Organic Lead Generation: Strategies for Success Without Social Media with Chris Liddle

You are listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 275. Today we are talking about organic lead generation strategies for success without social media. Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. As you may have already guessed, I am going to be your guest host today. If we haven't met yet, my name is Chris Little. I help behind the scenes at Be Simpson Fitness. And today I'm going to go through 10 points that ideally will help you get a kickstart to your lead generation. Even if you are struggling with your social media, hopefully you have some takeaways. I would encourage you to grab a notebook, take notes, listen to the episode over a few times. You might want to go back to certain points, maybe even write timestamps to the parts that that you value the most. But without further ado, let's dive into step number one. So step number one is knowing your target customer. Now, I think this can be almost over complicated for some people because as I was preparing for this episode, I made a note that you are not necessarily looking for unicorn. You're not looking for somebody that is so rare that your biggest obstacle is you can't find them. And you're not necessarily looking for somebody that is so specific that you wouldn't have a viable business if you only served that very, very specific person. So what I would say is if you were just getting started and you've helped fewer than 50 clients, maybe even fewer than 10, consider this as knowing who can afford to hire you right now and who you'd click with based on your personality, values, skills, experience and qualifications. So once you've identified who this person is, perhaps they are someone who lives a lifestyle where you know that you could improve it and you know that if you had touch points with this person, you could maintain a long term connection. So where your communication styles line up, your values line up, your personalities line up, they like your jokes, things like that. Once you have identified who that person is, that's going to help us expand into some of these next steps that we're going to go through. So step two is identify where those customers exist. So this isn't in the realm of stalking people. But it is understanding, you know, where do they dwell? You found the kind of people that you could probably help out. Well, what neighborhoods do they live in? Is it a more well off neighborhood? Is it more of a middle income neighborhood? Is it east side, west side? Is it in a certain state or province or country? Is there anything that you can identify that kind of calls out these people within your local areas? What are the popular coffee shops that they go to? Or perhaps what are the franchises that are in various areas that your kind of people gravitate towards? So in Canada, there's one kind of person that would go to Tim Hortons and one kind of person that would go to Starbucks. That might be the same for us and other nations. You might find that a certain kind of person shops at Target, maybe a certain kind of person shops at Walmart, and you might make your decisions accordingly. As you're kind of going through this, you want to also figure out where do they hang out where, when they don't work, where do they work? Are they a dentist? Are they a doctor? Are they a business owner? Do you tend to gravitate towards CEOs and what kind of groups are they a part of? So are they a part of a home ownership group? Are they a part of a car fanatic group? Are they part of the peloton moms group? There's a lot of different groups where people can hang out, where you might not have thought about it. And this could be where you start to build your connections, or maybe you know somebody in that group and you can have them be your ambassador. Without diving too far into that, I want to get into step number three. So we want to implement a strategy that ensures your potential customers are actively participating and engaging. So not only have you created that touch point, but you're either talking to them or they're involved with something that's tied to you. So this could be a challenge. It could be like a four week challenge where they walk away with a takeaway. They've found new tools for their mindset. Maybe they've found a way to track and increase their protein per day. Maybe it's a step count challenge. Something that kind of gives them like a full circle loop moment where they're like, I did it. I feel accomplished. I've learned something. I got value from doing this. Or it could be a survey. Maybe it's a survey that kind of gives them an idea of like what their struggle is. Perhaps they didn't know. And this addresses that. Maybe they were not Prioritizing sleep. Or maybe they are the perfect candidate to start a strength training program based on their present day lifestyle and based on the goals that they have shared with you for their future. You can frame it in all kinds of ways, but you need to structure something that kind of gets them into your circle. You could do coffee meetups, you could do a seminar. You can think outside the box. It doesn't have to be one on one, super scary, but you do have to connect with people. So whether you're doing this online or in person, we really have to reiterate that it's going to be detrimentally important to the success of your business that you talk to people. And if you can't talk to people, then you should start to reassess what your overarching goals are. Because I'm going to tell you right now, successful business owners find ways to talk to people. Even if they are shy, even if they're nervous, even if they're scared, even if they're introverted. They find a way. So find your unique way that works for you and lean into it. Which brings us into step number four. So you want to create a way to reward people for their accomplishment or participation and build brand awareness. This doesn't mean just making as much different swag products as possible. You kind of want to get clever with this. So you could do branded water bottle or shaker bottle. You could give them recognition or a shout out in your newsletter. Perhaps you have a paper newsletter, maybe you have an email newsletter and just showcasing them for what they've accomplished. Or this new person that you met could be a highlight for them that could make them feel validated. Perhaps you come up with a unique prize, something special to them. Maybe your business is growing and you have a budget that would otherwise go to like paid ads and you want to try something different. And maybe you want to give them something that they can gift themselves, the gift of fitness. Or they can pay it forward to someone in their family that wouldn't have otherwise taken that leap. These can be pretty neat prizes. Just the impact of a person in their life. Maybe you decide that you have a budget that you can send them on a cool, all inclusive little day trip out to a local park. Maybe their park pass is covered or maybe their their overnight fee at a local getaway is covered camping fee. You think outside the box. Think of things that might appeal to the people that you tend to gravitate towards. It could just be as simple as paying for their coffee and giving them a little small Token of your gratitude for them to pay for their next two coffees. After your coffee meetup, where you've gotten to know them, gotten to know their journey, gotten to talk about what you do, how you help people, you've created a lead in that way. And it all started from connecting with somebody and being, hey, I have a business. I help people with transformations, or I help people gain strength, or I help people gain better awareness of their lifestyle and making positive changes to help them live longer. And I'm wondering if you'd be interested in meeting up to chat over coffee. I do these once a week and this is just a reoccurring thing that I do to get out in the community. Worst thing that they can do is say no. And the more you get used to hearing no, the more resilient you are as a business owner. Some of the other things that you can do is with regards to a brand water bottle, you can use a reusable water bottle, which is great, but there's also an opportunity that you could leverage where if there was like a local run or a local fitness event where part of their logistics required that they have some kind of like disposable water bottle. If you were to connect with a supply company that could put your brand on that water bottle, on the label, that might be strategic. It could be a cost of like 50 cents per bottle. And if that generated a lead for you, it could be well worth the cost per lead. Something worth considering. It's something that I've seen a lot of realtors do. That's actually where I got that idea from and worth entertaining. So on to the next step here is give people tools to tell their friends. So when I talk about giving people tools to tell their friends, I am reflecting on how it's one thing to be like, hey, I've been really working on my fitness and I think that a lot of people would be getting value from working with this coach. It's another thing to have like, almost like a media kit or a some kind of a showcase that shows exactly what you did, who you did it with and how you did it. So I'm going to dive into this, into a bit more detail. Let's say you helped a rock star client over the course of 12 weeks or six months or one year. And you have never been more proud of a client progress that they've made. And you want them to be proud of it. You want everybody they know to be proud of it, and you want to give them a tool to showcase that now this idea I pulled from an auto body business. So what the auto body business would do is they would take the before of the vehicle, they would take the after of the vehicle. I've also seen, I think some detailing businesses would do this where they're showcasing basically the product of their hard work. And they're putting this on a business card specifically to give to that client, where that client gets to see, well, it's their vehicle, their transformation, their body, their portrait, their picture, that testimonial. And then in turn, instead of just handing out some blank business card with your name, your brand, you're this, you're that, it's actually them. Then your logo is still on there, your contact info is still on there. People will know that you were the person that supported them on that journey. But for them to be like, hey, check this out, that's pretty cool. So if somebody gained confidence and they had just a really great testimonial, you could feature that testimonial, a great portrait of that client who talks about what they gained from working with you. And then it has your contact info in turn within that offer where you have that card. Let's say your client referred client to you, you could reward them with a credit for future services with you, or perhaps you could attribute it to a reward or maybe just take them out to coffee. Again, figure out something that works with the scale of your business that shows your genuine appreciation of that person's support of your business. Because everybody, every business starts with one person and it could end with one person. So you have to treat every client like they're your only client. And so whether you're sending them to Mexico or getting them a customized coffee mug, find a way to make sure that your people know that you care. Sometimes it's just through how you treat them while they are your client and beyond. Maybe it's just that level of connection, that level of support that they're getting from you and they couldn't ask for anything more. You're going to be the best judge of that. And the best data to look at is going to be your attention rate how long your clients stick with you. And it's just important to find something where they, they understand that they're valued. And then in turn the client that was looking at the card was like, yeah, I will sign up. Perhaps you could offer them a reward for a long term commitment. Maybe if they sign up for six months, in contrast with like four weeks or 12 weeks, they get a reward of a discount, something that make it make sense for your business so that you're still getting the profit margin that you require to be viable and to value your time. So then our next point here, step number six, bring value to other businesses. Now I think it's important to get an idea of what businesses you have connections with. So perhaps it's businesses that you used to work at in the before times, maybe in times when you did part time work maybe 10 years ago, maybe you have friends who own businesses, maybe your neighbor owns a business, maybe there's a business down the street, could be all kinds of things. It could also be via your online network where it's just people that you've stayed connected with and, and despite the fact that you might not have a big social media following, maybe you have some very integral social media connections where you could offer some kind of a webinar. Now the lists that I've gone through to maybe give you some inspiration of what to think about are perhaps you are aligning yourself with a business that requires a fairly major labor workforce. So this would in most cases be like warehouse or construction or just something where the business runs because people are on their feet and they're lifting things. So you could provide a lifting seminar for a labor workforce. You could format it just as though it's for fitness professionals, make them feel like really professional, really knowledgeable people who lift things for a living. Because that's exactly what they do. So why wouldn't they need the best of the best and that's who you're going to be. Or maybe you're more nutrition geared and you offer a nutrition seminar to a construction or demolition or renovation company. A lot of people who have a very high energy balance who if they just dialed in their nutrition a bit better, would have an incredible body composition if they don't already. There are plenty of businesses that already have these bases covered, but I'm sure if you look hard enough, you'll find businesses that would get a great deal of value from somebody being able to come in there and explain macronutrients and to really give them ideas of how they could increase their protein, maybe give recommendations of different whey protein supplements or supplementing creatine and you could be the game changer. And perhaps from there you could provide ongoing support to the people in the admin, the people in the sister companies. Maybe there's a neighboring city, maybe it's a franchise of companies, maybe it's a really big conglomerate that has branches all across North America. You never know. That would be your way in for all these bringing value to other businesses. In most cases, the quickest way to make this happen is to offer it for lowest cost possible or no cost. That gets you in the door and from there you can show your offer. And if you don't get any offer, you've at least generated this community of leads. Perhaps you can create an agreement where once you've entered this business, people are signing your form, your intake form and they're added to your email list, at which point they can cancel at any time. And that's just the simple trade off for you, providing value to their business at no cost. One of the other examples I've thought about is mobility or movement seminar for an IT company. So whether you are doing some static or dynamic movements, maybe it's a yoga session, maybe it's just like a breathing meditation session, just something to help people who work it, where perhaps they're in a seated posture for a long time, maybe they struggle with discomfort in their hips, their joints, their knees, their back, all kinds of stuff. You could probably help them out. You could then in turn act as a consultant for their company when they're finding that they need to give their workplace a bit of a boost to reduce the amount of time that people are out of office or at home or feeling unwell. This could be an opportunity for you to create a business catalyst in that space. Next item here is now the way I'm wording it is selling tables at local restaurant for a seminar or event. But I'm going to explain what I mean here. So most local restaurant businesses offer it on a pretty tight profit margin. Food's expensive, with inflation, there's, there's a lot going on. So any opportunity that they have that they can fill in the gaps, a lot of forward thinking restaurant owners will be very much on board. And that probably goes the same for many coffee shop owners or any food industry where it's like busy dead, busy dead. So if you can ensure that 20 people are going to come through their doors and order a plate of food and you can pre sell the tickets, it's very likely that they will work with you to host just about anything that's safe as long as you have the, the insurance needed, as long as you are qualified, etc, as long as it doesn't look poorly on their brand essentially. And this is something that I did early in my training career, I did a boot camp once, I did a goal setting session another time. And they're both for the same local restaurant business that just happen to have Two locations, they now have three. We'll be doing an event with a fitness conference that I'll be helping with in the end of the week here. And so when you create a partnership with a business, it can flourish for years to come. The first event that I did was 2018. The second one was late 2018 and I'm still connected with them. I actually worked with them for a little bit on the service side as a porter behind the bar. And you'd be amazed at how many of your connections from, from before can still pay off today as you're putting out the event cost, your meal will include gratuity and you'll be bringing people in. It's a win win situation. If anything, just add in a little bit to cover the cost of materials. But I wouldn't necessarily worry about making this a super profitable event because there's potential for lots of opportunities down the road. You could perhaps get an up and coming photographer or a photographer in your network to come and photograph. When I say up and comer, it could be like having a intern to build their portfolio. Essentially what you would be doing is getting more documentation for your branding to show the things that you do, how you help people, how exciting it is, who you connect with, where you've been, how involved in the community you are, and you'd kind of go from there. All that stuff can help you when you're overcoming your roadblock of the social media, which brought us to this episode in the first place. So step number seven. Now, I like this one because I'm a fan of walking. Step number seven is start a walking club in your community. Walking is the entry point for a lot of people if they're able bodied and able to walk. And, and if not, you can maybe integrate a rolling club where they're in their chair or whatever they do. But it's the entry point to meaningful lifestyle change. If you create a safe space and a sense of community is powerful and will impact lives in greater ways than any social media post can. So a lot of people don't really feel a sense of community. If you build it, they will come. If you create something that people are excited about, they'll be very passionate about it. And as they get to know you, they're going to trust you more. And so if there are things that they would value from working with you on, they're more likely to work with you after they've gotten to know you. And how better to get to know you than to go on long walks with you and talk with you and be able to get their exercise without making a big thing out of it because you're just meeting up at the flagpole for a walk and. And then when you're done, you can all go for coffee or you go on your separate ways, maybe go to the dog park. But this gets you out of the house. Gets them out of the house, creates some genuine connections. Perhaps they have other people that may want to go for a walk or maybe they want training or nutrition coaching or something like that. You can make T shirts for your group and so that they can be walking brand ambassadors for you. Maybe they really like the T shirt and they wear it grocery shop and they wear it everywhere else they go. You'd be surprised what could happen from starting a walking club. Maybe they have big social media followings and they're talking about the walking club and who started the walking club and where the walking club goes. Little things like that can go a long way and probably will get you further faster than the average organic social media post. So step number eight, create strategic partnerships. So we've kind of touched on creating strategic partnerships when we talked about bringing value to other businesses. But in this case I want to think like thinking outside of the box, thinking of people who serve the people who inevitably need the things that you offer to. And so perhaps maybe that strategic partnership could be like a kickback for if that person refers somebody to you, you can give them a credit or referral bonus or something like that. And the businesses that I've identified, and it's not limited to this, this is just scratching the surface is wedding planners. Because if you're working with wedding planner, you're probably working in advance of the wedding. And I'm sure that the people involved in the wedding have certain goals for their mental and physical health which probably correlate with the offer that you provide. So that wedding planner can say, hey, I am aligned with a rock solid trainer, coach, whatever you are, and I can set you up for success. I can make this thing go so well. It'll be the best day of your life. And all you need to do to create that connection is find a wedding planner that you click with, find one in your community, find one in your network, start meeting up with them, seeing if any of them are aligned with your values and your goals. Where your goal is to help people have the best day of their life and their goal is to help people have the best day of their life. And it's a win, win situation. And as you help people make their life Changing, transformation. Perhaps they want to get married and you send them to the wedding planner. So it works both ways. It's just something that many people might not have thought of at first. Next is massage therapist. There's a lot of people that go for massage for stress, that might not have considered strength training for stress or for feeling better. And so this is going to be nuanced because every different practitioner is going to have different biases and styles. But in the best case scenario, you, perhaps you aligned yourself with a massage therapist that was just as passionate about fitness as you are, and maybe they're just not qualified to offer it, or just as passionate about nutrition as you are and they're not qualified to offer it the way you are. And you could create a harmonious partnership where when your people need a massage, you send them to them. And when their people need to have additional things in their lifestyle to get the opportunity, optimal results from the massages that they're getting, they could send them to you. Other examples are doctors. The last doctor appointment I had, they actually assessed certain things and suggested just certain shoulder strengthening exercises would help with some of the things that was coming to them to address. And they mentioned physiotherapists. It wasn't all about painkillers and medication and all this other stuff. No band aid fixes. So it is possible to find people in all kinds of different industries and professions and spaces that are on the same page. The only way to find them is to start networking, start to get out there, ask questions, ask your friends, ask who knows a person who knows a person who knows a person, and get to the bottom of it. Start to build a, a contact list in your phone or a spreadsheet or a document or something where you can keep track of the names, who they serve, where they work, what their website is, what your partnership could be if you've reached out to them, stuff like that. The other items on the list are chiropractors, which some of you may be physiotherapists, or physical therapists, depending which region. You're listening to this from dating coaches, that's going to be huge because from my point of view, dating coaches, that's going to be a rising industry because of the rise in social media and AI. A lot of people are going to need all the help that they can get to create meaningful connections because society isn't what it used to be. So if you can find a dating coach that advocates for living the best physical, mental health and lifestyle possible, chances are they'd be an ambassador for the things that you offer. You can also look at executive coaches, people who are specifically helping successful professionals be that much more successful by optimizing their time or helping them gain more money or live a better lifestyle. There's all kinds of coaches out there, whether it's life coaches, fitness coaches, executive coaches, everything coaches. And chances are there's a way that you can complement one another, even if you're very similar in what you provide. And if it's the exact same, just find one of the other services and work with them. The other ones that are listed here were sobriety coaches, people who help others get over addiction. That's a great one, because those people are focused a lot on things beyond the fitness and nutrition. They can't necessarily always be the one stop shop. So a lot of them will partner with fitness and nutrition coaches specifically. I actually know one, and he has basically a roster of people that he works alongside with to give a complete service to the clients that he serves. You can work with emergency services. They value fitness greatly. So when I say that, I'm talking about ambulance, fire, police, nurses. You work with unions, whether that be like physical labor unions, welding unions, boilermaker unions, nurse unions, teacher unions that could get you in the door to do guest presentations at their meetings or provide value to their newsletters, or maybe give an exclusive offer to the people who are part of that community to kind of make them still feel seen, heard and valued. And there's endless possibilities beyond that. But hopefully that kind of starts to get you thinking. Step number nine is to structure your life where you're out in public more than in isolation. And as you're building a business that's primarily based online, that's going to be a lot easier said than done. But to have a viable business, you need to talk to people. You need to talk to a lot of people. So some of the sneaky ways to do this is you can brand yourself. Now, when I say brand yourself, I'm going to give you a few examples. Some of these examples come from a friend, colleague and mentor. Magdola. Some of these examples come from coaches across the industry. I'll start off with one of my examples that I've done myself. So I have this black shirt that says, this is my personal training shirt and has my website at the bottom. Then I have another black shirt that says, this is my grocery shopping shirt and has my website at the bottom. So I wear the personal training shirt at the gym, where there's about 30 different contractors. And it's kind of a call out to say, a, I'm a personal trainer, B, I've got a personality, C, this is my website where you can find me if you ever thought you'd want to work with me. But maybe you're too shy to work out or to reach out, I should say. Now the idea that I have borrowed and been inspired by Magdola on is a laptop skin. The paraphrasing of what the laptop skin would say is like. If it was for me, it'd be like, hey, my name is Chris, I'm a personal trainer and online coach. If I look busy, come say hi and if you're too shy, reach out to me@chrislank.com so just something along those lines is an icebreaker. Another thing that I think he has done is he would prepay some of the coffees at the front counter so that maybe the next 10 people that come through don't have to worry about paying. And then the barista or the server can just point to him with his identifiable laptop screen screen and hopefully his friendly face. And I thought that was very clever. Another thing that he would do is he'd go into like the self help section of bookstores and just slide in some business cards saying this isn't the way, this doesn't have to be how it, how it goes. And these are self help with regards to like the sort of not science back solutions, the guru solutions, the things that necessarily aren't sustainable or a little bit too good to be true. And it would just be steering them back onto a more healthy, sustainable, less toxic path. And it's just kind of like poking humor at the irony of the fact that the person was just about to make this choice and they came across the bookmark and like, oh, wait a second, there's another way. And they had contact info that one might not be for everybody. Takes a bit of guts to start putting bookmarks and books at the bookstore, but it's on the table. I'm sure that nobody would be upset if you at least gave it a try. Just as long as you're not breaking any rules. So the other things that you can do are just having a hat with your brand, just having a T shirt with your logo, having a water bottle with your logo that you carry everywhere. Something where people like, oh, that person's professional. They got a thing. This is what, what they do. Don't overkill it. You don't have to look like a branded out soccer player that looks almost so professional that they're intimidating. But Just kind of make it so a person could quickly jump to the conclusion of what you do and that you might be able to help them. You could join social groups like public speaking clubs, you could join social sports clubs, you could take a class in a room full of like minded peers. So that could be a pottery class, a photography class, a music class, a improv acting class, a dance class. Try to root it back to your, your target customer. So when you're thinking, where do your target customers hang out? Find something that you genuinely enjoy too, so that you're genuinely having fun on the journey. Don't do something that you don't want to do just because you want to meet the people. Do something that you want to do knowing that there's a better chance that you meet people doing that thing than sitting in your house. Now step 10 is I want you to create some kind of a structure so that on a reoccurring basis, you're meeting somebody new every week. Now, the way that I've done this historically has almost always been podcast, but there has been a time when I would do some kind of a call out or an invitation and it'd be like, hey, who wants to go for a coffee and a walk this week? And it could leave a lot of people confused. And if they were like, well, what, what's this all about? Like, what are we trying to do here? And it'd be like, well, I just, I like going for walks, I like coffee, and I don't like doing it by myself. So if you want to join, we can talk about life, I can talk to you about fitness things, we can talk about dogs or ice cream or sandwiches. And when the walk is done, we go about our way and continue on with our day. So little things like where it's in the calendar, where it's set in stone, or you have accountability with somebody else and you're continuing to connect with people can keep you top of mind for people. When your business needs to get more clients, when you need to get more leads, this might be the icebreaker that you need to put somebody just tip them over the edge where it's like, they thought they might work with you one day to they're going to work with you next week or they're going to work with you tomorrow. Because now they finally understand what your offer is. They understand that you can deliver it in an app, they understand that it's a subscription model, they understand they can cancel anytime. They understand that results are guaranteed. They understand that you're really approachable you're not as intimidating as they thought. You're relatable. You got funny stories, you got good jokes, you're smart. All these different things that they can gain from going for walks with you and connecting with you. But all these strategies should help you. The only thing missing is going to be the effort that you put into them and the level to which you hold yourself accountable. So as you reflect on this episode, make sure that you are starting to schedule things into your calendar. Make sure that you're following through with stuff. Make sure you're getting out of your comfort zone. Tracking things, writing down email addresses, writing down phone numbers. You get leads. You track leads. See how often you've communicated with them. Follow up. Make it genuine. Make it real. You don't have to be sleazy or like a used car salesperson. But if you have a big business goal, you need to serve people. And in order to serve people, you need to talk to people. If social media hasn't been working the way you'd like, and even if it was social media, you'd still have to talk to people, then think out the box and try things that are off social media now. I hope this helped. If it did, please leave us a five star review on Spotify or go to Apple Podcast five star review Leave us a review tag simpsonfitness or myself hristianlittle on Instagram. Thank you for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.

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