You’ve decided to start a private coaching or health and wellness provider business. But what’s next? What do you need to get your business off of the ground and how can you be sure everything is optimized for a successful launch? Well, we put together this checklist for private sports coaches, trainers, dietitians, physical therapists, or any other private provider to launch their business successfully, and hopefully start generating leads as quickly as possible.
1. Form your business legally
If you’re serious about starting your coaching or provider business, you should create a legal company. There are a few reasons why this is important.
- Professionalism: Clients will take you more seriously and there will be trust if you’ve created a company.
- Tax Benefits: There are tax benefits that are associated with having a legal entity. For example, you’ll be able to expense purchases related to the company which will reduce your taxable income.
- Limiting liability: If you’re starting a business and something goes wrong, you want to be sure your personal assets are protected. That’s why creating a Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a good idea. There are a number of services that can help you create an LLC, like Zenbusiness or LegalZoom, or feel free to get in touch and we can help. Additionally, we find LLCs to be a good option for most coaches due to the low friction to set up and minimal paperwork.
2. Get business insurance
It’s a good idea to invest in liability insurance for your business. By the off chance a client sues you, it's good to be covered. There are a lot of providers, depending on your business type, like Biberk or Next. Or if you’ve been certified as a coach, many times they will offer insurance deals for graduates.
3. Create a website
When you’re really ready to professionalize your business, especially if you’ve formed a legal company, It's time to create a website. A recent survey showed that 84% of consumers believe that having a website makes your business more credible than just a social media page. So create a website and put it on your own domain. You can check out website builders like WordPress or Weebly, or reach out and we’re happy to help you get a coaching or provider website up and running without needing to stress out about building it yourself. Or you can generate a site for free using our website generation tool.
What pages should you include on my coaching or health and wellness provider website?
We recommend a home page, an about page, a pricing/services page, a contact page, and a blog at a minimum. Some coaches and providers also like to include additional pages like media, sponsors/partnerships, or an event page. Also be sure to add testimonials, reviews from websites like Google, and create a separate page for each service you offer. This is helpful for SEO.
4. Optimize Website SEO
Now that you’ve decided to create a website, how do you make sure it shows up on Google and people can find you? That’s where SEO comes in. There are a lot of elements to SEO, like website structure, on-page SEO, and backlinking.
A good exercise to start thinking strategically about SEO is to make a list of keywords that you’d like people to find you for on Google. For example ‘Run Coach in Columbus, Ohio’ or ‘Dietitian in Denver, CO’. Now search these keywords and click through some of the sites that come up. How are they using them in their website content? Think through how you can create and structure content similarly. Over time, search engine algorithms will crawl the web’s content, including yours, and begin to rank results based on how relevant and well-structured some of this content is.
Don’t want to think about SEO? Zipper Sites are already optimized for SEO. Generate a website or contact us to for a free website draft built by our team.
5. Create a My Google Business account
Now that you have a company formed and an optimized website, it’s time to create a Google Business profile. This is going to help with being found in local searches, for example, ‘Personal Trainer Near me’ as well as allow clients to write reviews which will further help your SEO.
Make sure that your name, your business address, and your phone number (known as NAP) are all consistent across your website, Google Business, and directories. Also be sure to add a nice photo of you and add additional photos periodically, which will help your SEO.
6. Create social media accounts
Next, it’s time to create social media accounts related to your business. Below are some of the social media accounts we recommend, however, there may be more.
- TikTok
For Facebook, also be sure to create a Business Profile where you can get Recommendations from clients. This will also help you get discovered. As you create these accounts and begin to post, ensure that you have your website (or other means to funnel clients) clearly listed in your bio.
7. Set up a business email
Now that you have a website on a custom domain, create a business email. This will make you look more professional and give you more credibility with clients.
8. Create profiles on directories and review sites
Get your business listed on directories and review sites. Not only is this going to provide a backlink, but it will further help with SEO and discoverability. Below are some of the directories and review sites we recommend:
- Your local Chamber of Commerce
- Factual
- Foursquare
- Neustar Localeze
- Express Update
- Yelp
There are also likely directories related to your specific industry, so do a bit of digging and see if you can be listed there as well. Remember to keep your NAP consistent, otherwise, it can confuse Google and hurt your ranking.
9. Start collecting reviews
Start asking previous clients, or maybe friends and family whom you’ve helped at your specialty, for reviews on Google Reviews, Facebook Recommendations, and Yelp. Today, over 90% of consumers read online reviews, so it’s best to start managing your reputation. Better yet, if someone gives you a great review, ask them if you can add it to your website as a testimonial too!
10. Explore backlink opportunities
One of the best ways to help your SEO ranking and drive more traffic to your site is to get other websites to link to your website. Especially if it is a website with a lot of credibility (known as authority) Google views this very favorably.
One of the best ways to get a backlink is to guest blog for another website. Do some research and find some sites related to your industry. Reach out to their marketing team and ask if you can write a blog post for them. This is often a win-win situation, where you get access to their network and link to your website in your author bio, and they get free content from an expert.
11. Start blogging on your coaching or provider website
Another great way to improve your SEO and drive more traffic is to start blogging on your own website. When Google sees that you’re creating fresh, relevant, and helpful content, it will also view your site more favorably.
Now you may be thinking, what should I blog about? There are a lot of strategies on how to figure this out, such as doing keyword research on Google Keyword Planner or using a keyword research tool like SEMrush. But one of the simplest things to do is to search some of your competitors and see what they’re writing about. Can you write more informative and more helpful content related to these topics? This is likely a great place to start. As you browse some examples of well-performing blogs in your space, also take note of the structure of the articles in addition to the content. While things like word count and paragraph length are not explicit ranking factors of the algorithms, there is evidence to suggest that a more comprehensive piece will hit more long-tail keywords.
Want some free blogging tips? Reach out for a free coach or health and wellness provider marketing strategy consultation.
12. Make payments clear and easy
Set up a payment system that clients find easy and trusted. When you’re focused on professionalizing your business, investing in a way to automate payments, accept credit cards, and do invoicing is crucial. If you can also integrate it into your website, even better. We recommend exploring a payment processor like Stripe. You can also use Zipper Payments which leverages Stripe to make one-off packages, subscriptions, and donations seemless.
13. Launch on social media
Now that everything is ready to go, share the news about your new business on social media. You can use tools like Canva to create cool designs and start getting the word out about your private coaching or provider business.
While it might seem a bit overwhelming to start your coaching or provider business, it’s actually really easy if taken one step at a time. We hope this guide was able to demystify some of the process. Feel free to contact us for a free website consultation and a free draft custom website for your coaching or health and wellness business.
Done-for-you Websites for Fitness and Wellness Businesses
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