Fitness Business School – Connecting With Your Target Audience

Full Transcript

Second episode in a three-part series on crafting your unique marketing plan. The first episode we talked about identifying who your ideal target market is, how you can kind of filter that, how you can narrow in really start to hone in on serving the perfect person for you to build your business around. So if you’ve not checked out that episode, go back to it. But today we’re going to transition and kind of move to the next step in this client or prospect to client journey and talk about connecting with your target market. So let’s get started.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

So once we’ve identified who our target market is, the people that we want to reach, we need to now focus on connecting with them and getting them to essentially raise their hand or engage with us if you will, right? We need to be able to generate leads from this bigger pool of people, because a target market isn’t necessarily a qualified prospect that is interested. It’s more or less like the pool of people you’ll be drawing from. So for example, in my wife’s fitness business that she operated for over a decade, her target market was busy moms that, you know, might want to get their pre-baby body back and, and look and feel better. Well, not all of those people are ready to embark on that journey and not all of those people have any interest in exercising or changing the way that they’re eating or whatever else. So what we’re trying to do is get the people who are interested to become aware of us and how we can help. And they’re going to raise their hand through some of the things that we’re going to do, tactically, and we will then become aware of them.

So the first thing we need to do at this step of the journey is to identify where we’re going to consistently be able to reach this target market so we can make the people that are part of it, aware of how we can help. So I basically divide this up into three different buckets. If you will, one is networking focused where we can just organically go out and connect with people and start to position ourselves as an expert, as an authority. The second is advertising focus, where we can pay to reach our target market and start to initiate a relationship. And then the third is referral focused where we can leverage our current clientele and use, use that, that relationship to introduce us to new people in that target market.

So let’s start with the networking focused one. Well, what can we do? We can do things offline and online, but remember a lot of people talked about organic marketing. Well, all, ultimately remember these, these platforms that we’re using we’re were initially called social networks, right? Networking, networking to connect with other people, but we’re doing it online instead of offline. So when your networking think of it that way, what would you be doing offline? Well, we can do some of those same things online. So how do we approach this? Well, we can still do offline, personal networking, kind of this level structured, or maybe more organic approach. So if you, you know, if you encounter, like if you’re a parent and you encounter other parents at sporting events, or you connect with people in your neighborhood or at church or through work, or you know, school, but you just are proactive in initiating conversations. That’s organic networking. And I’ve seen people build really successful, robust businesses by just making sure that they are entering into several conversations over the course of each day. And, you know, invariably what they do for a living will come I’m up and they will offer to be of help if that person shows any interest and they’ll just take control and follow up with the people that they meet.

So personal networking is a very simple and really, I think foundational element of a good marketing plan, because it doesn’t require you to jump through any hoops to make that happen. You can go start making that happen immediately. Now the second networking option is structured networking events. I mean, chamber of commerce meetings BNI groups, affinity groups, anything where there’s a structured environment where people come with the purpose of networking or the purpose of connecting with others.

The third option is a strategic alliance connecting with somebody else who has an audience, a client customer, patient base, a group of people that they have some sort of connection or influence with that. They’re going to introduce you to the fourth option, public speaking kind of thing, the same thing as structured, like the strategic alliances, except the way that they’re going to, to get you in none of this other audiences, just as a public speaker, which is a really powerful positioning platform.

And then a fourth, thinking about online networking, I mean, we have Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and all these other social platforms like clubhouse or different things that come along. The idea is figuring out where you can connect with your people. And what is the appropriate mechanism to do that? Because personal networking in the online world is just friending people, connecting with people, starting conversations, putting good information out that maybe some people raise their hand and show an interest in structured networking meetings, be part like being part of, or even starting a free Facebook group. Strategic alliances might be somebody else hosting you for a training in their Facebook group or sharing what you do with their audience. Public speaking kind of falls along those same lines. So identify where your people are online and how you can connect with them.

So the second way to reach the person that we’re aspiring to reach is an advertising focus where you’re paying to reach your target market and ideally initiate a relationship. And you know, this is not knew. None of the things that we’re doing online are particularly new. It’s basically you’re doing the same thing that we would have done 15 years ago, sending direct mail when we’re running a Facebook ad, we’re basically paying to reach a specific audience with a specific message. So where can you pay to, to reach your target market while all the same social platforms that that we talked about in the networking folk focused approach, but you can also pay to do direct mail. You can pay to advertise in local media, you can pay strategic alliance partners to disseminate things to their audience. I mean, you could pay a homeowner association to send out an email to their list or put something in their newsletter. So paying to reach the audience you want to reach allows you more specificity. And basically you’re trading time for here or, or money for time. In this case, you’re saying, okay, I want to go faster. So I’m going to pay to reach more specific people in a more focused and targeted way.

And then the referral focused approach is just leveraging the current clients. You have to reach the target market. You want to reach and initiate a relationship. So let me give you a few of the things that we do with our clients or help them do with their clients may be a more appropriate way to they’ll ask clients to give invitations, to participate in things to their friends, to their network. They’ll give their clients gifts to share with other people. They will allow their clients to offer discounts on certain programs or offerings that they can give away. As a referral item to the people in their lives. They’ll ask clients for revert, for reviews or testimonials. They’ll ask their clients to share content that they’re posting online or lead magnets or posting online and just do social sharing. Or they may even run referral-based contest or do charity style events. But basically they’re finding ways that their clients are comfortable spreading the word about their business to be introduced to new people in those people. Those clients’ lives that might be a good fit, might be part of your team target market.

And then one time we’ve identified, okay, how we’re going to connect act with the people that we want to reach. The people that are part of our target market. We’ve got these online and offline platforms or mechanisms at our disposal. We’ve got networking, we’ve got paid or advertising based, and we’ve got referral based. Well, now we need to compel those people who might be a fit to provide us with their contact information and they’re their, their attention so we can follow up. So what we need, there is a lead magnet to do that. So basically what is a lead magnet? It’s basically just a piece of content or a valuable, cool resource that ideally meets a few criteria. One is it’s this irresistible offer. It’s a no brainer offer that somebody is like, well, why wouldn’t I do that? I mean, it’s free. All I have to do is give them my contact information and I can get it this free, valuable item. Ideally, it’s very specific or unique to that target market. It solves a problem. Did they want to solve it? It’s something that speaks very specifically to them. So it’s not general, it provides some immediate gratification. So it’s not something that’s going to take them weeks and weeks and weeks to benefit from, or in the case of something like a book. It’s not something that requires them to do, do something on someone else’s timeline or someone else’s terms. I mean, if I download a copy of a book, well, I can go through this on my time. So I’ve got the benefit of now owning the book, but I don’t have to consume it in the moment. And then ideal, it has a high perceived, an actual value it’s obvious to, to the person in your target market, that it has a high perceived value, but then when they get what you’re giving them in exchange for their contact information, it’s actually really valuable. It’s really useful because if it’s not, you’re, you’re making a poor first impression in the odds of them continuing to give you their, their attention really diminishes.

And then we’ve got to pick a format, you know, something, a book, a guide, a cheat sheet, a template, or a video, a gift card. There there’s so many different things that you can do. So I don’t want to go through every one in detail, but basically we’re packaging up the intellectual property we have that would be valuable to the person that we want to serve. And we’re basically saying, Hey, I’m going to give you results in advance. You don’t have to pay me for anything, but I’m going to help you solve a problem or move towards achieving a goal. And whatever format is best for you to deliver that. So not only would be valuable to them, easy for them to consume, but also would be easy for you to create.

And then we’ve gotta make this lead magnet marketable. We’ve got to make it something that gets their attention. So we need to give it a compelling title where the benefit is obvious. The, the, the reason they would show interest is in this thing is really, really straightforward. Then we have to describe it like who should get this resource or consume this resource on why we need to call them out by their name and the desire. So, so they know we’re talking specifically to them, and then we need to what I call bullet the benefits. We need to be very specific in bullet point format. So it’s easy to read and easy to see what is someone going to get out of this? Because the idea here is we are going to give them something of value to them. We know who our target market is. We want to give them something of value to them, to get the people who are most likely to ultimately do business with us, to raise their hand and say, yes, I’m interested in more. I have a problem I want to solve. And I’m ready to start thinking about taking action. So gets them to raise their hand. And so all those tactics that we’re using to connect with our target market, the approach that we’re going to take to put valuable information in front of them, the, the networking focus stuff, the advertising focus stuff, the referral focused stuff, or really the goal is to get them to really just download this lead magnet or access this lead magnet. So now we’re in control of following up and we can follow up with them and position ourselves as somebody who can help them solve their problems and achieve their goals. So I know that’s a lot to digest in this episode, but we’ve identified our target market. We figured out where to reach them and how to reach them and how to start to take control of this conversation by getting them to opt into something. So now we can have more control over the followup. We know who’s interested, we can facilitate reaching out to them and connecting with them. So we’re going to go into how to do that effectively and use it as a tool to generate more business in the next episode. Stay tuned.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School. And before you go, I have a quick announcement. When I first connect with a fitness business owner, they almost always ask me, “How can I get more leads or how can I get more clients?” Well, I have an exclusive offer for you and it’s going to help you do just that. As a listener of this show, you can test drive Fitness Lead Academy for six full weeks for just a dollar. Fitness Lead Academy is a one of a kind program where you get done-for-you marketing tools and coaching to attract more qualified prospects and convert them into paying clients. Imagine having three marketing emails written for you each and every week for easy-to-deploy promotions provided to you that are proven to convert and they’re ready to use and proven ads and social media posts given to you each and every month as well. Plus you have access to three weekly live video coaching sessions to help you with everything from dialing in your brand to navigating things like building funnels and getting ads approved. You get all of this and more when you join Fitness Lead Academy. And to prove that FLA can serve you as your virtual marketing department and not only save you plenty of time, but also consistently bring you more leads and clients, you can get access to the entire coaching program for six full weeks. Again, for just $1. If it delivers for you in the way that I expect it will, you can continue on for just $199 a month. So basically, just one additional client each month and you’re ROI positive. And I’m sure that if you apply what we give you, you’re going to get more than just one additional client each month. And you’re going to likely save at least 10 hours a month to take advantage of this special offer. Just go to TestDriveFLA.com to try it out for six full weeks. If it’s not what you’re looking for, you can cancel it any time.

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