Creating a Global Coaching Business from Your Home Office
Over the last 10 years there has been a significant increase in starts up businesses, entrepreneurs and a rise in millionaires. The internet has opened up two doorways for the wannabe rich; the first door way to creep open, was the ability to work on a global scale through .com websites. The second door to open was the ability to set up a business with little overhead cost, often from the comfort of your bedroom.
One sector that is growing in terms of clients and potential profit as well as a rise in self start businesses is the coaching sector. Coaches’ work and coach professionals from many sectors including sports, business, marketing, as well as supporting individuals to overcome personal barriers such as self esteem, anxiety, phobias and confidence.
The coaching sector is not regulated and anyone can become a coach utilising their skills, experiences and techniques learnt from books, personal know-how or through a coaching course(s) to support others achieve their goals.
This article will explain in 5 steps how you to can set up your specialized coaching business on a global scale, making massive profits with little or no overhead cost.
Step 1 The Power of an Expert
Before you take your first step you need to pick a coaching niche within a niche. So many failed coaches will advertise themselves as a general coach, covering all bases from fears and phobias, to business and marketing coaching.
People trust experts. A potential client will search for coach for a particular barrier, in this example we will use “confidence” The candidate finds two websites a generic coach and a confidence coach – who do you think they will book a session with? Why pay the same money to see a generic coach, who dabbles in confidence coaching when you can, for the same price hire an expert confidence coach? Let’s imagine the client wants a confidence coach because he has to deliver a presentation at a sector event. The clients finds a third website, a coach specialising in “confidence for public speaking” Now who will he pick the confidence coach or the confidence for public speaking coach?
The more you niche your sector the more bookings you will receive. Remember competition is high and finding coaches on the web is easy, which means you need a unique selling point. By matching your specific niche to the clients needs will ensure an increase in client bookings.
Step 2 The Power of Technology
Once you have your niche you need to set up a couple of key elements. The first is
you will require a professional looking website. Before choosing your URL, you need to make a choice on your business name. For personal coaching its recommend to use your name www.christopher-delaney.com because you’re potential audience will build trust with your name. When specialising in the business sector, a stand out name works well www.employmentking.co.uk
Step 3 explains the importance of content, but what is also required is the technology to reach a global audience. Google+ Hangouts’ and Skype work well, as you can coach clients from around the world from your home office (this saves on a variety of overheads). To help attract clients you will also require to set yourself up on the at least one social media site.
The key points are having niche website, the technology to reach a global audience via the web and the ability to share content which will help you come across to your client base as a professional organisation. Image is everything, if your coaching business looks professionals and is targeted to the viewer’s barrier your chances of a referral will increase.
Step 3 The Power of the Internet
The number one rule to make money online, and all coaches need to utilise the web to make their business a success, is to rank high on Google search engine. You have 3 choices to help you rank high, and you can utilise all three.
The first is through SEO – organic searches. To optimise this opportunity you are required to write regular relative post on your blog. Each post has to be relevant to your niche, this way Google will match your blog to related search terms “I need a confidence coach for a presentation” Blogs that to cover to many niches (unless the blog is highly successful and popular) can confuse Google, which results in your website dropping in page rankings.
As you write about your topic you will start to build an audience, to boost this use Google plus, YouTube and other social media channels to share your content. Blog post have to be good, and when possible create intrigue by using titles that catches the audience’s attention. Good post will become global and will be shared on other webmaster websites. These web owners will add links to your site from theirs, which encourages Google to place your website higher up the Google ranking system.
Using SEO techniques alone takes a while, as you need to build a reputation and expertise status in your niche to increase backlinks and article shares. Once Google recognises that your blog specialises in X and that your content is useful to the reader and relevant to their search query, you will start to find that your webpage is receiving ever increasing hits, and the first 3 organic search results on Google page 1 receive around 90% of traffic.
Second you can utilise Google Maps. When you search for a business “Life Coach” Google will show you organic search results as well as a list of businesses on Google Maps.
Getting placed on Google maps is easy. You add your address, opening hours, contact details and type of business into Google Maps, as well as that all important link to your home/sales page. To help increase your Google Map rankings add the business address to your webpage and encourage your past clients to recommend you on Google Reviews.
Google Maps is a great way to get ranked on Google page 1 for free.
Finally you can pay for advertisements on Google. When you search for X on Google you will see the organic results as well as a list of paid advertisements. Google take a payment for every click these adverts take, the cost per click depends on the popularity on the key word.
Some coaches spend a lot of money on pay per click, without making any money, this is because they are often to general. Like your website and business model you need to be specific, make it clear on the short advert what niche you support clients with, even include the cost of your session. Ideally you only want paying customers to click your advert to help you maximise profits. With Google Ads it’s not about increasing traffic to your website, it’s about appropriate traffic. You don’t want 100 hits and only 3 paying customers, you want 5 clicks and 3 paying customers. Click the “Business in the Box” image below for more details.
Step 4 The Power of the Media
As we said previously people trust experts. One way to increase traffic to your website is to be seen as an expert. To be seen as an expert guest blog on other related websites, get interviewed on Google Hangouts and give quotes to high ranking websites and newspapers. Click my “in the news” tab to see examples of this. Once your name/company name becomes popular (related to your niche) your hits and customer bookings will both increase.
Step 5 The Power of Good Therapy
Word of mouth, or maybe more appropriate the word of reviews is extremely powerful. Would you book a session with a coach who only received bad reviews? Your coaching business will be successful if you are proactive with your marketing strategy, but long term word of mouth and online reviews will be key for retention. Remember coaching is not regulated so you may feel that you have the skills to be a coach. If not you would be wise to attend a coaching course to give you the skills and techniques to support your future clients.
Many of my clients come from recommendations from past clients that I have successfully supported. I always recommend for coaches to keep developing their skills, learning new techniques to support clients and find more powerful coaching questions to empower your clients. This way you will continue to help clients achieve their goals, which will increase your positive reviews.
Chris Delaney NLP Life Coach, Hypnotherapist and Career Advisor is available for booking for One to One Private Sessions, Group Training Sessions and Public Speaking Events
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Chris Delaney NLP Life Coach, Hypnotherapist and Career Advisor is available for booking for One to One Private Sessions, Group Training Sessions and Public Speaking Events
Chris Delaney 