The Best Ways For Online Coaches And Course Creators To Build Trust With Their Followers
A major factor in selling an online course or coaching program is trust. People are not going to purchase your program until they believe that what you are offering will solve their problem. There has to be some level of trust established between you and your audience. This leads us to the question, “What are the best ways for coaches and course creators to build trust with their followers?”
As the team at The Life Edge found ourselves in a similar situation of trying to build trust with our audience, we wanted to know the answer to this question as well. To do this, we did a study of course creators and coaches who have built enormous trust with their followers.
We found that the coaches and course creators with the most trust from their followers had five things in common. 1. They were the expert in their niche. 2. They were genuine and personable. 3. They truly cared about their followers. 4. Created the content their audience wanted vs what they wanted. 5. They were always giving generously to their followers.
Be the expert:
Like we talked about in our other post: How to drive traffic to my online course; today’s user or follower is becoming smarter. It is not enough to be a self proclaimed expert anymore. People want to know why and how you became the expert.
They want proof of your expertise!
There are two very simple ways we found that worked well for showing proof.
The come up story:
The first way is to share your “Come Up” story. Tell your followers how you have achieved your success and what makes you qualified to help them.
A great example of this is Ryan Serhant. Ryan is consistently using his “come up” story to qualify him as an expert in his niche of selling real estate. And, it works because it is a great story. Everyone loves the underdog story, how can you not?
Here is a quick recap of his story. Ryan is a struggling actor and becomes a licensed realtor in NYC the day that Leman Brothers collapse which started The Great Recession. Not exactly the best beginning to becoming a successful realtor.
Fast forward a bit and he fakes his way onto the hit tv show “Million Dollar Listing.” Today, Ryan is running his own brokerage out of NYC and has sold Billions in real estate.
*To get the full story check out Ryan’s book, Sell It Like Serhant on audible.*
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The Failure:
The second best way we found to establish expertise in your niche, was through the failure story.
This is where you share how you failed in the very niche you are now an expert in. Tell your audience about how those failures taught you extremely valuable lessons that eventually lead you to becoming successful.
Dave Ramsey has a great failure story. He is constantly sharing how his expertise in personal finance came out of desperation.
Dave had over-leveraged himself and put his families financial future at risk. He was up to his ears in debt and facing bankruptcy. This experience forced him into becoming a personal finance expert. Dave vowed that he would never allow that to happen to him or his family again.
Dave has now created a business empire that uses his previous money mistakes to help others become free from the burden of debt and take charge of their own financial future.
Don’t Rush
As the saying goes, It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Just remember as you work on establishing yourself as the expert, it won’t happen overnight. Establishing trust is a process and it will take time. You have to be persistent in sharing your experience and knowledge with your audience. No one else is going to do it for you.
Be genuine and personable:
Show your followers you care:
Don’t view your audience just as a number or dollar sign. Each member of your audience has dreams, wants, needs and desires. They are looking to you for knowledge and the guidance to reach those dreams or meet their needs. So take time to acknowledge just that.
We found that the best way creators and coaches expressed care for their followers was engaging with them by going live. (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) This allowed them to communicate with their audience directly by answering some questions in the comments in real time.
If that is to intimidating or does not fit your style for some reason, then do a Q&A. Ask your audience for questions and then make a video of you answering those questions.
Or you can take a page out of Mel Robbins playbook. She does a great job of caring for her followers but does it while addressing her audience as a whole. She has a magical way of sharing her motherly advice that makes you feel like she is talking directly to you. You know when it is coming because she always starts off by saying, “I don’t know who needs to hear this today but…” For more examples of how Mel Robbins does this, follow her HERE on Instagram.
Just remember that your followers are humans and not numbers so treat them like that.
Create content for your followers not for yourself:
This seems like a no brainer but we still see creators and coaches getting this wrong.
Your followers are not following you to get a sales pitch from every post. They are looking for advice, entertainment, inspiration, etc.
It is ok to post about your course or coaching but mix it into content that offers value to your follower. Brendon Burchard is an example of always creating value for your audience. The result of him offering value to his audience is his 1.1 Million followers on instagram. It is hard to find a post from Brendon that is a sales pitch. That has not stopped him though from signing up more than 10,000 members to his Growth Day App.
Here is a pro tip.
If you are not sure what type of content your audience wants, then ask them. We have noticed many coaches and creators using the survey tools on different platforms to determine how to better create content for their audience. They will tell you what they want. Simple as that.
Give generously:
This is the last but most effective way that we found creators and coaches are using to build trust.
What we mean by giving is sharing bits of your knowledge and expertise with your audience. Give them small bits and pieces of the course or coaching that you offer. This does not mean you have to give away everything for free.
You’re the expert right?
That means you should be able to share just enough to get your audience hooked but leave enough out that they want to buy your product or service to find out more.
One person we see doing this regularly and crushing it is, Heather Austin. She is regularly holding 1 hour free webinars on YouTube Live.
For each webinar she has a short presentation prepared. It’s not the same pre-recorded webinar being sent out like some special offer. Heather is live on YouTube answering questions and building trust with her audience.
She is sharing her knowledge with the viewers but it is her willingness to share her time that is actually building trust. Heather is bringing together the other four steps of trust building into one great experience for her followers. This sets her up to be able to end the webinar with a non-intrusive pitch for her course.
Putting it all together:
Building trust does not happen over night. It takes time and effort.
If you are looking to build trust with your audience then make sure you are:
- Establishing yourself as the expert in your niche
- Genuine and Personable
- Caring for your audience
- Creating content for your followers, not yourself
- Giving generously
If you can accomplish all five of these listed above, you will build trust with your audience. That will allow you to have a greater positive impact on this world by helping others with your online course or coaching program.
If you have this covered but are struggling to get your audience to sign up for your program then you should check out: 3 reasons your online course or coaching program is not selling.
Cheers.
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