Branding, marketing and website fluff

Let’s talk about branding and spending money on things in your business to promote yourself versus what are some of the things that you actually do not need to spend money on in your business, especially in the first couple years. Plus I also want to touch on the fact that you don’t actually need to spend as much money on your business on branding and marketing and websites and all the stuff that larger businesses traditionally spend a lot of money on. I mean corporations, when you think of larger pharmaceutical companies, clothing brands, things that you see ads for on TV, for example. When you think about those organisations, and the size of them, and how many people they’ve got in them, and how much income they make, they’ve probably worked their way up to be able to spend money on TV ads, and spend money on business plans, and spend money on websites, and spend money on various other things.

It is a mistake, when at a smaller level to follow in their footsteps, and if I can save you some money, I will. It’s a mistake from the perspective that if you’re working one, for yourself, or there’s just you and you’ve got under 10 employees, there’s a very big difference in the following;
1. The time that you have, and
2. The amount of money that you have to spend on such things as marketing and branding because what I want you to understand is the marketing and branding that you’re doing needs to be able to be tracked so that you can say, “Great, I acquired a client for this much money” and that’s often missed. In particular, it’s missed with things like branding.

You might’ve spent money on branding, and look, I’m saying this because I have spent money on this stuff in the past twenty years, so if I can save you some money then I will. I’ve spent money on branding down to the point where you choose colour swatches, and what best represents my feel and my tone, the italics, the font that’s on my website, blah-blah-blah, all that stuff. Now, it’s not too much to think about it, but I don’t want you to think that it is as important as you possibly think it is, because it’s not. I promise the return you often see from it is not what you may be expecting.

I want to give you some examples. Two of my girls have had their own gyms before they started with me, and they’re not big gyms, they’re just personal training studios. They had some branding done around the name of the studio, however, the studio, in the clients eyes, has nothing to do with them. These girls have now launched their own VIP online program where people are going to work directly with them. One’s in the field of mindset, the other is in the field of health and fitness.

Now, because all the prior marketing has been done around the studios, they’ve almost had to start again because their warm audience knows them, but the cold audience – with the problems they now solve, with their new service (people they have not personally met and interacted with yet, do not know them.)
So they have this huge cold audience that they’re now marketing to, and they’ve had to almost entirely rebrand and remarket purely just under their own name because, for people to get buy-in to you as an individual, guess what? They need to see you. If people do not know you, they of course won’t hire you for your VIP coaching.

My point is, they don’t need to see your brand, they don’t need to see your business page name, which is something else which is not you. They don’t need to see your beautiful logo, they don’t need to see the inside of your studio for them to have buy-in to you as a person.

Now, I want to give you the complete, out-there version of why this is true. If you look at my material online, for example, and how I make videos, I’m often in my gym clothes.

Sometimes I make professional videos, sometimes I’m holding the camera without using a tripod.

Obviously, I’ve been doing this for a while for both fat loss and health coaching and also business mentoring, but in just the personal training coaching business, I’ve had over a hundred of you girls through my ninety-day course, which I never talk about, which is another thing to do with marketing, because I don’t have a “buy my thing”, “click button here”, that kind of stuff, so be aware of how many ‘pages’ links and ‘buy my stuff’ posts, in general, that you put out there…

I’m not making this point to tell you about that, I’m just saying because it’s kind of exclusive invite-only course. That’s not always available. And it’s not for everyone. Yet in the last couple of years I’ve had over one hundred people through it, and it’s purely because I’ve resonated with a majority of those people, simply like this, in content. And it’s a higher-end course.

Now, prior to that, another example is, and again this is my own business, then I’ll give you some other people’s business examples … I ran a retreat in 2016, that was the last fat loss retreat that I ran, and it was high-end. There wasn’t anyone that came that was actually a fat loss client of mine, there weren’t any clients out of the business that came. It was bizarre. They were people who’ve kind of established relationships with me outside of the gym, and that have watched me on social and followed for years.

So, again, it’s because of the ability to connect. Which, if you’re a coach, you have that ability. So, what I don’t want you to do if you’re a coach is buy into the fact that you need branding, and colour swatches, and a lot of professional videos.

Because you don’t need a lot, if any at all, unless they (your graphic designer), really knows what they’re doing.

I have to say, the girl that did my professional videos in the last couple years was fantastic. Do you know why? Because she actually questioned me and did the interview process in a way that I’ve never explored before. She asked about things that my market wanted to hear the answers to. She’s a social media expert, so that was different. And incredibly valuable..

That’s not what people normally do on professional videos, I have to say, and the professional videos don’t usually end up getting people more clients. But your marketing efforts really need to be helping you to increase your client base with whatever that is that you are trying to do.

Now, I want to talk about the difference between low-end and high-end. Those two girls I gave you the example of before, where they’ve got studios and now they’ve launched their own VIP high-end program. It’s not something that’s going to cost the client fifty dollars a week, like group personal training sessions would for example.

They’ve gone into that, and they’re doing it without any branding. Instead it’s built around themselves as a person. They might have a professional photo done for their business page, but there’s no colour swatches that are being chosen, there’s no full marketing campaign, there’s no website that’s being built by a professional.

There’s just very, very simple things that we’ve done. But the most important thing for you to do as somebody who’s launching anything, just like what these girls have done, is to actually nail your message and the communication that you have with your potential clients because it’s in the message and the communication with potential clients that has the person go, “Yes!! I need to work with you!”

That doesn’t come from a pretty colour swatch in your branding, or a nice website, or even throwing money into ads. It comes from potentially the very small audience that you’ve got already, and you understanding how to market yourself, and how to communicate with your client. That’s what it comes from. And I can tell you now, from speaking to lots of people, that is the biggest hole in a lot of people’s advertising. If you want to have a look at what I’m talking about, there’s another video I made on why posting pictures of food and pictures of you exercising, or anybody else in your gym exercising, why that stuff doesn’t work to attract new clients.

You know for yourself.. don’t you scroll past those posts?
You probably do, because it used to be interesting ten years ago when social media started, it was relevant and it was good at getting results then. But it’s not anymore, it hasn’t been interesting for at least five years. You’re not going to get any further in your business if you just keep posting pictures of exercise and/or food. You have to make it interesting, I guess, to read, or interesting to listen to, or helpful, and/or there’s a whole list that I’ve given that you actually need to make, and I will post the link to that video near this content you are reading.

Make sure you’re in my free group for coaches that goes through this kind of content that you actually do need, and I do talk in that group about the things that you just need to worry about in regards to one, bringing on more clients to your gym, but I’m also, more importantly, about  teaching all coaches to sell things at the high end as well as have things at the low end. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a VIP online program, it can be anything.

But if you don’t resonate with people and help get your message across, you don’t understand marketing and no one will buy your stuff. Regardless of the price.

And that’s why they’re not buying your stuff. If they’re not messaging your business page and asking to work with you, then there’s a disconnect in your messaging, you can pretty much guarantee that. It’s not because you don’t have a brilliant website, because a brilliant website does nada, does absolutely nothing, for most service businesses.

If you’ve got any questions about this, or you’d like me to have a look at your website, your social media pages or any of that stuff, I will be able to tell you in a few sentences what you’re missing, why your message is disconnected or not ever resonating with people. Just message me and tell me who it is you serve, and then send me the links to the pages, and I can have a look and tell you if and why there’s a gap and what you probably need to do. Otherwise, make sure you’re in my group for coaches. There’s a lot of amazing, free information in there, here’s the link for that;

https://www.facebook.com/groups/228413110602048