Excerpt from Pilates Hour #127 “Finding New Clients Online” with BizHack Founder Dan Grech
If you believe in what you do, and you are selling someone on becoming a member of what you do, such as buying a 10-pack of classes or scheduling their next session with you, you can learn to look at this as you giving them a gift to stay in touch and helping them stay on track to reach their goals.
Telling Your Business Story
This is what I believe in, this is why my company exists, and this is my deeply personal reason for doing it! My personal story of how movement and movement science connect for me is…
This is telling your business story. The goal is to do this in a systematic way across all of your marketing. This is the underlying melody behind all of the notes in your marketing symphony.
Sustainability in The Pilates Industry
Customer communications are the most powerful form of marketing. What you say before and after a session is your most powerful form of marketing and it’s where so many Pilates instructors fall short. I’ve never met a Pilates professional who isn’t doing the work for the right reasons.
If you don’t have your marketing and your business practices tightened up, you can’t do your work in a sustainable way. The way you can shine your light more brightly is to be efficient and effective in your marketing so that more people get touched by your greatness! Without efficiency, you are at risk of burnout. This is one of my concerns about working with Pilates professionals.
These are stars who burn brightly and then fade unless they have a unique sustaining patron. But you don’t need a patron to make a profitable Pilates business. There are a lot of successful Pilates businesses out there, and they all share something really important to give to the world.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
Simon Sinek
10 Benefits of Leading With Purpose
1. Gives meaning to the work you do
2. Makes you more money: Visionary companies have beaten their competitors by a 16:1 margin on the stock market (from Jim Collins’s “Good to Great”)
3. Attracts your ideal customer. When you talk about your authentic self and why you do what you do, it becomes like a magnet for your perfect customer.
4. Differentiates you from the competition. The competition is not just for other Pilates studios. It’s also all the other exercise and movement-based methodologies that are out there competing for people’s time and attention.
5. Attracts new employees. If you are good about talking about your ‘what’ and ‘why’ you do what you do, it becomes much easier to recruit and retain talent. This is probably one of the biggest things holding back small businesses today.
6. Motivates your existing employees
7. Guides employee behavior, making them more competent, committed, and contributing. When your employees are upselling, cross-selling, or doing the necessary work of running a business, they are doing it in a way that isn’t ‘slimy’ but is actually coming from a great place!
You must believe in what you do, and the goal is to sell someone on becoming a member of what you do. Maybe this is buying a 10-pack of classes, or scheduling their next session with you. You can learn to look at this as giving them a gift to stay in touch and make sure they stay on track to reach their goals.
It’s just like that Joseph Pilates quote, Feel the difference after 1 session, see the difference after 10 sessions, and change your life after 100 sessions.
8. Sets clear guard rails on what your company does and doesn’t do.
9. Creates the foundation for the public image of a company
10. Increases your impact on the world.
We should all be hungry to touch more lives, and this is what effective marketing will enable you to do.
This is Not a Channel-Driven Approach
This system is not how to use Tik-Tok or any other social media channel to build your business.
Don’t fall into channel-based tactics and strategies. You will overwhelm yourself. Everyone should be on Instagram, it is the natural place and home for a Pilates professional. However, just mastering Instagram will take you the rest of your life. It is constantly changing.
You are not an Instagram expert, you are a business owner and entrepreneur. So you need to understand how Instagram fits into the bigger picture, but don’t get confused about channels, versus strategy.
When we focus on the bigger picture, we can apply these skills across all of our marketing.
To learn more about our new course “How To Find Customers Online” Click here.
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