3 Ways To Pin Point Your Marketing
For most of us, as personal trainers, we didn’t choose this profession because we loved the sales and marketing side of the job. I get it. When I started, I hated doing those things. I just wanted to train people.
Guess what happens when you adopt that thinking? YOU DON’T HAVE ANY CLIENTS TO TRAIN!
If you can’t market yourself, you can’t get people in to change their lives. It’s an essential part of the job if you want to make more money and, more importantly (hopefully) help more people.
As I’ve gone through my personal training career, I’ve actually come to love the marketing side. I use my competitiveness from my athletic background to push myself in this area. Below are three tips that I’ve learned along the way to improve my marketing.
Get Familiar with your Core Values
Your core values are going to dictate everything you do in your career: how you train people, the way you interact, the ideal clients you want to work with, and your marketing strategies.
Core values are your identity as a person, and a coach, in the present moment. These can (and probably will) change over time as you gain experience.
For example, starting out, I believed that all of my clients needed barbell work to reach their goals, regardless of what that goal was.
Now, I still value getting strong and love barbell movements, but I also understand that there’s more than one way to achieve this goal. At this point, one of my core values is to intently listen to my clients’ wants, evaluate their needs, and meet them where they’re at. I no longer have a predetermined agenda.
Finding your own core values will take some time and deep thought, but it will be worth it. As I said, it will dictate everything you do as a coach. As a word to the wise, don’t get lazy about your core values. They shouldn’t be one word bits. They are CORE VALUES, they should be taken from the depths of your heart and soul.
Identify Your Ideal Client
One of the biggest mistakes I used to make with my personal marketing was trying to be everything to everyone. I believed I could help anyone and wanted everyone to know I could help them. I wrote and posted about every issue for every kind of person. Without having a direction or ideal person I was speaking to, I was effectively speaking to no one.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe we should work with a variety of clients, but when marketing yourself, you should hone in on one particular type of person.
To figure out who this person is, picture what your perfect training session would look like. What was the goal of the session? What type of workout have you designed? What was the conversation like? Envision these characteristics and your ideal client will reveal him or herself.
Speak Directly to Your Ideal Client
Once you’ve found your ideal client, now you can target that person with the content you produce and the campaigns you create.
Believe it or not, personal training is PERSONAL. You have to build love, trust, and buy-in for people to want to seek you out to be their coach.
To do this, the content you create MUST address an issue your intended audience typically has, and how YOU can help them get passed it.
There are a lot of ways to achieve this, but my two favorites are telling stories of your own struggles with these problems and showing proof that you can help.
Personal stories are a powerful tool to attract attention from your ideal client. Stories let them know that you’ve gone through the same struggle, but you’ve come out on top. It gives them confidence that you can help them. This also gives you a unique advantage in knowing how you felt going through it, and what strategies you used to get to where you are today.
While personal stories are great, especially for building a connection to potential clients, having them see people just like them actually achieve their desired results is a game changer. Now you have visual proof that you can help more people than just yourself. You’ve built a track record of success with these types of clients. Visual proof is the most powerful tool you can use to attract new clients.
Final Notes
It doesn’t matter how good you are at marketing yourself, if you don’t have the technical skill or knowledge to get results, that will override everything else. Make sure you have the skills and ability to change people before you claim to do so.
Also, stories and visual results can help attract potential clients, but there’s one additional piece that needs to be accounted for.
When we’re tapping into potential clients’ emotions, they’re much more likely to buy, but they also don’t consider what it takes to get the results we’re selling.
We need to make it clear what kind of commitment and effort it’s going to take to achieve their desired goals. That’s exactly how body wraps, detoxes, and fit tea’s are able to be so profitable; they tap into the emotions of the consumer, but don’t tell them the whole story.
For us, we want clients that are going to stick it out for the long haul (it’s much easier, and cheaper, to keep clients than it is to get new ones). That’s why we lay out exactly what it takes, so there’s no surprises. It may mean we get fewer leads, but those leads are going to be exactly what we’re looking for and stay long term.
Put these tactic to use and see more potential clients come looking your way!
