“Thirty seven,” he said in disbelief. “That’s the number of personal trainers within ten minutes from here. I’m never going to be able to stand out!”
“Well then,” I replied, “we better position you as the best.”
Have you ever wondered why some fitness professionals seem to effortlessly attract new customers and clients?
Have you ever wondered why some personal trainers are able to charge several times more than their competitors… without even really trying?
Or, have you ever wondered why companies like Apple or Tesla have incredibly loyal and evangelistic customers who stand in line for literally hours just to be able to buy the next product?
The answer lies in their POSITIONING.
I want to share the exact formula to rapidly position you as the number one trainer in your town.
If you want your prospects to know you, like you and trust you before they ever even have a chance to buy training you, then this is for you.
The Competition Isn’t Going Anywhere
There has never been more competition. That’s a fact.
Unless you plan to open a personal training studio in somewhere like Namibia, you are going to be faced with a lot of competitors.
The good news? It’s not hard to stand out!
Really, it’s not. Take a look around at other trainers.
There are a lot of trainers with very little experience, and lots more who aren’t willing to create content the way I’m about to share with you.
And this is a good thing.
Why? Because it means that if you’re willing to do the work it’s possible to become the number one in your town or niche, and to develop enough demand to never run out of clients again.
It’s all to do with positioning – you want to position yourself as the authority in your particular niche, or even micro-niche.
With authority comes demand. You will be highly sought after as an expert in one particular area. This will help you to grow your business, charge more, and even grow a team around you to help even more people.
The Three-Step Positioning Formula
There are three steps to follow to become the authority and to become highly sought after:
- Stop training everyone
- Produce great content
- Distribute it everywhere
Stop Training Everyone
Stop taking on any client that comes your way. You want to carve out a niche that you are both great at training, and enjoy working with. It’s 2017. You need to specialise.
The only exception to this is if you’re just starting out. If that’s you, take anyone you can whilst you carve our your niche.
For everyone else, you need to be selective.
Don’t train athletes…
And mums…
And college kids looking to bulk…
And baby boomers…
And rehab clients.
Pick one niche you love working with. Once you decide who, we can then go deep into their psyche.
You can ask some simple questions to really tap into their mind… Such as:
What do they love doing?
What do they really want from their training? [Hint: it’s not ever just ‘weight loss’]
What keeps them up at night?
What else do they buy?
What can you learn from other companies who also target this niche?
We want to go narrow in terms of niche and then deep. Deep into what makes them tick, and how we can add massive value to them.
People often say to me, “but doesn’t that mean we will turn away business? If we narrow down our focus, wont we turn away potential income?”
The short answer is no. As counterintuitive as it may seem, it will do the opposite.
Think of this in the medical world.
If we compare a general practitioner with a medical specialist, you will notice they are very different.
The GP has to cover the entire human body, and deal with a wide range of patients every single day. In many ways, the GP actually knows more than the specialist!
The specialist only works with a select few patients, in one narrow field.
A shoulder specialist won’t go anywhere near a knee or ankle, for example. He sticks to what he knows best – shoulders!
The specialist is sought out, often booked months in advance… The GP takes walk-ins.
The specialist is paid very handsomely… The GP unfortunately is not.
The specialist becomes well known and stands out… The GP blends in.
This is not meant to disrespect GP’s, they do a brilliant job.
However what works in the medical world also works in the fitness world… Those who niche down, be selective, and become sought after are those who decided at some point in their career who they want to specialise in.
Perhaps you love training developing track athletes. Or you love helping busy CEO’s stay in shape. Whatever it is, focus on helping one particular niche as much as possible.
(At the bottom of this article is a free guide that will help you define which niche to focus on.)
Next, we need to create great content.
Content marketing is free in terms of financial cost. But it will cost you time.
It can take some time to put together a well through out, well structured article or blog post. But it’s vital for positioning.
The job of content is to position you as the authority, as the go-to guy or gal in your town.
So what type of content is best?
A mixture of written and video is best.
In my opinion, you should be creating one written blog for your site, and at least one video on Facebook Live or Youtube each and every week.
You can aim for more if you like, but consistency matters most.
For the sake of this article, I want to share some tips on creating great written content.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Host the site on WordPress.
- Follow a basic template for your blogs, so you can sit down and simply ‘join the dots’ when it comes time to create [you can grab my free blog template, below]
- Keep track of topics you could write about. Use Evernote, or a note on your phone, to track down some FAQ’s you get from clients. These make ideal topics for your content.
- Format the blog correctly, and make it easy to read. Use lots of white spaces, and break up big chunks of text.
- Don’t try to impress your peers, write for your audience.
- Make it sharable. Make it easy for your followers to share the article via social media, and use some cool tools like the popular click to tweet function.
- Keep track of your most popular articles, and you can send those out with welcome emails to new subscribers.
- Use a featured image in the settings of the blog.
- Use 2-3 relevant pictures throughout the article.
There’s no point having amazing content, if no-one reads it. So let’s get to part three…
Distribute Your Content
Now that you’ve defined your niche, and written quality content, we want to distribute it around the internet.
You can share the full article via Facebook, LinkedIn and Medium work well for the full version.
You should also email it to your list.
You can then even pull the best quotes and lines from it, and share those on Instagram or Twitter. One piece of content can be used in multiple ways.
As Grant Cardone says in his book ‘The 10X Rule’, you want to be omnipresent.
What Grant means is that you want to your potential clients to see you in multiple places, consistently. You want to be everywhere that your audience is.
Sharing your content across different platforms will definitely help you to become omnipresent and to stay ‘top of mind’ when your prospect is ready to take the first step.
So let’s put all three pieces together for a minute…
Narrowing your niche will help you to focus your attention on one particular person. That means you can really go deep into what they need and what they really want out of their fitness goals.
You then create content for that niche. Not average content, but great content. Aiming for a weekly blog would be a great start.
Finally, you distribute it across multiple platforms.
Imagine the effect these three things will have on your business and on your positioning. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, you specialise. It’s easier to create content because now you’re trying to help just one person, and not fifteen different people with potentially fifteen different problems.
You then create valuable content, that’s presented really well on your site.
And then you share it across multiple platforms.