This is Part 1 of a 3-part series teaching you how to implement one simple strategy into your fitness business that will completely change how you attract leads and clients online…
Part 1 – [You Are Here] – All you can eat leads: 3 proven steps to attract more leads into your fitness business.
Part 2 – [Case Study] 33 new clients a month, starting from scratch…
Part 3 – Turning on the tap: How to reach your perfect audience and attract unlimited leads into your fitness business
Getting new leads and clients and attracting people to your fitness business, all comes down to your ability to build trust and a relationship with your audience before they’ve even stepped inside your ‘door’…
It’s about providing valuable information to your audience, positioning yourself as the ‘go to’ person and putting yourself out there for people to get to know, like and trust you.
Here’s the thing…
You know your fitness business needs to be online. You understand ‘social media’ is a thing. You know you ‘should’ be blogging and I bet you’ve thrown around the idea of doing ‘videos’ as well.
You’re trying to do all the “right things”…
But, let me ask you a question…
Are you generating any leads and clients on a consistent basis with all of the stuff that you’re doing? When you’re posting on Facebook and Instagram or writing articles for your blog, are you seeing a direct increase in leads and clients?
In this article you’ll discover:
- How to attract an unlimited number of leads into your fitness business by “blogging” and doing “social media” the right way.
- Why doing all of these “things” without a strategy will put you on the same path as the titanic.
- A three-step system you can start implementing straight away to get real results online.
Excited? Good. Me too. Let’s dive in; we’ve got a lot to cover.
The Importance of Having a Strong Strategy in Place
Truth is, most fitness professionals are doing this whole “online marketing” thing the wrong way.
Most of the stuff the ‘gurus’ teach you about online marketing only covers half the story.
It’s only half the info you need to truly get results. I see it every single day.
Sometimes I feel like these ‘gurus’ are telling people a story similar to the Titanic… Except they stop half way through the story.
“Blog regularly, take a risk, put yourself out there on social media, get as many people as you can onto your ship and you and your business will live happily ever after.”
Story (half) finished. You’re excited. You’re pumped.
But then reality kicks in, you continue the story on your own, you hit the iceberg you didn’t see coming and you go down with the ship.
Nothing ever works out how you wanted it too because they left out one inconvenient detail – you’re going to hit an “iceberg right ahead” if you’re not prepared and you don’t have a strong strategy behind you.
When it comes to marketing, most people are in the basket of the ‘blind leading the blind’ and people are doing things online because they think they have to.
Do you know the real reason why you’re blogging, using Facebook and posting to Instagram?
You’ve been told you have to ‘blog’, you have to be on ‘Facebook’, get on Instagram, but what the heck for? Why are you blogging? Why are you posting on Instagram? Why are you creating all of this content? What’s its purpose? Are you being strategic? (This feels like a date and I’m asking you 20 questions, by the end of this post I promise it will have been a good date and you’ll ask me out for a second).
I want you to seriously ask yourself whether or not you have a definitive answer for why you’re doing it.
Think about it for a minute. I’ll wait here.
Okay, the bad news is that a lot of people that create content on their blog, post regularly to Facebook or Instagram don’t see any measurable return from their efforts. Sad, but true. Can you directly tie revenue to all of your blogging and social media efforts?
If you’re like most fitness professionals, the answer is simple… No!
Now, all of these things I just mentioned are things you ‘should’ be doing. Blogging, posting on social media, creating videos etc. All of these things need to be high up on your to do list.
There’s a point to doing all of this, but if you don’t get it right, then you can actually be doing your business more harm than good.
Without a strategy behind you, you’re going to be chasing your tail, thinking a wooden door won’t hold more than one person, spending more time trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing, that you’re missing the point entirely.
You’ve got to remember that your job is not simply to create new content by blogging and posting randomly on social media, your job is to market your fitness business and this is most likely where your strategy is broken.
People Don’t Just Need More “Information” From the Health and Fitness Space
Truth is, the world does NOT need any more information. The Internet is flooded with information about health and fitness (and this is often an objection people put forward when I talk about the idea of content marketing, but between you and I, it’s incredibly naive).
Instead, what people REALLY need and truly value is someone who steps forward, is a trusted authority and organises all of this valuable “information” that’s genuinely worth reading, into one place.
People want to be told what to do and they want it laid out for them step by step.
Anyone can Google “How do I lose weight” or “How do I get fit” there’s anywhere between 98 million and 957 million websites that will answer that question for you. That’s a couple of people with opinions on the matter, right? How many of those opinions do you think are the same? More importantly, how many of those opinions are different? It’s confusing for people, and despite all of this information being out there ready for people to find, people still struggle so much to reach their health and fitness goals. Why?
People don’t need more information.
People need you.
They need structure and they need all of your information in ONE place.
They need an expert they can turn to that will give them advice specific to their needs. They need someone who will motivate them, keep them accountable and they need all of the other amazing things you can offer people that ‘information’ cannot.
Luckily, this isn’t a ‘blog’ post telling you ‘how to blog’ or how to provide more information to people and I’m certainly not teaching you social media 101. That’s step 0. (I’m going to assume you’re already doing some of that already and if you want help with any of these things then you can join us in TFE Academy and I’ll show you how to do that as well).
What this blog post is going to teach you is how to turn yourself from a fitness blogger or someone with lots of followers on Instagram, to someone who can use all of this valuable content to actually build your fitness business.
Ready for this? Good. Let’s do it.
Truth is, all you need to do is implement a 3-step strategy behind your current efforts to make all of the above work. That’s all there is. 3 steps and you’ll move from a place where you’re creating content that doesn’t go anywhere and you’re struggling to get leads on a consistent basis (oh and you’ll be doing everything manually as well), to a place where you’re generating leads consistently and on autopilot.
Before I talk about this 3-step strategy, I want to make one thing clear. The quality of the content you’re creating is incredibly important. There really is no point in creating content that is mediocre. It won’t work for you, especially in such a competitive space like the health and fitness industry. Every time you create a piece of content it has to be educational and help people solve their problems. Deal?
Make sure you’re including action steps. Allow them to walk away with something of value and that’s what will bring them back to you and what you have to offer.
Okay, so first I’m going to go over step 1 of this 3-step strategy. Part 1 = Step 1, (see what I did there).
How to attract an unlimited number of leads to your business:
Use a lead magnet
Okay, so let’s take a look at the first step of building your three-step lead generation funnel.
The main thing you need here, is you need to have something that will help you to attract people and move people from simply ‘fans’ to leads.
Visitors on your website or blog are just that. Visitors.
People who ‘like’ your Facebook posts or ‘like’ your Instagram posts are simply ‘followers’.
They’re not leads. You’re building up your reputation and building a relationship on someone else’s platform, but at some point you still need to move them from point A to point B if you ever want them to be clients. This is where things start to truly change.
When you can move people from ‘visitors’ and ‘followers’ (Point A) to active leads (Point B) that’s where the magic happens.
So, you do this by having a strong lead magnet.
If your current lead magnet is a free training session then listen very closely because that might not be the best option to increase your client numbers. A free session can be a part of your funnel but it shouldn’t necessarily be the first thing you offer people. I’m going to talk about free sessions a little later on, because you can occasionally break this rule but ONLY if you fit into a particular category – so stick with me, because if you don’t fit into this category, you’re not allowed to break this rule.
So, what on earth is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is a (free) offer you make to someone in order to get his or her contact details. Some people like to say that a lead magnet is something that you’re using as an ethical bribe and incentive for potential clients so they provide you with their name, email address, possibly their phone number – or whatever info it is that you’re asking them for. But no matter what way you look at it, it’s something that you’re offering in exchange for something from them.
Even if you have a ‘freebie or lead magnet’ already – make sure you read carefully through this entire section because if you don’t get this part right, it won’t work for you and you’ll be wasting a heck of a lot of time, money and effort.
Here’s a few filters I want you to use when it comes to creating your lead magnet.
Firstly, make sure it offers an ultra specific solution to an ultra specific market.
Make sure the result people will get from consuming your lead magnet is something they really want and that it offers immediate gratification. I do not want you getting people to sign up for a newsletter or your next blog post, ideally we want something that people can start consuming in 5 minutes or less which actually provides them with high value.
So, we want it to be ultra specific, has a desired end result, has high perceived and actual value and if possible, something that can be consumed in 5 minutes or less.
You also need to remember that even though it’s free – people still have to give up their email address – plus your potential clients will be spending their TIME going through the material that you’ve created and their time is incredibly valuable. So, don’t waste it.
You need to know what they want, what they need, what problems they’re experiencing and what their fears and frustrations are. It’s important that it’s not what you think they are, but what they actually are – so it’s important to ask them what they want and what they need. It will make sure that the freebie that you’re creating for them will be much more irresistible to them, if it truly connects and resonates with them. There’s a lot of competition out there, but a lot of people in the fitness industry get this wrong. So, if you take the time to truly understand your audience and connect with them, it will mean that you stand out from your competition in no time.
It’s incredibly important to realize that your lead magnet has a much greater purpose than simply ‘getting leads’. You want your lead magnet to help you build your brand, boost your visibility, position you as the expert and the ‘go to person’ and so whenever you’re building your lead magnet you want to think about its purpose;
A good lead magnet will;
- Get Leads,
- Give Immense Value,
- Give people a taste of what it’s like to work with you,
- Help people overcome some of the problems they’re experiencing right now (for free).
- A lead magnet will be a way to let people get to know the real you, trust you and connect with you, and it’s a great entry level tool that gets people into your funnel so you can lead them to the next thing you have to offer.
When creating a lead magnet you could create any of the following
- Create a valuable eBook
- Video series
- Tutorial
- A challenge for them to take part in
- Recipes
- Checklists
The options are endless. As long as it will have high-perceived value and they can start to consume it quickly, then that’s a good lead magnet.
So, that covers step one. Let’s see this in action.
Here are a couple of lead magnets we’ve helped our clients and TFE Academy members to create.
So, what next for you? It’s time to take action and it’s time to work hard. There are no shortcuts to success. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
The more effort that you’re able to put into creating your lead magnet, the better the outcome will be. Building the best freebie will take you some time to put together. But what I really want to point out here is, the only way to really see results and build your fitness business is to TAKE action.
Do not fall into perfection paralysis and over analyze what you’re doing to make it ‘perfect’. You have to make a start!!!
So how do we fix this? JUST DO IT. It’s okay to start with something NOT as good as it ideally could be – so you can at least capture some emails while you’re working on the ‘killer’ magnet. You don’t want to keep losing opportunities and losing the visitors that are coming now if you have nothing while you are working to create the ‘perfect one’. Just remember – any lead magnet is better than none… but don’t settle for something that is really mediocre. It’s important to find the middle ground.
Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s get this irresistible giveaway of yours underway 3..2..1 Go!!
In Part two of this blog series I’m going to show you how you can turn your lead magnet into a lead generating machine. Your lead magnet is the first step. It’s step 2 and 3 or this three part system where the power of this strategy lies.
Plus in part two I’m going to show you this system in action and go through two case studies where this 3 step system helped an online fitness business generate just under a thousand leads in 5 days, and an offline fitness business generate 33 new clients in a month (who was starting from scratch…)
Going through this again Jaimee… from the start… to make sure I’ve got it all water tight. Love your articles. And I would definitely ask you out on a second date 🙂