This is a follow on from last week’s post about the key decisions that I have made over the last 20 months in order to have gone from working in a local park with 5 clients to owning my own 3000 square foot premises and having nearly 200 monthly paying members.
Last week I advised you ‘ignored the naysayers’ and this week I really want to encourage you to be very clear about who it is exactly that you’re trying to help.
Please don’t say everybody.
Personal Trainer Google Search
Bear with me while I talk you through an example of what happens here in Northampton when a 35 year old lady with a 2 kids starts searching for a Personal Trainer to help her get back into shape.
Step 1:
Types into google : personal trainer northampton
(we’re going to assume that I don’t pay for any google ads)
Step 2:
Clicks on the top google paid ad which is for a Personal Trainer that has lots of qualifications and used to play netball for the county. Option to see you in the home. Seems to deal with everyone. Move away after about 8 seconds.
Step 3:
Click on another site. This trainer “is passionate about the industry and really cares about his clients”. Photos of him training men and women outside. Nice looking site but still nothing grabbing her. Move away after about 6 seconds.
Step 4:
Notice in the ad text (below the paid ads) that my company is “Exclusive to women only”. Click on the ad. Taken to my homepage and greeted with a sliding image across the screen with 2 athletic looking women with big moving text screaming out “Transform Your body In 6 Weeks”.
This grabs her attention so she scrolls down the page. It is broken up with before an after photos (all women), you tube videos of my clients talking about their results (all women) and why fat loss for women is different than for men.
Spend over 2 minutes on the homepage (I know this from my google analytics page) and then leaves her name and contact details in the contact box at the bottom.
Why?
The reason that she leaves her details is not because I have the best looking website in the world, not because I have the most qualifications and not because I used to play for the county at netball. It’s because she can see that I specialise in fat loss and toning for women only and back up what I say with client photos and endorsements.
Why see a generalist when you can see a specialist?
Especially in this industry when so many people have tried and failed in the past. Most that join a gym do so with good intentions but then the numbers don’t lie. Enthusiasm wanes and people get bored trying to motivate and figure things out for themselves.
Get laser focused on who your market is:
When you are very clear on who your target market is – age range, sex, what their goals are, whether they work, do they have kids etc. Then you will be amazed at how much easier everything else then becomes.
Your marketing efforts speak directly to that audience. Take this blog post as an example. I am very specific in that I help Personal Trainers and Fitness Instructors to market themselves better.
Now what I am saying about niche selection applies to just about any industry but by being able to be specific about certain examples (like the case study above) you are able to relate to this a lot easier. Certainly easier than if this was a generic post trying to appeal to all coaches in all industries.
Your website and facebook page will be easier to design and put content into.
Tricky to turn people away:
Feel uncomfortable at first:
It was tricky for me to do this at first as I just wanted to get as many clients as possible and when friends (male) were asking me to train them, I had to say no!
….but as soon as word started getting around that I was training women only, my membership levels started going through the roof. Women were bringing their friends, their work colleagues, family members as it was a very non intimidating environment to come and train.
In addition to all of this though, it’s worth also recognising that people are willing to pay a specialist more than a generalist. That’s why surgeons earn more than GPs.
You can charge more for your services and people are happy to pay more for your services if they think they have a much better chance of achieving the result that they want.
This was a big (and uncomfortable ) call that I made early on in my business and looking back I’m really glad that I did.
Ricky
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