The first step for your coaching business is to build a website as your home base. Whether you're going to primarily work online or offline, you absolutely need a website to call home. This is where people will come to get a feel for who you are. It's where you'll build your list of potential clients, where you'll showcase your expertise, and where you'll have leads coming in on autopilot.
Depending on your line of business, you may or may not be intimately familiar with building websites already. It's fairly simple these days. I recommend using self-hosted WordPress because it has a ton of themes (styles/designs) and plugins available for it.
What Your Website Should Look Like
Your website should be an extension of what you offer- professional coaching that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Your website should fall right in line with your brand. As soon as people land on your site, they should get a feel for your personality. Your website sets the tone for your business.
With that said, it doesn't have to be perfect at first. It's better to get something nice and clean up for now so you can get your business going. You can always tweak and change your website over time. Do whatever is going to move you to action the fastest.
Take a look at the websites of other business coaches. Note what you like and what you don't like.
Choosing Your Domain Name
You need to choose a name for your coaching service. It can be your own name or a name that symbolizes what you offer as a coach. This is an important decision, but it's also one you can go with your gut on. Again, don't stew over this decision- get it done so you can get up and running with your business.
Once you've chosen the name of your business, go ahead and secure your domain name- Namecheap is a great domain registrar. Then, grab the name of your business at Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You don't have to move beyond that for now, but you'll want to secure your brand across the web.
Getting Your Site Up
You'll need a hosting account- many people use Hostgator to start with, but since they were bought out by a larger company in 2013, their support has declined, so seek out a host that you're comfortable with if you don't have one already. I do still use Hostgator myself.
Point the nameservers of your domain name to your hosting account. Then, install WordPress on your chosen domain name.
If you're confused on any of these steps, you can search YouTube for easy tutorials. YouTube is great for helping you with anything technical.
You can also hire a professional relatively inexpensively if you don't want to deal with any tech headaches yourself.
Choose a Theme
The theme of your WordPress site is its design- there's no need to hire an expensive designer. There are many free themes and many paid themes. Headway or Thesis are popular options for those who want something they can easily tweak to make their own.
Include These Pages
The purpose of your coaching site is to help people get to know you, to build your authority, to help people, to build your list of prospective clients, and to generate leads.
With that in mind, you'll want to include the following pages:
" About you
" Sales page (on the homepage)
" Testimonials/client feedback
" Services and packages you offer
" Contact page
" Squeeze page
" Opt-in forms on the sidebar
" Links to your social media accounts
" Blog pages
All About Your Homepage
Your homepage should do a good job of selling your services. As a businessperson, you've likely studied a bit about copywriting before. Use elements of persuasion and copywriting to hit on their emotions and draw them into the idea of hiring you as a coach.
You aren't necessarily putting a buy button on this page. You're warming them up to the idea of hiring a coach for business.
The Importance of Building a List of Prospects
As most coaching offers are fairly high-end, you'll want to focus most of your energy on getting people to sign up for your list. Offer them a free report or free consultation for doing so.
If you get people on your list, you can build a relationship with them. They'll come to know and appreciate your expertise. They'll take advantage of coaching offers you send out much more readily than they would if they saw a cold coaching offer from you.
Add a squeeze page to your blog and send traffic to it. Give something really great away for free if they sign up to this list.
Include an opt-in form on the sidebar of your blog. It should be visible on every page.
Write an autoresponder series as a follow up for when they sign up. This will work for you on autopilot.
Building Your Website over Time
This will give you a great start. Build your website over time as you get a feel for how you want to present yourself. Your main goal is to demonstrate your authority and expertise and start to build relationships with those who hire you. You really want to stand out as the best for the job.
If you find this content helpful, you can find lots more like it, that you are free to use for your own purposes, at my main site: http://www.PLRContentSource.com
コメント