5 Powerful Tips To Get Coaching Clients Online Via Your Website

Why should coaches build an online presence via their website?

We live in a global world, so why limit your coaching clients to the area in which you live? Having an online presence gives you the opportunity to widen your impact to people around the world. There are many ways you can serve people virtually. For example:

 

• Virtual coaching via Zoom (one to one and / or group sessions)
• Online courses. This can be an excellent source of passive income.
• Ebooks
• Other downloads – checklists, goal planners, worksheets etc
• Webinars (paid / or unpaid)
• Membership subscription services to paid online content (weekly group sessions, ebooks, online courses can all come under a membership subscription service)

I’m not going to sugar coat building an online presence. It takes time and hard work. It’s a long term commitment. You can’t do it overnight. It’s not for every coach. Some may prefer to just connect face to face with potential clients.

However, even coaches who get the majority of clients through in person connection can still benefit from having a powerful web presence. Many potential clients will look at your website to check you out before they book, even if they have met you at a networking or other event. You can also direct your social media following to your website to get more content and connect with you further.

If you’re working on your website and blog anyway, why not start by making sure you’re putting effort in the right places?

5 Things You Can Do to Get Your Coaching Clients via Your Website:

 

Build an Email List

The most important thing you can do as a coach is to build an email list. Then you have a group of people who are interested in your work who you can serve.

Offer something for free. A download. A free video. Access to a webinar. A goal setting sheet. An ebook. When they download or get access to your freebie, you can capture their email address.

As a side note when you request their email address, you need to state very clearly that their address will be added to your mailing list in line with GDPR regulations (a web designer will also be able to advise on this).

Make sure your free content offers value. Make it something that they are really going to benefit from. This is your chance to showcase what you can offer.

Mel Noake’s website is a great example of how you can build an email list from your website. Her coaching niche is self care and website visitors can download a copy of her ebook “The Little Book of Self Care” just by clicking a button. When they do this, she will capture their email address.

 

When you have email addresses, you can email your list with offers, events, new blog posts and information they can download. Don’t bombard them with emails but don’t be scared to email them either. How can you help them?

I already have a Facebook group where I connect with people, why do I need their email address?

If you have a Facebook group, you have a connection with people but Facebook has ultimate control over who sees your posts. If Facebook changes its policy about who sees your group posts, you have lost some contact with your followers. Also, if people don’t log on to Facebook for a few days, they will miss your posts. On top of this, many people are abandoning Facebook altogether. Direct your Facebook followers to your website, offer them something free in exchange for their email and you can also keep in contact directly as well as via Facebook.

Focus Your Website On Your Niche

The Internet is a very competitive marketplace. If you have a very general coaching website, it’s harder to attract your ideal client. It’s also harder to feature on Google search results.

For example, maybe you have a life coaching business. Who is your ideal client? What is their profession? Where are they located? Who are the people you love to serve and how can these be translated into a narrow focus.? As part of your life coaching business, you could focus on one or more of the following niches:

Life coaching for teens / young adults /  students / kids / women / parents / men / seniors

Life coaching for depression / anxiety / weight loss / addiction

Life coaching for teachers / athletes / artists / business owners / couples / doctors / entrepreneurs /executives

Life coaching in (name of place) Essex, Worcester, Lewisham etc

Life coaching in a different language ( Arabic, Urdu, French etc)

An Example of a Niche Coaching Website

Authentically speaking is a coaching website for lawyers. Hannah Beko’s site doesn’t beat around the bush. You know exactly the kind of client she is looking for. Also note the business mastermind button (in the top right corner), where small legal businesses can sign up for a monthly membership to a mastermind group.

You don’t have to have just one niche like Hannah, you can focus on a few and expand as your online presence builds if you want to. But having niche content will help your blog articles and content rank on Google. It will also help your content resonate with your ideal client base.

The important thing when creating niche content, is that it should be content people are looking for. If your focus is too narrow, it won’t resonate with many people which will make it hard to attract clients.

The other thing you can think about when working on your niche is what unique offering can you give your potential clients. For example:

• A retreat
• A book club
• Speaking at events
• A networking event
• A meet up
• A walk and talk event

 Make It Easy for People To Get Content from You

One of the number one mistakes people make is that they don’t make their offering obvious to their clients. There should be clear buttons where people can sign up or download your offering. Don’t hide this! Make it obvious. They may not download information on their first visit, but it’s there in plain sight for when they are ready.

Matthew Kimberly’s website is an outstanding example. He has a copy of “5 Things You Need to Do Every Morning To Get Coaching Clients in the Next 60 Days”. People don’t have to hunt for this information. They can download it straight away. And he then captures people’s email address when they sign up.

Your website should have a button that is super visible and easy to click like on Matthew Kimberley’s website. It should be above the fold (this is the content that people see before they scroll down). Make it as easy as possible for people to book a session and sign up to your email list.

Other content you should have above the fold is an easy to navigate menu, so people can find the content they want without having to do a treasure hunt!

On your homepage, you could also have a clear sentence explaining what you do and how it relates to them. And if needed a few sentences with some more explanation with a little more context.

Have a Blog

A successful blog is a great way to attract clients via Google. Adding a blog to your existing website can increase traffic by as much as 434% (source : techclient)

One thing to be aware of is that there is a lot of competition out there. You can write articles that people are searching for on Google. However, if there are a lot of bloggers writing content on the same topic, it’s very difficult to rank your article in the search engine results. To deal with this, you need to find niche article topics with less competition.

One great way to find niche articles for your website is by using the following website:

Answerthepublic.com

Type in one or two words into this website and it will bring up questions and topics that people are actually searching for on Google. I typed in business coaching and got the following:

There are lots of niches you could get from just this diagram alone.

For example, business coaching for fitness professionals is one suggestion. This could be an area of business coaching you could offer (with a global marketplace there is a lot of opportunity for coaching on zoom etc). You could also write an article such as 10 Powerful Ways Business Coaching Could Boost Your Fitness Business.

The key is to make your article targeted. Write a heading that is clickable. Numbered headings are great. Find out how to write powerful headings quickly here.

I hate writing! Is there an easy way to blog?

Yes. There are easier ways to blog. Here are some ideas:

1.) Why not create a video and have it transcribed? There are online tools that are ridiculously cheap to help you do this. Check out rev.com and scribie.com. Then your blog articles can feature a video and the written content.

2.) Can you update other content you have already produced? Perhaps you can rewrite headings for articles that have little traffic. Are there social media posts you could use for the basis of an article? Perhaps you have emailed advice to a client which could be rewritten for a blog post (remove any personal content first!)

3.) You can hire people to write content for you. Websites like fiverr.com and iwriter.com allow you to hire a writer virtually.

Blogging is a long term game, you need to write long, high quality articles and publish often for the best chance of success.

The other thing to note is to write content that people are searching for on Google. What questions might they be typing into a search engine? These questions can make good titles for your blog post.

Make sure your blog posts are keyword optimized. By this I mean you need to include keywords for your articles in your headings.

For example, if you are writing about business coaching for start ups, these are the keyword phrases that need to be included in your header. So your heading could be “How Business Coaching Could SkyRocket Your Start Up In Under 3 Months”

Pay Attention To Your Web Statistics

Once you get some traffic, your website statistics offer the most powerful feedback to show you where you should concentrate your efforts next.

There are many ways to get statistics for your coaching website. Google Analytics is free and shows you which pages people are landing on as well as how much time visitors spend reading your content. If you can see which posts and pages are popular, you can produce more targeted content for these readers. You can also link to other related content on your website that these visitors can explore.

Here is just one screenshot of some statistics you can get from Analytics. This shows how much traffic is coming to your website via different channels such as organic search, social media, referral and direct.

Google Analytics statistics include the demographics of who is looking at your website, such as the percentage of male and female readers as well as their age range. It tells you how long people are spending on your pages and where they go to next. It will show you exactly where your readers are located in the world.

Another free resource is Google Search Console. This gives information about particular keywords people search for to get to your blog. If you can see which keywords are working, it gives you insights into other keywords which will also work.

If you use WordPress, there are plugins you can use to connect your website to Google Analytics or Google Search Console super easily. Or ask your web designer to set this up for you.

There are other sources of statistics as well. For example, if you sell products, check your sales statistics. Check your social media accounts and see which posts are directing traffic to your blog. Then you can focus the time on the social media channels that are working for you.

This information is crucial as it gives ideas on what to work on next. It shows precisely where to concentrate your time. It prevents you from squandering energy on tasks that are not worthwhile. You can work on your website less to make its successful because you are working smarter.

If your statistics show particular types of posts are getting lots of visitors, it makes sense to write more posts like these. Statistics show you which niches are working and which aren’t. They let you know what products are selling, what to develop more of and which products to abandon.

I’m Overwhelmed, What Should I Do First?

There is a lot of information in this post, it can be very overwhelming. The first tip is don’t panic! You don’t have to do all this at once.

If you just have to focus on one, go for building an email list. Produce a fantastic piece of content that people will want to download. You can direct people there from your social media following. Make sure the button to download your amazing piece of content is super visible and above the fold, so anybody who goes to your website doesn’t have to hunt for it!

Have fun and good luck coaches!

 

You May Also Like: