Trying to grow your business as an endurance coach can sometimes be overwhelming. But you know what? It can also be exciting and rewarding. Whether you’re new to endurance coaching or a seasoned professional, we’re here to help simplify the process and make you feel more confident in your efforts to scale your business.
So, here are 14 ideas to take your endurance coaching business to the next level! 💪
14 ways to business growth, for the endurance coach
1. Perform market research
By performing market research you’ll be able to collect critical information about your target market and audience. It’s a very practical way to ensure that you’re communicating your business mission, vision and values effectively. Furthermore, you can utilize the results of your research, to iterate on your existing services and improve brand perception.
Identify your target audience
Identifying your target audience is the foundation upon which you’ll start scaling your business, as an endurance coach. Through this process you’ll come to understand who your ideal clients are, and who your competitors are, too. Also, what are the issues these ideal clients face that your services can solve.
To identify your target audience, try to answer questions like:
- What is your target audience’s demographic information (age range, location, job and expertise, the sport they engage in, etc.)
- What is their psychographic information (behaviors, lifestyle and hobbies, communication style, etc.)
- What problems do they face with their training?
Identify your brand assets
Your brand assets are the distinguishable elements of your coaching brand. These make you stand out, as an endurance coach, from your competition. To give you an idea, brand assets include — but, are not limited to — the following:
- Brand name
- Logo
- Typography
- Design elements and color palette
- Slogans, taglines
- Songs or tunes
- Brand voice — also known as the brand character
But, the most important brand asset you’ll ever have is “the real reason why your athletes prefer you over your competitors”. Find that, and you’re golden!
2. Build your sales funnel
Building a sales funnel can help you monitor your prospective clients in their ‘journey’ toward becoming your actual clients. This will allow you to study their behavior — and level of engagement — to determine where they are in your sales funnel. Only then, can you conclude whether your funnel is working or not. If it’s working, you’ll possibly be onboarding some new clients soon.
Identify your goals
Why do you want to create a sales funnel? What do you want to achieve? You got that right, before you can start building your sales funnel, you need to identify your goals. As an endurance coach, you know well how important goals are for a successful outcome.
Keep in mind that it might be helpful to set one goal at a time. That is, focus on one principal goal, and move to the next when you’ve accomplished what you wanted. Nonetheless, you can set smaller goals that support your main goal, to help you get there more effectively.
Build a series of steps to get there
You may have realized, by now, that you have to build a plan of action — a sales funnel map — if you are to create a sales funnel that works. For instance, you can integrate these steps in your sales funnel mapping:
- Study and analyze the behavior of your target audience
- Create a landing page
- Build a strong social media presence (maybe run some campaigns, too?)
- Offer something valuable
- Capture the attention of your target audience
- Set up and run an email drip campaign
- Optimize your sales funnel
3. Increase athlete retention
If you want to grow your business, as an endurance coach, first, you need to make sure that your existing clients are happy with your services. There’s no better way to retain your clients than making them happy. Some ways to retain your clients include:
- Turning their coaching into a positive — exhilarating, even — experience
- Building strong relationships with them
- Involving them in the coaching process; listening to their ideas or concerns
- Personalizing your services, as much as possible
- Assessing their season with them, and implementing a feedback loop
- Keeping them engaged (newsletters, webinars, educational events, competitions)
- Utilizing a wholesome, purpose-built, endurance coaching platform like Endogusto
Use a client-first approach
A client-first approach is exactly what it sounds like: Bringing your clients at the center of your coaching practice. This includes seeking ways to design and deliver services, having your clients in mind. Because, your clients — their experience with your brand, their emotional reaction and attachment — are a part of your company’s purpose.
Bring prospects into your funnel: Use a CRM
The future of your coaching business depends on attracting new athletes, streamlining communication, and maintaining a meaningful relationship with them. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform can help you bring leads into your sales funnel and steadily grow your business. How can it help you grow your business as an endurance coach? Among other things, by:
- Improving overall efficiency, and automating the sales process; thus, helping you increase your revenues — diversifying your revenue streams, even.
- Utilizing the data it provides, to better understand your clients’ behavior. You can even use this data to tweak your services, to correspond to their needs.
Deliver on your promises
Suffice to say, when it comes to athlete retention, keeping your promises is essential. To elaborate a bit on this, keeping your promises means that you are committed to your athletes. It means that you are serious about helping them, that you care. When you break a promise, you’re actually letting your athlete know that they — and their needs — don’t matter to you. And if they feel this way, they cannot possibly count on you.
Use a reward system
Using a reward system is a great way to reinforce client loyalty. Loyal clients are clients that keep coming back. Also, loyal clients can introduce new, prospective clients to you (WoM), informally becoming your ‘salespeople’, too.
Engage with your audience on social media
Social media can do wonders for you, as an endurance coach, and your endeavors in retaining your athletes. Especially if you combine them with your email campaigns. One thing to remember with social media, though, is to keep adding new value, to keep your target audience engaged.
4. Build a business network, as an endurance coach
Networking is crucial for growing your endurance coaching business. But, where does one start building a business network? We have gathered a few ideas for you below, so, keep reading! 😉
Keep one eye on your industry and competition
Being in the know, regarding your industry and competition, will help you:
- Evolve as an endurance coach
- Remain relevant
- Understand your competitive advantages and disadvantages
As you see, your niche industry and competition can provide valuable information — each for different reasons — that can help you grow your business. However, they can both help you discover your competitive advantage. Once you find — and capitalize on — that, the growth of your business is only a matter of time.
Attend events and talk to peers
Attending events, and talking to peers can be the key to building a solid business network and generating new business. What’s more, it’s a great way to stay current with the latest trends.
Leverage thought leadership
Thought leadership is how you can prove that you have expertise as an endurance coach. Yet, leveraging thought leadership takes time, dedication, patience — not to mention, strategy. Be that as it may, once you establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche, you can use it to turn your ideas into new services and create new revenue streams.
Promote your business at various events
Attending events is the perfect opportunity to promote your business. Why not make the most out of these events to connect with people, and talk about your business? You will rarely get the chance to meet with so many people from the industry — and, as such, with so many prospective leads.
5. Leverage CSR
You’d be surprised what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can do for your business — growth-wise. Although every business has different goals, regarding their CSR strategy, the main concept is pretty much the same: To create a positive social impact, while establishing a positive brand image. All in all, CSR is an incredible opportunity for you, as an endurance coach, to build a brand that your clients — and, prospective clients, of course — respect and trust.
Give back to your community
Obviously, if you are to leverage CSR at all, you need to give back to your community. It could be taking part in fundraising sports events. Maybe, encourage your athletes to join in, and participate under your brand? It could also be a financial contribution. Whatever the case, do offer a little something back to the community that gives you the opportunity to do business as an endurance coach.
Go green and sustainable
Going green and sustainable means using products — as well as, getting involved in practices, and activities — that respect the environment; and trying to conserve natural resources for the future generations, of course.
Now, to go green and sustainable, you can start using sportswear and equipment that are eco-friendly. Try to convince your athletes to do the same, as well; make this part of your coaching philosophy. What’s more, you can participate in activities with your athletes, like reforestation; and, why not, combine it with some trail training, or hill training. 😊
6. Build strategic partnerships
If anything, strategic partnerships have the power to skyrocket business growth. To explain why, when you build strategic partnerships you can:
- Gain access to your partners’ clients and leads
- Leverage an enhanced value proposition
- Drive new customer acquisition
- Offer unparalleled customer experience
Notwithstanding, before you go on building partnerships, make sure that your future partners share the same values with you. And, of course, that their skills and assets are complementary to yours.
7. Use new technology
Why use new technology? This one’s for you, the ‘reluctant’, maybe ‘old-school’ coach. Don’t get us wrong, old-school is fine, but if you want to keep up with the new, tech-driven era, and evolve as an endurance coach, technology is your buddy.
To help you realize how pivotal new technology can be for the growth of your business, with a coaching platform, you can easily:
- Collect and analyze training data
- Measure and monitor athletic performance and status
- Encourage athlete engagement and motivation, etc.
Indeed, coaching-specific platforms like Endogusto can offer you deeper metrics and analytics, to help your athletes achieve their goals. There’s no better tool, if you’re serious about growing your business!
8. Diversify your services, as an endurance coach
Diversifying your services can give you an edge over your competition and help increase revenue. To clarify, let’s briefly examine diversification through the lens of specialization. To specialize in a service you offer, in an overcrowded market, helps you stand out. Why? Because you have more knowledge in a specific area; and, thus, are able to offer more advanced services. You get to remain one step ahead of other endurance coaches, whose services are just ‘the usual’.
9. Work with assistant coaches to broaden your capacity
When your business starts showing signs of growth, it’s a good time to start seeking assistant coaches, to help you ‘tend to your garden’. Even help you ‘plant more flowers’. Put plainly, if you want to scale your business, you’re going to need help.
When in the process of finding assistant coaches and establishing smooth collaboration with them, consider the following:
- Create a selection process that works. That’s how you can find the right assistants for yourself. Apart from the skill-set and education, there must be chemistry among the members of the coaching team; you, the head endurance coach, included.
- Evaluate them regularly. How else are you going to know if they are, indeed, a good fit? They must be aligned with your vision and goals. Hence, evaluate them often, to make sure that everyone — and everything — is on the same page.
10. Develop additional revenue streams, when possible
To help your business grow, you need to develop new revenue streams, whenever you get the chance. It will also help offset potential losses, along the way. So, how are you going to develop additional revenue streams?
- Create new services — better make them diversified, as well
- Go international — which will be easy, if you’re coaching online
- Build strategic partnerships
- Create a business network
- Seize potential business opportunities
- Follow market trends
11. Ascertain what works and build on it
Finding out what works — and what doesn’t — is the most foolproof way to scale your business. Nonetheless, you can’t do this overnight. First, you need to gain some experience, as an endurance coach, and as an entrepreneur. At the same time, you need to observe and study your competition. With time, you’ll come to a number of critical conclusions that will help you create new opportunities for your business.
12. Expand to adjacent markets
Remember what we said earlier about developing additional revenue streams? Following the market trends will give you a hint as to which adjacent — to your niche — markets seem promising. Are they smart sports watches? Perhaps, sports equipment or nutrition products? Do a little research to find the ones that may be worthwhile.
13. Be adaptable with your services
If you want to grow your business — and challenge yourself, as an endurance coach — be prepared to adapt. What do we mean by that? To simply follow the ebbs and flows of your industry and adapt your services accordingly. Adaptation means continuation and advancement. The more you’re able to adapt, the longer your business will last, and the more opportunities you’ll get, to scale up.
14. Use marketing tactics to expedite the process
There are many marketing tactics out there that can help you grow your business, faster. Before testing the waters with these tactics, remember your goals and what you’re trying to achieve. After that, pick the tactics that can serve you towards that purpose — depending on your marketing strategy — and stick to them until you get results.
For example, some common tactics that coaches implement today, and seem to work well, are:
- Leverage loyalty programs
- Utilize email marketing
- Start blogging
- Apply SEO best practices
- Create a strong presence on Social Media platforms
- Collaborate with influencers
- Start doing videos, podcasts and livestreams
- Host events (online and/or in-person)
TL;DR — To grow your business, you need to keep growing as an endurance coach
There you have it! That was our comprehensive guide to start growing your endurance coaching business, at your own pace. Nonetheless, in closing, we’d also like to bring your attention to another point that is important for you to consider: Your business can only grow — at least, the right way— if you keep growing, as an endurance coach.
No matter how knowledgeable you are in coaching, there’s always more to learn. Don’t forget that new knowledge is constantly emerging, too. Coaching, being both an art and science, will keep evolving, in more ways than one, and you have to evolve with it. If you’re not committed to learning (and evolving), you and your business will soon become outdated and unrelatable — irrelevant, even. In order to help your business grow, you need to keep growing, yourself; and staying up to date — both as a person, and an endurance coach!