Thinking of starting an online coaching or consulting business? Perhaps you’ve already started, and you’re looking for effective ways to grow your business, get more clients and continue scaling.
Whatever the case may be, you’ve come to the right place – in this article, we’ll be talking about how to build and run a successful online coaching or consulting business: from picking a profitable niche and building audience personas, to building your website and promoting your business, we’ll be covering every essential step in building a successful coaching/consulting business:
Pick a Profitable Niche
In order to be successful as a coach or consultant, you first need to pick a good niche.
And by good, I mean profitable: a niche that has a large audience and that offers scaling possibilities.
For example, weight loss coaching is an incredibly popular niche and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon as people will always need and want help to improve their weight. That being said, there are numerous popular coaching niches, most notably:
- Life and mindset coaching
- Financial coaching
- Career coaching
- Business coaching
Think of your strengths, your skills, and your own interests to come up with the best coaching options for yourself. Once you’ve got a few options, do a bit of research: find out who the big players are in that niche and how popular they are.
For example, you can use a tool like SEMRush to look up any competitor’s website to see their traffic metrics.
At this stage, it also helps to do some keyword research; mostly, so that you can find out how many people are searching for topics relevant to your niche, which can then give you a better idea of the size of that audience (plus, this exercise will also come in handy when you’re building your website and promoting your business, as you’ll see in a bit).
Once you’ve settled on a niche, you might also consider getting certified as a coach– it’s not mandatory, but it can definitely help you become a better coach as well as give you that social proof you need to show potential clients that you’re the real deal.
Get To Know Your Audience Inside Out
Who exactly forms your audience? Who will you be targeting? Who exactly needs your coaching services and why?
Whatever type of business you start and whatever your niche may be, getting to know your audience will always be an extremely important step of the process.
If you’re a coach, this is especially true; after all, you’re working directly with people, helping them with their problems and pushing them towards success.
Take your time to put together several audience personas that form your target audience. Give them names, interests, jobs – provide as much detail as possible to ensure you have a very clear picture of your target audience.
What’s more, try to understand why they’re your audience: what are their problems? Why do they need coaching? Why do they need your help? How exactly can you help them improve themselves and/or their lives or careers?
Furthermore, this exercise will also come in very handy when you start promoting and marketing your coaching business as you’ll be able to create highly targeted campaigns.
Build Your Business Website
In order to get people to hire you, you need a quality, professional-looking website that inspires trust in your business. This is the place people will go to learn more about you and what you can do for them– here, they can contact you and hopefully hire you for your services.
You don’t necessarily need to pay someone to build your website for you; for this type of business website, it’s quite easy to create it yourself using a platform like WordPress and picking a theme you like.
Apart from that, you’ll also need a few tools to help you monetize your coaching skills and start making money.
For example, one option is to get paid as you chat with your clients, using a tool like Premium.Chat.
You’ll be able to easily add a chat to your website, connect it to your preferred payment method and get paid by the minute or through using flat rates every time a visitor wants to chat with you.
This is a truly easy way to monetize your website and make money every time you speak with a client or potential client.
Another essential tool you’ll need for your website is a good appointment scheduling tool so that your visitors and clients can easily set up appointments with you in a way that makes it as easy as possible both for them and for you.
A great option is Acuity Scheduling, which pretty much does all of the scheduling work for you; simply set your availability, your rates and session durations and your clients will then be able to pick a convenient time themselves.
Once you’ve set it all up, the app will handle all the scheduling and simply tell you when to show up for your meetings. It’s also highly customizable and features several automation options, including one-click rescheduling, auto-adjusting for time zones and automatic reminders for clients before meetings.
Promoting Your Coaching Business
We’ve gone over the easy steps; now comes the more difficult part: promoting your coaching business and getting your first clients on board.
Here are some tips and tactics to help you promote your services:
- Build an email list: create a powerful lead magnet and start collecting leads that you can later turn into clients. Plus, even if your lead-conversion rate is low, this simple strategy will also help you generate more traffic to your site and help you build up your online profile.
- Build a social media following: social media is a must – establish a presence on several (relevant) social networks so that you can generate traffic, leads and even clients. What’s more, if you’re targeting professionals, LinkedIn can be an amazing source of potential clients for your business; plus, LinkedIn features a powerful sales tool – the LinkedIn Sales Navigator – which helps you search for and find leads for your business:
- Start a blog: blogging is an incredibly effective way to build up your traffic and generate leads for your coaching business – especially if you rank for the right keywords on search engines. Use a keyword research tool like Ubersuggest to help you find the right keywords to target and create valuable content that’s highly relevant to your target audience
Conclusion
If you’re thinking of starting a coaching or consulting business, follow the tips outlined in this article to help you build a successful business from the comfort of your own home:
- Start by picking a great niche: a niche that you’re not only comfortable with, but that also has great potential and a large enough audience
- Create audience personas: make sure you know your audience well so that you know exactly who you’re targeting
- Build a website and leverage tools: leverage the right tools to help you monetize your website and increase conversions and sales
- Create a powerful promotional strategy: leverage multiple platforms and marketing strategies to grow your business and get clients
Brainstorming process – DepositPhotos
