Proving Yourself

 Are you struggling to grow your business using social media? Are you one of thousands advertising the service but are struggling to prove yourself?

When it comes to business consulting, health coaching, marketing, and various other vocations, establishing ourselves as ‘experts’ takes a little more than bombarding people with motivational quotes, colourful pictures, and cool videos, we need something real and substantial that shows we actually know something… Know, like, and trust!

Loss Leader is when a business sells a good or service at a loss, or even gives it away for free, in order to entice customers to buy something else. In my teen years the owner of a particular gas station would sell cigarettes at cost (I know… bad example for this day and age) in order to bring in customers to buy gas. In addition to this, the facility had a fishing tackle store in which the owner would give away free coffee and donuts to the fishermen who came in and purchased items on their way to the marina.

How can this apply to a coach or course writer? Simple: you are giving away free content with the hope of getting positive feed-back, and lots of it. So how might this work? We will use a real example: Let’s say you are writing business courses being offered on an on-line learning platform (which I am); I create a free introductory course, ask for positive feedback, then encourage the learner to take one of the more advanced courses which they must pay for. When prospective students look at my account, hopefully they will see the number of students I have already had, viewed a high rating score, and perhaps even read some flattering comments.

Let’s hear your ideas including what has worked, what has not, and what could be done differently next time.