by Mac Gambill / Co-Founder at Nudge Coach
In this post we give you a 6 step health coaching business plan and discuss how an online health coaching program can help you build a more successful business.
In this day and age, it feels like everyone is trying to launch an online health coaching business. It’s the golden age of the health coach entrepreneur. But most struggle to gain traction and get their business off the ground.
Why?
Ultimately, they don’t launch with the right strategy or foundation in place. It’s vitally important to have the right health coaching business plan in place before you begin your venture, and this is where many businesses fail.
With this in mind, we will dive into the key elements of a successful online health coach business plan. We’ll discuss how online coaching programs can help you increase client retention, revenue, and most importantly, the impact you have on your clients along the way.
Why You Should Consider Offering An Online Health Coaching Program
Anyone who’s leveraged a subscription or coaching membership model in their coaching business knows the importance of delivering continuous value to clients, otherwise your clients won’t stick around very long.
If you are exploring online health coaching as a new bolt-on or extension to your current services, just know it can be huge for your model and expand your customer lifetime value.
Have you heard of the leaky bucket analogy?
Let’s say you have a traditional health coaching business with 100 clients and you regularly lose 4 clients each month - that would mean you have a 96% monthly retention rate (96 clients remaining out of 100 initial clients).
That doesn’t sound too bad, right?
Health Coaching Retention And Customer Lifetime Value
Wrong!
Here is the thing – losing 4% of your customers each month would result in you losing 38% of your customers each year, meaning each year you’d need to sign 38 new clients just to remain the same size.
That kind of turnover makes it REALLY HARD (and expensive) to build a sustainable business.
Here is where an online health coaching program comes in. It enables you to stay connected with clients and provide continuous value.
Consider the idea of perceived value. You need to ensure that in your customers’ eyes, your health coaching business provides value that surpasses the associated costs of your program.
Also watch
Watch our featured webinar with Dr. Steve Feyrer-Melk and Nudge Co-Founder, Mac Gambill on creating an effective coaching program for patient engagement
How An Online Health Coaching Program Can Rev Up Your Business
Let me make it clear that launching an online health coaching program isn’t just for boosting your retention numbers.
It can greatly strengthen your health coaching business across the board, increasing value, providing better data to you and your staff, and increasing your revenue opportunity.
Let’s explore this a bit deeper:
Increased Value
Everyone can use additional accountability and guidance and these programs can be simple ways to strengthen your relationship. Your clients want to feel you’re there for them with the right messages when they need them, and good online health coaching programs allow you to do this.
Ultimately, it’s that relationship that will keep someone around, increasing the customer’s lifetime value.
Access To Better Data Unlocks Proactive Support
One of our partners runs a health coaching program within a private medical practice and actually equips clients with mobile health devices to better understand their lifestyle habits in-between his coaching sessions.
He monitors his patient's habits and provides feedback using the Nudge platform, which makes it easy for him to monitor progress and provide proactive feedback in quick messages in-between sessions.
At one point he noticed that one of his clients had all of a sudden stopped wearing their device.
Like any great practitioner he reached out to the client – “Hey Jack, did you lose your Fitbit? Do we need to get you a new one? Just wanted to touch base.”
Here’s the thing about Jack. He had gotten incredibly sick, wasn’t able to workout, and hadn’t made it to the practice yet.
This practitioner was able to coordinate with this patient and get Jack into the practice the next day.
As a result, Jack actually told him that they now had a client for life.
It’s simple interactions like these that create the foundation for a successful health coaching business, and online coaching tools make more moments like this possible.
Increase Your Revenue Opportunity
You will always have customers ready to pay extra for additional value, and online health coaching programs are an obvious add-on as they complement your core services.
Creating an upsell can take multiple forms ranging from something as straightforward as charging an additional $50-100/month for light accountability in-between sessions all the way up to $2,000-3,000 for a specific 6-month program.
Regardless of the program, this is NEW revenue you didn’t have in your pocket beforehand.
You can read more on how to package, position, and price your coaching programs here.
The 6 Steps To An Online Health Coaching Business Plan
Below I’m going to share with you some of the key steps we’ve learned from helping thousands of coaches launch online health coaching offerings.
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
Let’s start by identifying the pain point that really needs solving. What I mean is a subset of members who have a similar need and would find value in additional services.
A simple example would be providing a weight loss program if you hear multiple people voice frustrations trying to lose weight or meeting a certain health goal. Whatever the issue, identify the cohort who would be most likely to purchase additional programming.
One thing to avoid is trying to craft a “one-size-fits-all” program as we’ve regularly seen companies struggle when attempting to market broad, generalized programming.
Helpful example: ELEVAYS
Dr. Isaac Jones has a program targeting those wanting to be "high performing" individuals. Check out their landing page AND application to see an effective approach to targeting and presenting a high value offering.
Step 2: Identify How The Online Program Fits Into Your Model
Now that we’ve identified our targets for this new coaching program, we need to identify 2 key items: your goal AND the economics powering it to make sure it’s viable.
The table below will give you a sense of the pros/cons associated with programs more geared towards mitigating patient attrition - "Increase Lifetime Value (LTV)" - vs. those focused on increasing your revenue opportunity - "Increase Revenue."
We’ve seen two strategies that work well in this instance that depend greatly on the program and how it’s packaged: charging an additional monthly fee OR charging upfront for a set program (i.e. 6-month weight loss program).
There are pros and cons to both but a lot of this comes down to the nuances of the program and how front-end heavy it is to administer.
Monthly Fee ($50-100/month in addition to membership fee)
Your program will likely contain some type of assessment at the beginning with regular face-to-face/ video interaction and ongoing communication as the patient progresses, but ultimately this may be a more traditional program built around basic accountability.
This type of service may be more appropriate for scale as it has low deployment and onboarding costs in terms of time and effort.
Upfront Fee ($1,500-20,000 depending on specificity of program)
I’m seeing more programming that is front-end loaded with services, such as body composition analysis or advanced laboratory testing, but these are generally positioned as “concierge” or “white glove” offerings.
As such, coaches are using that as a way to encourage upfront payments, which can influence buy-in during the opening months.
People tend to be more serious when spending money up front for a service, and those expressing this level of seriousness are likely candidates for follow-on programming and maintenance plans.
Step 3: Define Roles & Responsibilities (if in a group setting)
Are you a solopreneur or do you have coaches on staff who will be involved in running the program? Both can work but we need to understand who will handle key responsibilities required for running a successful program.
There is a growing trend of health and wellness businesses hiring coaches and other dedicated staff to run coaching programs. They’ve seen a return on investment and realized that increasing retention numbers can result, in some cases, in thousands of dollars kept from heading out the door.
That being said, businesses generally have several options for addressing program structure:
Run it yourself - Starting point for most businesses
Delegate to a staff member - Example would be a practitioner handing off coaching responsibilities to their in-house health coach
Partner with a part time coach to work with clients needing additional support - Depending on the business this could come in the form of a referral agreement with a trusted health coach, life coach, nutritionist, etc.
Regardless of whether you are a solopreneur health coach running everything yourself or you are delegating aspects of programming out to others, the process itself should be similar:
Client Qualification (Make sure they are a good fit for your program - i.e. in an appropriate stage of readiness)
Program Introduction & Onboarding
Ongoing Content & Data Capture & Feedback
Retesting to Illustrate progress
Subsequent Management Program (if appropriate)
Step 4: Kick Off the Program With Upfront Testing
Everyone purchasing/enrolling in a coaching program will be expecting some type of identifiable return on their investment – i.e. achieving a certain goal in mind, like losing weight, feeling better, running a marathon, etc.
Your program won’t be any different, so it’s important to lay a foundation enabling you to illustrate client progress.
It’s for this reason I would strongly consider kicking off your program with some type of upfront data collection because it will provide several key layers of value. This is an important step in your online health coaching program, as it gives you a better understanding of your client’s motivations.
Most businesses opt to either handle this by starting their health coaching program with a comprehensive assessment, a full body composition analysis using an analyzer like InBody or Tanita, or through advanced lab testing.
Items to keep in mind:
This is a chance for you to illustrate your knowledge in the field.
Results are tangible and can be taken with them afterwards
It’s a benchmark to measure progress
Another opportunity to consider that we’ve seen regularly is coaches offering one-off, follow up readings for a small fee to further increase your earnings potential.
That would likely be in addition to complementary data readings you may be providing at the beginning and end of your program as a part of the overall package.
Body Composition Analyzers
Step 5: Select The Right Technology To Simplify Data Collection And Follow-Up
I regularly meet health and wellness professionals who’ve gone to incredible lengths to manage their coaching program, from hosting regular web conferences to equipping patients with health tracking devices to understand who needs their attention.
Both result in a touchpoint, but the strategy largely depends on the size and cost of your program.
Ultimately, most businesses adopt some type of online coaching platform to streamline the process of sifting through data, sharing content, and providing feedback.
There are multiple systems on the market that can provide value with this process but they vary in functionality and complexity.
Your approach to technology should be from a patient experience perspective so select a platform that fits within your desired process and the experience you have mapped out for participants in the program.
Here is a post highlighting the pros and cons of some of the best and most widely adopted online coaching platforms we’ve seen to help run programs.
Step 6: An Effective Touchpoint Strategy Based On Regular, Concise “Nudges”
The value of your offering is largely based on the perceived value you or your staff bring to the program – your blog, book, worksheets, etc can only move the needle so much.
YOU are the most important variable in this equation.
One of the main pitfalls we see is coaches spending far too much time with the management piece, thinking that every communication needs to be long and detailed.
This is not the case!
There are two main things to consider with your communication strategy:
Set Expectations - let clients know the frequency and purpose of ongoing communication with this program.
Keep it brief - your feedback should be quick and concise. Keep most correspondence to 1-3 sentences and make it easy to respond to.
An effective communication strategy is one that leverages a combination of regularly dripped educational content plus contextualized feedback as needed based on a client’s progress.
This may seem obvious for when you are engaging clients remotely, but you would be amazed by how often we see coach messaging that is very informative but falls short in engaging their client.
Why?
Because in most cases we see people forget about the call-to-action. The key to effective remote engagement is making it as easy as possible for clients to engage back.
Consider complementing your professional advice with simple “yes/no”, multiple-choice, or other short-form questions that a client can respond to in seconds.
With that in mind, here may be the touchpoint strategy for Month 1 of a 3-month program. Keep in mind that any personal note you send will likely lead to follow-up messaging between you and your client.
Week 1
Personal Note: “Excited to start working with you” note with mention of materials heading their way.
Automation: Getting started email or Nudge Card with link to the curriculum.
Week 2
Personal Note: 1-3 sentences.
Automation: Link to educational content #1.
Week 3
Personal Note: 1-3 sentences.
Automation: Link to educational content #2.
Week 4
Personal Note: 1-3 sentences.
Automation: Link to educational content #3.
Putting It All Together
By taking a step back, we can start connecting all the pieces above to map out an online health coaching program that fits and can strengthen the profitability of your health coaching business.
Identify the common needs of your prospective clients to understand what type of program would be most valuable. Decide on whether this would be a concise, specific program or an evergreen service – the more specific the pain point you solve the higher the value and associated revenue potential.
Identify who will be running the program and make sure that it will be initiated with some type of upfront testing to benchmark clients and have a solid base to illustrate progress.
Map out the content and touchpoint strategy to provide significant, scalable value to participants every 1-2 weeks.
Find the right online coaching solution that will streamline the process and mitigate the amount of time required to run the program.
Lastly, remember to keep it SIMPLE for you and your participants.
You Don’t Need To Go It Alone
Whether you’re an aspiring health coach entrepreneur or you’re scaling an already thriving health coaching business, it’s never the wrong time to get additional help from people who have done it before. I laid out the steps for you in this post, but that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
Schedule a call with our experienced team and let's discuss how we can help set up your program for success.
