When you launch your coaching business, your main goal is to bring in your first athletes and start growing. Unfortunately, you can’t achieve this goal overnight, as it requires hard work, dedication and, of course, patience.
While there’s no secret way to surpass your competition and take your brand straight to the top, there are a few proven tips that can help you lay the foundations for business success.
15 tips to start developing your customer base in 3 months
Below, we outline 15 simple ways to bring in your first athletes and increase your customer base, in 3 months. So, grab a pen — or your keyboard — and start taking notes!
1. Identify your ideal clients
Your ideal clients are the athletes you want to work with. They value you, as an endurance coach; they value your promising coaching brand, and they value your services. They have the same interests — and, maybe, experiences — as you. That’s why they can relate to your message and your mission. Finding these people will be a major milestone in your coaching journey.
2. Connect with prospects and provide value from day 1
Your prospects have the power to drive your business, once they become your clients. This is why it’s important to personalize your messaging to connect and start providing value to them, from day one. Doing so will have a direct impact on your brand’s long-term success.
3. Document their thoughts, ideas, and plans
Documenting your prospects’ thoughts, ideas and plans is an essential part of your marketing strategy; also, of your client-base-building process. The aim of documentation is to discover the problems they need help with; and, at the same time, offer you a direction to create your services. At the end of the day, it’s these services that will bring in your first athletes.
4. Help your prospects with their top daily frustrations
The real art of the client-onboarding process is to find the daily frustrations they’re trying to deal with, very early in their customer journey. Maybe, before they even realize they have an issue.
Getting to the bottom of this will require you to go the extra mile. Indeed, it takes a lot of research, but, if you pull this off, you’ll get your prospects’ attention. Once you get their attention, it’ll be a matter of time before you start bringing in your first athletes.
5. Keep an eye on what competitors you admire do for their clients; and how much they charge for it
The competition in the endurance coaching business, these days, is more fierce than ever. However, you can use this fact to your advantage, by keeping an eye out for what your top competitors are offering to bring in new clients. And, how much they’re charging for these offerings. 😉
Monitoring your competitors’ client-generation activities will enable you to understand what your target audience — or ideal clients — are interested in. This way, you can make adjustments and improvements to your own services, to make your business competitive.
6. Propose and demonstrate your solution
When proposing a solution to your prospects, the right description and demonstration will ensure that they get the information they need to understand your unique selling proposition. That’s how they’ll choose you as their coach, over another.
Only, don’t forget to show some empathy for their pain points. In fact, that’s the angle you should take this from; ask yourself, ‘How will my services help my prospects solve their problems?’, and take it from there.
7. Don’t do full-blown marketing campaigns all at once
In this time and age, there’s a variety of channels you can tap for your marketing campaigns. But, the question is: ‘Can they all help you cover your needs and achieve your goals?’. No, of course not. Yet, with so many marketing channels to choose from, how do you know which ones can help you bring in your first athletes?
Well, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s experimenting with them, first. Evaluate every channel you use, then — depending on the results — it will be clearer which channels fit you best. In the end, you want to keep only the channels that can bring you maximum ROI.
8. Come up with a personalized marketing plan
Developing a personalized marketing plan is no easy task. Nonetheless, you can come up with one — that will help you bring in new clients — by following these steps:
- Create a marketing strategy
- Define all the actions you need to take, to achieve your strategy
- Select your tactical approach for each action
- Prioritize what you have to do
Tip: Make sure to pay attention to the actions that depend on other actions that are being completed. This way, you’ll avoid mistakes or delays that can cost you time and money, along the way.
9. Use platforms that already have traffic and engagement
More or less, we all know which social media platforms serve ‘traffic and engagement’ on a golden platter, for their (paying) users. As a matter of fact, some of these — like Facebook — work wonders for endurance coaches (when used well)! Hence, there’s no reason why not to start creating content in these platforms; the kind that will help you bring in your first customers, as soon as possible.
10. Be active and keep an eye on your reputation
Surviving (and thriving) in today’s flourishing digital landscape requires having a consistent online presence. Not only that, but you need to tend to the reputation of your business, too. The latter fact is especially important today, as competition is ruthless, and a negative review can change everything.
11. Do some local business networking
Networking is a key activity for business development; especially for a coach, like you, who is just starting a business from scratch. Οpportunities to network and collaborate with other professionals in your local business community will offer you access to a pool of resources. This will enable you to find, and bring in your first athletes, much more easily than you would alone.
12. Do meetups and free webinars, offering real value to your prospects
By regularly hosting social events, and offering free webinars, your target audience will become aware of you and your coaching business. In such a manner, you can build your reputation as a knowledgeable, reliable, and supportive coach. A coach who not only knows what they’re talking about, but also offers useful tips to athletes who need them, for free. As a result, you’ll start getting more referrals — and, consequently, leads — as you’ll be the one that pops into their mind when they need a coach.
13. Keep track of the results
How can you keep track of the results? Well, with analytics. Analytics are measurements of your efforts to grow your business that depend on collecting data from your relevant online activity. This data may be everything; from website traffic to acquiring new leads. Collecting, and analyzing this data allows insights into:
- what’s working for you, so far,
- what you can improve,
- the ROI (return on investment),
- and the ROE (return on effort).
By tracking the results of your efforts, you can evolve and stand out in a very demanding — and ever-changing — endurance sports industry. With these in mind, make sure that you include in your analytics:
- New prospects
- New clients
- Business lost
- Website traffic
- Social media activities
- Inquiries
- Referrals
14. Keep your first clients super happy and use them as your ambassadors
When you run a new business, it can be tricky to try to retain your existing clients and attract new ones, all at the same time. Be that as it may, some extra pampering to your very first clients, may as well be a good part of the solution to this problem.
To elaborate, your first athletes are very special to you and your business. They are the people that got your business going, in the first place. So, if you think about it, they are the ideal candidates for becoming the best ambassadors for your brand. They already know what it’s like collaborating with you. They have been with you from the start. What does this mean? Simply that they have a powerful story to share with their friends and social media followers. A story of a relationship that stood the test of time; a story that teems with ‘user experience’ and social proof.
15. Test, verify and automate; then, scale to other channels
All newbie coaches want a ‘crystal ball’ to show them whether their efforts will bring in their first athletes in a three-month time, or not. But, how can they know which marketing tactics and actions are likely to generate the best results? Where can they invest their money to achieve their goals?
Dear coach, we give you the answer to these questions, in three simple words: Test (as in, experiment), verify (for validation) and automate whenever possible (to save time and money). When you complete this process, the next step is to scale to other channels. That is, follow the same successful recipe with a few tweaks and adjustments.
Endogusto will be there for you, all the way
If your goal for 2023 is to bring in your first athletes, implementing the tips we analyzed above will deliver the goods, dear coach. So, roll up your sleeves and get to work! And, remember, when athletes throng your front door for collaboration, Endogusto will be there to help you take your business to the next level. ✌️