Trauma-Informed Marketing
Trauma is an epidemic that impacts all aspects of life, including how potential customers engage with our marketing materials.
According to the National Council for Behavioral Health, 70% of adults in the US have experienced at least one episode of trauma, and 8% of women in the US and 4% of men in the US have been diagnosed with PTSD.
Trauma shapes the way many of us view all aspects of life, including how we process information and our motivation to change.
Ignoring how trauma impacts your potential clients during the sales process will negatively impact the success of your coaching business. and your bottom line.
The definition and opinions on how to be trauma-informed vary widely, but in its simplest form, it means not retraumatizing people during your marketing, onboarding, and while you deliver your services.
Trauma-Informed care invites us into a space where we understand trauma, healing, and how to honor both without stomping on people’s tender spaces.
Typical sales funnels leverage scarcity, urgency, and exclusivity to agitate people’s nervous systems and move them towards fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
The logic center of our brain is harder to access, which means people don’t typically raise the objections that might come up if they were fully embodied. Artificial deadlines and exclusivity cause us to get caught up in FOMO and make snap decisions.
People also get super excited about the possibility of what we provide to give them a serotonin bump and again, make a quick decision.
People purchase, enroll, or subscribe without having the capacity to weigh the pros and cons
But if It Gets Clients and Makes Money, Who Cares?
It really comes down to what you want to prioritize in your business. Are you running on a ‘bottom line first’ posture, or is your goal to move your clients towards flourishing in your practice? If it’s the latter, then it’s time to get really honest about who is paying the cost of you not being trauma-informed.
You can not support or facilitate someone’s healing if you use traditional marketing tactics that re-traumatize people and manipulate their nervous system to get the sale.
Being Trauma-Informed is the first step to creating stronger, more trustworthy spaces for your clients.
The core of this work focuses on centering safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness, and empowerment in your business. The safety created will also better serve people who haven’t experienced traumatic events.
As a bonus, you’ll be able to self-regulate better and disarm your own trauma response while doing something you love!
Begin Your Journey to Becoming Trauma Informed
Articles To Expand Your Understanding of Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care.
Ableist Language Guide
PTSD Stats from the V.A
How To Manage Trauma
Early Childhood Trauma (NICHG)
Harmful Language To Stop Using
Trauma-Informed Care Description
Stanford’s Disability Language Guide
Understanding Child Trauma (SAMHSA)