If you’re thinking about starting an online coaching business, you probably have two things on your mind;
- What online coaching tools do I need?
- How do I start selling my online coaching services to people?
If you’re having these thoughts – the good news is that you’re on the right track. But in addition to this, you need to be comfortable with the fact that starting an online coaching business isn’t something that happens overnight. In fact, most of the upfront planning and strategizing is what will set your business up for success.
The planning phase may also bring to light a few skills and expertise you have that you never thought of using for coaching. This can be anything from your communication techniques to your writing abilities. All of these types of skills come in handy as a coach and a business owner. This is why planning sets the tone for all forthcoming business start-up activities.
But in the past, we’ve seen many coaches make a few common errors when they first start out. These mistakes can always be rectified, but it’s always better to avoid them from the get-go. Let’s take a look at these now:
4 Common Things Coaches Get Wrong When First Starting Out
1. Setting up coaching as a pastime instead of a business
Because coaching is done online, many coaches feel they can start practicing it as a hobby instead of a full-blown business. Think about it – you get to keep your day job and earn your usual salary, and at the same time, you can make money from coaching on the side. This may sound efficient, but it does more harm than help. Why?
Well, when you begin building your coaching business, it will need a lot of support, time, dedication, and efficiency to make it work. You can do this by treating your business as any other business would. Come up with a business plan. Find your target audience (we’ll talk about that in a bit more detail later). Find your coaching niche. Network. Create primary and secondary revenue streams.
Key takeaway: If this sounds like way too much effort, don’t despair. You’ll be thankful for it in the long run because your coaching business will have the vision to work toward.
2. Trying to cater to everyone
We mentioned target audiences in the last point – all we can say is that this element can be more important than you think. The reason is that there are so many coaching niches out there, and although you’ll be a part of one niche – it’s imperative to remember that not every consumer will need that niche.
For example, if you’re a career coach, you may want to target young to mid-professionals working in medium to large enterprises. But by the same token, you wouldn’t be targeting teenagers, college students, or retirees. Do you see how quickly your target market bracket starts to reduce?
The secret to successful online coaching is to find your coaching niche and outline a target market related to this niche. Once you have this, start to analyze who actually interacts with you and who signs up for your coaching services. This will then narrow down your target market even further.
Key takeaway: The narrower you get – the more accurate your marketing efforts will be – even if you’re targeting fewer numbers.
3. Selling off-the-shelf coaching packages only
Okay, so when coaches first start, they may be inclined to invest in online coaching tool software. This is a fantastic idea and should be done as soon as you have your coaching business plan outlined.
However, many coaches sign up for coaching tools online and then need to create coaching packages and sell them quickly. These so-called off-the-shelf packages are a great way to get some content up and ready to be sold. But here’s a note: Don’t rely solely on these coaching packages.
We say this because coaching packages are great for generic and beginner coaching courses. But some clients are going to want a more tailored approach. And in order to do this, you will have to have consulting sessions with them and create a tailored online coaching program for them. This could be a six-week, six-month, or one-year program. It all depends on how you structure it and how comfortable your client feels with the longevity and style of the training.
Key takeaway: Our suggestion is to sell coaching packages in conjunction with customized coaching solutions. This way, you are providing various solutions to your target audience, thereby making them more comfortable to sign up.
4. Using tools that don’t work with scalability in mind
Let’s say you have the coaching business plan, the course content, and the paid or free online course creation tools ready to go. So, what’s left? To sell! If you say that, you are right. But before you begin selling coaching courses online, you should relook your online coaching tool software capabilities.
The truth is, your online coaching tool software needs to be able to integrate with core apps so that you are prepping your business with scalability in mind. For example, if your online coaching platform is cheap and allows you to upload content – that’s wonderful! But if that same platform has video storage limitations or doesn’t integrate with Zoom, then you’re going to have a problem. Imagine trying to host live coaching sessions without a reliable live streaming platform integrated. Or when your coaching business suddenly has not five but fifty clients, you need more content – but you have video storage limits. These minor line items on a pricing plan can make all the difference.
Key takeaway: You want to find tools for online coaching that are designed to help you grow – without making you break the bank or change your platform to do so.
5 Smart Admin Tools Strategies that are Crucial to Making Your Online Coaching Business Profitable
Now that you know which mistakes to avoid, it’s time to start looking at some key strategies you should have in your arsenal to help your online coaching business succeed. The crucial thing to remember here is that some factors of your online business will need to be advanced and consistent for your company to stay relevant and attractive to prospective clients. These factors are also known as smart administrative tools.
These tools are designed to help instructors, coaches, and entrepreneurs from various industries to set up their businesses the right way – from day one. These coaching online tools help you sell your coaching services, collect payments from clients, schedule coaching sessions, and track your clients’ progress. These steps are critical to providing your clients with a premium coaching experience and your business with future plans.
Here are a few smart administrative tool strategies to implement in your coaching business:
Automate and Integrate
The first step to using smart administrative tools is to look for an all-in-one coaching platform. These platforms are created to help you and many other coaches automate mundane daily tasks, thereby giving you time to focus on attracting and retaining your clients. Automation is the future, and by automating your marketing and operational efforts, you set yourself up for success before scaling up your coaching business.
Create coaching packages that your clients desire
Once you have a premium all-in-one coaching platform, it’s time to focus on the content you’ll be selling to clients. An important note here is to always keep your ideal customer top of mind. By this, we mean that each and every piece of content you put on your online coaching platform needs to speak to them. They need to relate to your coaching content and be impressed by it. You can do this by offering clients an opportunity to “test” your content and provide their feedback. You can then take this feedback away and adjust your courses accordingly.
Streamline your coaching sessions
As you know, some coaching clients won’t want an “off-the-shelf” solution. As a result, you will need to have multiple live coaching sessions with them. If you have a coaching program with your clients, it’s vital to realize upfront that no coaching program and experience will be the same for any two clients. This poses an opportunity: streamline those coaching sessions as much as possible! You can do this by having set agendas or following specific coaching guidelines and best practices. This keeps you and your coachee on track and makes each session more productive.
Manage your clients’ progress with care
Once coaching programs are set up and running, you will need to track and maintain your clients’ progress carefully. This is something that is often overlooked, but there is so much value in understanding progression. It allows you to redirect them if needed or praise them for improvements and achievements. Your online coaching platform should have reporting and analytics features that help you track your client’s progress with ease.
Market and sell meticulously
Use built-in landing page builders, email marketing templates, and more to market and sell to prospective clients. These features can all be found in online teaching platforms. With built-in marketing tools, you can manage your customers, content, marketing collateral, and results in one space. Tracking, editing, and reviewing all from one dashboard is easier.
Why Choose an All-In-One Business Coaching Tool?
One tab to manage your entire coaching business
As you can see, if you choose a modern and dynamic online business coaching tool, you will be able to do a lot more than host coaching sessions. The idea behind why you should be using one platform is simple; it saves you time and effort.
We all know that working smart instead of hard is the mantra of these recent times. The smartest thing any coach can do is to invest in a platform that is going to take the load off. Goodbye to emails, documents saved on desktops, separate mailing apps, and payment processing software. Today, you should have one platform that integrates all of these features in one tab.
Some all-in-one online coaching tools, free or paid, may also offer you mobile apps. This is even more convenient as you can speak to clients, schedule bookings, and more while on the move. The beauty of these integrated platforms is that it enables you to be so much more than someone stuck behind a screen for eight hours a day. Now, you can have that flexibility you always wanted.
What makes Mastera the Best Online Coaching Platform?
1. Simple and efficient interface
Mastera is known for its simple and user-friendly interface. The dashboard can be accessed within minutes of signing up for a plan. You can easily sign-in on any device and access your customer, revenue, marketing, course, and payment information. Mastera also integrates with major payment processing software providers such as PayPal, Stripe, and RazorPay so that your auto-payments are done fuss-free.
2. Unlimited content and customers
Mastera is one of the few online coaching tools that allows you to have unlimited customers and content. Most online coaching platforms charge you per subscriber. With Mastera, you don’t have to worry about paying more when your online coaching business scales up. You also don’t have limitations when it comes to video storage. The platform allows you to host unlimited content – a blessing when all those coaching courses start to pile up! Mastera also has an integrated customer messaging tool within the platform, so you can stay in touch with individuals or groups of clients at any given time.
3. Accurate reporting to help determine future actions
We spoke a bit about reporting earlier, and as you can see, it’s a vital part of business management today. Mastera understands that and offers all clients an in-depth reporting and analytics section. You can view your customer reports, revenue reports, and data related to your top-performing content. All reports are available on the Mastera dashboard, and custom reports can be created for increased efficiency.
Get Your Business Launched with the Best Online Coaching Tool
Online coaching tools are designed to help you elevate your business and get it up and running in the most efficient way possible. When you select the right coaching online tools, you will start to see how much time and energy you will save. The best part about all-in-one online coaching tools is that it doesn’t cost too much monthly, and it helps increase profits hugely.
If you feel that you’re ready to get going with one consolidated online coaching tool, speak to our team at Mastera. We believe in empowering coaches to connect with clients, sell online coaching courses, host live coaching sessions with a solid Zoom integration, and make some good income! If you’re ready to learn more about these features and so much more, schedule a demo with us today.
Co-Founder, Gleantap & Mastera