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Strategies to leverage your local community and offline to grow your business and create a consistent flow of leads. Discover the potential untapped market with offline marketing. Currently, online coaches feel they need to use online strategies to generate leads leaving a massive opportunity within the offline space.
Stemming from an awesome listener question, Landon and Laura walk through the strategies they used while owning a studio and gym to grow their online businesses and strategies they use with their 1:1 clients.
Strategies included:
Do not miss this episode!
Connect with us:
Did you enjoy the episode? If so, please leave us a short review on iTunes.
If you found value in our content, we'd love to connect with you. Please email us at landon@l2fitness.com to see how we can help you refine your message and design your business to support the life you want to live.
Click Here To Join The Momentum Lab Community!
Strategies to leverage your local community and offline to grow your business and create a consistent flow of leads. Discover the potential untapped market with offline marketing. Currently, online coaches feel they need to use online strategies to generate leads leaving a massive opportunity within the offline space.
Stemming from an awesome listener question, Landon and Laura walk through the strategies they used while owning a studio and gym to grow their online businesses and strategies they use with their 1:1 clients.
Strategies included:
Do not miss this episode!
Connect with us:
Did you enjoy the episode? If so, please leave us a short review on iTunes.
If you found value in our content, we'd love to connect with you. Please email us at landon@l2fitness.com to see how we can help you refine your message and design your business to support the life you want to live.
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the unfiltered coach podcast. Today we're coming with another question that we got from the audience talking about strategies to leverage your city or local cool community to grow your business and generate leads. So I'm really, really excited because we have actually a ton of ideas for this, so I'm really excited to dig in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this'll be good. And I think we can speak to this so well because we had the gym for so many years and we utilize a lot, almost every single one of these strategies ourselves with really good success. So I'm excited to carry over what we used to do in person and translate it to the online space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Because a lot of what we were doing in the later stages of running our facility was using our brick and mortar to build our online nutrition coach.
Speaker 3:Right, totally agree. Yeah. And it's, it's powerful and it's something that a lot of online coaches are completely missing because they think that if you're online, you have to generate clients online when in fact an offline source of clients can be a massive powerhouse and growing your business.
Speaker 2:I agree. And I think that people are just missing the boat. There's this massive market, this massive untapped resource that we can leverage. And when it comes to, you know, even creating larger scale offline trumps online because we create real authentic and genuine relationships in person, not online.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think too, it just, it, it's a longterm play. Like these relationships you build offline can bring you clients for years to come. Right? It's not just a DM here and there. It's a relationship with someone that you can foster for years and years and years and you can grow together. Right? So let's jump in. I think we agree on the first point or the first strategy wholeheartedly. This is something that helped us grow, not only are in-person business, but also our online business. And that's finding allies who have the attention of your niche but who aren't necessarily direct competition of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You know, we talk about the concept of finding who already has your clients, your clients are out there, somebody else just has their attention. Yeah. And if we can identify the people that have their attention and they are complimentary to what we do, not indirect competition, then we can create a win win scenario for both of us. And then us helping generate our own leads is also benefiting them and benefiting their business. Yup. Everybody's happy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Let's give a few examples so that we can really paint a full picture before we go into how to utilize these allies. Um, two examples that stand out for me that I really utilized well in growing my online business was Lulu lemon. We did collaborations with them and got our name out there through them. So an athletic wear company, right. My target was weight loss clients. They're buying Lulu lemon clothes. So I put myself in front of the Lulu lemon audience and I did workshops for them for free. Right. So that was a really awesome way to get my name out and to the community with a partner that was an ally that didn't compete with what I was trying to provide to their clientele.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I also think it's good on that note that the people that you do collaborate with, you should have a similar message and same values as them. Yeah. I think that makes that the, the relationship very, very good. Yeah. Um, the one that stands out for me is if you're in, you know, doing online nutrition coaching or you're an in-person nutrition coach. Cause I know the, the gentleman that asked the question is actually an RD. So he has an in person practice. So where are your clients looking to lose weight? Well, the most obvious answer is they're at a gym. Most of them are probably exercising. Yeah. So the easiest collaboration for somebody doing nutrition coaching is going to be facilities trainers. You know, small gyms, micro studios, F 45 orange theory. Larger gyms is creating those relationships. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes. And just not being afraid to walk in there, shake someone's hand, tell them what you're about, what you're trying to do, and see what they're open to. As a previous gym owner, if someone walked in and they aligned with my message and I liked their energy, I would have appreciated the entrepreneurial spirit to come pound down my door and ask me what they wanted. Right. Ask for that collaboration and be open to wanting to collaborate with me and build a relationship. They're not just a onetime, I want all your clients sort of thing. Right. It has to be an authentic relationship. So it really matters who you approach and how you approach them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think, you know, the, the other two strategies that I have down, and I know you have down, are all kind of grouped together. And I think there's, there's carry over between all of this and it comes down to collaboration and events. And I think that finding who has your clients is essentially collaboration. Yeah. So when you're looking at collaborating with a business, you have to start to put yourself in that business owner's shoes. Right. So if you're thinking about reaching out to a facility, understand first and foremost that they are also a business owner. So number one, they're going to be very busy. And number two, you can't expect them to put in work for you, right? So if you're going to come to them with an opportunity, you have to make it as easy as possible for them to implement and execute. And it has to benefit them in some way. Sure.
Speaker 3:Yes. I think you need to come to the table with value for them first, right? You can't just be asking or the answer is no. Like they don't have time. They don't have time for your opportunity. Right. They have opportunities coming out of the yin yang. Probably make that assumption. Right? And if they don't, that's good. That's great for you. But if they do, you have to stand out to them. So what can you do to make their life easier? What can you offer that will help them retain their clients longer, bring a better service to their clientele? Like they only have a certain amount of bandwidth if they're a gym, like the example that you gave and you're a nutrition coach, do they have nutrition on staff or can you provide that and fill that gap for them for free potentially to foster that relationship and siphoned clients out that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head of that. If it is a facility, it's going to come down to increasing their customer retention or increasing the value to their clients. It's going to come down to bringing awareness to the business or brand and drawing people into it. Yeah. Or it's going to come down to making them more money. So when you think of, you know, doing the collaborations with Lulu lemon. Yeah. You know, we were building awareness around that brand. We weren't increasing retention of them, but we were bringing customers to them because we're advertising the workshop. People are coming there. Lulu lemon offered a slight discount for a private shopping event that they could get after the event. Right. So now Lululemon is now making a bunch of money, right. Well getting the brand out there. Right. So it's a win win, right? You have to think how am I going to help them? Even if you're doing something for free without actually even asking for anything in the beginning. Yeah. Cause if you come with open hands to give them a value and benefit their business, most times they're going to ask like what? What can I do for you?
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly. Exactly. I want to just give one more example before we continue to dive into the strategy is just because I know there's a lot of also personal trainers that listen and that's not really as effective for them obviously. Right. So one strategy that worked really well for us or one point of collaboration that worked well for us when personal training was our focus was a local chiropractor that we had a great relationship with. I got lots of referrals from him for a long time and it was great because our methodologies were very similar. Our though our ethos was very similar. And so I would always refer every client to him and he would refer every client who needed personal training to me and it worked so well. I could have taken that one step further and hosted workshops in his, in his space or, or presented other collaboration opportunities for him in his online community, whatever that looks like. But something like that would be an example of someone who has your ideal clients who potentially would love to collaborate. You who is in direct competition.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're in the health and fitness space, who else is in the health and fitness space? You have, you know, holistic health practitioners, you have chiropractors, you have misuses. There's all of these other businesses that if someone is, you know, concerned about their health and coming to you for personal training or weight loss, yeah, they're probably going to see these other people as well who is complimentary to your service. You know, can you provide them value? Can you bring value to them by maybe you host a workshop for him to speak to your network. Right. You know, there's so many opportunities to not only provide Valley but to create kind of referral opportunities, which is super, super beneficial as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. And I think too, just to elaborate on that one step further, taking it outside the box and thinking where else are my clients that isn't in the health and wellness space where they're hanging out. So if you are searching for weight loss clients, they're probably at grocery stores, they're probably at restaurants and bars and maybe mom groups in schools and like get in the head of your client. Where are they spending their time? Put yourself there. Can you collaborate with your local grocery store to do an event where you can take a small group around and teach people how to read labels? Like get creative. Really good idea. I know that that was an idea I had years ago that I never actually took action on cause we pivoted in our business. But that is a really good idea. Everybody can steal that one. Right. But that's just a good example of, you know, these are places that other people who are doing what you're doing locally are not going to, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think another thing you should think about is leveraging the people within your network. So who do you have access to? Do you know if, are they moms? Are they a part of a mum group? Do you have any business owners, you know, do they have any connections within the government? We did multiple talks for the government of Alberta and we were asked to come back and speak multiple times. Now that put us, they asked us to come speak where the very first time we did it, we had one of our clients worked in that department got us to come in and we worked with her to put on a presentation. Yeah. Then me got, my aunt worked in a government and she recommended us to come in and speak on, it was like a once a year. They bring in a bunch of guest speakers to speak on various topics and we were the people speaking on, on on health and fitness and then they invited us back out the next year. So then we were just all of a sudden in a room of, you know, 30 to 50 people that were all our ideal clients because our talk was then tailored to, you know, people looking to lose weight, people in pain because they're sitting at a desk all day. The struggles and obstacles that they face, they're all perspective clients and they all work for the government. We knew generally what their income levels were. They knew they could afford us. So you know, the corporate world is massive, but leverage the opportunities that you have and start to just look at what's going on within your community and how can you insert yourself there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100% I think it's overlooked how many connections you actually have right now. Make a list. Who do you know and who do those people know? Like expand your circles and then all you have to do is ask for it. I think most people are scared to ask and that's where they feel stuck, where they're like, Oh my God, how do I get my name out there? Well, you know how you know people, you just have to take that step. Right.
Speaker 2:Um, another strategy that we leveraged and I recommend everybody leverage is charity events. Yes. Is there a, you know, a charity that you can partner up with to put on an event, whether it be, you know, a workshop on weight loss, whether it be, you know, uh, an event to raise money and you're doing personal training, you're doing like a group training thing or you put on, you know, you can pull in other people to leverage their networks as well. And then what happens is you're doing a good cause sometimes you can actually get media coverage when you're doing these sorts of things, especially if it's around the holidays. You're helping them raise money. People can come for free with a donation. Now you're getting your name in front of all of these people. And that organization is, you know, advertising that event as well.
Speaker 3:Yes. I think like looking back a couple of years ago, we ran a self love month for February in our studio and we ended up getting news coverage for that because one of my clients worked at a new station. But even if you don't know somebody at a news station, you can still approach them with a story. They're looking for stories all the time. So if you're running a charity event and you have all of this collaboration around it and you're raising money, chances are you probably could get news coverage. Right? And that's just one more layer to get your name out there into the community even more. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the, the last you know, suggestion I have on collaboration is looking for opportunities for free publicity when it comes down to establishing ourselves as an authority. It's a lot of legwork to do it online, but it's not very hard to establish yourself as the authority locally. Right? You can create omnipresent locally where you're just simply putting herself in front of everyone all the time. Even like on a very nerdy level, search engine optimization and getting your website ranked locally is super easy cause no one is doing it. Yeah. But
Speaker 3:talk to that, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, if you started to write a lot of articles for your website teaching with, you know, keyword rich topics in terms of, when I say keyword rich, I mean things that people are searching about. Right, right, right. And you know, most often there's maybe one or two other facilities that are actually aware of digital marketing in your city. So the chances of you getting found just organically through Google are very high. We did this, we actually paid our trainers$25 an article to write articles for us and we put out three a week and we were ranked number one in Google for personal training and Edmonton. Right. And we would receive a lot of that way. Yeah. And it's something that cost us no money. They came into us organically. We didn't have to run paid ads to it. So it's just getting creative. But free publicity is, there's probably some fitness magazines in your city. There's probably a lot of a local, you know, smaller magazines or newspapers. Can you write an article for them for free? Typically for even their website or their magazine, they are always looking for content. Yes. And you're not getting paid. You're getting your name out there, but what happens, you put the information out there, establish yourself as an authority. They referenced you maybe a link to your website and you're just building your brand within your city.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think too, like something that just popped into my head that I had never thought of before is if you're a mom or a dad and you have kids in school, like your school has a newsletter, right? You could submit a fitness article or a nutrition article for healthy eating or you know, workout routines to that newsletter for the families. It's so easy when you start to think outside the box like, okay, where are my ideal clients? How can I possibly get in front of them there? Just meeting them where they're at instead of making it difficult. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is actually turning into a really, really good episode. Um, and I think the, the last point that I really wanted to hit on was utilizing talks and events to put on or to build awareness. So you utilize that with collaboration. Yeah. So we just touched on, you know, collaborating, find who has your clients and one of the ways you can utilize all of those is with talks and events. Yes. So if you're a nutrition coach or or, or a dietician and there is a facility that doesn't do nutrition, can you collaborate with them to do a seminar or a workshop for their, for their clients. Now that's you talking and providing him value. If they lose more weight, they're increasing their client retention, but now you can possibly work with him on some sort of deal. Now you have the opportunity with talks to do things like pitching on the backend of a talk for nutrition coaching. Even if you don't do anything, you're still building your brand and getting your message in front of new people, which is the most important thing. But you could possibly run the nutrition coaching for that facility. You could run a weight loss challenge for that facility, you could do online nutrition coaching through a Facebook group for that facility. We know these things because we do them and we work very closely with people that teach these methods as well. Yeah, so talks and events could be done with facilities or with the chiropractor or with the corporate
Speaker 3:or the school or the mom group or whatever.
Speaker 2:Please. So utilizing that is a really, really good way to to generate leads on a local list
Speaker 3:and also being open to the virtual side of that as well. Right. If you go into a gym, most businesses have an online community now, right? So if they aren't open to maybe bringing you in in person, is there the opportunity to do a Facebook live inside of their Facebook group for free? Is there the opportunity to collaborate on a 14 day challenge with their online community for free? Right? Like how can you still provide them value if they're too busy to have you in person or they have a nutrition coach on site or whatever. Right? Think outside the box. Don't take no for an answer. Be passionate and lead with value.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I recommend you create just a massive list of people on a local level, right? Businesses, people, news outlets, all of these things that have your ideal clients because when it comes down to it, is there any podcasts locally that you can get interviewed on? If you have a really cool niche or we have one of the people in our community, he's working and trying to get a message out to help people with mental illness through physical fitness. So I told him, go through all of the local news outlets, organizations, micro influencers, and see how you can collaborate with them. When you have a message like that, he's going to have a very easy time working with people. Right? But even if you're just doing nutrition coaching, if there is micro influencers on Instagram, can you do a joint live on Instagram to their audience? Can you do a joint Facebook live for someone? Can you go live to a businesses Facebook group? You can do it with organizations or people. Yeah, there's so many opportunities out there. You just have to get creative and understand that you could completely build your business. That's an online business using offline and in-person strategy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really love this episode. I think this is something that everyone needs to hear, cause truly it's so overrated or underrated, not overrated. No one's utilizing. No,
Speaker 2:and it's such an untapped market. They think if I'm an online coach, I have to generate my leads using social media and no, you know what? Some people just, they're an online coach, but they don't show up as well or communicate as well when they're deeming people. Yeah, so they want to go do talks and then they pull people. Yeah. We're actually in the process of starting to tour around the U S putting on free events because that's in line with our ethos of providing free information and then you know what that's going to generate leads for our business, but allow us to travel, which we love and allow us to put on talks and provide value. Yeah, so you just got to get creative with your business. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I love that. If you guys have questions about this or if you need clarity on anything that we jammed on, please don't hesitate to ask. You can grab us in our private group. Just head over to momentum lab.community and you can ask us anything in there. We're teaching in there constantly. All right, we'll talk to you soon. Okay, bye.[inaudible].