Are you trying to figure out how to build a coaching website to grow your coaching business?
Most coaches struggle with:
- Website wireframe
- Content creation
- Choosing website building tools
- Finalising a learning management system (LMS)
- Picking a marketing automation tool
- How to get coaching clients
There are three key stages of building a coaching website to overcome these challenges to grow your coaching business:
Let’s explore these three key stages of building a coaching website in detail.
1. Coaching website strategy
Building a coaching website that helps you grow your business is challenging.
My favorite framework to grow your business is using a sales funnel by Donald Miller, author of StoryBrand.
Key parts of the sales funnel that improve your entire business are:
- Aspirational identity
- One liner
- Website
- Lead generator
- Nurture campaigns
- Sales campaigns
I highly recommend checking out a business made simple course to learn more about how to build a business using a StoryBrand framework.
2. Coaching website development
In this post, I will share how to build a coaching website homepage using a StoryBrand framework.
The basic elements of a website homepage that grows your business are:
- Header
- Stakes
- Value proposition
- Guide
- Plan
- Explanatory paragraph
- Video
- Price choices
- Junk Drawer
Let’s get started and explore these elements in detail with examples.
1. Coaching Website Header
If you confuse, you lose. Donald Miller
Your website header must answer the following questions within five seconds:
- What do you sell?
- How does your product or service make your customer’s life better?
- How can I buy your product or service?
Your website header, including the top navigation, is the first thing your website visitors will interact with when visiting your website.
That’s why they say that it is the most precious real estate on your website.
According to marketing firm Yankelovich, Inc., the average modern person is exposed to around 5,000 ads per day, and this number is from 2007.
The best way to complicate it further is to bombard your website visitors with multiple options to choose from, which usually confuses your potential clients. We already know that when you confuse, you lose.
The simplest way to use your website header is to create curiosity by inviting your prospects into a story they are interested in.
Your website header should work as a starting scene for any popular movie. You’ll find one thing in common in all the movies that do well: hooking the viewers at the start of the movie with what the hero or the heroine wants.
For example:
- Trying to overcome a personal problem
- Take down an evil villain
- Disarm a bomb to save the lives
The sooner any movie establishes what the hero or the heroine wants; the more chances are to captivate the audience for 90 minutes or more.
Here are a few things you can do to achieve the same with a coaching website.
- Your top navigation must not have more than three links. Ideally, only one such as book a call or schedule an appointment.
- Your header tagline must give your prospects aspirational identity (what they want to get, become or feel after getting your coaching) in one short sentence.
- A clear call to action to start that journey with you.
Commonly seen header section mistakes on coaching websites:
- Numerous unnecessary links in the top navigation bar
- Vague tagline or a tagline that reflects coach’s own aspirational identity instead of your students
- No clear call to action. For example, buy now or schedule a call
A few examples of websites have done a great job using this framework to create the website header.
2. Stakes
This section of your coaching website must explain to your customers what is at stake if they do not do business with you or sign up for your coaching program.
What are the external, internal, and philosophical problems your customers experiencing?
The following aspects are crucial to communicating the stakes:
- Short and concise words
- Bullet points
- Images
Here is how our case study websites created this section to convey what their customers are missing out on without their coaching or services.
Frequently seen issues on coaching wites:
- Excessive use of words
- Unclear stakes
- Same old content about the business
3. Value Proposition
In a value proposition section, you must repeat how your life coaching services make your coaching clients’ lives better. Your customers are busy, and you have to say it repeatedly before they start paying attention to your messaging.
4. The Guide
This is the biggest paradigm shift in the StoryBrand framework. You must not present yourself as a hero in your marketing collateral. Instead, you must always play a role of a guide.
Your coaching clients are the heroes and heroines of their stories.
They need a strong guide who has done it before and has a plan to help them win the day.
How most coaching websites go wrong in this section:
- They make this section about them
- Lack of empathy
- You find the guide section in the header
The guide section should come after at least the header and stakes section.
5. Plan
For a coach, it isn’t easy to connect and build a rapport with prospects without having a clear step-by-step plan to deliver results for their customers.
This is why the plan section is critical for a coaching website conversion.
A plan section must not have more than four steps, ideally only three. Research showed that three steps convert the best. The conversion rate drops significantly for a five steps plan than three steps.
6. Explanatory Paragraph
Search engine optimization is an important part of your website’s organic success, which is highly dependent based on the words on any webpage.
However, using excessive words is not the right way to go about it, particularly in the header, stakes, or plan section. You can include a section on your home page to address your SEO requirements and fill it up with the required words.
You should do your best to use content that adds value to your customer experience, which ultimately is the best SEO practice, in my opinion.
Following is a great example of using an explanatory paragraph to improve your homepage SEO.
7. Video
A video is an optional section. However, if you are good at creating videos, adding a video section to your homepage can add massive value.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a few thousand words.
A video is also the next best face-to-face when building a rapport with your prospects.
Donald Miller uses videos brilliantly on the Business Made Simple website homepage.
8. Price choices
Closing a sale in minimum possible steps is a superpower.
Adding price choices on the homepage reduces at least one click. However, if you believe in adding price choices on a separate page, you can go with that as well.
The same rules apply to plan steps. The more choices you have, the lesser the conversion rate you’ll have. In my opinion, three price options convert best.
9. Junk Drawer
Your website footer is the junk drawer, where you are free to add anything you like.
Creating a website wireframe and content that converts is the real challenge. StoryBand framework gives you a great head start and ideas to create one.
Once you have the wireframe and the content you can use WordPress to develop your coaching website.
3. Coaching website promotion
No matter how good your website is, it is no use for your business until your prospects are landing on your site.
Here are the common ways to drive traffic to your coaching website.
- Paid advertisement
- Word of mouth
- Joint ventures
- Introducers/affiliates
- Social media
- Organic search traffic
Paid advertisement
This is the easiest and quickest way to drive traffic to your coaching website. However, it is usually costly and requires a substantial marketing budget.
Getting the return on your marketing investment is challenging. It will be a great win If you can get in return more than what you spend on paid marketing.
The paid advertisement stops bringing traffic to your website the moment you stop paying for it.
Word of mouth
Many small businesses run on word of mouth only.
The foundation of any marketing that works is the quality of your products and services.
Tesla is an excellent example of this, becoming the fastest growing brand in 2021 despite spending $0 on advertising.
Your coaching clients have a problem, and you offer a solution to their problem. The better your solution is, the more successful coaching business you’ll have.
Joint ventures
This is an extremely powerful marketing channel and has the power to grow your business overnight.
Finding interrelated businesses with client bases and trying to joint venture with them for mutual benefits can help you get large numbers of clients at speed.
Introducers/affiliates
This is also a great way to get new clients and the best part is that you’ll have to pay the introducers/affiliates once you get paid, which is great for your cash flow particularly if you are at the start of your business.
Social media
It is another powerful marketing tool. If you are time-rich and like to produce content on a regular basis social media can be a powerful marketing tool for your coaching business.
The life of social media posts can be short as well and you have to come up with new post ideas consistently to stay in the feeds of your followers.
Organic search traffic
Organic traffic is the dream of most businesses that can help you scale your business over the longer term.
More than 80% of all traffic for most industries comes from organic search.
Creating rich content pages, and posts and building backlinks is the backbone of getting organic traffic to your coaching website.
The beauty of organic traffic is that it takes time to build at the start, however, once it starts working you can enjoy targeted organic traffic for the long term.
Conclusion
Your coaching website plays a key part in communicating and delivering your coaching solution to your prospects.
The best form of coaching website optimization is elimination. Nothing is more effective than removing the ineffective.
It is crucial to figure out why you need a website before building a coaching website. Once you are clear, it will help you greatly in:
- Creating a coaching website strategy
- Producing website wireframe
- Content creation
- Developing website promotion plan
I hope this will help you build a coaching website to grow your business. Schedule a call if you need help creating a website using the StoryBrand framework.
Feel free to request a free website growth audit today.
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