In the past few weeks we’ve featured case studies as to how different businesses have benefited from our one hour brainstrorming and consultancy services, you can catch up on the other case studies here.

The other day I spoke with reader Billy who in simple terms is a personal trainer who specialises in nutrition and corrective exercise.  Over the years he has spent $000′s on training and qualifications around the world. Despite his expertise he doesn’t have customers beating down his door and struggles to increase his customers. Sound familiar?

Confusing online presence

When we spoke with Billy we looked at his online profile and identified that as well as personal training, he’s also well known for competing in motorbike competitions and performing BMX bicycle stunts in night clubs.  When people look him up on Twitter or Facebook, they see something that they may not be expecting to see. So consequently potential customers are put off as all of these different areas are confusing to customers who just want to book him for his personal training services.

Clearly what sets Billy apart from other personal trainers is his is knowledge and experience. This is a big point of difference, but the truth is that the problems people have is that they don’t know that they have them.  This is a big problem for experts in that by telling people that they have problems, you’re more than likely going to put them off becoming customers, unless that person really needs to change (because they have a critical illness say).

A lot of visitors he does get to his blog is from other health care practionners or peers from the courses Billy attended.  So whilst Billy is well regarded by his peers, very few paying customers have any idea that he exists.

So consequently blogging about these problems, is that they yield very little conversions.  Far better for Billy to blog about general things that people are generally interested in – eg how to look good for summer, how to reduce body fat etc..etc or feature case studies about how individuals have lost weight, won competitions etc with Billy’s help, but without the technical input.

Where in the world are you?

Furthermore, like many people on Twitter, although he operates mainly in his local geography his Twitter location is shown as: Location ÜT: 52.795830,-1.677537.  So, if you’re based in London or Stockport,  or even New York, you’d have no idea where he was and consequently you’d be unlikely to pick up the phone and book his services.

Two new markets

So first off our advice is to target your customers!  We helped Billy identify the two main reasons why people used his services which were: 1) to get stronger (fitter) and 2) to loose weight.

Therefore, Billy needs to market his services in these areas. Take for example his love of motorcycle sports – he could tailor specific exercise programmes for other motorcycle sport enthusiasts to make them stronger and fitter and consequently more likely to win competitions – he could market himself via the motorcycle forums and magazines.

Another market is targeting people who are looking to loose  weight – but probably not directly competing with the Weight Watchers or Slimming World market but look for a niche within that. For example a  good target market could be  mum’s looking to get back into shape after giving birth – so he could provide tailored programmes specificially to address the physical stresses of giving birth and market these through mum and baby groups or forums.

Package services together

Rather than offering individual training sessions (or intoductory sessions) we suggested to Billy that he ‘packaged’ these programmes into a 6 week course. This is because not only does the programme have a better chance of working, rather than relying on the idividual to follow his advice, it gives him time to build a realitionship with clients who are then more likely to book follow up sessions.  From a financial standpoint not only does it increases his overall revenue  it also improves cash flow (as the customers will  pay up front)

We also suggested to Billy that he starts marketing his services in his local market – targeting local groups with his services – drop his UT location on Twitter and put his real location – so people know that he’s near by. Also to have one unified web site which promoted Billy’s services – but have clear identites for each activity – eg personal training, motorcycle sport and promotional work.

So what could we do for you?

For an investment of $350 you get 1 hour of our time by Skype and we can talk through the problem and work out a way forward to help you grow your business or make more money. To find out more and book our services click here.