Lift The Bar

Whilst you can’t guarantee that everyone who you work with will fit your ideal, you can absolutely adjust your marketing to attract more of the people who you do enjoy working with.

 

It’s really common to fall into the trap of copying what you see other trainers doing on social media without any thought about whether it is aimed at the people you are trying to attract or if it’s even likely to be successful.

 

With this in mind, it’s useful to make sure you are clear what your service is, and who it is for, so that you can make sure that all the messages you put out about your business are going to connect with the people you want them to.

Hopefully you already work with some clients you love but, if not, spend time working with different people and don’t put any pressure on yourself to come up with “your niche”.  

Even if you think you already know who you want to focus on then it’s a good idea to reflect on what it would be like to only work with this population.  Sometimes what we love when it is one or two clients can be draining or overwhelming when it is twenty.  

Don’t be limited by your own experiences or the loudest voices on social media.  If you don’t want to work with weight loss clients, do anything relating to nutrition, work with athletes, focus on parents, busy professionals, post-natal clients, or a specific age or gender, then that is fine.  There are billions of people in the world all in different circumstances, with different goals, physical abilities and limitations creating countless ways to group them in terms of a market for your services. So often, trainers get stuck thinking about who they don’t want to work with - and things they think they must do - rather than what they want to do and who they want to work with.  This can limit your creativity and stop you from moving forwards in the direction you want to go.

Once you know who you want to work with it’s easy to get caught up in the theory of ideal clients and avatars.  Answering questions about their likes and dislikes and writing stories about their theoretical life can be helpful for some people but for others it can be an overwhelming task that doesn’t get them any closer to attracting the clients they want to work with. The good news is that like attracts like.

Showcase the clients you like working with.  Highlight their achievements, behaviours, concerns, the barriers they have overcome and the benefits they have found from working with you.  Others like them will relate to their stories, be inspired by them, be envious of their achievements and spurred into action as a result.

You can do this without ever knowing what their favourite podcasts, newspapers, books or TV programmes are!

Similarly, by understanding the things that give them joy, the things that cause hiccups in the day-to-day health related choices they face, and the wins and breakthroughs they have, you’ll have loads of inspiration for content that connects with people inside and outside of your business.  To understand these things, you just need to listen to the things they say to you when you chat about their week.  Pay attention to the words they use, the emotions connected to them and jot them down.  

 

It's also important to remember why people came to you in the first place.  Whilst celebrating where they are now is great, there can be a disconnect between why they started training with you and the things they come to believe relating to the world of fitness and that can sometimes lead us down a false road.  E.g. if your clients joined you wanting weight loss but after working with you for a couple of years are now focused on performance then if we celebrate where they are now it probably won’t be appealing to the person they were when they started.  This might be great, and what you want, but if its not then focus more on the things that they thought they wanted and the changes they’ve been through rather than on the outcomes they are happy about now.  The key is to make who you are trying to attract a choice and align your messages with that.

 

Here are a list of questions that might help you if you are unsure about where to start.

Who do you like working with?

Why do you like working with them?

What were they looking for when they started?

What wins have they highlighted relating to working with you?

How does what they do in the gym impact their life outside of the gym?

What barriers have they overcome / breakthroughs or ‘Aha’ moments?

What are the behaviours they do that lead to their success?

Where did they find out about you?

Where else do they find out about local services?

 

 

When you have the answers to these questions you can use them to create posts, videos, blogs, podcasts or any other content you like creating.  You also know where to share this content (where they found you and find out about local services) giving you pretty much everything you need to successfully attract the people you want to attract.  

 

Reviewing, Tweaking and Troubleshooting

You can tell if what you are doing is successful based on the people who come into your business.   The key thing is to make sure you give what you are doing enough time to make a difference and not to panic / have a knee jerk reaction to anything that happens.  Marketing is never the result of a single post  / advert and we rarely have a lot of data we can use to evaluate the success of what we do so we must keep cool heads and make rational decisions.   Small tweaks to the language and images used can help as can getting feedback from the people you enjoy training or others you know who fit the target audience.  Giving AI different prompts or questions and asking it to come up with alternatives or variations of the stuff you create can also be a great way to keep creation quick and effective.

Look at how you are getting your messages in front of people.  Using local Facebook groups and asking friends and family to share your key SM posts are free ways of reaching new people alongside paid options.

 

It is possible to build a business focused on your preferred type of clients so go ahead and make a start on making that happen.

We have a number of different resources relating to marketing and identifying who you want to work with.  If you're an LTB member and unsure what's best for you then drop me an email and I'll be happy to help. 

New to LTB? Sign up for the free trial and respond to the welcome email to let me know more about what you are looking for support with.