The Ultimate Guide On How To Create A Successful Online Coaching Business

Coaching as a concept has existed for a very long time. Today, educating and helping other people acquired a new format — online coaching.

People want to become coaches for various reasons. Usually, they want to be financially resilient and have the motivation to educate others. Truthfully, this can be a lucrative business for you if you take the proper steps.

Do you want to become an online coach but don’t know how to do it? Are you already a coach, but you aren’t sure how to transition to online coaching?

We’re here to provide you with advice on how to become an online coach. In this article, we’ll define online coaching, give you tips on becoming an online coach, recommend the best online coaching platforms and tell you about some additional tools you can utilize for your coaching business.

The definition of online coaching

To put it shortly, coaching entails guiding clients and mentoring them so that they reach their goals. This goal depends on the client and the coaching category required, but it can be anything from losing weight to starting a business.

Coaches aren’t just there to instruct clients on what to do. They’re also supposed to give them enthusiastic support, be objective towards their goals, and provide helpful advice.

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Coaching sessions can last anywhere between 15 minutes and a couple of hours. The duration depends on the coach, the client and the type of problem they’re trying to solve.

There are also various coaching formats, but the ones most common are one-on-one coaching and group coaching. There are also webinars, seminars, retreats and other similar options. Each has its own benefits.

It’s imperative to note that coaching, especially life coaching, is not counseling. Even though coaching is an excellent experience that can aid any individual to enhance themselves, there is a difference between things that should be left to coaches and those that mental health professionals should handle.

The Internet has enhanced the coaching business immensely, making it more effective and efficient. Now, coaches can broaden their business and get coaching clients from all around the world.

Online coaching is different from face-to-face coaching because monetization and delivery are done through the Internet.

Of course, you don’t have to choose one or the other. If you want to become a coach, you can do online sessions with some clients and have face-to-face sessions with others. It all depends on whether you and your customers prefer face-to-face or online conversations and whether you live close enough to make it work.

Advantages of online coaching

Besides that, there are a plethora of advantages to online coaching.

Firstly, when you’re an online coach, you have a broader reach than a regular coach. Regular coaching limits you only to clients who live in your immediate area, while online coaching provides you with access to potential clients worldwide.

According to iPEC, there are 1.5 million searches every month for business coaches, life coaches and executive coaches made by people and business companies.

Because you can reach so many people through the Internet, you can also scale your business and make it advance rapidly and more efficiently.

Next, online coaching provides you with flexibility. Don’t get us wrong, every business takes time, but you can organize however you want and spend more time at home with your family when you’re an online coach. Becoming your own boss is a stepping stool to financial freedom.

Additionally, the tools and platforms found online can make your coaching business a hundred times more effective.

And finally, online coaching has relatively insignificant startup costs compared to regular coaching and any other business. All you require is appropriate equipment and legitimate advice. Considering that most coaches commence this as a side hustle while still working their 9 to 5, the risk of losing everything is also lower. You just need to put in the time and effort, even if it isn’t full-time.

Types of coaching

We could try to list every type of coaching, but that would be a long article. As long as there’s a subject that you can coach someone on, there’s a possibility that a coach for that exists.

However, some niches of coaching stand out from the rest. Here are the most profitable and common ones.

Life coaching

Life coaching entails a life coach providing motivation and guidance to a client who wants to improve some of their aspects of life. For example, they may want to be more confident, learn to control their anger or deal with stressful situations calmly. This type of coaching should mainly be differentiated from counseling because it can be exceedingly similar. Life coaching is the most prevailing type of coaching. According to surveys, 90% of life coaches said that they currently have active clients.

Leadership coaching

Closely associated with life coaching, leadership coaching is another variety where coachees wish to become more confident and reach their career goals. The coach encourages the client to become a leader or an improved one if they already were. This type of coaching is beneficial both for the individual and the business that they’re working on.

Career coaching

People who want to transform their careers or enhance them may turn to career coaches for advice. Career coaching can assist individuals in becoming more self-assured, making it comparable to life and leadership coaching. Besides the all-compassing ones, there are also career coaches who fixate on specific jobs and careers.

Wellness coaching

The term wellness coach or health coach is used to describe any coach that handles personal training, nutrition, diet plans, or any health issues. There are plenty of sub-niches to this community, with each coach commonly focused on one or two problems.

Financial coaching

A financial coach’s assignment is to educate clients on financial matters and motivate them to improve their income and become more financially stable. Financial coaches can provide advice on anything from investment strategies to handling a household budget.

Business coaching

Business coaching does have some similarities to financial coaching. Still, instead of focusing on the individual, the focus is on the business they want to build on a much larger scale. Business coaches will help you establish your business, plan it, improve it, save it or provide you with advice on any business-related problems that you require guidance with.

Other types of coaching

The ones listed above are just the most prominent and profitable varieties of coaching services, but there are plenty of other niches where coaches built a prosperous business. Other examples of different coaching types include spiritual, relationship, skills, photography, social media, and various other subjects.

No matter what niche of coaching you choose to go with, you can always build your future with it if you follow the appropriate advice. There are plenty of categories to choose from, but we’re here to help you with that.

How to become an online coach

If you decided to build your online coaching business but don’t know where to start, we’re here to provide you with some advice. These tips are also applicable if you think that you can improve your already existing coaching business.

First, let’s cover some basics.

The first thing required to start a business is commitment.

Second, you need to offer high-quality service and materials. This business is so competitive that you can’t give a subpar offer if you want clients to choose you.

Lastly, you don’t need too fancy equipment. Everything can get done with your laptop.

Coach training and coaching credentials

Having a coaching certification isn’t required to become a coach, but it can still help your business.

For example, if you have a couple of years of finance experience, you can become a financial coach for people without needing additional education. Unless you want it. But, if this is the first time you’re coaching anyone and if you aren’t that experienced in your field, you can improve your knowledge.

Attaining coaching credentials has two prime advantages. The first is — you’ll become a better coach. A good coaching certification will make you look at things from a different perspective and improve your education. This will inherently make your coaching methods better.

The second advantage is that you’ll attract more clients if you have coaching credentials. The simple truth is, potential customers will trust you more if they think they have proof of your skill and knowledge. For them, this will validate your claim that you’re an expert.

However, choose coaching programs carefully. Not all of them are built the same. Choose the one that is related to your niche.

Next, get in touch with other certified coaches to check which coaching programs are verified. Some other aspects of the offer you should check out are whether it’s an in-person program or done online, group sessions or one-on-one, whether it has accreditation, and what level of commitment it requires.

Choose your niche

The first step is to choose your coaching niche. This is the category of coaching you’ll commit to and the subject on which you’ll coach people. Earlier in the article, we listed some of the most common types of coaching, and your future business could be one of those.

Identifying and defining your niche well is the crucial element of success in the coaching business. This will make you stand out from the other coaches.

How do you choose your niche? Pick something that you already have some knowledge of. For example, have you started a business or helped someone in starting a business before? Or are you good at relationships or saving money? Pick something that you know you can educate people about and monetize it.

Define your mission

Defining your coaching philosophy is a crucial part of establishing your niche.

Take your time to define what the goal of your teaching will be.

This will help you figure out your method. Will you just do video calls with your clients or will they have additional questionnaires they’ll have to fill out? Will you provide coachees with actionable advice or will you coax them until they get to the solution themselves? Will you focus on coaching solutions?

Your mission statement is the groundwork for your business.

Your target audience

Who do you want to work for? What is your goal?

Picture your target audience in your mind. Do you want to help older people in starting a business? Or do you want to help young people with their life problems?

Describe your customers desired gender, age and income levels for a start, and then get into more details. Building an offer for a particular type of customer and their needs will help you create a better service and get more customers.

Define your service

Now that you know your niche, goal and target audience, you have to define your exact offer to them.

Even though some coaches offer individual one-on-one calls, making coaching packages is the best action you can take to support your coaching business.

So sit down and gather all your knowledge on the subject in one place. Then, figure out how to define it.

Investigating your competitors can help you immensely in this aspect. Check out their offers and build your packages based on that.

Pay attention to things such as the length of the package, the service description, and any additional services they provide. Don’t copy them, just use them as an example.

Finally, don’t create too many packages, as you’ll overwhelm your clients. And remember, you’re selling a solution to your clients.

Price your business

Pricing your coaching sessions can vary by niche so we recommend checking out your competitors to figure out the price.

Remember never to underprice yourself, especially if you’re a new coach. Some prices may seem too high for you, but prices that are too low in comparison to others will drive customers away and make them think you aren’t as skilled. According to the 2020 ICF Global Coaching Study, the estimated global revenue from coaching was 2.849 billion USD in 2019.

Investigate how your competitors are pricing their services, but don’t compare yourself to them. You know your worth and your knowledge. You just have to monetize it for your customers.

It’s good to define your budget and income goals before you set the price. If your goal is to make $100,000 per year, you can’t price each session just $50. In the US, the annual coaching income is $62,500. And if you need to invest a certain amount into your business every month, you can’t make less than that amount.

Also, location matters. Clients from urban areas can invest more in their coaching, while those from rural areas usually aren’t. Their ability to pay for your services also depends on the country they’re from.

Set different prices for different offers. Your group sessions should be cheaper than one-on-one sessions, and each of your packages should be priced accordingly. Check out our article about creating and pricing coaching packages to find out more.

Lastly, never be afraid to up your prices if you gained more knowledge and experience to rationalize them.

Once again, remember that you’re selling solutions and that those solutions are worth every dollar.

Market your business

Now that you have the groundwork set in place, it’s time to market your business and gain some clients.

This is why social media is the most helpful tool you can use.

First, know your target audience and what they want to see. You can check out what kind of posts they like and what hashtags they follow to understand what content to make.

The best social media platforms you can use as a coach are email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Our advice is only to pick two, one of which will be e-mail.

Your social media marketing continent should be of the highest quality as this is the first impression people have of you.

Maybe your target audience predominantly uses Facebook. In that case, make a page to advertise your services, describe your offer and make additional material. You can promote your business by joining groups and playing for pay-per-click ads. The second option can be expensive, but it’s worthwhile.

You can use this social media profile to get potential clients to sign up for your newsletter, and in return, they can, for example, get a free PDF with just a glimpse of what you have to offer. This will make your e-mail the core of your online marketing.

If you already had some clients before, use their testimonials to advertise your business further. Building a community is a crucial step for any business.

Pick the right platform

This is the last step, but probably the most important one.

Coaching platforms are excellent because they simplify your whole routine by putting everything into one place. You don’t have to use ten different apps just to organize your day and do your work. You can use just one.

Additionally, coaching platforms aren’t created just to make your day easier. They also handle the critical task of getting you more new clients.

Every coaching platform is different and conforms to various things a coach may need. This is why you should investigate the offer online before choosing any particular one.

However, there are a couple of things that every good coaching platform has. These are:

• Communication tools — you should be able to message your clients and call them on video or regular phone calls.
• Administrative tools — these tools handle things such as scheduling, payments, contracts, etc.
• Content delivery — the platform should support PDFs, video files, links sharing, and other content required in the coaching industry.
• Data monitoring — questionnaires and similar things that your clients can fill out should be readily available to you and all the data should be in one place so you can notice how they’re improving.
• Analytics — platforms should analyze your content and growth to let you know how your business is going.

All in all, define what you require before choosing the right platform.

Best online coaching platforms

You can feel overwhelmed even when you figure out what you need from a platform. That’s why we made a list of the best online coaching platforms you can try.

GroupApp

GroupApp is a membership-based community platform that you can utilize for your coaching business. It helps you build a community, make courses and give your community members feedback and support.

You can create different community channels and membership tiers people can access. Besides setting up a custom domain to sell courses, you can also create a community space where users can interact with you and with each other. GroupApp has email and in-app notifications available, and you can also integrate it with Zoom, Zapier, MailChimp and plenty of other additional tools useful for your coaching business.

It also has excellent functionality and content delivery where you can upload PDF and video files, among others. With GroupApp, you have 100% of control and ownership of your content.

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Satori

Satori is built as an all-in-one coaching platform with an efficient and valuable management system. It includes excellent features such as secure client profiles with information about all the sessions, agreements and payments in one place, lets you sync your calendar and schedule sessions easily and supports payments.

You can also create customizable packages and it comes with various sales and marketing tools, such as branding, email opt-ins and pre-session questionnaires.

It’s incredibly user-friendly and perfect for coaching management, but also customer relationship management.

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Teachable

Teachable lets you create online courses and coaching products. Setting up your page is simple, and content delivery is possible in many formats, such as videos, lectures and quizzes.

This platform handles all the payments and billings you need to make with your clients. It also lets you give certificates to your clients for finished lessons. The most significant advantage of Teachable is that it has many users, meaning that your coaching business is more likely to get clients.

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CoachAccountable

CoachAccountable is a coaching management platform for various types of coaching. Through this website that works on all devices, you can schedule sessions, get payment from your clients, send them assignments and track the progress of your coaching plans.

Besides handy features such as good content delivery and automatic reminders for your clients, there’s also Zoom integration available, making it easier to contact your customers for their sessions.

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TrueCoach

This coaching management platform is different from the rest we mentioned because it focuses primarily on wellness coaching. TrueCoach is created so that professionals can create personalized exercise plans for their customers and monitor their progress.

It has a built-in calendar, email notification system and a vast library with video exercises. However, the most significant disadvantage this website has is that it still doesn’t offer the ability to make video calls between coaches and coachees, but that should be made available soon. It does have an in-built messaging app.

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Additional coaching tools you can use

Zoom

Zoom is a platform for meetings and video conferencing, where you can call your client for one-on-one sessions or create group calls for your community. It’s probably the best tool that you can use to make sessions with your clients, as it’s not required from them to have an account — they can just click on the provided link.

It also gives you a valuable option of recording your calls for later use. This way, you can send your sessions to your clients and keep them for yourself as proof of what you can do and where you can improve. Although, if you want to have unlimited group calls you must get the paid version.

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Mailchimp

If you have a list of people subscribed to your email newsletter, the best tool that you can use to organize and send those emails is MailChimp. With this email service, you don’t just get to send and manage your emails, but you get analyzed data of what kind of emails work and then you can improve based on that.

You are delivered information such as how many people are opening your emails, how many are reading them, clicking on the links, etc. This way you know what your potential customers are thinking and what they find interesting.

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Final thoughts

Establishing a coaching business can seem complicated. Hopefully, this article helped you learn all the things you need to know about the world of online coaching and encouraged you to do it.

The most important advice we would like to single out is committing to this business, creating a high-quality offer and service in every way possible and, most importantly, choosing the right platform to host your business.

And we recommend GroupApp as the best option of online community-based platforms you can find for your coaching business.

GroupApp is membership-based, and you can create different tiers and spaces within it. With it, you can get in touch with your customers, but they can also get in touch with each other. This builds an efficient and supportive community that clients will love.

With many possible integrations, such as Zoom or MailChimp, this platform is the best option for your coaching business. Sign up for GroupApp today to start your coaching business!

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