When you’re the owner of your own business, you’re responsible for making the decisions around what you spend your money on and that includes help with marketing.
Chances are you’ve been doing all your marketing by yourself, but now you’re considering spending your hard-earned cash on marketing help and advice so you’ll want to feel happy and confident you’re giving it to the right person or company.
Perhaps you’ve worked with marketing coaches or marketing trainers before and it didn’t go to plan so now you want to make sure it doesn’t happen to you again, because you need to get results from your investment.
I do offer content marketing coaching and training to help you develop your content marketing strategy but I know that what I offer isn’t what everyone is looking for.
Here’s some considerations, insights and food for thought around the pros and the cons of working with marketing coaches or marketing trainers to help you decide the best approach for your business.
BENEFITS OF WORKING WITH A CONTENT MARKETING COACH OR TRAINER
What are the advantages of working with a content marketing coach/trainer?
Knowledge and Expertise
When you work with a content marketing coach or trainer to help you with your marketing strategy and content, you have instant access to what they know about online marketing.
What they’ve done is spent time learning about marketing and you can bet that what they’ve learned from working with other clients they will share with you too.
Over time they’ve created processes, templates and systems that could make the putting together and implementing your own marketing content strategy a straight-forward step-by-step process.
They’re nosey too so they’ll have their eyes and ears on what’s going on in the world of marketing and remember they’ll have their contacts they can share with you if you need specific expert help. So, if you’re looking for a virtual assistant, a web designer, a graphic designer, a copywriter, a video expert or a social media expert they can point you in the right direction.
Accountability
Have you been promising yourself to take action for your marketing? Been saying things like “I need to sit down and put together a marketing plan and a marketing strategy” or “I need to know what’s working and what isn’t with my marketing right now,” but not got round to doing it…?
When you work with a marketing coach or a marketing trainer, they keep you accountable and because you’ve invested your hard-earned cash, you’ll want to make sure you give the time and attention to your marketing and content strategy it deserves.
What else will they keep you accountable for? Well, to keep you on track they’ll put goals and objectives in place that are realistic for you and your business.
Creating your bigger picture
As I mentioned earlier, when you’re the one in your business and you’re working on it day in and day out it can sometimes be hard to have clarity around the vision you have for your business – short and long term. Your marketing coach or marketing trainer can help you with this by helping you plan and map out your marketing activity that aligns with your business goals.
If there’s been some debate and discussion internally about the direction you should take with your marketing strategy, a skilled content marketing consultant will help everyone get on the same page.
Think of all the time you can save
When you work with a marketing coach or a marketing trainer you save so much time because they take you through what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how to do and what to do with it once you’ve done it.
Think of all the hours you spent scouring the internet for answers, reading books or the self-study you did trying to get your head around this marketing malarkey. Your coach or trainer is there to show you how.
Because you have a plan of action to follow created by your marketing coach or marketing trainer, you’ll get things done more quickly, you increase your chances of getting the results you want more quickly and you can focus on committing to doing what they’ve mapped out for you.
Giving you more time to spend doing the fun stuff you always promised yourself you’d do when you started working for yourself and having time to commit to other parts of your business.
Short-term or long-term projects
When you decide to work with a marketing coach or a marketing trainer you can work with them for a short time or a longer time because they can be there to help you with a one-off marketing problem like reviewing your social media and putting together a plan and a strategy for you, advising you on what content to create, how to put together a lead magnet and create follow-up emails to help you get more sales to longer term projects like improving how you automate your marketing, formulate your content marketing strategy and implementing it to working with you to improve the performance of your website and your social media.
You can choose from working with someone for an hour, a day, to weeks and months. It gives you the flexibility to get what’s best for you and your business.
Efficient use of your time
Working together you’re focussing on a specific part of your content marketing with a clear goal and objective in mind for a set amount of time.
DOWNSIDES OF WORKING WITH A MARKETING COACH OR A MARKETING TRAINER
What are the disadvantages of working with a content marketing coach or a marketing trainer?
Cost
Whenever you decide to get help in your business it is going to come with a cost and that’s true of marketing coaches and trainers.
The cost could be an hourly fee or a price for a specific project to work with you. The cost of a marketing coach or a marketing trainer could start at around £100 per hour up to £20,000. Of course, this depends on what you want to work with them on and the coach or the trainer.
Many coaches and trainers, for higher ticketed project may give you the opportunity to pay in instalments after you’ve paid an initial deposit.
They may not implement it for you
Your marketing coach or marketing trainer could be there to teach and show you how to implement your content marketing strategy and not do it for you.
What does that mean? Well, it’ll be down to you to create and share your marketing content so be sure to discuss this with your coach or trainer.
Different ideas and approaches
Spending time and working with someone who can help you with your marketing has its benefits, but there could be a difference of opinion about your goals and objectives for your content marketing plan and strategy.
The reality is that they won’t have the understanding or knowledge of your audience, your clients or your area of expertise that you do.
They may not understand how or why you’re so passionate about holding on to your “this is how I’ve always done it” approach.
It pays you to be aware that not all coaches or trainers will be a fit to work with you. Be sure to have a good conversation with them before you start working with them, especially on larger or longer-term projects.
What happens when you stop working together?
It’s so good having your marketing coach or trainer by your side when you’re working together, but what happens when the project ends?
Any knowledge and insights they’ve learned about your business will be gone when you stop working together so if you want to work with someone in the future to strengthen your marketing, you may need to work with the same person.
When you have a full-time team member working on your content marketing, they keep any knowledge and lessons learned in the business.
Uncertainty and apprehension
Working with anyone brings uncertainties and apprehension that includes a marketing coach or trainer but you can do your due diligence. Ask them questions about how you will work together, check out their testimonials, website and social media and trust your gut.
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