What is CoachesWebMarketing.com?

CoachesWebMarketing.com is a blog that is aimed specifically at Coaches and Therapists and  who want to learn how to use the power of the web and to increase their perceived authority, improve their marketing and build their business.

You will find a variety of articles from my own personal experience of developing award-winning websites, building email lists and attracting targeted visitors to your site. In addition, I will reflect on the best practice and successes of other experts in the field of internet marketing in order to share strategies, tips and techniques that can help transform your own web presence into the client-attracting asset you deserve.

I'm also a big fan of learning via multimedia, so you will find lots of informative, easy-to-digest video and audio files that will help you follow the topics covered in your own preferred learning-style.

Who is James Watson?

My name is James Watson – let me tell you a little about my background and why I decided to create CoachesWebMarketing.com.

Firstly let me tell you the most important thing you need to know. I am not a 'tech-geek'. I can barely work out how to program my dvd recorder at home, let alone anything in html or any other techno-speak language.

Let me explain why this is important.

If you feel any of the following emotions when thinking about trying to use technology – frustration, bewilderment, anxiety, hopelessness, inadequacy etc etc – then know this – my journey using technology started just where you are now.

Plus, I'm not going to bamboozle anyone with tech-terms, as I just don't know how – nor want to!

In 2005 my wife and I decided to open a small Italian cafe/deli in our hometown of Bath in the UK. Naturally, we were extremely proud of our fledgling enterprise and we wanted to create a website that reflected the high-quality environment we had created for our customers.

So we arranged for a local web designer to build a web site made of very pretty, beautifully-styled, 'static' html pages. Our initial euphoria however soon turned to frustration as whenever we needed to make changes e.g. to our product range, we were stuck.

Here was the problem. Unless I was willing to learn html, css and other tech-geek web-programming languages, as well as expensive, complicated software like Dreamweaver, I would have to pay the web designer every single time I wanted to make even the smallest of updates. Subsequently I've learnt that this practice is actually rife, and that web designers are often only too happy to take this easy, ongoing work and rack up their profits.

To be fair, however, not all web designers are blatant 'rip off' merchants. In fact the majority (certainly the ones I know) are mainly honest, hard-working individuals just trying to make a living doing what they know. However, what they almost always are not, however, are marketers, and they don't know understand what your real needs are in order to market your business online successfully.

So one day I decided enough was enough and set about discovering just how easy it is to set up and update your own website, without learning html or any other technical jargon. Most website designers will tell you this is impossible! Not only possible, it is easy to do and will save you the thousands of pounds that I and other people have been foolish enough to pay.

In 2008 our ‘little' website won an industry award – and my wife and I were thrilled. I set up our website using a simple Wordpress blog that is easy to update with text, images and even audio or video files. In simple terms, a 'blog' is the name given to a particular style of website, one that is friendlier and more personal than most other websites – especially those for businesses.

Moreover, search engines like Google normally give preference to content written in blogs, so you will get at least some visitors naturally without having to do anything other than write some content. For example, our cafe/deli naturally attracts visitors who have typed search for terms like 'rice salad' or 'italian deli bath' into a search engine.

Because of the local celebrity of our website, I have now started to mentor other people about how to develop their own websites and web marketing in general. These are people who either don't have a website currently and would like to start one, or else they already have one but it is impossible for them to edit and update easily without incurring significant expense.

Now, as a member of a business mastermind program for coaches, I am increasingly aware of just how many coaches, consultants and NLP professionals are also having real difficulties in establishing their own powerful web presence. In many ways this website is dedicated to help these people make the most of their impressive array of talents and achieve a truly successful, long-term web presence.

So, the aim of CoachesWebMarketing.com is to provide real behind-the-scenes insights into the strategies and techniques that I have and continue to use to build a powerful web marketing presence, both personally and for my clients.