How to Start a Triathlon Coaching Business

 

This post was originally published at BetterTriathlete.com

Starting a triathlon coaching business can be an exciting and rewarding pursuit for those passionate about endurance training, multisport, and helping others advance.

Working with athletes - whether beginners or high-caliber triathletes - can be a meaningful career path that brings a powerful sense of fulfillment and community. But like any self-made business, becoming a triathlon coach comes with its fair share of challenges.

The reality of starting any business is that you need paying customers to survive. In this case, a triathlon coach needs to not only acquire new athletes but maintain a relationship with them, whether locally or online.

For most coaches who are not former professionals or notable figures in the sport, marketing, networking, and building a reputation are critical components for starting a triathlon coaching business.

Improve Your Visibility and Grow Your Business

At BetterTriathlete.com, we understand the importance of having a discoverable web presence when building a business. Whether it be your website or your Facebook page, sustaining a business in today's digital age demands having a place where athletes can connect with you.

Not only can these pages generate traffic and grow new opportunities, but they can include reviews, case studies, and testimonials - all things that dictate your online reputation.

One of the most powerful ways to attract new athletes and grow your triathlon coaching business is to improve your visibility. That can be through Google search, Facebook, or other media outlets like BetterTriathlete.com. 

Get Listed and Level Up Your Online Exposure

At BetterTriathlete.com, we offer opportunities for all levels of coaches to grow their businesses. As part of our online triathlon community, we provide qualified coaches with a free profile on BetterTriathlete.com.

Not only does this profile provide greater exposure online (and on Google), but it can help improve the visibility of your own website. We also provide additional content marketing, advertising, and sponsorship opportunities to further help your marketing efforts.

Get Help Getting Found in Google

In addition to being a triathlon media outlet for coaches and athletes, we also provide marketing solutions for coaches and organizations looking to be found in Google. Through custom consulting programs or extended campaigns, we can help grow your rankings and drive more traffic from search engines.

Take for example coach Chris Bagg from Portland Oregon and his Google web presence. He occupies multiple listings for a keyword search that's helping acquire new athletes and build the local triathlon community, all while growing his business.

Why Start a Triathlon Coaching Business?

In the early 2000s, triathlon was one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S., gaining massive popularity among amateur athletes and hobbyists looking to get fit or try something new.

While the growth in triathlon is not as strong today, it's still a prevalent sport that requires leaders and coaches in the community. Many triathletes from all over the world are seeking triathlon coaches to help them train more effectively and thrive on race day.

Further incentive to start a triathlon coaching business is that the average income of today's USAT triathlete is over $100k/year. In short, there is no shortage of wealthy triathletes looking for good coaches. These points and other compelling data on the demographics and trends associated with triathlon can be found at USATriathlon.org.

Define Your Triathlon Coaching Business Model

Perhaps you've already incubated on why exactly you want to start a coaching business, or perhaps you're just entertaining the idea and gathering some insights.

As part of the incubation process and developing a triathlon coaching business plan, the process starts with asking the right questions that define your tri coaching business model.

• (As specific as you can get) Why do I want to start a triathlon coaching business?
• Do I want to specialize my triathlon coaching in specific disciplines or distances of triathlon?
• Where do I start with marketing my coaching business and brand?
• How will I carve a niche or distinguish myself as a triathlon coach?
• How will acquire new athletes once I start my triathlon coaching business?
• How will I structure my triathlon training programs for athletes and how much do I charge?

These questions are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to starting a new coaching business. While you as a coach will need to answer some of these questions for yourself, BetterTriathlete.com can help jump-start your efforts by providing specialized business marketing services and sponsorship opportunities for triathlon coaches.

More About How We Can Help Grow Your Coaching Business

Discover how BetterTriathlete.com can help grow your triathlon coaching business. The resources and opportunities that we provide center on building and optimizing the web presence behind your coaching business.

Our model focuses on web marketing, specifically social media and search engine marketing, and coach sponsorship opportunities with BetterTriathlete.com.

Optimizing Your Web Presence & Cultivating Awareness

Times have changed since the days of buying ad space in a local newspaper or magazine publication. In today's digital age, athletes are actively searching the web for triathlon coaching, whether via online triathlon coaching or local triathlon coaches in their area.

For this reason, it's essential to create a website for your triathlon coaching business. Not only does having a website serve as the foundation to your coaching brand, but it can act as a powerful marketing tool to acquire new athletes and grow your business.

While building a website is integral to starting a triathlon coaching business, success often hinges on well your website is found, or how much traffic it's getting. There are many ways to generate traffic to your website. Some of which are very effective in helping you connect with athletes. Among the most powerful are:

• Search Engine Marketing - this includes organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Pay Per Click advertising. Attaining top rankings and exposure in Google and other search engines can be a momentous way to market your tri coaching business.
• Social Media Marketing - in addition to your website, having an active presence on social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) can help cast your marketing net and connect with athletes.
• Networking - there are great opportunities to attend certain conferences, seminars, and expos that are related to triathlon. Not only are these events great for networking, but they also contribute to learning and growth as a triathlon coach.

Learn More About BetterTriathlete.com

As part of the BetterTriathlete.com business model, we offer services and consulting in areas of search engine marketing as well as social media marketing. Like a coach designs training programs for athletes, we custom design web marketing programs to help grow your triathlon coaching business.

Does your website need a boost in Google for "triathlon coaches (your city/state)"?

Whether you need general consulting help or done-for-you-services, we provide individually-tailored media and marketing solutions specifically for triathlon coaches. Learn more about our social media and search engine marketing services below.

Details On What We Do

Search Engine Marketing For Your Triathlon Coaching Business

Here's a quick briefing on search engine marketing. Like mentioned above, there are two components: organic SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

As the name suggests, Pay Per Click advertising is a bidding model where advertisers bid by the price of a click, or hit to their website. This is done through Google Ads (or other advertising platforms for different search engines, like Bing.)

For perspective, see the image that shows an approximation of how much it would cost per click given each keyword. This is very approximate data, and depends on the location that's being targeted. But overall, PPC advertising is an effective way to be visible in front of athletes searching for your keywords.

Here is a snapshot of Google search results for "San Francisco triathlon Coach." This is the organic search results, thus the term organic SEO. In short, our organic SEO services are designed to help grow your site's search ranking in Google.

Yes, there are a lot of opportunities to be had with SEO and expanding your site's visibility in Google search.

Social Media Marketing For Your Triathlon Coaching Business

Social media marketing is also a vital component to starting a successful triathlon coaching business. Unlike search engine marketing where athletes are actively searching for triathlon coaches and coaching resources on the web, social media marketing focuses on building your brand, which in turn builds awareness and maximizes your potential to connect with new athletes.

Social media shouldn't be a head-scratcher for new triathlon coaching businesses. Like designing your website and overall online brand, your social media presence should run parallel with all other web properties surrounding your coaching company.

Start with the big social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, and perhaps consider including LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Managing each platform can be time-consuming, so it's important not to overwhelm yourself with managing each account. You already have a tri-coaching business to manage as it is.

Stay focused and stay within your comfort zone before establishing an account on every social media site out there.  The idea is to keep your account active and regularly share content at least a couple times per week. This will help you get the most from your social media marketing endeavors.

For strategic insights on social media marketing and how BetterTriathlete.com can help, please contact us to learn more.

Opportunities with BetterTriathlete.com

BetterTriathlete.com is a growing community of triathletes and triathlon coaches positioned all throughout the world. While inclusion and having a profile created is typically based on where a coach is located, we also make online coaching an option for both athletes and coaches looking to connect.

What makes BetterTriathlete.com a valuable platform for emerging triathlon coaches is exposure. In short, the coaches in our community can expand their visibility and acquire new athletes. This goes beyond athletes here on the site and potential athletes searching Google for coaches in their given area.

While the BetterTriathlete.com coaches network is currently a work in progress, we are always seeking new additions to our network. This opportunity can help jump-start your triathlon coaching business and help acquire new athletes.