Coaching World Issue 8: November 2013 | Page 26

Winning Web Copy
With a host of social media platforms at your disposal,
there are more ways than ever to promote your coaching
business to prospective consumers and connect with
current clients. However, if your business’ website is the
foundation for your marketing efforts, you’re not alone:
A March 2013 poll by “Inc. Magazine” and the marketing
software firm Vocus revealed that 86.6 percent of small
businesses planned to use their websites to achieve their
annual goals.

Abby Tripp Heverin
As ICF’s Communications
Coordinator, Abby oversees
content development for
Coaching World, helps
implement the organization’s
public relations strategy and
snaps the occasional behindthe-scenes photo for inclusion
on ICF Global’s Facebook
page. If you’re interested
in submitting to a future
issue of Coaching World,
email her at abby.heverin@
coachfederation.org.

In order to leverage your website as a
marketing tool, you need to produce
content that stands out to your readers
by providing the information they need,
speaking to them with a compassionate
and authentic voice, and illustrating your
commitment to high quality. Whether
you’re writing copy for the first time or
getting ready to give your longstanding
site a much-needed refresh, these five
tips will help you catch—and keep—
clients’ attention.

Write with the “you
attitude.”

You may be marketing your services, but
the prospective and current clients should
be the focus of your copy. To achieve this,
adopt the “you attitude” while writing.
First, think about your reader—in this
case, your ideal client. What does she
want or care about? Why is she visiting
your website? How can your services help
her achieve her goals? Craft content with
those questions in mind.

© 2010-2013, Julie Cohen Coaching, LLC

26 Coaching World

As you write, look for opportunities to
replace first-person pronouns, such as
“I,” “me” or “my,” with second-person
addresses to the reader (“you,” “your”).
Julie Cohen, PCC, demonstrates this on
her website (see the screen capture
below), directly addressing her readers
about their career concerns and
proceeding to articulate how her services
will help them achieve their goals.
You might even decide to extend your
use of you attitude by letting your clients
speak for themselves. A few thoughtful,
well-written client testimonials that
describe the benefits of your coaching
can be more persuasive than anything
you say yourself.

Use (but don’t abuse)
keywords.

If you already have a website for your
coaching business, chances are you’re
familiar with the abbreviation SEO. Short
for search engine optimization, SEO refers
to the process of increasing a website or
page’s visibility in unpaid (i.e., “natural” or
“organic”) search engine results.
In the early days of SEO, search engines
privileged keywords, so it was to a writer’s
advantage to load her copy with keywords
and phrases—even at the expense of
meaningful content and high-quality prose.
However, a shift is now underway toward
the prioritization of factors including
natural phrasing, linking and social sharing:
Google, for example, determines rankings
using algorithms such as Panda, which
focuses on content, and Penguin, which
looks at the number and quality of links
from around the Web that point back to a
given page.
With this in mind, don’t stuff your copy
full of keywords in the hopes of achieving