With a booming market projected to be worth over 6 billion USD in 2031 according to Growth Market Reports, many professionals have leveraged their skills, life’s experiences and lessons to start an online coaching business that has added real value to people around the world.
While most of these experts have gone on to build successful coaching outfits, a lot of them have also fallen off the radar after an unsuccessful attempt at building their own platforms.
As a beginner seeking to build a coaching platform that will give you robust success, leverage and relevance, there are key things you have to put in place before getting started. Some of these things may be crucial based on your location, resources, skills etc.
In this guide, I’ll be walking you through these foundational concepts you need in place before starting an online coaching outfit and the exact steps you’ll take to grow your platform from scratch.
Identify a Niche
Table of Contents
One of the many benefits that comes with starting an online coaching business is that you can nearly start from anywhere. But, regardless of where you decide to start from, you have to be very sure about who you’re going to help and the specific service you’ll be offering them.
This is very important. Instead of trying to work with everyone, find your tribe. Find the people whose journey matter to you. And those whose lives you can actually influence, based off your skills, experiences, trainings etc.
That said, there are quite a number of coaching niches out there that you can choose from. This includes niches like:
- Career coaching for young professionals
- Personal leadership coaching for young leaders
- Life coaching for Men or Women
- Business Coaching for Entrepreneurs
- Relationship Coaching for Single, Men or Women
- Marriage Coaching etc.
There are quite a number of these coaching niches even outside the ones listed here. You can choose any of them as your niche based on your skills, resources, experiences and trainings etc.
Now, before you choose any of these or other niches, you want to put certain things into consideration. For example, outside aligning the niche with your skills, resources and trainings, you also have to align it with your goals – the reason why you’re starting the coaching business in the first place.
Alongside that, you want to make sure that your preferred niche revolves around what you love, what you’re good at and what people will want to pay for.
What I mean is that whatever niche you want to settle with must be something you already love to do. It also has to be something you’re great at doing. And something that people should be willing to pay for you to do it at any time.
Define your Client
Now that we’ve gotten a niche, before you take the next step to start an online coaching business, you have to dig in even further to find and define your clients.
Although you started with finding a niche at stage one, it is still a matter of priority that you clearly identify your ideal client because this knowledge will shape your message, positioning and even offering, including the platforms you set up your business own.
To get this sorted out clearly, you want to ask yourself the following questions:
- Who’s my target audience?
- What’s their age, gender and demographics?
- What are they struggling with?
- What results do they want from me?
- What do I offer that can change their life?
Answering this questions thoroughly gets you all prepped up as you get set to find your ideal target client and create a solution they cannot resist.
Let’s break it down a bit. Questions around their age and demographics will give you an idea about their location, economic standing, experiences and exposure etc. this will further equip you with ideas to frame your offering in a way that suits with their realities.
If you’re a relationship coach for single women in Lagos for example, your ideal client could be single ladies who are 20-30 years old; based in Lagos, struggling with their relationships, having difficulties in attracting and keeping the right relationships or simply getting stuck in their relationships.
Also, this would mean that if your audience is in urban centres in Africa for example, you have to pay attention to their economic and social realities while building your offering. Ditto for situations where your audiences are in urbanized centres in Europe, America etc.
Also, if you’re targeting a gender-based audience, you also want to factor this into your offering so that you can create an offer that is not just appealing but something your target audience can connect with.
Create an Offer
Before you start an online coaching business officially, you have to create an offer – the service you’ll be providing to your clients to help them navigate life.
This offer has to be straightforward, practical and your target clients have to deem it to be capable of delivering on expected outcomes.
Your offer can should include the following:
- The Outcome: This is going to be the impact your target audience will experience from your offering. For example it can be something like: Get Skilled for your preferred job in 10 weeks etc.).
- The structure: This can be a daily or 3 times a week one on one virtual sessions where you coach them on the said topics, a material where they study and take on specific exercises, a task etc.).
- A Timeline: A period of time over which the expected outcome will be achieved. This can be 4-12 weeks or whatever duration, depending on your niche.).
- The Price: The amount you’re going to charge to deliver on the expected outcome, over the said period of time.
Your offering doesn’t have to be static. You can start with a single offer and then pivot as your business grows. This is one of the strategies that worked for us when we started our coaching and mentoring platform for digital skills.
PS: While setting all of this, keep your outcomes realistic and the pricing reflective not just of the value offered but the economic capacity of the target market.
Build a Brand
As a personal coach, to start an online coaching business, you need a strong brand power, a lot of sincerity and a very well demonstrated track record, to convince people to work with you in building aspects of their life or business.
If you’re a beginner, you may not necessarily have that brand power from the get go but you can take some steps to intentionally build your own brand right from scratch by taking some strategic actions.
This includes first of all finding your brand name. This could be your own name or whatever name you choose but regardless of the name you end up with, you need something that stands out and is capable of giving you a level of credibility.
Now after your name is all sorted out, you’ll need platforms where you can create a space for your brand, share content and interact with your target clients.
The first step to set up this platform is to head over to carry out some quick research on social media marketing. Find the largest platforms with the highest number of your target audience and then create a page for your brand on this platform.
Update your name, professional images, bio etc. be sure that all of these are the best representation of you that there is.
Afterwards, head over and create a website and a blog for your website. To show professionalism, credibility and further create a place where your audience can reach you easily, you’ll need a website.
On your website you’ll put up pages that displays information about your brand in a very catchy way. You’ll also need a page that describes your service offerings, portfolio, client testimonials etc. these are very much needed.
Finally, you’ll need content that aligns with your brand, speaks directly to your audience and is able to solve their needs, head on.
Set up a System
As you set out to start an online coaching business, one of the key things you need in place is to build a system or business model you can use to create the same results for your business over and again.
Since your business is going to be virtual, you’ll also need to put in place a virtual arrangement for meetings, bookings, payments etc.
Things like booking and payment can be done directly from your social media pages or on your website. You can do this by setting up a booking page directly on your website on its own page or saving links to the booking page on your social media platforms.
Alternatively, you can create online booking system using platforms like Calendly or incorporate booking platforms either into your social media platforms or on your website. With this, clients can book for your services via the link.
For a payment system, you can also set up your preferred payment options. This might include using established payment platforms or evolving your own payment mechanism and integrating it directly via your booking page.
When it comes to meeting spaces, there are a number of online platform providing options for seamless virtual meetings. This include platforms like Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom etc. you can also incorporate customer relationship management systems like Hubspot CRM, Zoho, Zapier etc.
You can set up a mechanism that works for you based off these platforms. Also, keep, do keep in mind that you’ll need a calm and quiet location for such meetings.
Attract your First Client
After you start an online coaching business, you’ll need clients to keep the business growing in leap and bounds.
Now, for beginners, it might look a bit difficult to attract new clients but there are things you can do to fast track the process.
Since you already know your audience, you’ve been able to capture the needs of this audience in your offer and you also have your brand all set up; it’s time to launch full out to get new clients.
For professional coaching businesses like this, one of the popular go to offer is to start creating content, sharing your own ideas, using powerful personal storytelling to demonstrate the effectiveness of your approach to coaching.
This may include but not limited to sharing your own personal story, how you moved from point A to point B, while trying to achieve this same outcome you’re offering to deliver to your target audience. This strategy works very effectively if you can wrap it around personal storytelling, strong credibility building stories etc.
At some point when your content has gained traction and you’ve garnered some audience, you can consider launching free sessions, free eBooks or free e-meets.
The goal of this strategic move is to give your target users a taste of your good stuff while wetting up their appetite for the even better offer.
From the free offerings, you can then get people to register for the paid offer. This strategy works oftentimes when you have a compelling and believable offer.
Additionally, you want to engage in and post content on the social media, network and request for referrals from your network.
Grow & Scale
It is not enough to start an online coaching business, you want to build this business and watch it grow in leaps and bounds.
For this to happen, you have to expend effort in promoting your business either directly or indirectly. And you can do this using any of the following options:
Search Engine Optimization: Optimize your website with target key words and search phrases relevant to your niche and target audience, this will drive organic traffic to your website.
Social Media: Create and share content on social media on topics that will captivate the interest of your target audience.
Content Marketing: Create and share content around your subject matter on your website and blogs. Outside building your credibility on the subject matter, it will build your thought leadership while also attracting targeted clients.
Paid Advertising: If you want to fast track your results, consider using paid advertising on social media, search engine or third party platforms as this will deliver faster outcomes while getting your platform across to the right audiences, at a faster rate.
There are many other ways you can go about this, including guest posting, networking, storytelling, writing your own books etc.
You should focus on using the strategy that aligns with your own goals, resources and expected outcomes. Also, continue to pivot and evolve your strategies, based off the results you’re getting from it.
Final Words
In addition to all of this, you may need to undergo trainings, get specific certifications and memberships before becoming a professional coach in some niches.
Also, to get things done properly, you have to sort out the legals. Get your online coaching business properly registered with the legal authorities. This will build a certain level of trust and credibility while giving your business legitimacy that will also rub off on you brand.
Using these strategies you learned here will get you to start your own online coaching brand successfully but remember that being successful in online coaching will need your passion for the work, determination and effort.
Outside being consistent and evolving your strategies, you must learn, re-learn and un-learn to keep staying relevant. You must also keep updated with the trends while evolving it to suit your focus.
And where you don’t have relevant skills to take on this momentous effort, sign up for our digital skills academy, let’s get you started.
Now, it’s over to you. What are your biggest challenges when it comes to starting an online coaching brand? Drop your comments below.
No responses yet