If you’re noticing that you’re wasting a lot of time answering the same questions from your 1 on 1 coaching clients, it may be time to leverage your time, and income, by creating a group coaching program. There’s only so many times you can say the same things right? Besides burning out, you’re not giving the 1 on 1 client the best of you or making the best use of their time either. Start keeping a record of the most commonly asked questions or major issues your clients have and develop a group online course to address their specific problems and allow them to achieve their best outcomes.
Introducing a group coaching program
First and foremost you’re going to need an audience to sell to, who want to hear your words of wisdom and need you to fix their problem. The best thing about having a group coaching program for your clients is that they can build a community around your brand. The members are united with a group of people who all want the same thing, to learn something they need to know. They will most likely have the same goals as well. Being in a supportive online group environment of like-minded individuals can have massive advantages for small business owners and you too. They are able to get experience and advice from a coach that is suitable for their small training budget. Resources and help can be shared amongst the members so that you’re not supplying all the advice and people get to see others points of view and suggestions. Members who are shy also don’t feel as intimidated as they would 1 on 1. To get started with transitioning from 1 on 1 coaching to a group coaching environment you need to have a plan.
Build your audience
Hopefully, you’ll have a dedicated audience that loves you already but you need to build on that. You can do this in several ways:
- Create an email series for your existing list with a special offer for the group course, for example, a free guide to the content (with tips) that will be included in the course
- Create a sales page to pre-sell your course and use paid advertising (Facebook Ads, Google Ads) plus all your social platforms to promote it
- Offer a short time frame to ‘get on board’, create a sense of urgency in your advertising
- Find out what your existing audience want by running a quiz or free webinar letting them know what you’re thinking of doing and if they’d be interested
- Ask your existing 1 on 1 clients to help you spread the word and offer them an affiliate link with a reward for doing so.
“Build your audience before you create your course, so you have people to sell it to”.
Sunny Lenarduzzi
Setting up your group online course
Setting up your group online course involves quite a bit of thinking and time-framing first. You need to consider the following:
- How many coaching sessions will you have?
- What will be the duration of each session as well as the course?
- How often will the sessions be held?
- What will be the content and how will you package it?
Think about your audience and how their days and working week are structured. 30 minutes might be long enough for some but 1 hour suits others. Different times of the day matter more to parents working from home to say people who have to travel long distances to work. Would they prefer to meet weekly or monthly, and what would be more beneficial for the content and information that you will be delivering? Stick to your boundaries once you’ve set them! Don’t allow some members to go off on tangents that have nothing to do with what you’re delivering. You’ll also probably have a lot of resources you’ll be able to package as giveaways for quizzes during the program, you can create these from your library of blog posts already, better yet get CloudXS to do it for you!
PRICING HINT: Offer different price points, timeframes and levels. Not everyone has the same budget so try and offer at least 3 options in price and length of the course eg. 30-day program, 90-day program, month-to-month with different corresponding fees.
Put yourself out there – do Facebook Lives!
Facebook Live has become an almost essential part of the small business marketing strategy. It’s a quick and easy way to tell people what’s happening and how you can help them. You can use it to build some hype around your course before you create it.
I know it can be nerve wracking to do videos, but hey, your group online course is going to be all about how you can help your audience so you need to be seen! The easiest way to get comfortable with it is to begin by doing Facebook Live sessions on your Facebook page. They don’t have to be long, in fact, the shorter the better for people’s attention spans.
When you’re filming your video make sure you face a window and not have the light behind you and always have the camera set to landscape rather than portrait as it will have two large black spaces either side of the video and nobody wants to look at that.
You don’t have to do it all by yourself
As you can see there’s a lot to think about and execute…that’s why we’re here to help you receive 5 stars on both look and delivery. CloudXS can do all the time-consuming work for you.
Ready to chat? Book in a call today, we can’t wait to speak with you!
Alethea xo