Laying the foundation for your Health & Wellness business forces you to wear many hats. The areas you are familiar and comfortable with come easy, while the things that are new and difficult or “You Don’t Get” cause additional stress and obstacles for your success. After all you didn’t go to school to become an online marketing genius.
This article has been created with you in mind. It breaks down 3 tech essentials (plus a bonus) when owning and operating your practice online. It provides clear and concise advice about what tech tools you need to run your business.
Contained inside are the exact answers to many of the questions you have around the technical aspect of your business, such as using email autoresponders, building landing pages and collecting money from your clients when operating your business online. This article will help you hit the ground running by allowing you to work ON your business, not IN it.
Essential Tech Tools to Run and Operate Your Online Wellness Business
Running a wellness business online can be a confusing task. Often you are faced with many questions about what tools you should be using to get the very best out of your online business and make the most money you can.
This article will answer many of the questions new and intermediate wellness professionals ask us on a daily basis. Understanding what the correct tools for the job are and how to use them is essential to your business’s success.
After reading this article, you will have a clear understanding of what you should be using to send your emails, build your pages and accept payments online. Additionally, we will provide direct guidance about creating downloadable lead magnets and having them be accessible to your clients and prospects through a shareable link in your emails.
Equipped with this knowledge, you will get your wellness business rocking in 2018!
ActiveCampaign vs. Other Email Marketing Services
Using email to nurture your prospects and clients is essential to being able to sell your online programs. By increasing your “Know-Like-Trust” and “Engage” factors through email you are able to produce warm prospects in your audience. Sending individual emails to each person is time consuming and redundant. Using an effective email marketing tool is essential to the operational efficiency and profitability of your business. The only question that remains is which tool to use.
There are many options when it comes to which email autoresponder to use for your business, which is why it is often confusing for wellness professionals like yourself.
As online marketing experts, we like to recommend tools that are both cost effective and also have the power you need to run your business today and also scale it in the future.
Even though you have many choices we almost always recommend ActiveCampaign over other competitors like Aweber and Mailchimp.
The reasons are two-fold.
First, it has an incredibly easy user interface. ActiveCampaign is intuitive and, with a small amount of learning, is a simple-to-use tool for almost anyone.
Second, it has a lot of power for its very-low-barrier-to-entry cost (starting at $9 per month). Many of the email tools with similar power and logic capability (Infusionsoft, Ontraport) are far more expensive.
By choosing to use ActiveCampaign for your email marketing you are implementing a tool that makes it easy to get started, keeps your costs low when your list is small and provides the ability to scale your business in the future. It is the best choice for wellness coaches like yourself to get it right from the start.
Leadpages vs. ClickFunnels
The webpage where the potential client is directed after clicking your ad is extremely important. Landing pages are used to offer Lead Magnets, Program Sales Pages, and Challenge Opt-ins.
We are often asked by wellness professionals what they should use to create their landing pages. People have heard of programs like Leadpages or Clickfunnels, but don’t understand the differences. Some even want to use their websites to avoid the additional cost of using a third-party service.
Research has shown significantly better results for companies that route online traffic to a landing page with a specific message and purpose rather than to a website. We are now going to break down the differences between Leadpages and ClickFunnels so you have a complete understanding of your options.
The first thing we should mention is the cost. Leadpages ($37/Month) is significantly cheaper than ClickFunnels ($97/month). So the question becomes what is the difference between the 2 softwares.
Design Capability: Although Leadpages has the ability to create nice looking pages, the software itself has many design restrictions. As a result, many of the pages end up looking very similar to each other. In addition, the tool is rigid, which makes the sections on the page a little more “blocky” than “fluid”
User Experience: When it comes to working with the tools themselves, ClickFunnels has a superior overall experience. It doesn’t bog down or slow down when using it and it is surprisingly intuitive, even for someone who is just getting started. Please realize that there is still a learning curve, but with excellent support and the most dedicated community of its kind you are always able to get the help and guidance you will need to build your pages using ClickFunnels.
Upselling: This is where there is significant differentiation between the 2 tools. Leadpages is a landing page creator at its core. It is meant to create individual landing pages and push to an external cart. ClickFunnels, on the other hand, was created with the concept of a multistep funnel process where people are able to add to their offer by bumping orders, or offering one-time offers, which increase the overall basket size of the customer.
A practical example of this would be being able to add on additional coaching sessions or a fitness component to the nutrition program they are currently buying. When you use ClickFunnels these transactions happen seamlessly and are contained inside of your own ecosystem/Funnel.
Integrations
Having the ability to plug into your other online tools is very important for your landing pages. This enable the ability to take payment, add your calendar for scheduling appointments, connect your emails. Both landing page softwares allow for the basic integrations, but if you are trying to get more complex, ClickFunnels offers smoother and better ways to integrate your pages.
It is important to note that for your purposes, the integrations offered by both softwares will be more than sufficient when creating Lead Magnet opt-ins or signature program offers.
Payment
When choosing how you are going to receive payment, it is important to take into account any fees you will be paying and how long it will be until the money reaches your account. The two most common types of accepting payment are PayPal and Stripe.
PayPal
PayPal is a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers. PayPal operates in 202 markets and has 210 million active, registered accounts and allows customers to send, receive and hold funds in 25 currencies worldwide.
PayPal’s services allow people to make financial transactions online by granting the ability to transfer funds electronically between individuals and businesses. It has the added bonus of PayPal Buyer Protection Policy which states that the customer may file a buyer complaint if they did not receive an item or if the item they purchased was significantly not as described, this gives your customers peace of mind.
A small percentage of your transfer goes to supporting PayPal.
Stripe
Stripe is a service operating in over 25 countries, that allows both private individuals and businesses to accept payments over the Internet. Stripe focuses on providing the technical, fraud prevention, and banking infrastructure required to operate online payment systems.
Stripe has a seven-day waiting period for initial transactions, during which time it profiles the businesses involved to protect against potential fraud. Stripe then transfers the funds directly into the bank account linked to the payee.
Stripe is incredibly useful for creating a subscription service, an on-demand marketplace, an e-commerce store, or a crowdfunding platform. Their biggest bonus is that they are made simpler for developers to integrate into your website.
They charge a flat rate on each transaction of 1.4% for European cards and 2.9% for non-European cards.
Bonus Tip
Wellness professionals often ask us how to create sharable files and clickable links for their Lead Magnet and PDF downloads for their programs. We always recommend creating these documents in Canva and storing/distributing them using Amazon S3. By creating the documents in Canva you are able to get an attractive and professionally looking download. Distributing through Amazon S3 makes clickable links for the best user experience for the prospects and clients.
Canva
Canva is a useful tool for creating designs and documents to share with prospects and clients. Using Canva’s drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts you can design eye-catching images to boost your business and easily share them. There is a free version that boasts; two folders to organize designs, 10 team members for free, 1GB storage for photos and assets, access to over 8,000 templates, ability to upload your own images and access to millions of photos for $1 each. There are also paid subscriptions, which boast further benefits.
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is a service that offers object storage built to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere. It is designed to deliver incredible durability and stores data for millions of applications used by market leaders in every industry.
S3 provides comprehensive security and compliance capabilities that meet even the most stringent regulatory requirements. It gives customers flexibility in the way they manage data for cost optimization, access control, and compliance.
Amazon S3 offers a range of pricing choices from the basic free package and upwards meaning it is suitable for any level of business.
Conclusion
After reading through this article you should now be better equipped to confidently launch your business and know the right tools for what you want your business to do.
Business can be a tricky place to navigate, but we hope you now feel a little bit better educated to make your business a success.
Understanding the the best tools for email marketing, landing page creation, and for accepting payments positions you for success in your business. Use the information we provided to build you company on a stable foundation that will allow you to succeed for years to come.