Resistance to Marketing Your Doula Business? Read this.
You just finished your Doula training, now what? Now how do you get clients?
Ah that’s right, in the business class you took in college, the professor suggested creating a business plan. Maybe even a specific marketing plan for your Doula Business?
While I’m all for making plans to provide structure to our ideas, there’s something that I think we should discuss before diving into a marketing plan. And that is - our resistance to marketing, where it comes from and how to shift it.
Let’s be real - many of us have some level of fear of marketing. It might show up in our hesitation to post our services online, or the jitters when networking with other birth professionals (midwives, prenatal chiropractors, fertility specialists and so on).
Where does your marketing resistance come from?
The discomfort with ‘putting yourself out there’ may come from an internalized understanding of the way that traditional selling works.
What do I mean by traditional selling? The masculine energy in marketing. To be clear, masculine energy in business isn’t always bad. But as Birth Workers know, feminine energy is needed to provide balance.
Back to our internalized understanding of selling… think back to your first experiences of sales growing up, and as an adult.
Was it the super pushy department store salesperson that made you want to leave empty handed?
Or the random (cold) messages you get on social media, asking if you want to lose 20lbs in 20 days (um no thanks)?
Or the boyfriend that did an hour long demonstration of a super fancy Electrolux vacuum cleaner in your living room for your Dad (most awkward moment of ‘97)?
These sales tactics feel like: convincing, tricky, misleading, coercive, pressure, pushy and gross. Not the vibe.
It makes sense then, that:
Your experiences may have resulted in a negative belief system about selling.
Sound familiar, Birth Workers? This is exactly how we unpack new families’ engrained (often untrue) beliefs about birth and new parenthood, right?
Why is this an issue with our marketing?
If you have gross feelings about selling, how can you possibly promote your work, get more clients and build the sustainable birth business that you desire?
Your marketing energy can literally BLOCK potential clients.
The good news is, you’ve found my little corner of the internet and you’re on track to make a significant change.
You get to shift your perspective, find out what’s true and create new beliefs.
Shifting the Lens on Marketing
Start by asking yourself questions like this:
Is it an absolute truth that all salespeople in department stores are pushy?
Is it an absolute truth that everyone that sells online is obnoxious in my inbox?
These ^^^ are not absolute truths. So, what is true?
Some salespeople are amazingly helpful and inviting, and I love purchasing from them.
I buy things online often, from people and small businesses that I know, like and trust.
When we go through this process, we are creating a new set of beliefs about selling, and shifting the lens through which we see marketing.
Final thoughts:
People want to buy things (raises hand). We want to buy vacuum cleaners. AND we want to be treated like humans. We want to feel connected. And that connection is how you can bring feminine energy into your marketing. It’s marketing that feels good.
Your clients desire support along their journey into parenthood. Real, connected support. And that IS what you’re providing for them, I have no doubt.
Marketing is simply connecting and having conversations.
When you change the way you see marketing, you heal that old story, break down the old blocks and open up to expansion. And getting more clients.