How To Solve 2 Major Problems of a Coaching Business?

As a coach, you have finally earned your certification. And, you are excited to work with clients to put your knowledge into practice. So you decided to make a website for your coaching business. You hired a freelancer or made a DIY website. After days of gruelling work, you are finally ready to launch your website & show your work to millions of people. Your heart is beating faster to see the results. You are hoping you will get first 3 clients within a week.

But, here comes the reality — You are refreshing your mail but there are no new sign-ups. Weeks have passed by but no one has contacted you.

Now a feeling of doubt comes in –

Do you have what it takes to become a successful coach?

Can you run a profitable coaching business?

Will you ever be able to live the life of your dreams being a coach?

Or, do you have to get back to a 9–5 job?

All of us who are running an online business have faced some version of this reality. And, if you haven’t kudos to you. By all means you are an exception.

Now the question is — What are we doing wrong?

First things first. If you want first 3 clients and test out your coaching service, don’t make a website. Reach out to your inner circle and have more and more conversations with your potential clients. I have discussed more about this in 7 Practical Marketing Strategies.

The two major problems –

1. How to bring traffic to your website?
2. How to convert site visitors into coaching clients?

Now, you don’t know exactly which problem you have. Why?

Because you or your freelancer forget to set up analytics for your website. And, even if you did you don’t know how to use that data to improve your website.

Here’s my suggestion:

If you are not sure in your abilities to make a great website, don’t make it on your own. It will take a lot of your time and you will not get the return on your investment.

Instead focus this time on meeting your potential clients locally, face-to-face. Call everyone on your contact list and ask them if they are interested in your service or if they know someone who might be interested. Preferred way is to call them but if you are too afraid to do that at least message them directly or reach potential clients by email.

Continue this until you have reached to each and everyone in your inner circle.

I know it’s hard work but that’s what you signed-up for when you thought about running your own business.

The more conversations you have with potential clients, more you will learn how to package your coaching service.

Making a website is passive work. You will remain busy but you will not get the results. And, second thing people do is that they hire cheap freelancers. I am sure they will get your site up and running. But, that’s not the goal. The goal is to get you clients. And if your site is not getting your clients, it is worthless to your coaching business.

I know it sounded too harsh. But that’s the reality of market we live in. People don’t care about the hard work you put in making your own website.

They only care about 1 question — ‘What’s in it for me?’

When To Hire A Freelancer –

There is no hurry in making your website. Hire a great freelancer or an agency, when you have earned some money by serving your coaching clients.

Here’s the general outline — If a freelancer is charging you below $1000 for a website, either they are not confident in their abilities or they don’t know what they are doing. And both are dangerous for your business.

In long run, they will cost you more money, time and energy. Because after some time you will notice that your site is not generating any revenue and you will have to revamp your site again.

Solving Your 2 Major Problems

1. How to bring traffic to your website?

There are many ways you can do this. And, we will discuss them in a separate article.

For now remember this — To build an online business you will need some form of content marketing. It can be a blog, vlog, social media marketing, email marketing, podcast etc.

And you need to put this content in front of right people.

But where do you find these people? I have discussed about Facebook groups & other social media marketing in 7 Practical Marketing Strategies.

Second thing is to make a list of 10 people who influence your audience. And reach out to them through emails. Tell them how you add value to their audience and they might allow you to do guest posts for them.

It’s going to be difficult when you start because you don’t have a list of already published articles. But as soon as you get first 5 guest articles, you will get a hold of this process.

And in this day and age, if your content is not remarkable you are not going to get the traffic.

If you think you can read few articles on internet and write about that topic, then sorry to inform you my friend — everyone else is doing the same thing.

Being a coach, you are in expertise business. Share your expertise to build a loyal audience.

Don’t hold back. Don’t think that if you share your best knowledge then no one will hire you.

Here’s the counter — If you don’t share your expertise, it’s almost guaranteed no one will hire you. And, I am sure you don’t want that.

Building an audience takes time. Setting up a profitable business will check your patience at every step. And, if you are too impatient I would advise you to take a job and never think about your dreams again.

2. How to convert site visitors into coaching clients?

Now, conversion optimisation is a vast topic. And there are agencies earning millions for optimising your website. So, what can you do about this?

You can focus on things which will get you the most results.

Start with first section of your website.

This first section of your website is called Hero Section. Why?

Because this section decides whether a user will scroll down on your website or he/she will decide to close your site and go somewhere else.

Research by Behaviour and Information Technology says — *Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!*

Your web visitors should know in an instant what your site is about. Write a clear value proposition for your coaching business and put it up in the Hero Section of your website.

But, what is Value Proposition? Here’s what CXL says –

In a nutshell, value proposition is a clear statement that,

• explains how your product solves customers’ problems or improves their situation (relevancy),
• delivers specific benefits (quantified value),
• tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition (unique differentiation).

What’s the #1 thing your clients are seeking?

Is it a higher-paying job? Do they want to improve their mental & physical health? Is making money their main focus? Or, do they want help in getting their first 10 clients.

The benefit they would happily pay for, put that in your Hero Section.

But how do you find out the main benefit they are seeking? By having conversations with potential clients.

That’s the whole game of business — Understand your clients better than they understand themselves and you will win.

Let’s make it more clear by looking at 2 examples of great Hero Sections –

1. Rebecca Tracey is a business coach. Have a look at her Hero Section:

Rebecca’s Hero Section

• She is tapping into feelings of her clients by asking a great question.
• Then she is mentioning the benefits you can get from her service.
• After that there is this line — Stop wasting your time and get your business off the ground…the RIGHT way. Look how she is ending her sentence ‘…the Right Way’. Her personality shines through in her copy.
• Finally, there is a clear Call To Action button — ‘Yes I’m Ready to get on track!’

There is one more element in her Hero Section and that is her picture. If you are a single person running a coaching business or any service business, use a picture of your own face in the Hero Section. People relate to human faces more than anything else.

2. If you want one more example, you can take a look at this coaching site design we made — https://bit.ly/2G5W1zT

• All the benefits a single lady can dream of.
• Then a clear call to action on how the site visitor can take first step towards their dream.

Remember your clients have only one question in mind — ‘What’s in it for me?’ And everything from your website, marketing, 1-on-1 conversations must contribute in answering this question.

Answer this question well and your site visitors will become your clients.

If you want to go in details of site optimisation, you can check out 5 World-Class Resources. I have shared Web Design Reviews of 3 coaching websites.

Action Step –

• Set up Analytics for your website.
• Optimise Hero Section.
• Reach out to 10 influential people in your niche.
• Share this post with 1 friend if you find it helpful.

Originally published at experts.chevaun.com.