Webinar: “Marketing With Authenticity”
Presenter: Dr. Faith Harper and Joe Biel
Air date: March 17th, 2021
*Our webinars are open to enrolled Sex Coach U students and current members of the World Association of Sex Coaches only. Click here for more information about enrolling in our program.
Love it or hate it, marketing is an essential element to a thriving coaching practice. So, how can you maximize your marketing efforts to make yourself stand out? How can you make yourself highly visible to your ideal clients? What is the magic ingredient to marketing yourself, a product, or an offering? The answer is authenticity. Dr. Faith Harper and Joe Biel are here to speak about marketing with authenticity.
Dr. Faith is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Unfuck Your Brain and numerous other books. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas and a Certified Sexologist through The American College of Sexologists International. Her publisher at Microcosm Publishing is Joe Biel.
In this webinar, they talked to us about how to unfuck our approach to marketing.
Stay Authentic
Dr. Faith went straight to the main point, “Marketing with authenticity starts with remaining authentic.” When she wrote Unfuck Your Brain, she wrote the book she wanted for herself. The fact that other people wanted it, too, was a bonus. As Dr. Faith put it, “Things don’t have to be dry or boring to be relevant or scientifically factual. We don’t have to give up one for the other, no matter what academia tells us.” According to Dr. Faith, she is occasionally foul-mouthed and always straightforward. If she took on a stuffy, academic tone, it would be inauthentic for her. She added, “Unfuck Your Brain may not be for everyone, but it’s for a lot of people.”
Joe pointed out that we need to get out of the fog of our expertise. When you create content, he advises, think about what the average person needs to understand something new. People want information in a way they can consume it. Humor often helps.
Marketing with Authenticity – Niche Down
Finding your niche is a theme that runs throughout the SCU curriculum. It’s true in sex coaching, and it’s true in publishing. When you write a book for everyone, you write a book for no one. Dr. Faith reminded us, “we have to be willing to not be for everybody in order to be authentic.”
So, what do you publish for your niche? Consider the content you find yourself using at workshops or with your clients—this material can be excellent for small, supportive products such as self-published books and workbooks. For example, Dr. Faith has a little recipe book available for clients to purchase. She said, “It won’t be a bestseller, and it’s for a different market than the Unfuck books,” but it’s a perfect offering for a particular niche she works with in her practice.
Marketing with Authenticity – Focus on Value Proposition
Joe said, at its most basic, the value proposition is “what you’re getting out of something.” The value proposition is why someone chooses this book over that book. In other words, it means pushing the benefits and results, not the features, of your coaching services or other products. Focus on the result, not the problem. Frame things in terms of the reader, not yourself.
Think Outside the Box
There are many ways to accomplish your goals. Dr. Faith told us to start by knowing what we want. Then, weigh the pros and cons of each option. Success is on your terms. What do you care about in life? Accept opportunities that get you the life you want.
Here are a few options for publishing your content that Dr. Faith and Joe discussed in the webinar.
- IngramSpark for self-publishing books
- Kickstarter to raise funding and support for your project
- Patreon or a paid Substack for smaller content like articles
Dr. Faith and Joe offered a few tips for choosing publishers to approach. First, specialized publishers can help with sales, promotions, and marketing. Look on your own bookshelves. Who is publishing the books you like to read? This is a good clue for where to pitch. Second, follow the publisher’s instructions for submitting pitches very closely so they can assess your manuscript.
Final Words of Advice
Dr. Faith and Joe closed with some final words of advice for us to unfuck our marketing. First, remember that your unique self and product are what make you distinguished. The material may be covered elsewhere, but you bring a new angle and spin. Be the most you that you can be, and no one can steal your thing, or they’re inauthentic.
Second, read and follow other people for inspiration. Learn about what other people are doing. Figure out what you like and don’t like about it. This helps you to know your authentic self.
As sex coaches, we know faking it during sex is not the way to go. The same goes for marketing. Whether we wish to publish a book, create a card deck, or design a sex toy, when we bring authenticity to the project, it becomes attractive to our niche.
Curious about training to become a Certified Sex Coach™? Join the next live Info Session to meet the SCU team and participate in a live Q&A!
