Finding new clients is one of the biggest challenges facing coaches. A properly optimized Coach Profile makes you more discoverable by thousands of athletes looking for a coach and is a powerful tool you can use to proactively find more clients. Think of this as a branded marketing page showcasing your abilities and expertise.
Use these best practices to maximize your profile, effectively use a customized URL and start growing your business. To access your new Coach Profile, open Settings, then click on the public profile editor text.
1. Personalize Your Page URL
Your customized URL can be shared on your website, social media channels, newsletter, etc. allowing you to proactively market your business. Use this URL to send athletes directly to your profile so they can easily view your summary and bio. Even for coaches who have a website, your personalized page can drive new traffic that your website may miss. Backlinking from other web pages helps your search engine optimization (SEO) too.
Since this URL affects those SEO results, it is important to consider what you use in your URL. We recommend you use your personal or business name. To help search engines, it is important to use hyphens between each word.
If your business or personal name is taken, think of how athletes would search for your services using keywords — more on that in the next section. For example, John Smith may want to use John-Smith-Triathlon-Coaching. If you are focusing on a niche sport, adding that to your URL may help.
2. Complete Your Summary and Bio
Perfect Your Summary
The summary is very important and serves as your chance to sell yourself to potential athletes. Your summary is shown to athletes searching in TrainingPeaks and any search engine. It should be a quick description that lets athletes know your philosophy, your values as a coach and how you plan to help them reach their goals. This is potentially the first source of information about you, so put information that will hook the reader into wanting to talk with you further.
Open Up with Your Bio
The bio is the place to list your certifications, TrainingPeaks Level 2 accreditation, experiences, services offered and other background information. Here, you can talk more about your personal racing, love of the sport, and even offer testimonials from previous or current athletes.
Leverage Important Keywords
Using the right keywords in your summary and bio is one of the most important things to help search engines and, most importantly, athletes find your business. Your profile will rank higher among all search engine results pages, including TrainingPeaks searches, by using specific words. Your name will already be included as a keyword for the search page on TrainingPeaks’ coach search.
The summary below is a good example of how to quickly and effectively tell athletes about your business and use keywords. Think of unique keywords that might be location-based, sport-based or philosophy-based to include naturally in your summary.
3. Use a Great Profile Photo
First impressions are very important, and your profile visually represents you and your brand to potential athletes. Using a quality headshot shows you care about the details. A good image shows your face and has positive body language. Phone selfies are generally OK, but a more polished image will represent you better. The image you select for your Coach Profile can be different from the one displayed on your TrainingPeaks Coach Account.
4. Connect Your Social Accounts
Social media is a powerful marketing channel for athletes to research your business. Many athletes will look to better understand you and your business by looking through your website and social media accounts. Adding your Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin pages to your profile is an easy way for athletes to find out more about your business. If you don’t have a website yet, you can link to an Instagram or other social media platform using the website field. Best practice would be to only link to a platform that you are actively publishing content on and is relevant to your business. If you don’t highlight your coaching business and only post personal content, it might be best to leave the social account off of your profile.
5. Services and Requirements
Check the boxes in the services section to help athletes use filters when searching for coaches on the TrainingPeaks website. Then be sure to include any special requirements you may have as a coach, but you will need to be concise as there are only 200 characters to use in this field. Most coaches use this to call out device requirements like power meters or heart rate monitors. By completing these sections, only athletes that feel they meet your criteria will contact you, limiting the time needed to sift through potential clients. It’s OK to not talk with every potential athlete.
6. Training Plans Tab
The Training Plans tab can highlight a few training plans you have for sale in the TrainingPeaks marketplace and, with a click, display any other plans you may have for sale. This is a great opportunity to cross-link your plans with your profile to allow potential plan buyers to know more about you and your qualifications. Building a profile that establishes authenticity and authority provides a buyer more confidence in your products.
7. Pricing Tab
Building out your pricing is a good way to set the bar for potential clients and break down what you have to offer as a coach. It also lets prospective clients know upfront what they would be getting with your packages or levels of coaching. If you’d rather have a conversation with them first and work out pricing directly or inform them of your packages, it’s certainly acceptable. If you have Level 2 Certification, you can offer packages and athletes can purchase directly from your profile!
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