OK, so you’ve taken the plunge. You’ve started your new educational consulting business. You’re fired up. You’re ready to tell the world, “Here I am!”
And, in today’s connected world, you know that means having a website that allows people to find you and get to know you and what you have to offer so they can hire you.
But before you grab a free WordPress template and start writing your site’s copy, slow down for a minute. Take a deep breath. Because I’m here to tell you that you don’t want to rush things at this point. You need to be strategic, because doing a few things correctly now will save you much heartache, time, and money later.
What do you need to be strategic about? Well, a lot of things, but here are three of the most important things, framed as three questions you need to answer:
Who Are You?
If you’re going to put up a website to let people know who you are, you need to figure that out in advance. That may seem to be a strange statement. You know who you are, right? You’re you!
But your site visitors don’t know you yet, and you only have a few seconds to convince them that you’re interesting, you’re different, you have a unique slant on things that can help them solve the problems they’re dealing with right now.
So how are you different? Let’s say your area of expertise is math instruction. Cool. But you can’t just say on your website that you’re a math consultant.
Why not? Because there are a bajillion other math consultants out there (well, to be exact, I just Googled “math consultant” and was told there were 67,000,000 results, so…yeah), and most of them have more experience than you. So why should a school hire you instead of them? They won’t…unless you can set yourself apart in some way.
So, the first question you need to answer is, “How am I different from every other math consultant out there? What do I have to offer that no one else can offer?” In business, they like to call this your USP, or “unique selling proposition.”
Look at competitor’s websites. Figure out what everyone else is offering. Think about how you’re different. Then position yourself to emphasize that difference.
There’s no reason to even put up a site until you know the answer to this question, because the answer is going to determine the content you put on your site. Everything on your site needs to be selling you—but not just you, the unique you!
Who is Your Ideal Client?
OK, so now you know who you are. The next big question you need to answer is, “Who am I doing this for? Who is my ideal client?
Knowing the answer to this question allows you to understand that person’s problems, their hopes and fears, and can therefore allow you to position yourself as the perfect solution to those problems. Do that, and you have a much better chance of getting hired.
I counsel new consultants to create an “Ideal Client Avatar” so that they can visualize clearly the kind of person they’re looking to attract. Here’s how to go about constructing this avatar:
Do a little research first. Let’s say the ideal client you’re visualizing is a high school principal. Go online and find out what percentage of high school principals are male and what percentage are female. What’s the average age of a high school principal? Find out the average salary for the position. Find out what their job duties usually entail. Get all of the factual information you can find.
Now, you’re going to have to use your imagination (informed by your own knowledge and experience). Imagine what the typical high school principal worries about or struggles with from day to day. What keeps him or her up at night? Imagine him or her sitting down, late at night, to browse the internet to search for the solution to those problems. What search terms are they going to type in? When they do so, will they find you?
When you’ve found all the factual information you can, and you’ve applied your imagination to flesh your avatar out, browse images of people online and find a photo that represents what you imagine your ideal client might look like. Save the image.
Now, it’s time to put this all together. Put the photo you found at the top of a Word document. Give this ideal client a name. Now, write out a good, detailed description of him or her. You might start out, “My ideal client, Pat Principal, is….” Be as thorough as you can. The more detailed a picture that you can paint for yourself, the better. When you’re done, put this ideal client profile up on your bulletin board or keep it next to your computer.
Now you know who you’re addressing when you write your website’s copy. And, even if you’re going to have someone else be your copywriter, you need to know the answers to these first two questions so you can give this information to your copywriter. This will allow him to write copy that will position you as the answer to the problems your ideal client is experiencing.
What is the Main Purpose of Your Website?
Finally, you’re going to want to get a clear idea about what goal you want your site to achieve for you. The answer to this question will determine how you structure the site (the site architecture) and what functionality the site will need to have.
For example, your site’s main purpose could be to help you build an e-mail list of people that you can build a relationship with. If that’s the case, you’re going to need to have one or more of the following on your site:
- A free report (often called a “lead magnet”) that you offer visitors in return for their contact information;
- A blog page where you post regular articles that help your ideal clients with their problems and demonstrate your expertise; and/or
- An e-newsletter that you send out regularly to the people on your list.
On the other hand, your site’s main purpose might be to sell products you’ve created. In that case, you’re going to need a Store or Products page, and you’re going to need merchant software and a shopping cart to take orders.
Or maybe your site’s main purpose is to offer potential clients descriptions of the presentations and consulting that you do and to convince them to hire you.
There are a lot of different purposes that a good website can achieve, and your site can have more than one purpose, but you need to think this through in advance and build your site’s architecture with your primary goal(s) in mind from the start so you don’t have to go back and add new functionality, write new copy, etc., later.
Yes, it may take you a few days to figure out how you plan to position yourself as a unique provider in the marketplace, to create a detailed picture of who you want to serve, and to get a clear idea of what you want your website to do for you, but this is time well spent. Answer these three questions in advance, and your website design and writing will go much more quickly and smoothly.
