Sell online coaching with Teachable

The ideal next—or first—step

The good news is online coaching and online courses are incredibly similar. The main difference between the two is that coaches have a more personal relationship with their clients. We often find that online course creators have success upselling a coaching package to people who have already gone through their course and need more intensive or personalized training.

A few things to consider with online coaching:

• Coaching comes with a more premium price point than online courses because you’re devoting time each week or month to your clients. Coaching also costs more because of supply and demand. Whereas you can sell your course to thousands of people, you only have 24 hours in a day. Your time is a valuable commodity for your coaching students.
• Coaching is a valuable upsell to offer students after they’ve purchased your online course. You don’t have to sell complete coaching packages. Even offering a few one-on-one, hour-long sessions throughout the duration of your course could be an engaging opportunity that your students would be willing to pay a premium to receive.
• Coaching requires a commitment from you and your students. You’ll have customers counting on you to be prepared and show up each week. And vice versa. The value of your commitment is one of the most important selling points in Coaching.

Knowledge is valuable—so is your time

No one knows your business quite like you do. And online coaching is a way to further validate your knowledge bank beyond your course offerings. No matter where you are in your business stage, coaching can be a powerful tool for you. Plus, an added revenue stream never hurt.

• Coaching diversifies your income. It makes sense. When you offer more products, you have the opportunity to make more money. Utilizing coaching as upsells and supplemental options for customers can be a strategic way to further tap into students’ learning goals. You can either offer coaching as an independent product outside of courses or package them together. Either way, your students are learning and you’re making money.
• It’s easy. We hate hard, so we made it easy. Coaching on Teachable is something you can offer immediately without any additional tech or equipment. We’ve taken care of all: the communication, payment, and scheduling—basically, the heavy lifting.
• Coaching clients can become your biggest advocates. When people like something, they want to talk about it. The next time you’re looking for first-person accounts of your expertise and services, look no further than those who have experienced it first hand. Coaching also gives you the chance to address customers’ needs, give deeper support, and validate that what you have to offer is just what others want.

Complicated isn’t our style

Teachable makes selling an online course seamless and beautiful, regardless of your tech skills or business level. And now, we’re doing it again. Thanks to coaching, you can now grow your audience, schedule one-on-one sessions with ease, and offer supplemental learning options for students. Teachable’s coaching scheduler can even integrate with some of the programs you already use—among the other functions of the new feature.

And, because we don’t believe in complicating things, we made it easy to use. If you haven’t already, start by signing up for Teachable. You’ll be able to select coaching as an option.

From there, you have the option to build your coaching offerings and create specific milestones such as assignments, calendars, or meeting times for your clients. You can upload worksheets, add in a calendar link to schedule their session, or immediately add in a video conference link.

Spread the word and your audience will come

Marketing coaching and courses will be a nearly identical process. Yet, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still some best practices to ensure online coaching success.

• Write blog posts that are relevant to your online coaching topic that help you showcase your authority in the subject and provide value to students.
• Share your blog posts via social media or offer them up at guest posts to others who have relevant audiences.
• Create a simple lead magnet (e.g. worksheet, checklist, or ebook) or a mini course to capture leads.
• Add a call to action to your blog post inviting people to download your lead magnet, sign up for your mini course, and yep, buy your coaching services.
• Invite new leads to sign up for online coaching. You can do this either on the thank you page after they become leads, via email afterward, or both.
• Add a product upsell to offer to your customers immediately after they purchase.
• Use email marketing to nurture your leads and customers thus generating more sales.

Even if students don’t bite for your online coaching services right away, that’s OK. The key here is to get them into your marketing funnel and prime them to buy in the future. Diversify your products so even if portions of your audience aren’t converting into coaching clients immediately, you can still provide them something.

Ultimately, coaching and online courses go hand-in-hand. Once you’ve set up your coaching business, consider adding a course element—or vice versa—to maximize your offerings.