What more can/should I do?

[ScottyD]

Hi all,

I am getting a bit despondent at the moment.

I have a business that offers training and consultancy on Excel, Power BI & SQL. These are tools that just about everyone is using! I am good at what I do, and I regularly train for other companies as what is termed an associate trainer, with excellent reviews. But I want to go direct and offer the same training via my business. So, I am trying to market my own business. Unfortunately, I am getting absolutely nowhere and it's starting to knock my confidence, not to mention my bank balance! Any advice would be appreciated!

I have a website which I think is decent and modern. I have tried the following:

• Google adwords - I got professional help from someone who put together a few adwords campaigns with specific landing pages and with a promotion to get a significant discount. I got about 10 leads, of which 8 were tyre kickers or time wasters. The 2 that were genuine - 1 didn't respond to several email/phone calls. The other said they were interested but haven't done anything. My adwords campaigns are currently turned off as it wasn't giving me decent returns.
• Reaching out to friends and family - I have sent out emails to all my friends and family stating what I do and asking them to share my details and my services with anyone they know who might be interested. Several did forward on my email (which I thought was a well constructed message - engaging etc).
• Sent promotional emails to past customers with offers of 25% discounts on bookings for courses.
• Created helpful posts on topics of interest in Excel and Power BI, including videos and posted these to:
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Various relevant groups on Facebook like local business groups etc

I don't quite know what more I can/should do. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions on thoughts in terms of avenues to explore? Cheers!

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

These are tools that just about everyone is using!

This is your first issue - no they are not. If they are, they probably do not know they are (e.g. websites).

Your website is at best OK, but makes the classic error of selling features not benefits - you do not say what people need training - what will they achieve?

Others in similar trades, have built great SM following by creating quick help & hint videos and spread them on every platform. This will build a good tribe, but who may/may not build business.

 

[fisicx]

You really need a website review. There are so many things that could be improved. Starting with the domain name (should be .co.uk) and the tagline:

"Elevate your data expertise..."

I have no idea what this even means.

Adwords can be very lucrative but you need the right keywords, the right advert and most importantly, the right landing page.

How do people normally get help with Excel? I usually just Google for a tutorial.

I don't know anyone who uses Power BI.

Do people really need SQL help? surely they have DB administrators for this?

Are you sure everyone is using these tools? Who are you actually targeting?

 

[fisicx]

Just looked at your course page. Nothing there that anyone would be interested in following up and almost certainly why your Adwords campaign failed.

Get a website review!

 

[NickGrogan]

I use excel quite a lot, and chatgpt has replaced looking at google.

Give it a small sample of data, tell it in plain English what you want to do and it will give you formulas. You can add more complication needed. If something doesn't work, it will fix it.

faster than a google search, copy and paste the code and done.

I looked at the course, they all look pretty basic, doesn't look like a days study for any of them.

Used PowerBI a couple of times when data gets too big for excel, a bit clunky, but I'd assume chatgpt knows it well enough

SQL, which one? as @fisicx said this is fairly specialist tool

 

[Mark T Jones]

People don't want a mattress, they want a good nights sleep.

People don't want a drill they want a hole. (Add 1000 other cliches).

Before you get a website review think in depth about these 2 questions:

Who is your perfect target customer?

What is one, single compelling benefit they will get from your coaching?

That's your starting block.

To add another cliche, marketing is a process, not an event.

Rather than sending out random chunks of 1000 emails (or whatever) target 100 prospects with an escalating series of messages.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

People don't want a drill they want a hole. (Add 1000 other cliches).

I love it! I am creating a cliche collecting topic on this!

 

[ScottyD]

I use excel quite a lot, and chatgpt has replaced looking at google.

Give it a small sample of data, tell it in plain English what you want to do and it will give you formulas. You can add more complication needed. If something doesn't work, it will fix it.

faster than a google search, copy and paste the code and done.

I looked at the course, they all look pretty basic, doesn't look like a days study for any of them.

Used PowerBI a couple of times when data gets too big for excel, a bit clunky, but I'd assume chatgpt knows it well enough

SQL, which one? as @fisicx said this is fairly specialist tool

Hi Nick, yes, ChatGPT does often give good results, and I teach this in my courses. ChatGPT is great for creating a formula to solve a specific challenge. However, what ChatGPT cannot do is tell you how to lay out your information to ensure it works effectively. Or how to process your data to reach a desired outcome.

I have had people on my courses who think they'll learn nothing new. I have yet to have it that such people feel the same way by the end of the day. They ALWAYS learn something useful.

Power BI is much more than just Excel for big data. Again, elements of Power BI can be solved using ChatGPT, but you're talking about very specific tasks.

Thanks for your comments - food for thought.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Have you asked previous attendees why they used your courses?

 

[fisicx]

You are answering your own question @ScottyD. People don’t want a course, they just want to know how to do one specific thing.

Or more often, they want someone to do it for them.

My wife uses excel all the time. But she didn’t build the spreadsheet. The company has someone do it for them.

 

[NickGrogan]

However, what ChatGPT cannot do is tell you how to lay out your information to ensure it works effectively. Or how to process your data to reach a desired outcome.

Pretty sure it can

 

[Ozzy]

Hi @ScottyD
You've had some great advice above, and I really do love the cliches from @Mark T Jones which are valuable.

A quick look at your website and I would suggest the website was built for you, it needs to be built for Granny Noclue. She needs to be able to look at your website and completely understand what is in it for her, you have too many words on your homepage written for you and people like you who understand what it is you do already. It needs to be written for people at a dinner party who glaze over when you start explaining to them what you do for a living.

This is just your website, as for a marketing strategy to drive people to your website - I'm a big fan of YouTube shorts, TikToks and Instagram Reels giving snippets of knowledge away as hooks.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Hi Nick, yes, ChatGPT does often give good results, and I teach this in my courses. ChatGPT is great for creating a formula to solve a specific challenge. However, what ChatGPT cannot do is tell you how to lay out your information to ensure it works effectively. Or how to process your data to reach a desired outcome.

I have had people on my courses who think they'll learn nothing new. I have yet to have it that such people feel the same way by the end of the day. They ALWAYS learn something useful.

Power BI is much more than just Excel for big data. Again, elements of Power BI can be solved using ChatGPT, but you're talking about very specific tasks.

Thanks for your comments - food for thought.

Are you target customers likely to understand this stuff? I certainly don't, but I've no idea if I'm your target customer.

A couple more pitfalls to avoid:

1. Using the language of the product rather than the language of your customer.
2. Getting embroiled in technical debate which might well be off-putting to your prospect.

To throw in my circumstances (for contect)

I work alone, use Excel a bit.

I'm aware that I could get more out of it. Sometimes consider learning more.

Why haven't I done so?

Lack of motivation + NOBODY HAS GIVEN ME A COMPELLING REASON/SPUR TO DO SO

I'm going to guess that applies to a fair chunk of potential prospects.

 

[fisicx]

I build plugins. Every now and then I get a request to build something that needs specialist programming skills. I could go and get trained or spend ages learning how to do something. Or I could pay someone in India to do it for me in a couple of hours.

There are dozens of free or low cost courses you can do online. Where something complex is required (and only ever required once) it’s cheaper to outsource rather than pay for training.

So while there may be some who want to learn and are prepared to pay I suspect the number is fairly small.

As an aside, I’m doing a plugin for a finance company who sent me a spreadsheet with all the calculations. Made no sense to me so I asked them to explain. They hadn’t got a clue. It was all set up by someone in the Philippines.

 

[Paul Carmen]

I think the website and your marketing approach misses the entire point of why someone would use your services. This has been covered by Mark, but doesn't mean you understand what needs to change.

I'd be interested to see what search terms you ran and the keywords that generated the leads, as I suspect you wasted your money.

This needs to be approached the other way around; e.g. who are your target customers, what are their issues, where do they search, what do they search for etc.

You can then look at your direct competitors, benchmark your offering and come up with compelling services, courses, copy and marketing to target these people properly.

At this stage your website and offering does not do that. You either need to be able to carry out this research, build a marketing plan and make these changes yourself, or get someone who understand the process to do it for you.

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

I was SQL certified, MicroStrategy certified (worked there for nearly 5 years) and know my way around Excel. Lots of good advice on here and I'd add a couple of things.

Firstly, trust. Sure, the website looks OK but why not add a video customer testimonial. Because who do prospects trust more; is it the company selling to them or their customers, on camera, saying great things?

Secondly, your website needs to inspire people to buy. And as everyone is saying, something that sells the benefits of what you're offering. Talk about courses with Excel so you can do bigger and better things. Save yourself time etc... Or maybe get up to speed really quickly.

Then, who are you talking to? SQL for whom? Marketers maybe? So "Hey marketers, understand what makes your customers tick better by understanding customer data..." Are your courses aimed at technical? And that's a question of 'get up to speed quickly and make yourself more employable by being SQL certified."

Etc...

Another thing you could do would be to put video of you on there. Talking about why you love to make a difference. Because of that 'people buy from people' thing.

It just needs to be more focused on the customer, what you can do for them. And maybe some video to develop trust.

 

[Mattymoomoo]

I would say im your target market. I use excel every day, I have had to learn to use VBA and use power queries/pivots due to stability of Excel and as i have too much data to fit on one tab and the files are too big etc. Our company is moving from Tableau to Power BI, so i have a need. The company (although has over 100m in turnover expects us to learn it ourselves).

As mentioned above, i normally have one thing i need to know immediately. Chat GPT has been rubbish 75% of the time (perhaps im not questioning properly), but ive seen a lot of wrong answers, which isnt acceptable. So my solution has been youtube (amazing content) and i also went to fiver and paid someone to help sort out some aspects and provide personalised training (which was great value).

If you are selling to individuals rather than companies, I rather suspect the people on youtube have plenty of work and proposals that they either fill or more likely contract out. If you have spare time, maybe try creating some content on latest changes/improvements, but make it engaging and clear as competition is high.

 

[fantheflames]

As someone that is actively working with a business that is similar to yours, my advice is exploring subscription-based model for support and advance training - making sure there is a clear difference between the two.

And building content to create powerful case studies, showing how your training has improved X, Y, or X for previous clients can be incredibly persuasive.

There is also a big difference between a case study that includes 1-2 stock images to a case study that shows figures, real images, and even videos that demonstrate the effectiveness of your training.

So make sure you're thinking about the quality of the content if you're looking at making a real difference to the user's experience.

Let us know how you go on, as I know it's been a couple of months since you originally posted @ScottyD!

 

[Newchodge]

Hi Nick, yes, ChatGPT does often give good results, and I teach this in my courses. ChatGPT is great for creating a formula to solve a specific challenge. However, what ChatGPT cannot do is tell you how to lay out your information to ensure it works effectively. Or how to process your data to reach a desired outcome.

I have had people on my courses who think they'll learn nothing new. I have yet to have it that such people feel the same way by the end of the day. They ALWAYS learn something useful.

Power BI is much more than just Excel for big data. Again, elements of Power BI can be solved using ChatGPT, but you're talking about very specific tasks.

Thanks for your comments - food for thought.

Just to agree with @Paul Kelly ICHYB. I use excel regularly. I have never heard of Power BI and although I have heard of SQL I haven't the faintest idea of what it is.

A communication that started off saying that I regularly use those things would go in the bin straightaway.

You need both to define your target market and, I think, be able to describe it in terms that do not make assumptions.