Before we go into the nitty gritty of this let's do some basic housekeeping.
Something that your competition is ignoring.
That most 'other' freelance tutors are totally ignoring.
Let me show you how to write the 'stuff' that will ...
PUT YOUR PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS ON STEROIDS
BY CONSUMING 'ONLY' YOUR CONTENT
It’s the secret sauce to how you are going to find students for your online teaching business.
Let’s start by looking at this page.
Don’t read the actual words for a minute but just look at the overall presentation.
It has small, simple, sentences that are to the point. Easy to read, spaced out with subtitles.
Why is this important?
Because,It is easy to read!!
And that is sooooooo important especially if you are a language tutor or teacher whose students are foreign!!
But the really important part is that before your readers, your potential students read this they are going to think …
Can I read this?
And they do that by first scanning the page. In effect they check out the content before they actually commit to trying to read it.
When they see short sentences – easy to read words, their eyes send a message to their brain saying:
“Yes this is easy to read. I can do this.”
So what do they do next?
THEY ACTUALLY CONSUME YOUR 'STUFF'
So then their brain starts working, FASTER AND FASTER because your content is easy to read.
Before they know it, they feel like they are on steroids because they have read all your content and guess what that means?
That means that ….
YOU have helped THEM - How?
By using simple sentences and ‘easy to read’ subheadings, in a technique that is called the “dual readership path.”
Pretty cool – right?
But the best part is this.
THEY are going to LIKE your teaching style before you have even taught them a lesson because the first piece of YOUR content that they interacted with was,
1) EASY TO CONSUME.
2) Helped them do the ONE thing they want to do which is, to be able to understand your message.
Brilliant! The first step of your content based marketing is already done.
What was that?
Because YOU made YOUR message
ALL ABOUT THEM
And more specifically, it is about communicating in a way that INFLUENCES people to CONSUME your content. Make content that is EASY to CONSUME.
Remember you are trying to get people to consume your content because it is appealing and EASY to consume. You are not trying to convince an examiner why your essay is the most detailed and intricate piece of work that they have EVER read! Keep it simple.
If you want to help people, Keep it simple.
So now that the general housekeeping is done. Let me show you …
6 Ways to get private, online students for online tutoring
Make sure you make EVERYTHING about them.
You would be surprised to see how many tutors don’t!
Go on Social Media and look at some private tutoring pages. Most likely you will see a long list of why the TUTOR is so WONDERFUL. Listing all THEIR qualifications, all THEIR expereince’s that have made them the wonderful teacher that THEY are.
Did you notice the high frequency word in that short paragraph above?
It was,
'THEIR'
Everything has been made about the teacher or tutor and NOTHING about the student.
The fact is this, students care about TWO things.
Themselves.
THEIR results.
Start making your content about THEM and you will get more bookings, more sales, more money. FACT.
2. Stop wafting on about ‘niche’.
Why – Firstly, you are just fooling yourself that YOUR type of teaching is so SPECIAL that is untouchable by any other tutor.
Come on – get real!
Secondly, you have again just made the content, all about YOU.
” Oh, I only help Doctors.”
” Oh, I only teach Architects.”
That is just a blatant marketing message saying. I only teach what I think are going to be RICH students.
With that type of content marketing, you have just demonstrated to the world, that the only person you are willing to HELP is YOURSELF.
How many sales do you think you are going to get with that, long term? Be realistic.
I’m just reminding you that you are reading this because you are interested in getting your own online students, go freelance or start an online tutoring business.
In business, you need sales to make money. A quick flash in the pan with a couple of high paying lawyers may not be the best business structure to build your online tutoring business on. For obvious reasons.
Now let’s get onto the subject of ‘Niche.’
Niche today in online marketing is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.
I hate to tell you this, but if you are still on the ‘niche’ bandwagon.
You are like, 10 light years BEHIND everyone else.
Today, in the modern world of teaching, we have this wonderful thing called a Digital PIXEL.
Now that, is going to be your Knight in Shining armour.
3. Make interesting and unique content that is HELPFUL to YOUR students. (not you)
And you do that by listening to them and observing their behaviour.
How do you observe their online behaviour? By creating content and seeing how they react. Simple.
Did you think that the way was to create a ‘program’ before you even knew who your students were and what they wanted, then tell them you only teach in a certain ‘niche’ then try and add a huge price tag to that because someone told you that it made your services MORE appealing???
Sorry to have to tell you this but have you ever heard of the term, ‘shotgun wedding?’
It’s kind of the same principle.
4. Be your own Influencer.
For you to make people want to buy your services, you need them to like, know and trust you.
I have already mentioned that and why that it is important but how do you actually do it?
By influencing them with your content.
You are in effect influencing people that look at your social media posts, blogs and articles to become your clients. The minute they start paying you for your services and products they are YOUR clients. Want them to stay being your clients. Create more of what they positively reacted to when you observed their behaviour as noted above in point 3.
But if you don’t use social media or have a social media account by don’t create a systematic strategy that helps people to consume your content, you are loosing the opportunity of converting those people into paying customers.
You are ignoring a FREE opportunity to be your own influencer in your own marketing , for your OWN business.
Why would you do that?
Why would anyone do that?
Why would anyone that wants to have their own clients and their own business, ignore the potential of getting paying customers for FREE using Social media and the internet.
Know that on average, most people will need to see the same or similar piece of content at least three times before they say yes. Why? Because we are conditioned to say no!
No, Im not buying that because I KNOW that they are just trying to sell me something!
Ring any bells?
Have you ever though that?
Now think of someone that you follow somewhere on Social Media or blogs or websites that you use, ones that you use frequently.
Think about why you do that and why you prefer to buy from that person or business than from somewhere or someone else that is selling the same or similar product.
I can guarantee that somewhere along your buying journey, you have been influenced by the type of content that was put in front of you.
Most of the time without you consciously knowing it because that is the power and the results of effective marketing.
With Social media, today you can more than 10X that!
You need to realise that by Freelance tutoring you can very easily become your own successful influencer and what’s more you can start doing it for free with just your phone!
5. Tell them what to do
In a friendly, helpful kind of way.
Of course!
You need to give your students and for the record I always use the words clients (i’ll go into that in the final point after) instructions. You need to tell them what to do.
Believe it or not, people like to be told what to do, as long as you do it in the right way.
Why?
Well to start with it avoids the issue of indecision, which is a killer for any business as it results in zero sales.
It helps to build the, know, like and trust factor which is
FUNDEMANTAL
If you want clients to actually pay for your services.
Want to test that theory out? Go try and get a sale from someone that hates you OK maybe hate is a strong word, try someone that you don’t get on well with – even though you KNOW that your services are going to help them.
So let’s get back to the instructions. An instruction or call to action which is what it is called, can be anything that helps that reader that prospective client interact with your stuff, with your content.
Like when you are teaching, you are training the brains of your students to do things in a certain way because you know that, that method gets the results that they need or want. And you need them to follow and understand the first method you are teaching them so thatchy will understand your next method.
Makes sense right?
Calls to action are the same. But most of the time, unless you have KILLER copy and a really good offer (which by all account, I can show you how to do) you will need to expect an investment in time from both you and your students, before they take action.
That ‘call to action’ might not be activated by them the first time or the second. This is why you have to train them. In your marketing approach and you basically have to train them to take action.
In fact further on down the line when you want to start running ads on social media, you can choose how many times you want your prospective client to see your ad in any given day. There is a reason for that. But moving on.
In it’s simplest form. You have been conditioned. Trained to take action when you go to a store.
You know that when you go shopping, you go to the store, open the door, walk in, look at the products, choose what you want (especially if their is a Killer offer) then go to the cash desk, pay then leave.
This process has a method and a procedure. One that you intrinsically follow, subconsciously.
But this process that you automatically and subconsciously follow was not innate.
Your parents trained you to take that ‘call to action.’
They trained you to understand the process, apply the method and take the call to action.
You need to the same with your prospects. Your future clients.
Which is why people that say you don’t need a website, a funnel, lead pages or emails to get online students are talking NADA!
Unless you are ‘in training’ to be the next Harry Potter of course.
Training people that look at your content to take a call to action, does not have to be a ‘BUY NOW’ call to action.
You can ask them to ‘like’ or ‘comment’ on what you have written.
Invite them to enjoy a free lesson with you on how they can learn more about reaching their goals. And how do you that?
Well you delicately drop it in like sprinkles on a cake in most of your content but make it clear but not cheesy but most of all helpful, just like this: Go here and have a look at this class where I actually show you how to find private, online clients for your freelance tutoring business and how you can basically DO the same.
6. Stop calling students, students! P-e-r-i-o-d
I know – what a shocker!
But there is method to what you might be thinking … is madness.
The first factor we need to establish if you want to get your own online clients, is in defining your authority and defining it differently from EVERYONE ELSE, who is trying to be ‘the best’ tutor out there. and that is by ….
DEFINING YOUR AUTHORITY
Stop calling your students, students. They are not at school and neither are you! So stop behaving like you both are. It’s false, pretentious and very unattractive unless you actually OWN a language school and it is marketed as a language school. Even then I find adults like to be called clients and not ‘students.’ Calling adults ‘students’ is for many cringeworthy – like if I call my sons Nike 97’s – sneakers!
Like ewww!
‘They’ are your clients.
If you want them to behave like clients.
Treat them like that and that starts with the appropriate mindset.
Once you call STOP calling your students, students and start calling them CLIENTS, you will yourself start to think like a business owner. This is necessary for all the relevant factors to work and to work well.
An important part of this name changing is in the authority, in the power, in the relationship that you need to build and have with your clients for it to function in a professional business, marketplace. And the transition you need to make from a teacher or tutor currently working for someone else to now for yourself.
When you call your clients student’s and you refer them to them as that and you market yourself and your business like that, you have ultimately put yourself in the position of power, of having power over and above a student.
This is not what clients want. In an online business it has the reverse effect to that in school or classroom environment. Power struggles and authority ranking in a business context like this will tank your business marketing fast.
Think about it.
If you are going to make a purchase and a considerable one in financial terms or a purchase on a regular subscription, what do you want to hear?
How do you want to be made to feel?
Are you likely to buy from someone that is ‘telling you what to do because they are so clever at what they do’ or are you likely to buy from someone because their marketing messages ‘make you feel good about yourself and your potential purchase.
Forget the, ‘finding the pain point’ marketing technique also. That will not work in tutoring, there are too many tutors in the world today for that technique to be even marginally effective. Your marketing message needs to have a more powerful and unique approach than that and that is YOU.
Treat your clients how you would like to be treated and put yourself in their shoes often to mind map these six ways to get private online students, to keep yourself in a regular, reality check!
It WILL ensure that you are consistently reflecting on your clients needs and wants and on how you are ‘really’ being perceived by your clients.
And if you want to find out more about how you can do any of what you have just read, Go here and have a look at this class where I actually show you how to find private, online clients for your freelance tutoring business and how you can basically DO the same.
