First, let's define what a Marketing Coach is. A Marketing Coach supports their clients with tools, techniques, and skills, in the marketing realm to help them in achieving their business marketing goals. 
 
Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Coach

• Efficient. Working with a marketing coach will save your business time and money, which will save your sanity overall. A Marketing Coach can collaborate with you and your team, to keep your marketing in-house versus hiring a marketing agency. Most marketing coaches like me, offer a flat rate fee for a certain amount of coaching sessions, versus paying a monthly fee to an agency. I’m here to help guide your marketing team with the necessary tools, which will help them, help you, grow your business 
• Specialized Assistance. A Marketing Coach will guide you with a variety of strategies to help grow your business, especially if you are a solopreneur, and don’t yet have a marketing team. I have a wide range of coaching packages available for any business on any budget, with a focus on creating an individualized, actionable, marketing gameplan.
• Experience. A Marketing Coach is all about Marketing, it’s what they do, day in and day out. A good marketing coach pays close attention to current market trends and keeps their clients updated with news, info and changes that may impact their client’s business marketing agenda.
• Accessibility. When you hire a marketing coach, you have the ability to schedule one on one time to get questions answered, receive additional training, and brainstorm ideas.
• Personalization. Having a dedicated, experienced, marketing coach in your back pocket is something that your business will want and need. I take the time to get to know my clients, their business, their products and/or services, and their passion for their purpose, so that I can better be of service to them. You don’t get that with a big agency.

​Bottom line, if you lack engagement, leads and sales on social media, or you’re not sure how funnels, email marketing and social media work together, you may need a marketing coach. If your business has stalled and needs a boost, or you can’t seem to scale the way you would like, you may want a marketing coach. If any of this sound like you, then connect with me, Coach Valygrl, your Marketing Coach Extraordinaire.
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If you would like to learn more about how a marketing coach can help your business or are ready to see what options are available to you, schedule your Complimentary, No Obligation 30 min Coffee Connect Today!!   BOOK HERE

Facts are fabulous and stats are super, but they can be boring if they aren’t shared in a fun way. As a business owner, one of the easiest ways to capture your audience’s attention is through storytelling. From the platform to the in-box, you can use stories to 

• Engage
• Inform
• Motivate AND 
• Sell

Storytelling helps your audience relate to the material you share. Storytelling engages their imagination and brings concepts to life with each twist and turn of the story. A great storyteller can take the audience on a journey and help them better understand the message and information you want them to digest. Storytelling isn’t just about speaking. There are lots of ways to share a great story that don’t include standing in front of a group. Let’s take a look at ways you can use storytelling to engage and grow your audience. 

Public Speaking- Storytelling from the stage is the most obvious way to use stories to engage and grow your audience. Whether it’s a keynote speech or an elevator pitch, you can use stories to break the ice, deliver a message, or engage an audience with emotion. 

Written Correspondence- Writing posts, emails, and reports can be an excellent way to convey information, but they need to be interesting to hold your audience’s attention. Storytelling is an awesome way to spice up your written correspondence with your audience. 

Social Media- Nowadays, social media uses “stories” to encourage live engagement with your audience. From sharing what you’re doing at the moment to teaching a concept or idea, you can engage your audience and use a story to express yourself.  

Podcasts- Podcasts are a great way to use storytelling to grow and influence your audience. Audible learning is one of the top ways people consume information and stories can help solidify concepts and make them easier to understand. 

YouTube- Similarly to speaking in front of an audience or hosting a podcast, video can be a hybrid of all the ways to share a great story. The average person engaging a video has a very small attention span. Telling a great story can help them stay tuned-in and turned-on to what you have to say.  

The more you engage your audience and use stories to convey information, the more likely they are to know, like, and trust you. This helps them feel connected and increases your authority with them, making sales easier than ever. Use storytelling to boost your authority and entertain your audience while delivering important information.

Thanks for reading
Coach Val

1. Have a plan.
Having a plan for your day – even if it’s just a simple bullet list of to-do items – will help you be more productive. Divide your business tasks from your personal errands. Some people swear by the “brain dump” method, where you write down every single thing that’s on your mind and then organize it into categories, such as Must Do, Client Work, Future Projects, or Personal Errands. Utilizing this method gets the extraneous ideas out of your mind so you can focus more clearly on the task at hand.

2. Schedule how much time you will allot for your online activities.
Try using the time block method, which entails blocking off a certain number of hours to work with coaching clients, writing your next book or course, or to reconnect with your list by scheduling a month’s worth of emails. Simply follow the plan and you’ll see your productivity increase because you know exactly what has to happen next. Try this method at home, especially with tasks you don’t enjoy, such as housework or yard work. Block off a certain amount of time and work as quickly as possible to get the job done.

3. Reduce your online to-do list.
When you are looking for a workday that results in more focus and more productivity, it is best to create a realistic list. This means you should cut some items off your list that can wait until another day or that can be delegated to a VA. Try not to do everything in one day because you will naturally run out of time. Prioritize and do the most pressing online tasks that cannot be put off. When you are not frazzled by thinking you have so many things to do online, you will produce better quality work.

4. Take a few breaks.
When you are online for a long time, your mind can start to wander. You get distracted and strive to engage in less meaningful activities, which reduces your focus and your productivity. Rather than sitting at your desk for hours on end, take some breaks throughout the day; your body and your brain will thank you. You’ll gain mental clarity about what you need to accomplish and be able to recognize when you are veering into less productive activities.

5. Do the more difficult tasks prior to lunch time.
It is highly advised to do your more challenging items before you head off to lunch. This is because your mind has more vitality in the morning and will be able to make it through the difficult tasks more quickly than if they were left to be completed in the later part of the day. This technique is sometimes called “eating the frog” and you’ll have an immediate sense of accomplishment when this one task is complete.  Avoiding distractions throughout the workday is paramount to your success, especially if you work in a home office. Start off with these five tips and you might surprise yourself with your increased productivity.

​ 1. Stick to a schedule.
To wean yourself from the habit of checking your notifications and phone so much, make a schedule. You can start with fifteen- or thirty-minute increments for checking your email and social media. Once you become better at not getting sucked into time wasting activities, increase that increment to every 45-minutes, then move up to every hour. In addition, also set a 5-minutes timer to check and respond to the most important things. If your inbox is full, allot an extra ten- to fifteen-minutes to respond to anything that requires your input. Also, it is a good idea to inform friends, family, and colleagues that you will not be answering their calls and messages as quickly as you did previously, so that they do not worry or become anxious.

2. Be sure to shut off push notifications whenever possible.
You are not obligated to be bombarded with interruptions from your social media platforms or with messages that your favorite online podcast has just uploaded a new topic. You can greatly reduce such distractions by shutting off as many push notifications as possible. Go even further by shutting off your email and calendar notifications. If you’re on a schedule for checking email, then notifications are unnecessary.

3. Remove distracting apps.
Much of your phone usage comes from unconscious habit. Without much thinking, people shift from Instagram to Facebook, then check the weather and texts before playing their favorite game or checking their news headlines. However, if you use only specific necessary apps, then this will reduce the amount of time that is wasted on your phone. Try deleting the apps for social media sites and only use the web browser of your phone or laptop to engage. You’ll reduce time on your phone as apps make it too easy to waste time, even after your finished engaging with your followers.
 
4. Keep your device away from your bed.
Your phone does not have to be the last thing you see before going to sleep at night and the first thing you see in the morning. To avoid the trap of looking at your phone too much, try using an old-school alarm clock instead of your phone.
 
5. Use a smart speaker.
A smart speaker is valuable, because it helps you live a life away from your phone screen. When you have a smart speaker attached to your network via Bluetooth technology, this will prevent you from having to use your phone to turn on podcasts or music; instead, just say your choices to the smart speaker and go about your day, listening and learning instead of being sucked into your phone. The longer your phone is out of your hands, the more productive you’ll become, and these tips are just the beginning of your lessened dependence on technology. You may even discover that your days feel longer because you’re not distracted with your phone or notifications any longer.