Do you help people feel better or worse in your marketing?

I was criticised a while ago for trying to sell one of my coaching programs by using fear. The criticism was misguided in that selling wasn’t really my intention at the time (stirring people up was however, and it worked a treat!). But it did however, give me some food for thought about the different strategies used to promote & sell health & wellness.

There’s the one where you use the fear of succumbing to illness or even death to motivate people to use your services. Or there’s the one where you use the carrot of helping people feel really, really good about themselves to motivate prospects to pay you for your services.

In my experience, making people feel worse about themselves is not a way to keep your clients happy nor a way to keep them coming back for more nor to get them recommending you to their friends & family.

Here are a few examples of how you can make your clients feel worse without meaning to:

• Forcing them to look in the mirror at themselves when they really don’t want to, even though you think they look great or better than they did (I made this mistake – but watch out for a fantastic tip on how to help clients who have body dismorphia problems).
• Flaunting your fabulous body in their face, mistakenly thinking that you’re inspiring them to be like you.
• Telling them about how healthy you are and how healthily you eat, sleep & breathe – again mistakenly thinking that if you walk your walk as well as talking your talk, they’ll be inspired (Note: I’m not saying don’t walk your walk, just don’t expect it to be inspiring to all your clients. Some will find it intimidating, some will find it annoying and some will think you just don’t have a life and don’t know how to enjoy yourself).
• Telling them just how well all your other clients are doing.
• Focusing on what they still need to work on and achieve without spending enough time celebrating their achievements & progress each time.
• Using the phrase “If you don’t do x, then you’ll never achieve y” as a motivator.