In our community of coaches, the question of ‘product mix’ often comes up. People want to know how best to expand their portfolio of services: How do I start a course? How do I create a programme? How do I set up a community? Good, valid questions, although frequently people worry about them before they’ve even got their first product sorted (or selling). So how do you create the perfect mix?

Marketing is often talked about in relation to ‘products’ – but how does that apply when you view what you do as a service? What’s more, why bother thinking in product terms? Why not just market your services? For the simple reason, people (potential clients) are more comfortable buying products. Products – whether the latest iPhone or a tin of peas – are tangible, demonstrable, easier to attribute value to.

It is often said that nothing is original. In many ways, that’s so but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In marketing your services, there’s often an assumption that you need to be the ‘next big thing’. But is that really true?

There’s always a get-rich scheme. And sometimes the scheme is telling other people how to get rich. More specifically, there’s no shortage of people online who have ‘made millions’ selling online courses and high ticket affiliate programmes. They go to great lengths – and time and expense – to tell you how much money they’ve made and how successful they are. What’s more, because they are kind and generous and have only your best interests at heart, they also offer to tell you just how they did it… to let you in on their money-making secrets so that you too can make hundreds of thousands of dollar-euro-pounds. There is a lot of money to be made telling people that there is a lot of money to be made and offering to show them how.

In this blog we take you on a behind the scenes tour of what it was like for us to build our own course. We wanted to provide coaches with a “warts and all” overview (or underview?!) of the ins and outs of conjuring up, building, packing, shipping and marketing an online video course and to ask yourselves why would you even want to do this?

There is quite a bit of information out there about Group Coaching, but arguably not enough. And maybe not the right sort of information. If you are interested in starting your own group as a coach, read on. You will learn the difference between coaching groups, running workshops, and team coaching… not the same things. You will also learn how to tackle pricing around group coaching, and start thinking about WHY you might like to build a group coaching product – again, not the obvious answer.

When making a coaching product most coaches create something they want to deliver, then try to sell it to prospective clients. They have to spend a lot of time and energy persuading clients that this is what they need to buy. It can feel awkward and is a lot of work. This is because there is a mismatch between what the client wants to buy and what they want to deliver. What if there was a better way?

Many coaches seek out or create communities for their clients. It is often said that creating an ‘online course’ is the answer to many coaching business problems. For some of your clients, a group coaching process may be the best way forward. And that’s another kind of community – one in which people on a coaching journey (and you, their guide!) can support each other. The reality of creating either of these is often a lot more work than you might expect and it’s easy to be overwhelmed when searching for online tools. In this blog, we share our research on the best options for building an online coaching community.

A fundamental marketing question (for coaching or any other business) is: are you selling what your market is buying?
Yes, you’re selling your coaching services. And yes, your clients are buying them. But what exactly causes them to say yes? What aspect of what you offer clinches the deal? You may think you know but beware of assumptions…

As the UK’s lockdown begins to ease, you have a great opportunity to build a better coaching business. Why? Because the world is different and whatever business you’re in, customer behaviour and expectations have shifted. As a coach you’ll know that the widespread switch to remote and home working means that people are looking for different services and different ways to access them. The world has changed. The question is, are you changing with it?