S2 Ep 31: The Announcement Method
In this podcast episode, Richard Toutounji presents the "Announcement Method," a step‑by‑step, no‑budget strategy for generating organic leads, especially for fitness professionals and other small‑business owners. He begins by explaining why many entrepreneurs fail to communicate what they actually do, sharing a personal anecdote about a directory business that went unnoticed even by his own brother. He then outlines the core process: (1) tell your story through a video or written post; (2) broadcast that story on three key platforms—Instagram Stories, Facebook (personal page), and LinkedIn—using short, heartfelt content and a clear call‑to‑action to direct‑message (DM) you. Detailed tactics for each platform are provided, including the optimal number of Instagram stories, how to use personal Facebook pages versus fan pages, and updating LinkedIn employment status. Finally, he explains how to maximize reach by tagging relevant people, spending time in private conversations, asking viewers to share or tag others, and extending an invitation to work. He emphasizes that the method relies on time rather than money, can be repeated a few times a year, and serves as a free alternative to paid Facebook ads, with a brief mention of his "Ninja Program" for those who want deeper support.
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Welcome to the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. Today you're going to hear a training from Richard that is called the Announcement Method. It's hands down the best way to get a bunch of organic leads into your business and works best if you have something to announce. So let's take a listen.
Welcome to the announcement method. Today I'm talking about a really important method. And it's the announcement method. I'm going to share with you the tactics of how to use the announcement method to generate new leads. And when you are in the stage of 0 to 10 clients, even 10 to 20 clients, even when you're just You know, you're strapped for cash and you have no money to generate a lead, but we have all this technology. What do you do? And that's what I'm going to talk about today. And if you don't know what we do, we help fitness professionals market their business online through education or services. So let me put some context to this announcer method. This is a method that we use a lot here when we are developing, when we're working with clients who literally have, Richard, I've got no money. Um, you know, I came from a bootstrap, I call it the bootstrap approach where the The only thing that you have is your shoelace on your shoes and you have no money in your bank to market. When someone says, how much is your marketing budget? You're like laughing inside thinking, well, I don't have a marketing budget. I barely have food for this week. So if that's you, this is a great method for that because what we generally have when we barely can rub a few cents together, we have time and we all have time when we start our business. Let me know if that makes sense to you. When you've started your business out, you might not have much cash but you have time. So this announcement method is exactly for those particular people who literally don't want to spend any money on marketing but have a lot of time. And not to say that this is just for startups. This method is awesome. It doesn't matter what stage of business you're at. But what it does require is time. And it takes time to ensure that you do this correctly. And I'm going to take you through step by step how to do it correctly. I want to share a story while you're doing that. You know why this announcement method is really important? Because, you know, it's happened to me. Like, I, when I started with the online marketing game, I had a few different directories like Yellow Pages directories for different industries. And one of those industries I had was for a removalist industry and it was called relocating.com.au. It's still active today. And anyway, the whole method of that business was that I was had to get leads for removalists, and removalists would pay us a monthly fee, and I would get leads for the removalists. Now, this wasn't a business that, you know, obviously I'm in the fitness game, in the marketing game of fitness. That's where a lot of people know me from. But I have been very successful in other industries such as funerals, such as real removalists, you know, cosmetic surgery, things like that. So, you know, I kind of kept this website on the low a little bit where I didn't really share it much, and It was really a concept that came to me many years ago when my own brother— I had this website live and I was really pushing to drive traffic there and we did very well with this website. But I remember very clearly my brother— I've got 3 brothers— and my brother said, listen, I'm— it was a family catch-up and he goes, I've just spent the last week trying to find removalists. I can't find any good ones anywhere. And at that stage there, he literally had no idea what I did in my business and he had no concept that I had a directory with over 300 removalists and those removalists could have helped him, but he had no idea because I never talked about it. I never talked about that I actually had a business that helped people to find, you know, to move by finding removalists. And I thought, this is ridiculous. My own brother doesn't even know what I do. And I just thought, You know, you know, how can we ensure that this doesn't happen again? Because sometimes it's the people around us, it's our friends and family that actually have a burning desire for something of your services, but they just actually don't know what you do. Let me know if that makes sense. You know, do people think that you're in the fitness game and you like going to the gym and it's all fun, like you're getting— staying fit? But they may not actually know what you actually do. I'll say that again. They may not actually know what you do. They may think that, yeah, he's a fitness dude and he likes going to the gym and he likes going to City Surf, but maybe they actually don't know what you do, what services you offer. So that's what we've created, the Announcement Method. And the Announcement Method basically announces to the world what you do because It's when you actually really clear what you do, clarity will come into your world. And so let me take you through the method. This is how it goes. When you're in the startup phase of zero, no clients, 5 clients, 10 clients, even if you're— you've got 100 clients, you can still do this method. It still works very effectively, but it's got to work at the right time and you've got to follow the step-by-step process, which I'm about to share with you now. I'm really excited. Okay, here we go. The announcement method. There is a 3-part, like a 5-part strategy to this. And you can follow through. So number one is you need to now tell your story. So this is it. Step number one, you need to tell your story. You need to tell your story. So for example, you may have been doing a personal training certificate over the last 2 years, 6 months, 3, 3 years, whatever. And you might have had a transition of careers. You might have been in a different area. And what you want to be doing is you want to tell your story from if nobody knew what you did. If you all of a sudden got all these Facebook friends and leads and that kind of stuff, you want to tell your story for the very first time like nobody knows what you do. Just think nobody knows what you do and I'm just going to ask you a straight out question. What do you do? Now what you want to do is you want to build the excitement in telling a story. So you want to be announcing this story to the world and the fastest way you can announce this story to the world is you've got to figure out what, what platforms do we have today to announce your story to the world. So for example, I've just finished my personal training course. I've been posting stuff about fitness and City to Surf and how I like training. And people generally know that I'm into the fitness game, but they don't really know what I do in my personal training. Do I work in a gym? Do I help people lose weight? Do I help people gain weight? What type of clients do I want? They have no idea about that. And I'll test that out. Test it out with your own friends and family. I bet you, I bet you that 95% of them actually don't know what you do. So basically what you do, you want to update your— you want to basically update your people and you want to build excitement. It's very important to share your story here from your journey. So I started as a, you know, I started into fitness, I enjoyed the fitness game, I entered into this course called yada yada, I got my certificate, and then, you know, I did the training, I did the course, I loved it so much, I opened up my business, and then boom, this is what I do. That's the story you want to tell in a video. That's the first part. And the second part is you want to share it in a, in a text sentence. So 2, 3, 4 paragraphs, a whole page if you want to, if you're a writer, 3 pages if you really want to. But you want to share at least 1 to 2 paragraphs with a video. So that's the first part. You need to build excitement. How are you going to build excitement? Well, there is 3 platforms you're going to put them on. One is Facebook, second is Instagram, third is LinkedIn. These are the 3 platforms you're going to be sharing this excitement strategy on, the announcement method I should say. So what you want to be doing is you want to go to Instagram and you want to go to your stories. Instagram stories is a great place. Instagram stories is like people that are seeing what you do in post, but this is like behind the scenes of what you actually do. This is like walking past You're in a hotel room and you're walking past the hotel, another room, and you see it open. And this is like looking inside what they're doing. Instagram Stories does the exact same methodology as that. So what you want to do is you want to do— you want to set yourself up for around 4 to 6 stories. Okay, now every story, I believe it's 15 seconds at this stage, it always changes, but about 15 seconds per story. So what you want to be doing is you want to be sharing your story. You want to say, Hey guys, if you've been following me, I just want to share with you what I've been working on the last 2 years and who I am today because I'm different to who I was 2 years ago. I left that job and I want you to just know what I do because if you're going to start to follow me, what's going to happen is I'm going to start posting images with fit people, with my clients. I just want to tell you, you know, what I'm actually doing and why I'm doing this for. So I just thought if you want to know this, I'm going to share my story. And what you want to be doing is you want to go through Instagram and you want to hit the video and then you want to continue the next video and the next video and the next video. Because remember, it's 15 seconds. Correct me if it's wrong, is it 15 seconds or 30 seconds? And what you want to be doing is you want to hold it down and you want to keep, you want to keep continuing because what you're going to see is that people will keep hooked on the 15 seconds and you want to kind of hook them every 15 seconds. Seconds. So they move through your journey. And again, you just want to be sharing the story. Tell people what you're up to. Yes, Instagram Stories. Tell people what you're up to. Tell them what you've been working on. You did a course, it was great. I decided to become a personal trainer. I'm really excited. I love helping people. I'm actually working in this kind of area with these kind of people. You know, if that helps you— now this is the thing— if that helps you, what you need to be doing is you need to ask them to to DM you. You need to say, listen, if this relates to you or if you know somebody, just give me a DM. Uh, you know, get me a DM, just put a DM and we'll connect. And you want— that's your lead source is the DM, the direct message. Does that make sense? So Instagram, 4 to 5 stories as a minimum. You could do more, but you know, people's attention span on Instagram stories is not that much. They might watch 6 stories max. I doubt they'll watch 12. Depends how entertaining you are, of course. And that's the whole thing is building excitement in the story. So that's the internal page for Instagram. Now you can also, you know, share a video on your Instagram page as well. You know, that's a little bit different, but you can put it on the front of your Instagram story as well. Now the second part is Facebook. Facebook is really important, but you're going to tell me that I don't have a fan page with many fans. And I'm going to say that's okay. But what you do have is you have a personal page. So you ask them, you ask them to send you a DM on the last video. Okay, so you tell your story on the last video. If this interests you, if you know somebody, just DM me. If you want to have a conversation, let me know. But you know what? If, if we've been friends since high school and this is not what you're— this is not right, just unfollow me. You know what I mean? Just say, listen, this is what I'm gonna be sharing now. If you want to go with my action, check it out. If, if this helps you, DM me. But that's what I'm going to be doing. So on the last one, do all the stories belong together or would you recommend they are all different? Yeah, they all belong together. It's like a continuation. If I did one video, I would cut it. But the great thing with stories is that you can break up your, you know, you can break up your videos in 15 seconds. So it's like a continuation. It's like It's like at the end of a TV series, they leave you as a cliffhanger. Try to leave everybody as a cliffhanger for every 15 seconds because I want to go to the next 15 seconds and the next 15 seconds. So it's building anticipation. And that's why we call it the announcement method. You're announcing something really big, like you've just changed your career, you've just got a new job, and people need to say to you, congratulations, that's so good, I'm so happy for you. That's the angle that you need to play it, not Hey, sign me up. It's just announcing what you do, and what's going to happen is people will naturally progress through that. Okay guys, I'm going to move on. Number 2 is Facebook. Now, for those who are really, uh, they hate live videos, you don't have to do this live at all. Okay, you can pre-record the video, make it, uh, you know, make it heartfelt. That's the number one thing. Make it heartfelt. Make it clear what you do. Make it exciting that you're going into this new venture of personal training. Why you went into the venture of personal training for. Obviously, this can be a longer video, telling more of your story. And you know, this is a this is a process that obviously this video is is the reason. It's a story back to them. You know, so in this story again, you want to build the excitement. You want to update. Tell them what you've been doing, what you've been working on. You can share this as a live or you can do a pre-record. I know a lot of you out there. Hey, I've never done lives and it's going to freak you out. Just do the prerecorded. Not a problem at all. That's fine. And then you want to post it. Now you want to post it on your personal page, personal page. The reason why I say your personal page is because on your personal page, most likely you're going to have some friends on it. On your fan page, you're not going to be having a huge amount of fans because you've just started your business. It's probably, you know, trying to get out there. So your personal page does that because you got to remember, That your personal page, you're like, you know, 2 degrees of separation away from anywhere. So you got to remember that this person, if they're an old school friend of yours, if they're old clients you've worked with, your old boss, your old plumber, your old electrician, somebody you met late at night at a party and you're just friending everybody. If you have friends, if you have 200 friends, 100 friends, 56 friends, 31 friends, you know, my parents only have 30, 50 friends and it's great. They know all the feeds that are coming through. So you can imagine. If this video goes to someone like my parents who have 56 friends, they're going to see your video and that's your market. Your market are not the ones that have 1,000, 5,000 friends. Your market are the ones that are actually taking what you say seriously, literally. They actually care for you. They actually want you to succeed. They actually are interested in that, the progression that, hey, you may have had a corporate job. Now you've moved into your own business. That's something to be proud of, and that's something that you need to announce on Facebook to your friends. Remember, you're not asking them to purchase anything. You're just announcing something really important to you to them. That's what you're doing here. So you deserve to put this on your personal page, 100%. Now you want to live on your personal page, then at the same time too, hey, share it out. Share it to your fan page. You might have 10 fans, 56, that's fine. Then share it to any groups you have. That's fine as well. Share it to your friends' groups if you have it. Share it wherever you want to share it. But most importantly, start from your personal page because again, it's a, it's a video regarding what you're doing personally. Okay, heartfelt excitement. So yeah, after the one video, then you announce it. It's the announcement video. It's announcement presentation. Now at the same time too, guys, if you're a writer and you struggle with videos, It's okay to do this as text. Okay? It's okay to write a nice story and put a picture. You can do that as well. I just think that a video is a bit more personal and especially if you don't generally do videos, you got to remember that if you never have done a video personally about your journey of your life or what you've done, it's going to be really effective. We're trying to basically break the game up a little bit and we're trying to be really effective to those. So again, do a video. If you suck at videos, even better. You're going to look more natural. Um, you know, because I do a lot of videos and I don't do a huge amount on my personal page, this will work very effectively. Okay? So again, it's about you. It's about saying, hey, this is what I've been doing. I've been working on this. People love to know what you've been working on, if that makes sense. First point, we're going to put on Instagram in the stories, 5 to 6 stories. Boom. Next step is Facebook. Um, you know, Facebook, we're going to prerecord or go live and then share it out. It is okay to ask the clients to DM you after one heartfelt video because you got to remember, guys, um, they have already been following you for a period of 5 months, 6 months, 12 months, and you're just saying, if this resonates with you, just DM me. We'll have a chat. That's all. If it doesn't resonate with you, uh, that's cool. Just wanted to let you know what I'm doing. Um, if you think that, you know, you don't like fitness at all, well, unfriend me. If we've been friends since high school and we've just been following each other, I just want to let you know what I do. That's all. And you'll be surprised that people are now going to understand because what's going to happen is in the lounge room that night at the dinner table, they're going to be talking about you. Yes. They're going to say, oh, Fadi, you know, I went to school with him, man. That guy's a personal trainer now. Wow. That inspires me. Oh wow. I don't like that. What a loser. They're going to talk about you. It doesn't matter. And when they talk about you, you're the topic of conversation. You're basically renting space in their lounge room. You're renting space on their phone. That's the important part here is they're talking about you most importantly, and they're going to either say, you know, cool. And then what they're going to do, they might not take no action, but what's going to happen when they start to follow you and see all these other videos come out, it's like the method going, well, oh yeah, I might actually get, I get fit. I know that guy. He's a nice guy. You know, actually thinking about it, he's a nice guy. I might actually train with him. So it's just announcing. So then now you have a bundle of clients and a bundle of people that are going to say, hey, check out Buddy, check out Colette. They're awesome. I know they're a trainer. I used to go to school with them. He's a trainer. And they might just tag you in. Okay, that's what it's about. It's the announcement method. Okay guys, third thing is LinkedIn. If you haven't used your LinkedIn or you don't know the passwords, go find your passwords. It's not a method sometimes many people use LinkedIn. It's like one of those things that are just like the thing you got to have. But LinkedIn does work really well because Facebook is getting a crowded marketplace. So what you can do is you're going to put the same video on LinkedIn, okay? And most importantly on LinkedIn, ensure that you change your employment status if you've started a new career or new job or something. Because what happens is everybody gets a message to say Richard has, um, you know, Richard has changed careers or changed jobs. You know, I had— I got my inbox flooded the other day when it was my 6-year anniversary at Comm. So yes, I've had Comm for 6 years, like last week, and I got a whole bundle of people saying, wow, congratulations on your work anniversary, because they have to click it to say, yep, send that message. So definitely put on LinkedIn as well, because LinkedIn is one of those strategies that you might have friends that you've known with And they're not on Facebook, but they're on LinkedIn because they're more in the executive space or they use those platforms. Just because you don't use a platform, other people use LinkedIn platform. So again, share on LinkedIn as well. Use the same video, share it on there. If you want to be really tricky, you can say, hey, welcome LinkedIn friends. I never get on LinkedIn, but I just want to do a video talking about what I actually do. And again, keep it short, keep it sharp, keep it long, whatever your style is. But the aim here is to announce the process of what you're doing. Does that make sense? We've got Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I'm going to show you how to maximize this in a second. Remember guys, we're doing this because I'm hearing people saying they want leads and this is how you get leads on a shoestring. You've got to do the work. You've got to go and ask people. You've got to go announce people because what's the point of running a Facebook campaign when you're paying $5, $50, $100, $150 a lead? When you've got leads already, you just need to announce what you've done and you're going to be very surprised because people want to know people. People love to know, hey, you're looking for a trainer? Oh my gosh. Oh, my mate's from school. He's still a trainer. I'll tag you and I'll connect you. People love to know people in places. That's really important. So make sure you tell people what you do. I got a referral just yesterday off my father-in-law. He was getting— he had a plumber come to his house and the plumber basically said, hey, you know, I'm struggling with marketing. My father-in-law goes, oh, my son does marketing. You should talk to him. And I got a lead because he knew what I did. So if he didn't know what I did, I wouldn't have got the lead. Does that make sense, guys? Because I'm going to share with you my maximizing concept now. Are you ready to maximize this concept here? Are you ready to maximize the concept? So this concept here we call maximize your reach. So just to recap where we are at the moment, the announcement method. It's about people who want to shoestring the approach. When someone asks you, what's your marketing budget? You look in your pockets and you say, I've got nothing in my pockets. And that's what shoestring marketing approach is, is you're rubbing together, you know, you're rubbing together a few coins for marketing. And what you do have though, you have time. So the announcement method is basically going to the world, sharing them what you actually do. It may have been 4 years since you've actually— they actually know what you do. And remember, people just think, you know, you were this person you were many years ago. Like my uncle, for example. I've got an uncle called Uncle Mike, and Uncle Mike, you know, he actually thinks that, you know, I started personal training and fitness very young. So I started my own— actually, the The thing behind me, that's my first business called Personal Best. And I like to frame things when I finish businesses. I've got another frame over here you can check out. Yep. That's a corporate wellness company I have. And anyway, I like to frame things. So my Uncle Mike thinks that I'm still a personal trainer and he always asks me at family functions, hey Richard, how's the personal training going? And I go, Uncle Mike, I don't do personal training. I haven't done it for 10 years. So why don't we have a better conversation of how is your marketing business going? That's the problem that we have is people think you're doing the same thing that you did when you were 10 or when you were 15 or when you were 17 or when you left school and had a part-time job for 3 months. Wake up, people, and figure out what— tell people what you're actually doing. So this could also be the Uncle Mike strategy. All right, so last point. So the last thing is the maximize your reach method here. So what you want to be doing is this. This is the— this is like the time— this is the 10%. We're talking about the maximize your reach, and there's 4 things that you can do to maximize any of the reach. Number 1, it's tag people. So if you know that this video, this announcement might help somebody that you may have talked to, or you know They've been working out or trying to work out or trying to get fit or trying to get their HR sorted, trying to get staffing solutions sorted. It means, you know, it means really that you need to tag them in with a specific reason. Don't just tag them in. Tag them in and say, hey, I thought this might be interesting to you because I saw that you were, you know, a few months ago wanting to work out or wanting or had problems with your staff. Okay? So I'm saying that for Karen. I know she's on the call. Has an amazing HR business where it can maximize your staff. So that's number one, tag people. Number two, maximizing your reach is spend time in conversations. So the whole aim of the video on Facebook and Instagram, if I did— if I forgot to tell you guys, is asking them to contact me, to send me a private message, not put in the comments. Send me a private message if this makes sense to you. A lot of the comments on your Facebook will be like, oh, congratulations, so pumped. But the real ones that you want are the private messages. So in this process here, and this is really important, you need to make sure that you're spending time in the conversations. If someone's liked your video, follow up with a message and say, thank you so much for liking the video. It's really exciting that I'm moving in this new venture and start a conversation. If you have 100 likes and no comments, go and send up a private message to 100 people and saying, Thanks for liking my video. I really appreciate your support. It's taken me, you know, a long time to get my business to this point. Really appreciate that. Thank you so much. What have you been up to? Engage with the conversation because they've got 100 people that know, like, and trust you, what you do. Does that make sense? This is really important, guys, to maximize what you're about to do right now, and that's spend time in conversations. And then number 3 in this is ask them to share the video with someone that might benefit. So at the end of the video, You can always say, hey guys, you know, this might not work for you, but if this does work, just tag or share this video onto your page. I'd really appreciate that. You know, it's going into a new business venture. I really need as much help as possible. So I'd really appreciate if you can tag or share this video to, or, you know, just tell somebody about what I do. If, if, if you have, if you know somebody, you know what I mean? It's asking once because this is not something that you do every week. Not something you do every week. You do it as you need it, require it, but not too much. You don't want to do this method too much. Okay? Uh, maybe twice a year possibly. And, um, D is make an invitation to work with you. So, you know, at the end of the video, make an invitation. Say, hey guys, um, you know, this actually, if this suits you, yeah, just, just message me direct. Open up a message for me. And so really this whole part here is you can't just expect the video to be put out and then it's going to happen. Like, yes, hopefully the best way it's going to happen— I've seen this happen many times before— people will just like comment and say congratulations and start messaging you and calling you or texting you. I've seen it happen. We literally did it with 2 clients last week. It happened. They put one video out and they had 3 people DM them interested in fitness. Interested in their fitness service from this method. They only did one part of it on Facebook. So it does work. So that's the maximizing your reach strategy. I'm pretty excited for this concept. I'm pretty excited everybody see and want to see this concept work. It's called the announcement method. Yes, it's the Com Announcement Method, and it's a very unique method, but it's very effective method as well. And when it's done correctly, It's spot on. Like I always say, guys, you know push-ups are good for you. If you don't do them, you're not going to get the results. You don't do them, you're not going to get the results. So it's the same kind of thing in your business. If you don't do the push-ups, you won't get the results. You don't do the work here, you're not going to get the results. The other method to this is called the Facebook method, and you pay money to Facebook and they get you leads. My always Number one, and and that's the reason why we've got the Ninja Program as well. For those who are interested in the Ninja Program, DM me, let me know, and I can tell you more about that. But that's the reason why we have this program. A lot of people, you know, don't have the funds or aren't ready to spend money on marketing. When you're in a zero to twenty stage in regards to clients a week, you may not be ready to spend money in marketing on Facebook, and you need methods like this, quick wins like this that will generate those leads for you. And that's the reason why. I started the Ninja Program. I was just sort of frustrated with the choices out there and like all the methods that I've used over any of my business have always been around these quick win strategies. And I hope you've enjoyed this, guys. It's been amazing. Gotta go. Bye for now. Bye.
