This blog is your one-stop solution to figure out a full-fledged plan in order to grow your online coaching business and promote your coaching institute online.
Being a coach, and being able to drive meaningful transformations for your customers is the most fulfilling part of your job. Whether you are a fitness coach, business coach, or life coach, helping others in achieving their individual goals serves parallelly with your purpose as an entrepreneur.
But there comes a saturation point for coaches when the calendar is filled and business growth plateaus. Serving clients one-on-one results in over-commitment and burnout.
Hence, coaches end up looking for ways to scale. Thanks to technology, you have wonderful options!
My favorite one- Online Courses!
Related: Best Online Teaching Website In India
At Graphy, we are empowering teachers with the highest quality, affordable and scalable education technologies.
-GRAPHY COURSE PLATFORM
Related: 7 Reasons to Sell Online Courses.
There are two major ways to build an online education empire. You can either sell your online courses or get premium coaching clients.
Table of Contents
Grow your Online Coaching Business by Selling Online Courses
In order to determine whether you’re ready to launch online courses for your coaching business make sure you have figured out the following:
- Existing coaching program with tested market demand.
- Specified niche/industry.
- Testimonials & case studies of your clients.
If you have figured them out, you will have 10x your impact as a coach through online courses!
Related: Create your online course: Step by step guide.
Online Course Business Models For Coaches
Online courses have the potential to transform the businesses of coaches. In order to create great content and test your ideas, you need to specify a business model that would work for you.
Model 1: Online coaching course
This model leverages online courses to turn your coaching program into a full-fledged online information product. This has incredible scale because once you’ve created your digital asset, you can keep.
Model 2: Membership sites
Having a membership site is like having a standalone online course but with a recurring payment plan. A recurring revenue model creates stability within many businesses. ”
Model 3: Group coaching
This method organizes clients into groups. This method works wonders when you have incorporated live training along with online course content which they can follow along at their own pace.
Content Types for Engaging Online Learning
To create impactful learning experiences, your course must add multimedia components. By including activities like quizzes, assignments, and tests, you’ll be able to cater to various kinds of learners.
Use a combination of content elements to create a powerful coaching strategy for your clients. Best online course platforms support multimedia course content.
- Video: Great way to maintain a personal touch and appeal to your online audience.
- Live Classes: In a coaching program live training are imperative to double growth. Graphy has an integrated live class platform which has multiple user engagement features.
- Quizzes and Assignments: These exercises keep the learning curve of your students in check.
- Community: Engage in the students’ discussion forums of your platform to maintain student touch points. Graphy has an inbuilt course discussion forum.
Related: Record Videos For Online Course at home.
Branding and Marketing Your Online Course
Before you plan to launch your online course into the world, have a plan to market it.
Build your brand and circle of influence
A few strategies work particularly well in helping coaches grow their sphere of influence while attracting new clients.
1) Become micro famous in someone else’s community
Rather than building your brand from scratch, actively engage with existing communities. This works like a magic in helping you get exposure in front of critical mass faster than you could do alone.
2) Get featured as an expert
Building visibility as an expert is immensely important. Here are a few ways to do it:
- Podcasts.
- Speaking Gigs.
- Guest blogging.
3) Cultivate your own community
Above mentioned steps get the ball rolling for building your brand. Building your own community, on the other hand, keep the momentum going.
- Facebook group.
- Membership site.
- Video marketing like YouTube.
The foolproof 3-step system to get new coaching clients fast for your recently launched Online Coaching Program.
Have you been working on carving out the best strategy to get new coaching clients online?
This is the place where you get your answer.
In this article, you’ll get my foolproof 3-step formula to get your first paying coaching clients, all without spending any money.
Now, if you are wondering if you need to have a pre-built network or an email list, you don’t need one.
Let’s dive in.
How to promote coaching classes online
Finding your first paying coaching clients might seem like a lot difficult to achieve. But, it is easier than you might be thinking. Being a little strategic about your marketing efforts would give you the desired results.
You see, if you try to juggle 100 different things in order to get conversions, you will more likely have burnout without going much far.
What I am going to tell you is ONE simple strategy. It requires effort. But, you’ll end up getting paying clients even faster than you might think.
Step 1: Connect with potential clients
Before you begin to gather coaching clients, you need to quickly understand WHY people buy from YOU.
The answer would be because they trust you. Building the trust factor is imperative to your success. It’s one single most important factor which your clients would take into account.
When you begin, you’re not as well known.
Online Groups and forums are one of the fastest yet most effective ways to connect with your potential clients and build trust.
My blueprint uses which you can leverage groups to get new coaching clients.
Build real engagement with your potential clients by participating in discussions that cater to your topic. You can target relevant online groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Yahoo. You can get into online communities like Quora and Reddit. Similarly, you can get into industry-specific forums. Your audience is surely hanging out on one of these platforms.
These groups allow you to build trust with your audience via participation in conversations. That’s not at all like running E-mail campaigns where you are just talking from your side. Here, you are talking to people who can reply back to whatever you are saying. Here, your potential audience has a way to engage with you.
This process would allow you to build relationships in weeks that would take you months to do using email. Emails are also an expensive affair.
Wondering how you can find those forums?
There are TONS of Facebook groups, Quora, and Reddit threads. Just Google it.
For example, if you are a Fitness Coach, go to Google. Now, search for keywords like “Stay healthy” & include “Quora”. You’ll find an entire forum FULL of your ideal clients in the first few results.
Or, just log in to Facebook and search for relevant online groups.
While building relationships within groups, keep in mind the following:
- Choose only those groups/forums where your ideal clients are active.
- Introduce yourself time and again so they know who you are and how you can help them.
- Engage in conversations, post insightful content & provide value.
- Showcase your expertise by helping people & giving them advice.
- Infotain – That means you have to inform+ and entertain, at the same time.
- Engage as a person – Don’t be like a robot, express yourself openly, be humorous, and most importantly be yourself.
Step 2: Identify potential clients
And at this point, you might be thinking,
“Ok, I’ve built a relationship with my audience, consistently engaged with them & provided value. How do I get clients now? ”
Time to leverage the trust you have built.
The Power of Free Assessments
By now, you’ve managed to deliver value inside at least one online group. People recognize you for the knowledge you possess on a certain topic. That means you have the “social capital” to make an offer & help members of this audience, for FREE.
“But, I am selling Paid coaching, not free!”
Okay, stay with me for a little while. We are getting to it.
Free assessments are not full-fledged coaching but a kind of free call where you spend 15 minutes helping someone with one specific problem. By the end of the call, you show them just how much you can help them. Finally, pitch about your coaching.
Here are a few examples of free assessments that you can provide:
- Niche Clarity Assessment: “Tell me what all you want to specialize in, and I’ll help you with picking one niche for your business”.
- Brand Assessment: “Tell me about your existing brand positioning. I’ll give you three suggestions that would help you to stand out in your industry.”
Key Point: Solve ONE Quick Problem
Make sure you don’t try to pick up every aspect of your coaching. Just fix one problem quickly. Define what the problem would be beforehand.
However, you need to solve a big enough problem so that your prospects know that you can help them with results. Don’t fall into the trap of solving so much of their problem that they think they don’t need assistance anymore.
Give them “quick wins,” not the entire solution.
Step 3: Get coaching clients after offering free “quick wins”.
At the beginning of the free 15 min assessment call, you’ll have to inform them.
“Hey, I’m going to help you with the XYZ thing now. However, at the end of the call, I‘ll show you what more is possible.
Set the expectations right from the beginning. Towards the call, pitch your coaching program. Tell them how it would benefit them.
Hence, these are the steps to get coaching clients fast.
Once you follow the above steps for the initial few weeks, your audience will begin to trust you, and that’s when they will be ready to hear about your offer.
So what does it mean? It means that when you share your offer, people will actually buy from you.
Get, Set, Go!
The reason why one institute goes on to grab eyeballs while others fail to make their mark is mostly because of its promotion. Besides, the course content of the course. We are in an era where everyone’s eyes are fixed on their smartphone’s screen. Hence, you must have a strategy to promote your coaching institute online.
However, before you draw your online marketing strategies to promote your coaching institute online, here are the things you should consider:
Understand What Makes Your Course Unique
There are multiple courses available out there. In order to stand out, you must be offering something special. Otherwise, no one will take the bait. Your promotion should be highlighting that same “special” factor.
Apparently, If you have a well-known brand, then just offering it under that brand name would be an easy deal.
Read Here: Create Your Online Course in 5 easy steps
To promote your coaching institute online, show up Online
If you are just operating on physical classroom teaching, you may want to go Online & reach a wider audience. That kind of exposure won’t only expose you to global outreach but would also promote your offline coaching institute undeniably.
Read Here: Best Platform to Sell Courses Online
Monitor Your Competition
This one is the classical step before finalizing your promotion strategy. No matter which field you are operating in, there would always be some brand that would have positioned itself as a market leader. If you aim to become a knowledge hub in your industry, there is an absolute necessity to monitor existing leaders. You must have an in and out idea of how they are operating & growing. In the process, you will discover your consumers’ behavior, what works for them, and what doesn’t.
Use a Platform that Offers Flexibility
Your Online Institute must be flexible and has all the marketing as well as user engagement tool. Something like Graphy. Using this advanced solution would ensure your branding as well as would make your life easy as an entrepreneur. The platform is user-friendly & technically sound. This will make sure you invest all your energy in creating amazing content & fiercely promoting it.
Read Here: Types of Platform to Sell Online Courses
Once you are clear about the above-mentioned points, you can now focus on the MARKETING PLAN.
A Comprehensive Guide on How to Promote your Coaching Institute Online.
Before you begin with a marketing plan, you should steer clear of the flow of strategy.
- Collect the contact details, email & phone of your potential consumer to create a funnel.
- Follow up.
- Provide free valuable content.
- Establish yourself as an expert in your domain.
- Finally, start pitching them with sales E-mail & calls.
- In the meantime, keep up with the free valuable content.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing has become way too common than you think. From small business owners to giant market leaders, everyone seems to be pretty active on social media all the time. Businesses are present because, we, as consumers, use social media way too much in our everyday lives.
There are various social media channels which are immensely popular. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to name a few. However, you can focus on those channels where your target audience mainly spends time on. There are two ways of promoting on Social Media, one through organic means & the other one is paid marketing.
Organic Social Media means growing through creative means. Here, you post regular updates about your institute and grow your audience without spending money on promotions.
On the other hand, Paid Social Media Marketing is about running online promotions while targeting your potential customers.
Social Media Marketing is important for your business because it increases your brand’s visibility as well as presents you in front of your audience the way you want to be presented.
- Create your Institutes’ page on major Social media channels like Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.
- Set up a content calendar & post regularly.
- Create content which is engaging while using the right hashtags & keywords.
- Try to gather students’ data by offering free lectures or a discount coupon.
- Track your progress & improvise accordingly.
While Facebook & Instagram are used for social purposes, LinkedIn is purely a professional connection platform. Worldwide 450 million business professionals use LinkedIn. If your target audience consists of professionals, then LinkedIn should be a substantial part of your Social Media Marketing.
It is considered as in order to develop a brand for you and/or your institute’s LinkedIn presence is inevitable. You can either create a brand for yourself or your institute by creating a LinkedIn page.
- Create your company profile.
- Build a connection within your community with your target audience.
- Post regular updates. Ask questions to build engagement.
- Engage with other posts for maximum reach.
- Try to collect Target Group data through your posts.
- Gain credibility.
- Share details about your course regularly.
Online Communities: Quora & Reddit
Quora and Reddit are immensely popular Online Communities where people ask questions on everything under the sun and get a series of answers in return. These communities are divided and subdivided into various categories.
On these platforms, value addition is the most important metric. Though the nuances of both platforms differ from one another, the goals, as well as their functionality remain the same.
- Do your research and collect insights from your targeted community.
- Showcase your expertise by answering questions asked within the community.
- Take part in the discussion and interact with the community members.
- Establish a genuine connection with your potential buyers.
- Eventually, start growing your customer base without hard-selling.
Take some effort every day to get on with the aforesaid communities. Once you have built credibility for yourself, what you will get is a loyal customer base. This consumer base will continue to grow if you will keep on bringing constant value to the table.
YouTube
YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world. To be precise, the second largest. After Google. By posting quality content consistently you can leverage YouTube to grow your coaching institute.
Throw in some of your knowledge for free. Create video lectures on a few topics and upload them on YouTube. The videos uploaded here, stay forever until you willingly delete them. So, take this opportunity to show off your talent and get some attention.
- Open a YouTube channel for your institute.
- Create & upload some demo lectures for gauging attention from your potential students.
- Use the right keywords in the description box.
- Share your YouTube channel across various platforms.
Email Marketing
When you want to communicate something about your brand or sell your stuff, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to do so. It’s great for customer acquisition & retention.
Email marketing has a high ROI and a better click-through rate.
- Gather all the data you have from the above-mentioned channels as well as offline coaching.
- Get your objective for E-mail marketing clear on this very step.
- Decide on the E-mail templates which are responsive & will stay throughout.
- Bifurcate between branding as well as sales E-mail.
- Create an E-mail calendar citing the types of mail needed for ultimate conversions.
- Finally, keep tracking your progress while making sure you are adding value through E-mails.
No business can thrive without marketing. With access to the internet, it has become extremely easy. The channels explained above are free to use and can garner tremendous results if planned constructively.
