Bill Clarke was born and raised in York, England. For nearly 2 years he has been running his digital marketing agency – Mustard Fox Marketing – helping health and fitness coaches to generate a steady flow of leads in a systematic, scalable approach.
To give you some background on Bill Clarke, he dropped out of university to pursue his dream of helping others with their digital marketing. After working freelance for his Dad’s business and generating a healthy amount of work for them, he decided to take it to the next level and branch out into other industries.
Once he recognised his own aptitude for marketing, he took it upon himself to perfect his craft and apply it to an industry he truly knew he could help – health & fitness coaches. When we sat down with Bill Clarke, he mentioned that a few friends of his were trying to build their own brands online as coaches but couldn’t see any progress. After some long conversations, Bill realised that he had an inclination to help them.
In the past couple months, Bill had recently come back from spending time in Thailand, running his online business from paradise with just 2-3 hours a day. He explained that one of the core reasons he became an agency owner was the build system he was not only proud of, but also a vehicle to building his dream lifestyle.
•So Bill, have you always planned on working for yourself?
“Yes, ever since I started thinking of what I wanted to do when I grew up. I have worked for other companies and I always felt that life was at 50%, that there was something missing. At one point, I knew that it didn’t even matter what type of business I had, just that I would be the one running it. I think of it less as a control motivator, and more about freedom. As my Dad has his own business, it opened me up to the potential of doing the same and creating a life on my own terms.”
•At what point did you realise digital marketing and lead generation was the industry for you?
“Shortly before dropping out of University in Leeds I was in a bookshop browsing the marketing section. I can’t remember why but it was probably related to what I was studying. I came across a book called “Think Digital First” and that was my first introduction to digital marketing concepts, their potential and their applications to businesses.
What seemed the craziest was that this was such a powerful industry yet 1.5 years into university studying marketing and no-one had mentioned a thing… It was time to find out for myself.”
•What do you think is the number one obstacle preventing online coaches from reaching their goals in business and life?
“During COVID-19 I think a lot of coaches are worried for their businesses, especially those who were face-to-face and have been forced to move online, however I think this has been good for them as it has opened up so many doors.
Right now I think coaches should be systematically growing their brands online. By this I mean creating a strategy for content marketing, not just posting as and when you feel like it but to having genuine purpose behind it all. I think using this time to reflect on your goals in business is also very important.”
•Which is better at generating qualified leads, free or paid traffic?
“I don’t like this phrase, but it depends! If you’re starting out and still looking to validate your offer, stick with free traffic – content marketing, referrals, SEO tactics.
But if you have plenty of social proof, a sales funnel that has proved itself to convert then it is time to start scaling your work with Facebook Ads as they are still a very underpriced strategy for getting targeted attention to your services.”
•What 3 key steps can our readers take away to improve their content strategy today?
“I would start by thinking about what you want out of your business. This breaks through marketing and it should be at the core of your strategies. Once you have your goal in mind, then you start to reverse engineer the process.
Next, I would focus on systematically building your brand with content. Don’t post for the sake of it, have a purpose behind everything you do and remember that consistency is key when showing up and adding value to your audience.
Finally, if you struggle finding ideas for what to post I want you to go to your 10 competitors and look at each one’s last 9 posts each of them did. This is the important bit now, look at the topic of what they posted and the comments they receive. Now you have 90 topics to talk about and you can put your own spin/opinion on each piece of content. That’s 3 months worth of content if you post every single day!”