Using Online Challenges to Scale your Health & Wellness Business

Guest blog by Charlyn Ooi, Business Coach for Dietitians & Nutritionists

Online challenges have become more popular in the health and wellness space in recent years. They are a fun and engaging way to motivate your community and challenge them to start making dietary and lifestyle changes. From a business perspective, online challenges provide a cost-effective method to grow your email list, gain more visibility, and ultimately lead to more sales for your signature online program. 

This appeal is one of the reasons why online challenges have become a favorable option for business owners to nurture their audience, boost engagement within their community, and set themselves apart from their competition.

If you are keen to learn how to attract more ideal clients to your signature online program and grow your business, read on to learn more about the benefits of online challenges and how you can adopt this strategy to market yourself and grow.

The Benefits of Online Challenges

Online challenges can be a powerful tool for both your clients and your business. Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of using challenges to market your program: 

1. Drives engagement within your community

Online challenges help you create a deeper connection with your community fast. Nothing beats having a group of like-minded people together working toward the same goal, supporting and motivating each other.

As the facilitator and challenge host, you would be showing up to connect with your community every day during the challenge period by supporting them to take action and answering their questions. Hosting the challenge accelerates the know, like, and trust factor with your community and positions yourself as the credible expert.

2. Expands your reach

While challenges can help re-engage your existing clients, they are also a powerful tool to grow your email list and draw in new leads to your business. Challenges introduce new leads to your community and give them a taste of what it’s like working with you. When they start to see results, they are more likely to trust you and buy into your signature online program. 

3. Grows your brand and positions you as the go-to expert in your niche

An online challenge grows your visibility and allows you to set yourself apart from your competition. It is a low-risk way to introduce new and potential clients to your services and get them curious about working with you. Since online challenges are still underutilized in the nutrition industry, it’s a great opportunity for health and wellness professionals to use this as a marketing tool and easily stand out as the go-to expert in your niche! 

4. Optimizes conversions

Compared to other traditional marketing methods like email marketing, social media, or webinars, you will be able to offer your community more value during an online challenge and get them results. If they are excited about the small wins, they will be motivated to keep the momentum going by signing up to your longer-term signature program.

Planning an Online Challenge 

Now that you understand the benefits of online challenges, let’s explore the steps to creating a successful online challenge. 

Step 1: Determine the goal of your challenge

Ask yourself, what sort of results would you like your participants to achieve by the end of the challenge? How do you want them to feel? Be sure to consider if your goals are realistic for the timeframe of your challenge.

Next, determine the ultimate goal of the challenge from a business perspective. Do you want to enroll five or 10 clients into your signature program? Having a goal to work towards helps you map out your challenge more effectively.

Step 2: Decide on the challenge title + logistics

This is the stage I see a lot of people get stuck on when it comes to choosing the challenge topic. My advice would be to use results-driven keywords so it appeals to your audience and tells them exactly what they can expect from your challenge.

Next, determine the duration of your challenge and whether there would be a cost to register.  I find that free challenges are an easy way to get started and three or five days is a sweet spot for nutrition challenges.

Below are some ideas to inspire you: 

• 3-Day Boost Your Fertility Challenge
• 3 Days to Calmer Family Mealtimes 
• 3 Days to Meal Planning for PCOS
• 5-Day Hormone Balance Challenge
• 5-Day Beat the Bloat Challenge

Step 3: Create Content + Deliverables 

Map out the teaching content and duration of each daily Livestream session (I recommend keeping each video to around 20-30 minutes per day). Outline a small win you want them to achieve each day and ensure this goal is both realistic and actionable.

During this phase, you would also start to consider what deliverables to offer to your challenge participant. The purpose of deliverables is to educate and make it easier for them to take action. Examples of deliverables include a PDF guide, worksheets, or checklists.

Lastly, consider giving away prizes to encourage participation. Gift cards, ebooks, or even a bonus kickstart call with you are great incentives to offer to your participants.

Step 4: Promoting Your Online Challenge 

Having a plan in place for promotion is crucial to the success of your challenge. Here are a few things that you would need to prepare: 

• Opt-in Page – Let people know what your challenge is about and who it is for. At a minimum, you would want to ask for their first name and email address when they register so you can send them the confirmation email and daily reminder emails with action steps. You can set this page up using Practice Better or any email marketing platform. 
• Promotional Emails & Social Media Marketing Assets – Let your audience and email list know that you are hosting a challenge! Start promoting this 2-3 weeks prior and be sure to share it to all your social media channels.

Bonus Tip: Encourage registrants to spread the word and incentives them to participate in the challenge with a friend!

Step 5: Deliver Your Challenge 

Here’s where the fun begins! Show up live daily and engage your audience. Support them to take action and answer questions so they can keep making progress. Be sure to recharge and take some time out for self-care as running a challenge is an additional responsibility that will require you to be more present and consume more of your energy.

Step 6: Present Your Offer

When you reach the end of the challenge, don’t leave your audience hanging! Let them know what their next step is. This stage is where you would promote your offer or your signature online program to help them keep the momentum going. 

Open the doors to your program for 3-5 days after the challenge. Make this a time-sensitive offer with an incentive; you could give a limited-time discount or a bonus offer. Time-sensitive discounts create a sense of urgency and encourage the challenge participants to take action.

3 Keys to a Successful Online Challenge 

1. Relevance – Your challenge needs to solve your ideal client’s struggles and address their key needs.
2. Engagement – Encourage engagement and active participation to help participants achieve better results. Be sure to take into consideration your ideal client’s lifestyle and time availability so you can minimize the barriers to taking action. If you work with busy moms juggling multiple commitments, consider keeping your challenge short and delivering it on video as well as text so they can quickly and easily consume the information.
3. Results – Don’t cram too much content in! Pinpoint a realistic or achievable outcome you can deliver during the challenge period. Create momentum by encouraging them to share results with the community to encourage others as well. Don’t forget to celebrate wins! 

What to Do Next

Now that you know the benefits of hosting an online challenge and how to execute, it’s time to take what you’ve learned and put it into action! Don’t know where to start? Practice Better makes it easy for you to run your online challenge. 

Practice Better is an all-in-one platform you can use to build your business and coach your clients. Check out Practice Better and discover the amazing features this platform has to grow your online business. 

About Charlyn Ooi

Charlyn Ooi is a practicing Dietitian and international Business Coach who has helped hundreds of online Dietitians and nutrition entrepreneurs start and grow their dream practice online. If you need help with setting up your online nutrition business or creating your signature program, be sure to register for this FREE Masterclass hosted by Charlyn Ooi. In her masterclass, she shares her secrets to scaling her online IBS practice to 6-figures in 9 months with online programs. Reserve your spot today! 

Connect with Charlyn on her website, Instagram, and TikTok. 

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