Eight Leading Ways to Get More of Your Ideal Clients
1. Education, Education, Education!
Recently a newly independent trainer asked me ‘How do I become better at sales?” My response, “Become the smartest option in your market and selling your services will be effortless.”
In selecting your best direction for advanced education, consider the goals and pain points of your target customer. Where are your clients not seeing their ideal results? Where are you unable to help them with achieving these leading goals? When are they seeking out assistance from other practitioners for assistance? Choose continuing education that makes your product and services unstoppable in meeting their needs and improving their lives. Then prioritize time each week to gain this new knowledge.
Read this TBM BLOG for some powerful fitness education suggestions.
2. Dominate Your Target Customer’s Marketing Methods
Don’t waste your energy and money marketing to the wrong audiences. Get specific with identifying your ideal target customer, especially with knowing their shopping habits. Start by asking your current clients, ‘If you did not have my services, what would be the leading two ways that you would go about locating a business like mine?’ A Google search? By asking your friends on Facebook? Online review sites?
Once you have this list of leading marketing methods, focus all of your time and budgets on becoming the leading option in each of these areas.
3. Know Exactly What You Are Up Against
Using your target client’s marketing methods which you identified above, make a list of your leading competitors and dig deep into researching their strengths and weaknesses. In what ways is THEIR product a better fit for your clients? In what ways is YOUR product a better fit for your client’s goals? This research will assist you in two main areas:
The weak points for your business may be ideal areas for you to beef up on your education.
Your strong points will be the building blocks for defining your differentiators, which we will discuss next.
In the end, the more you know about your competition, the more strategic you will become in identifying the missed opportunities in your market in order to create successful future business developments.
4. Tell Clients WHY They Should Choose You
Using your competitor research above, you must properly express to your clients, the following three ideas:
Why is your product/service unique in your market?
Why are you the leading option in your market?
Why is your product/service best suited to meet your client’s needs?
Once you have built this powerful list of differentiators, you need to calibrate every element of your marketing so that your potential clients will immediately connect with your product/service. You have less than 10 seconds to get these major points across using vivid text descriptions, photographs, and social proof (more on this below).
If you are having trouble defining your key differentiators, check out our course ‘4 Steps to Sprint Ahead in your Market’.
For help with writing content that immediately connects to your ideal client, I recommend reading Donald Miller’s ‘Building a Story Brand’.
5. Use the Power of Other’s Opinions
With 90% of consumers reading online reviews before visiting a business and 88% of consumers trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations, the intelligent use of social proof is a necessary element of every marketing plan. Stay ON POINT using the following tips:
Include impressive client testimonials throughout your website, including the homepage. Ideally these reviews should focus on your leading differentiators and mention the life changing results that your clients are experiencing.
Include client photos and descriptive details (i.e. ‘35 yr old Stay at Home Mom’) to help potential customers immediately recognize themselves in your current client base.
Develop a strong, well branded presence on all review sites used by your target customer.
6. Hire your Current Clients as your Marketing Team
Personal client referrals are a leading way of obtaining new clients, therefore I recommend creating a referral request email template and reach out to your current clients, ideally after they have gotten great results from your training, using what I call the ‘Win-Win-Win’ method. The key elements for this method are the following:
Offer a ‘Friends + Family’ discount on your services for the first package for the new client. This discounted price will make it much easier for your current client to convince their friend/family member to give your services a try.
Give your current client a CHUNKY referral reward for recommending your services. After their referral friend/family purchases their first package, consider giving your current client up to 30% of this package purchase income as a thank you! Or even better, think of a personalized way to thank your current client. Something that would get them EXCITED to refer more clients to you. A chunky gift certificate to the hottest new restaurant in town or maybe a nice gift card to their favorite athletic wear store. The more personalized, the better!
Therefore your new client WINS with the discount, your current client WINS with the referral reward and you WIN with a new client.
7. Offer the ‘11 Star’ Experience
With 83% of customers caring more about how you treat them than the actual product which you are selling, a strong customer experience and first impression can often overpower even the most educated fitness professional. How are you making it easy, fun and valuable for clients to do business with you? Is your intake process concise with well organized communications and electronic online forms? Is your first session with a client blowing their minds and far exceeding their expectations? How does your customer experience outperform your competitors?
I highly recommend trying this ‘11 Star’ exercise created by Airbnb CEO/Co-Founder Brian Chesky in order to stretch your creative brain into designing unforgettably ‘Above + Beyond’ experiences for your customer.
8. Personalize for Each Individual
Our clients want to be seen as a unique individual. They want to be heard, to feel special, and to have their specific needs addressed. Are you delivering a truly personalized product for each individual?
With limitless ‘one size fits all’, generic fitness options available in our market, your business goal is to adapt to each individual clients needs and to assist them with meeting their goals in the most efficient means possible.
How can you upgrade your intake, assessment or programming to a more individualized product for each client?
While this personalized service may take more time, the tremendous boost in your product quality and your improved client results will become powerful differentiators for you and your business.
