Tag: best practices

A Beginners Guideline To Online Coaching

by Chris Ward, posted in Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized

Intro to Online Coaching

With the current condition of COVID-19 in the world I have started to think of ways that I can continue on with one of my biggest passions; coaching golfers. With social distancing becoming the norm for the foreseeable future I recently took part in an online seminar from CoachNow to learn remote coaching best practices from their founder Spencer Dennis. With a major trend of online coaching in golf blowing up over the last few years this post will provide you with some well needed information if online-coaching is for you and what you can do to get started.

One of the quickest ways to learn about a new topic is to follow some of the industry leaders of online coaching and find what makes them successful. Some of the coaches I’ve looked at are:

The above coaches vary in creating their own platform to utilizing established apps and coaching companies such as V1Golf, CoachNow, and Skillest.

CoachNow Webinar Takeaways

The CoachNow Online Coaching Best Practices webinar was designed for any coach looking to start or add to their remote coaching.

Their description was “The option for remote coaching has never been more important than it is today and we feel very fortunate that we’ve been able to help thousands of coaches stay connected and still generate income even when they can’t meet in person. With that in mind, our Founder Spencer Dennis will be hosting this webinar to ensure you fully understand the best practices we’ve learned over the years.”

Basics of Getting Setup

My main takeaway from the the webinar was structured into two main areas: How to market your remote coaching and how do you structure your remote coaching package.

How To Market Your Remote Coaching?

  1. Clearly list who this is for and use this in your marketing efforts
    • Are they an out of town student
    • Looking for more frequent check ins between sessions
    • Completely new students looking for a coach
  2. Come up with your own Hook, Story, and Offer.
    • A example used in the webinar was:
      • Hook: Fix your slice in 20 swings.
      • Story: This is how we do it
      • Offer: Normally this is (set $ amount) and now its 20% this week only!
  3. Utilize CoachNow on Instagram
    • Tag @CoachNow_App
      • This gives you the opportunity to highlight what you are doing on a larger platform than your current one
  4. CoachNow also offers a media kit on their website which can be found here.
  5. Create a video covering what your offering and all of the above points.
    • Give the students a call to action by a direction to direct message or link to your website.
    • Once you have a CoachNow account you can create a welcome video for your students along the lines of “Hi this is (YOUR NAME) and welcome to our remote coaching reply to this video with a down the line swing and a face on video!”

How to Structure your Remote Coaching Package?

  1. Remember that this is remote coaching and not an online lesson.
  2. CoachNow allows for a team mentality so build a team if available. This collaboration consists of mental coaches, technical coaches, fitness trainers, and parents.
  3. Typical remote coaching follows the process of:
    1. Student Adds Video To CoachNow
    2. Coach makes Comments & Provides Drills
    3. Student Puts in Work
    4. Student Post A Video For Reassessment
      • If this is done correctly you pass the development on to the athlete and it provides them with the proper tools for success
  4. CoachNow has preset templates that will allow you to scale up your content and give you a structure that best fits your needs
  5. Individual or Teams
    • You can work with individual players in CoachNow which allow a private space between coach and student
    • You can also work in a team atmosphere which allows you to reach all at once and provide group coaching
  6. Pricing and Billing
    • What do you charge?
      • This varies on the services provided, look at other coaches in the area and find something that works with your skill set and clientele.
    • How does billing work? CoachNow doesn’t do billing but they suggest Venmo, Zelle, or PayPal. You also can offer a recurring product that may be offered in a platform that your club or current charging systems uses.

Most Successful Business Models

  1. Altus Performance utilizes effective language used and showcases versatility in offerings (Cameron McCormick-Jordan Spieth’s Swing Coach). They have a pdf which features their pricing and offers here. 
  2. Wil Fleming – Weight Lifting utilizes CoachNow’s teams system very effectively by offering a community workout setting that allows him to reach many people with the same content. Wil charges $199 per month and currently has 65 members in one of his teams, doing some quick math that’s a total of $12,935 a month through remote coaching. He also requires a minimum 3 month commitment to show effective results.
  3. Lance Gill Performance showcases the simplicity of buttons needed on a website and strong marketing video showing what he offers. Remote Training Protocol
  4. Martin Chuck utilizing segments for bulk messaging. Martin Chuck has user base of over 20,000 students which is why he offers segments to help personalize his messages without sending 20,000 separate messages. For more information on segments click here.

Videos and Image Analysis Best Practices

CoachNow’s Video and Image analysis tool allow students to send in content for the coach to analyze. Some of the CoachNow features include Slo-Mo and Scrubbing, Drawing on portions of the media, Snapshots, Recording of analysis (Screen capture), and comparison tools. For a more in depth analysis on how to use CoachNow’s analysis tool click here.

Provide something like this for your students to improve the quality of videos.

Promotion

One of the most important aspects of building up your student base is having a strong social media presence, check out some of my past posts below on effective ways to promote yourself and brand:

Thanks for Stopping By!

Be Sure To Follow @WardoGolf On Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter!

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