From Passion to Profit: Heart Centered Strategies for FitPros

002 Fitness Marketing: Attracting Your Ideal Clients to Your Health & Fitness Business

• Nichola Page • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Hello again, it's Nichola Page, and welcome back to "From Passion to Profit." 

Today, we're diving into a vital aspect of your health & fitness business - fitness marketing and attracting your ideal clients.

In order for your marketing to resonate with your ideal clients, you first need to understand more about them.  We're going to be breaking this down into demographics and psychographics.

Demographics are the basics like age, gender, and occupation but the real magic lies in the psychographics – understanding your ideal clients' pain points. What is it they no longer want and what do they want to achieve? Put yourself in their shoes and feel their struggles.

Remember, use their exact language, not industry jargon. If they're frustrated with back pain, don't just talk about strengthening core muscles. Address their frustrations and concerns directly.

Once you are clearer on what they want to move away from, think about what they want instead.  What results do they want?  How do they want to look and feel?  What is it they want to do?

Then think about where they spend their time – both online and offline. Knowing this will help guide your marketing strategy in terms of the types of marketing you will do.

Address their objections and barriers. Why might they hesitate to work with you? It could be due to negative past experiences or misconceptions. Aim to overcome these objections and barriers in your marketing.

Lastly, highlight your unique value. Why should they choose you? Do you have a story that shows you understand where they are at and how they feel?  Use your story, qualifications, and what sets you apart, in your marketing.  Show how you can help them get from where they are to where they want to be.

To sum up:

1/ Identify what they want to move away from - their pain points, their struggles, concerns, and frustrations.

2/ Identify what they want instead - the results they want, how they want to look and feel, what they want to do

3/ Use their language, not industry jargon.

4/ Think about their potential objections and barriers.

5/ Be sure to show your unique value.

Once armed with this knowledge, you'll be able to create marketing that resonates deeply with those you are trying to attract. 

Remember, it's all about taking action. Grab a pen, jot down these insights about your ideal client, and get ready to elevate your fitness business marketing.

Thanks for tuning in, and until next time, keep turning your passion into profit!

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Welcome to From Passion to Profit, where we talk about all things related to creating a successful health and fitness business. One that works for you as much as it does your clients. 

I'm your host, Nichola Page and in this episode we're going to be discussing - who is it you actually want to attract into your business? What types of clients do you want to work with? You know, the ones you have in your classes or your sessions right now that you absolutely love working with. If we could just clone those, what would they look like? So we could fill your classes and your sessions with those types of people. That's what we're talking about in this session. Who are they?  

There are two areas that you need to look at, when it comes to who you want to attract. There's the demographics, and I'll explain what that is in a moment. And then there's the psychographics, which plays a huge part, when it comes to creating your marketing wording. 

With demographics is things like their age, their gender, where they live, their occupation, whether they're married, whether they’ve got kids, and whether they're divorced.   That's what we call the demographics. 

Now for some businesses, that might play a very important part in the marketing message, for example, you may have a ladies only gym. You don't see many of those around anymore, but maybe you do. That's very specific, that demographic is important. It's an important part of the marketing message. 

Maybe you work with men only. Again, that's a very important part of the demographic.  Maybe you work with people who are of a specific age, maybe you work with kids, that's age-related. Maybe you focus your business more on helping teachers. So, the occupation part of the demographic is really important. 

I would say, for the majority of health and fitness business owners I come across, the demographic is hardly relevant at all.  The commonality between their ideal clients is down to the psychographics. 

The psychographics are about their pain points. Now it could be it's their physical pain. If you're a Pilates instructor, for example, and have a Pilates studio - maybe you are trying to focus your marketing on attracting people in who have back pain. That's a physical pain that somebody has. That's psychographic. 

Maybe you have people that you're trying to attract into your business, who are just completely stressed out. They're overworked. They're stressed, they're overwhelmed. That's psychographic. 

What we need to think about is (and to do this piece of work you're going to need to sit down and really think about it with pen and paper in hand) what is it you know about your ideal clients in terms of their now problems? 

What is it they do not want anymore? What is it they're trying to move away from? What is it that they're worried about? What is it they're confused about? Concerned about? What are they fed up with? What are they struggling with? What are they suffering from? All of those things will help you to create psychographics. 

My advice to you is this… get a sheet of paper, a large a4 sheet of paper.  Draw a line down the middle.  On the top left-hand side, put the words ‘away from’.  On the top right-hand side, put the word ‘towards’. 

On the left-hand side, you're going to list all of those things I just said.  What is it that they’ve tried to move away from? What they don't want, are fed up with, struggling with, suffering with, worried about, concerned about, confused about?  Just list them all out. 

Then on the other side of the paper, the ‘towards’... if they don't want that stuff over on the left-hand side, what is it what is it they want instead? How do they want to feel? How do they want to look? What is it they want to be able to do? 

As human beings we are motivated to make a change to do something, either because we're motivated to move away from something that we no longer want, or we move we're motivated to do something to move towards something we want instead. Your job as the business owner is to identify what those two things are. 

Use this to come up with your list of away from pain points.  It could be physical pain points.  It could be mental pain points.  It could be spiritual pain points.  What is it they're trying to move away from? What do they want instead because they’re the results and the solutions they are looking for. 

What you happen to be, with the service that you provide, you’re the bridge that takes them from the left-hand side of the paper (what they're trying to move away from), to the right-hand side (what they want instead).

Once you have an idea of the psychographics (the move away from - move towards) you can now start to create your marketing wording that is really going to attract those people in.  The key thing when you're doing this exercise is to think about the terminology.  The words your ideal clients would actually use, not your interpretation of it. And certainly not your industry jargon.  What words do they use? What do you hear people say when they first come to you?   

If you don't know what that is, you could do a bit of a survey of your actual clients right now. If you've got clients right now, do a survey and ask them… What was it like before they started coming to your classes to your sessions? What is it that they weren't happy with? What caused them to find you, what was going on?  

Look at the words that they use. For example, if you've got somebody that is in pain - they’ve got back pain, or neck pain.  Whatever that physical pain is, they don't sit there thinking... I need to strengthen my core muscles to get rid of my back pain. Yet, what I see time and time again, with marketing in the industry is… come along to Pilates class to strengthen your core. That's not the terminology the vast majority of people use.  They will sit there on the sofa at night going… I'm fed up with this, this is affecting me every day, I can't even do the things that I want to do. I can't even pick the kids up without back pain.  I can't concentrate, can't sleep at night.  Every time I get up in the morning, I'm in pain.  That’s the wording that they use.  That’s the type of thing you need to get down on paper, because that's what you're going to use in your marketing to resonate. 

If you think about it for a moment.  If you walked into a newsagents, if you go into your local convenience store and you see a row of newspapers along the side, as you're queuing up to buy, whatever you've gone in there to buy.  You see the row of newspapers and you glance across at those headlines. One of those newspapers’ headlines is going to jump out at you for whatever reason.  Because it drew you in, it resonated with you in some way, shape, or form.  You either drew towards it or you were repelled by it. But it had its desired effect. That's what we need to get to with your marketing. The only way that you can get to that with your marketing is by knowing the psychographics of your ideal client. What are their pain points? What do they want to move away from? And what do they want to move towards? What results do they want? What goals do they have? What solutions are they looking for? 

The other thing to come to grips with when you're doing this exercise is to think about how they spend their time. Where do they go? Because this part is going to be important when it comes to identifying what sorts of marketing you do. Do you do social media marketing?  Do you do offline marketing? 

Once we can get a picture of how your ideal clients spend their time. Where do they go? What social media platforms do they use? Even if you've got an online business, you can still do what I call offline marketing. You can still do things that have nothing to do with the internet or social media to get in front of your ideal clients.  Once you've got a clear understanding of how your ideal clients spend their time, you'll be set (and you'll be surprised at what comes through from that) as to where you can put your marketing.  

I'm just going to give you a quick example. If you know that your ideal clients spend a lot of time, in the summer months, going to garden centres…  that will be the perfect place to be putting some of your marketing. That's why we want to get a clearer picture of - where do they spend their time? 

The next thing for you to look at is - what might their barriers be? What might their objections be to working with you, for saying yes to whatever it is that you're offering? What have they tried before that didn't work? That's actually affecting their decision-making process?! Maybe they've tried other classes before or worked with other trainers before that wasn't right for them. That's actually blocking them from saying yes to you.  You can use that in your marketing.  You can use that in the wording and say - ‘maybe you've tried X, Y, and Z before, and it didn't work. You're talking about the elephant in the room. 

Think about what have your ideal clients tried before that didn't work.  What might they be worried about? What might be stopping them from taking that first step?  It's very common in in the industry, for people to think… I won't join that fitness class, I need to get fitter first, before I join it.  That's their barrier. That's their assumption, that they're not going to be fit enough to come along to your class. 

Maybe, it's something completely different for your ideal client. But think about that, what could be getting in their way? That makes no logical sense. But it's so emotive for them, it's stopping them from taking the next step. 

We also want to think about what qualifies you to help them.  Why should they come to you? What we're creating here is a very clear picture about your ideal client. This last bit, what qualifies you to help them, why should they come to you - is just going to be the final piece of the puzzle that's going to help push them over the line when you come to creating your marketing wording.  

So why you?  What's different about you?  There will be some differences. Maybe you already know what's different about you.  You may do things in a certain way.  Maybe you've already got something different that you've added to your classes or your sessions, what is it? 

Maybe it's the fact of the amount of people that you've helped.  Or the qualifications that you've got, the knowledge you've got, the experience that you've got.  Maybe it's just about your passion.  Maybe for you, what's different about you is that you've been through the same processes.  If you work with people that are looking for weight loss results, maybe you've had your own weight loss transformation. That's what makes you different, because you know how it feels to feel the way that they feel.  

Think about that for a moment. The important thing is, before you start putting any more marketing out there, before you start creating content, and spending hours creating content for social media, you need to make sure you are clear about who it is you want to attract.  

Yes, this is about niching your marketing. Some people might say I don't want to niche. I want to help everybody. Maybe you're afraid to niche, thinking that it just reduces the amount of people you can help.  That's not going to be the case.  There is going to be plenty of people that you can help. But if you try to be everything to everyone, you will end up being nothing to no one.  

If you get specific, and you tap into the conversation that's going on in people's heads, the psychographic information, that's when they see your marketing in whatever shape or form that is, that's when that person reading that or hearing that if it's a video, or whatever it is that the marketing has done. That's when they go oh, that's me. That's exactly how I feel. Who is this person? They know. That's just like they're inside my head. They know me. I want to work with this person. That's the beauty of getting your marketing right. And the only way you can do that is by really delving into who it is that you want to attract.  

I hope that has been helpful. Let me summarise what I've said today. 

You need to look at who you want to attract and the best kind of action you can take is getting that piece of paper split in half. What do they want to move away from - on the left-hand side? What do they want to move towards -on the right-hand side? Really getting into your ideal clients' head. What words do they use? Not your terminology. Not your interpretation, their words.  Think about what that looks like, if you were to look through the window of your ideal client’s house and be able to watch them as they go about their day.  What would they be saying? What would they be doing or not doing? How would they be feeling? Create that picture of who you want to attract. Then you'll be able to turn it into some marketing.  

From there, you'll think about - how do they spend their time? Where might you be able to put your marketing where they are going to see it?  Rather than just copying what everybody else is doing and nobody's taking any notice of it. How can we get your marketing right in front of your ideal clients?  The only way you can do that is to create a picture of how they spend their time. 

Think about the barriers, what they've tried before, what they're worried about, what's stopping them from moving forward.  

Then finally, why you?  Why are you the best person to help them? What's your experience? What's your story? What's different about you?   

Create your ideal client, or your client avatar, it’s the same thing - ideal client, client avatar.  Who is it?  From here, you'll be able to create the right marketing message. So you stand out and you attract your clients in. The only way you're going to build your business and fill your classes in your sessions is for you to stand out and get the right marketing message. What I've gone through today is the first step for you to be able to do that.  

I hope you found it useful. I hope it's got you thinking about it.  Make sure you take action on this. These sessions are not about things that you just listened to. I want you to take the action. It's all about getting the results for your business, so your business works for you as much as it does for your clients. 

Enjoy the process.