to be open, then you’re not ready for a marketing coach.
- Can I accept criticism?
You likely hesitated after our reprimand in the last paragraph, but it is something you need to answer. If you don’t like someone telling you that there’s no emotion to your brand, that your website sucks, that you’re confusing the market – then you won’t be opening to a marketing coach presenting objective feedback.
Listen, a marketing coach is not your little league coach, there to baby you and pass out participation awards. Your business won’t survive if you think customers are just going to miraculously find you and hand over their money – that is not how this economy works. Your coach is there to get you and your business to the next level. The only way to do that is to look realistically at your marketing and accept that there is room for improvement. If you’re not ready for that, then seek out counseling to soothe your ego, but don’t waste your time with coaching.
- Am I coachable?
No, this isn’t a redundant question. What we mean here is that if someone points out that you chew with your mouth open, can you make the conscious effort to chew with your mouth closed moving forward? Do you have the self-awareness to catch yourself when you slip and do you have the discipline to keep working at it until you’ve achieved the unconscious ability to chew with your mouth closed once-and-for-all? That’s what we mean by being coachable. This might be something you can’t honestly answer if you’ve never had any type of coaching, but if you said yes to the first two questions, you’re probably at least a good candidate for marketing coaching – give it a try!
- How badly do I want results?
If you want to hire a marketing coach to keep up with your entrepreneurial friends, you’re not going to get much out of it because you’re not really being driven to make any changes. However, if you’ve seen your leads diminish, new competitors crop up, or if you just need to stay relevant in the increasing millennial driven market-place . . . then you’re ready for a marketing coach.
Marketing coaches come with a wide range of experience, so be sure you do a little research, poke around on their LinkedIn profile so you understand their level of marketing expertise.
If you want to work with a seasoned marketing coach who stays on top of all the latest marketing trends, works with cutting-edge marketing technology, and understands traditional marketing methods, reach out via email to info@visionforcmarketing.com to learn about the dynamic and proprietary marketing coaching process of Vision Force Marketing.