S1 Ep 31: How to Identify An Avatar To Attract More Clients

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle-Up Show. Today, Richard is going to take you through a quick training called the Avatar Identifier to help you find the best clients to work with who are attracted to you and stick with you in the long run. Enjoy.

We're talking about how to actually cut through the noise, cut through the congestion out there, and make sure that you're the only, you're the only gym, studio, personal trainer that people are going to think about when they want to get fit and healthy. We're talking about specific people that love what you do. We're talking about just focusing on You know, just people that are raving fans of what you do, clients that pay their bills on time, clients that refer your clients, clients that you get amazing results for, and clients that just love to keep coming back for more and more and more. That's choosing the perfect clientele to go and train. Okay, so let's get to it. I've got a 4-part process I want to take you through to identify this amazing client base. I mean, It's funny talking about this. You've never talked about this before because I remember many years ago I decided to fire some clients. I said, no, I don't want to work with you anymore. I don't want to work with you. And I decided to start letting go clients. Now, sometimes firing clients seems a bit like out there, but the concept that we're talking about, we are talking about a concept of letting go clients that you don't— that no longer serve you. or that you don't think you can get results for, and you can open up your premises, your space, your time to people that you love to train. So think about this concept. Why do something you hate for? It's your business, so you should train the clients that you wanna train, and you should have amazing clients coming to you. Why? What are the benefits? Well, number one, you're gonna get people who just refer you naturally. And if you have people that are like that rotten apple there, you know, that rotten fruit that's got one rotten and it rots everybody else, that's pretty much what happens. It drags everybody else down. Literally, your business can make or break with this concept here. It can make or break. It can thrive or it can die. And at the end of the day, it all comes down to ensuring that you have the right people in your tribe, in your business. And I think the whole concept here is make sure you give your clients a name, not just clients, make sure they have a name. So they're really identifying who they are and they love to come into your circle. We have a program at Com We have a Ninja program. It's a marketing ninja program, so we call our clients ninjas. We have another program, it's called Scale. We call those clients scalers. So always having a name to identify these clients is a great first step, so they feel like they're not just a number, they feel like they're a tribe. Okay, so let's go through this. How do you actually find clients? How do you find your audience and avatar? An avatar is a person you want to go for. How do you refine that so you don't feel like, oh my gosh, if I, you know, and I know, I know what the problems are. People go, well, if I refine and just go after, for example, let's say females, pretty simple avatar instead of females, males, you might say, well, I'm going to lose 50% of my market. And that's a fair call. You will lose 50% of your market, but in fact, you'll also gain a much stronger market because you're calling out to that avatar. If you can slice your market in that really specific zone, you become that industry leader, that specific person. So when now people are searching for what they want, they go to you directly. This is fundamentally one of the best ways that you can scale up your business without having to focus on all the negative people around you you don't want. So let's talk about number 1. Number 1, you wanna go back to your current clients, current and past clients, current and past clients and ask yourself, is there a common thread with these clients? Have they had similar problems, results, or is there a similar demographic that I've trained? So we wanna ask ourselves, go back to your current clients, currently clients you're training, and any past clients, and ask yourself, is there a current kind of thread that you generally get in? So you might get people that have lower back pain, you might get people that are post or pre-pregnancy, you might get people that want strength, you might get— focused people that are executives, busy people. So depending on who your kind of your clients are, you'll probably have a good indication already who you're attracting. And just because you attract them now, you can change who you attract in any state of the game. You know, we had a marketing company for many years and we went through everybody, every single industry. And a few years ago, we— I got some great advice off a mentor, a friend and mentor of mine, and I said, you know what, let's just slice it. Let's just really go deep into one audience and one avatar. And when we did that, everything changed. Why? Because we became the leaders in our niche, in our industry. So instead of going for everybody, we became the one person people are looking for when they want studio marketing or fitness marketing. Same concept with your studio. You want to go and focus on that. So number one is go back to your current clients and kind of write a list of of all the clients and kind of who they are, what they are. Are they male or female? Are they working, non-working? Are they a tradie? What are they? Who are these people? What are the common threads that they share? That's number 1, okay? Number 2, was there a particular client that you really liked working with? Now, you have the clients, not everybody's equal. There's some really amazing clients you love to work with, and they're probably a common thread with those guys as well. So identify what you liked, why you liked working with this current client. Was it because they turned up on time? Was it because they paid their bills on time? Was it because they got amazing results? Were they good at like just implementing and eating well? What was it they liked? What were their pain points? Number 2. So the first one was identify what they liked. Number 2, what were their pain points? What pain points did they have? Why they came to you first. Number 3, why did they start training with you in the first place for? What was the first thing they decided to do when they were training with you. What was that first thing they tried to do? And then identify their demographic information. So what is it, the fundamental things of why is it location-based, was it income-based, why were they with you for? So identify that current client that you really like working with. Now, this is important, point number 2. Why? Because these are the clients you want to focus around more of, and we can Identify these people, identify their pain points. What we do in the backend of marketing, we can now start putting the right messaging out in the pain points. And we can also then talk about why they came to us in the first place for us. Now, if you're not sure why they came to you, guess what? The easiest thing to do is just go back to the clients, the current clients, say, hey, I wanted to ask you a few questions. I will try to grow our brand and give you more service. Why do you come to us in the first place for? And they're going to tell you why they came to you in the first place for. You might have to ask them because they probably forget, but just ask them, what was it? Why did you come here for? And that's going to give you the greatest clues. And if you don't ask, you'll never know. So ask your current clients and keep it really simple, guys. You don't have to send out a MailChimp survey. You just have to basically just ask them at the end of the session, hey, I've got a couple of questions. Do you have a minute? I'd love to ask you a couple of questions. We're improving our marketing, our business, and I'd love to know. Super simple. And believe me, people want to help you grow. Your clients want to help you because people generally want to help other people. So if you can ask them and bring them along for this journey, this is a really great first step. Number 3, this is it. Once you've identified them, this is a big one that a lot of people don't do. Once you identify them, You want to choose three different avatars, so up to three different avatars you can work with. So three, I wouldn't go more than three because it's just too many. Now you can go, for example, in the background here I've got a lady in the red top. I've got a lady in the green top. She's got no face on, so that's kind of random, right? And one might be a younger audience. One might be an older audience. Let me tell you something: just because you say I want to work with females, someone who's, for example, in the red top, let's say she's eighteen. and the lady in the green is maybe 45. Let me tell you something. An 18-year-old has a different set of problems than a 45-year-old lady. 2 different worlds. Even someone who's 18 and 30, 2 different worlds. Can you imagine when you were 18, or you may have a kid who's 18, 17, 16, and they got a different set of problems? Like they're thinking about, dating. They're thinking about, do I look good in my pair of jeans because I'm about to go on this hot date with this guy or girl? And then maybe a 30-year-old or a 40-year-old are thinking about, well, geez, what am I going to cook for dinner tonight for my kids? Like, who knows what they're thinking about? So you've got 2 different sets of problems, and your job as a trainer, as a fitness professional, as a studio owner, is to ensure that you solve their problems along the way. I had a great example of this. when someone said, Richard, I'm going for, I'm going for post, you know, moms that just had babies. So post-pregnancy moms that have babies. And they said, my biggest problem is I can't, you know, they never have time. I said, no, that's not their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is they're sleep deprived. Their biggest problem is they're up throughout the night and they can't get to your sessions in the morning because you've only got them at 7 o'clock in the morning. So that is your biggest problem. is you're gonna solve their problem of how do they get more sleep? Now that's a big call, right? But that's what their problem is at that point. So you're gonna put out your content, your marketing to solve those problems of sleep deprived, not, hey, you're lazy and you can't get to the studio. That's the wrong messaging totally. So, sorry, I'm sidetracking. Number 3, once you've done that, you wanna choose 3 different avatars that you can work with. So give them a name, really important. So it could be Stay-at-Home Linda, or busy working Linda, whatever it needs to be. Give them a name so you know the name. Number 2, give them a story. This can be made up. For example, the story is just, construct a story about the avatar. Hey, stay-at-home Linda was a stay-at-home wife and she loved to do this, this, this, and that's my stay-at-home Linda. You could have working Linda. Working Linda gets up in the morning at 6 o'clock. She trains, Trains really hard for 30 minutes, then she goes to work. She works a 12-hour day, then she comes back. She has takeout dinner, and then she goes whatever. So you've got to have stories in your head of who these people are. Really important. And then this is number three. Point three is then go to Google and go to images and just search for your avatar. Basically search for busy female executive, right? And there that's your picture of your busy leader. Busy Linda or Stay-at-Home Linda, whatever you wanna call it. You can't type Stay-at-Home Linda. It's not gonna come up in Google, right? But you know in your mind what this person is doing. And so you can kind of find that picture and then you can stick them just here like this. So just here, I think. So you can stick them on your wall and when the phone call comes or your staff or team watch this, they basically will go, oh yeah, you're Stay-at-Home Linda. And then we can actually write on that their problems, their pain points, What they love, what they hate, all that kind of stuff. And so number 4, now that you have 3 avatars, let's say you've got 3, you want to focus on that. So focus just on one and then go the next one, focus on the next one, and then go to the third one. Don't focus on 3 at once if it's the first time you're doing this because there's too much to do. You mean you need to have an ad set for that avatar, you need to have a landing page possibly for that avatar, you'd have photos for that avatar. So just focus on one and then move to the next one. Then after that, what we do is we then start to flavor all your marketing to be focused around that avatar. So for example, you've got stay-at-home Linda or busy Linda. We wanna make sure the testimonials, the case studies, the photos, the imagery, the content is all based around the stay-at-home Linda or the busy Linda. So other people go, wow, that's me, that's me, that's me. I need to train at this place. You know what I'm talking about, guys? It's just a perfect fit. You find a business, you find a service, and you go, wow, that is exactly my problem. If you can achieve that in your marketing, you win the game and you never have competitors, you never have competition, and that's exactly how you win the game. This was something that I did many years ago, and this is one of the greatest marketing pieces that you can ever do because really it cuts all the clients you don't want out and you just love what you do. There's no longer having to work crazy hours and no longer having to serve Every single client, every single industry. It just makes life really, really smooth.

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