One of the best ways a private counselor, college, or even a student can market themselves is to earn the right to have a conversation with someone.
You might meet someone you don’t know at a dinner party and start a conversation. That’s a first step. If you like each other, you might exchange emails and stay in touch. You might decide you enjoy each other’s company. You might become good friends. You might become best friends. But it has to start somewhere, almost always with a conversation.
Most people will not immediately make the jump from viewing our website to enrolling in our counseling program. That’s like expecting someone to meet you at a dinner party and immediately invite you on vacation with their family. A lot of our customers are referred by their friends, but for strangers who don’t know us, it’s a process that looks like this.
1. Sign up for our free newsletter or subscribe to our blog.
When someone signs up for our newsletter or blog, we have permission to communicate with them (not spam them with marketing messages they didn’t ask for). We share good insight and advice, just as we promised to do. And over time, they’ll come to trust us more.
2. Sign up to be invited to one of our free college admissions seminars.
This is the professional version of, “We should get together sometime.” So we reach out to invite them, and if they attend, they’re in our figurative living room, willingly showing up to hear what we have to say. The conversation has progressed and we’re becoming friends.
3. Schedule an appointment for a free introductory meeting.
Now we’re meeting one-on-one and learning more about each other. We’re talking about the family’s college-related worries and how our counselor might be able to help. The conversation has progressed. We’ve gone from being strangers to potentially working together, but it didn’t happen because of one ad or marketing message.
If you’re trying to “get your name out there,” to get more people to notice you and maybe even buy what you’re selling, find ways to start conversations first. Do the work it takes to keep the conversation going so that both parties benefit. Good conversations are hard to stop having once you start them.