Coaching has been around for as long as humans have wanted to improve (so, basically, as long as humans have existed).
If there is a need to learn something new or to get better at something, there is likely an experienced and knowledgeable individual who is ready to teach or guide.
This fact hasn’t changed much over the millennia, but one thing has: you no longer need to be in the same place to offer high-quality, hands-on coaching.
What Is Virtual Coaching?
Virtual coaching is both old and new. It is the same product that humans have been selling for generations—guidance and mentoring focused on improvement—but it is now delivered in an entirely new format. Virtual coaching, or e-coaching, is the next step in the evolution of learning and development.
It is the repackaging and reformatting of the old coaching process into a more effective, more efficient, and far-reaching method.
How It Works
In more practical terms, virtual coaching is simply moving the familiar relationship of coach and coachee to a digital environment. Instead of (or in addition to) meeting face to face, coaches and clients can meet via videoconferencing or video coaching. In place of exchanging handwritten notes and letters, coaches and clients can send brief messages and thoughtful emails. And despite the physical distance, professionals can provide guidance and mentoring to students across the world.
Virtual coaching not only offers a new way to work with your clients, it also offers a way to scale up your practice and reach people you could never have before. Instead of simply taking the old coaching method and moving it to a digital landscape, today’s online coaching platforms offer a chance to expand, enhance, and empower your practice in innovative and exciting ways.
Running A Successful Online Coaching Practice: 5 Tips
Virtual coaching not only offers a new way to work with your clients, it also offers a way to scale up your practice and reach people you never could have before.
Before we get too in-depth on the online coaching platforms available to you as a coach in the digital sphere, let’s cover a few basics.
How do you create and maintain a successful online coaching practice?
Several books have been written on the subject, and there’s certainly more to explore in this area, but there are a few tips that can help you get started.
Virtual Coaching: Tips For Success
If you want to run a successful online coaching practice, make sure you:[1]
- Create client personas. Especially now, with an increasingly online world, it’s important to understand who you are serving and what their needs are. Take some time to create personas of your target clients and make sure what you’re offering is a good fit for them.
- Produce high-quality content. It’s vital to show your potential clients that you have something valuable to offer them, and creating high-quality content is a great way to do that. Write an e-book, make a handy informational PDF, or share a helpful video to get people interested in hearing more from you. This content may be part of the products you offer, or it may be a freebie to bring clients in, but it should be high-quality and extremely valuable either way.
- Refine your offerings. You might have a ton of ideas, options, and resources to offer your clients, but overwhelming them with information won’t lead to better outcomes. First, decide on whether you’re offering products, services, or both. Next, based on your personas, narrow down what products and/or services you’d like to offer each persona based on what they need and what is likely to work best for them. Remember that you can always provide further offerings if your first engagement with them goes well.
- Decide on a pricing structure. Whether you want to charge by the hour, by the week, by the pieces of content you share, or some other structure, now is the time to create that framework. Decide how you want to charge your clients for your products and/or services and define it in a way that’s easy for your clients to understand. They need to know what you’re offering and how much they’re paying for it, or they’ll never take the leap of purchasing from you.
- Find an online coaching platform that works for you. It’s possible to run an effective coaching business via iMessaging or texting alone, but it’s certainly not sustainable long-term or scalable to more than a few clients. Imagine trying to work with a dozen clients at a time via nothing but your email and messaging apps! Instead, find a coaching platform or online coaching app that offers you customer relationship management tools. Read on to learn about what’s out there.
8 Best E Coaching Platforms and Softwares
As business continues to move online, the demand for platforms and software options to conduct virtual business has skyrocketed. Only a few years ago, you might have been hard-pressed to find a tool that worked for your unique business needs.
Luckily, scarcity of options is no longer the issue; instead, you might find yourself inundated with options!
If you know you need an e-coaching solution but you’re not sure which one to go with, the table below is a great place to start comparing and contrasting your many, many options.
Platform | Details |
 | Business management system with:
|
| Name | LifeCoachOffice |
| Price | $24+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Practice Management, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://mycoachoffice.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | Client management platform that offers:
|
| Name | CoachingCloud |
| Price | $99+ monthly |
| Good For | Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://www.coachingcloud.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | Online directory of professional coaches that offers:
|
| Name | Noomii |
| Price | $396+ annually |
| Good For | Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://www.noomii.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | Cross-platform software and coaching app that includes:
|
| Name | CoachingLoft |
| Price | Free+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Calendar Management, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://coachingloft.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | An all-in-one platform that helps you:
|
| Name | DoTimely |
| Price | Free+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Practice Management, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://dotimely.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | Coaching platform that offers:
|
| Name | CoachAccountable |
| Price | $20+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Practice Management, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://www.coachaccountable.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | Nudge is an online coaching platform that offers:
|
| Name | Nudge Coach |
| Price | Free+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Life Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Health Coaching, Wellness Coaching, Nutrition Software |
| Website | https://nudgecoach.com/ |
Platform | Details |
 | All-in-one customer relationship management system that includes features like:
|
| Name | Satori |
| Price | $39+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Customer Relationship Management |
| Website | https://www.satoriapp.com/ |
3 Digital Coaching Apps for You and Your Clients
If you’re specifically looking for an app you can use with your clients, you have several options here as well.
Below are three of the most popular and well-designed online coaching apps.
App | Details |
| As mentioned earlier, this app supplements the Nudge Coach platform and offers:
|
| Name | Nudge Coach App |
| Price | Free+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://nudgecoach.com/ |
App | Details |
 | This app is geared towards health, fitness, and wellness coaches with features like:
|
| Name | Coach Catalyst |
| Price | $39+ monthly |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Life Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Nutrition Software, Wellness Coaching, Fitness Software |
| Website | https://coachcatalyst.com/ |
App | Details |
 | A micro practice and digital coaching app that offers:
|
| Name | Mobile Practice |
| Price | Available on request |
| Good For | Coaching Management, Practice Management, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching, Fitness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching |
| Website | https://mobilepractice.io/ |
Other Resources: Our Favorite 3 Tools
Aside from the platforms we’ve covered so far, there are a few other helpful tools out there to help you take your coaching practice to the next level. If you decide not to go with an all-in-one platform, consider these standalone tools:
- Acuity Scheduling: this is a 24/7 scheduler that allows your clients to book sessions at their convenience; it also takes deposits and/or collects payment information ahead of time, and it can send email and text reminders to cut down on no-shows.
- Zoom: one of the most popular videoconferencing tools, Zoom allows you to meet with clients whenever and wherever works best; keep in mind, the free version allows for meetings up to 40 minutes long, but they offer unlimited time via their paid plans.
- Thinkific: this platform allows you to create and sell your own content in the form of online courses and membership sites; everything is customizable, and they offer tons of tools for marketing and selling your content too.
Of course, there are many more tools that can help you schedule sessions, market your content, find new leads, and virtually meet with your clients. If these tools don’t meet all of your needs, do some searching to find other options.
There’s sure to be something that will cross off each item on your “must-have” list!
Final Thoughts
It’s an exciting time to be a coach. There are tons of options available for you to create content, customize your offerings, and connect with your clients.
In a world that is becoming more digital by the minute, you have more resources at your disposal than ever before. Put in a little bit of time now to find the tools that best suit your coaching practice and set yourself up for continued success down the road.
