The PT Roadmap

The weekly newsletter for personal trainers who want to build and run a great business.

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Thanks for opening up today's newsletter. I appreciate you being here.

I just finished re-reading Angela’s Ashes. What a book it is. I enjoyed it more this time around. If you’re looking for a good read that has nothing to do with fitness or business but all about hardship, life and growing up poorer than 99.9% of us can even begin to comprehend, it’s one I’d push up your ‘to-read’ list.

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Business

How to Use Local Facebook Groups to Get Clients

Facebook groups are a great place to go to find PT clients.

They are filled with people who are local to you.

The people most likely to buy your PT.

And other trainers rarely use them well, if at all…

So, you might end up fishing in a pond with no competition.

Apart from the time required to create posts and engage with group members, you can use them for free to market your personal training services.

Why spend cash on other methods when you can test free ones?

How Most PTs Use Them

You might have tried to use local FB groups if you're anything like me.

You’ll probably have posted once and received Tumbleweed back.

Or maybe you’ve used them and had ok results.

A more systemised approach is where I’ve seen the best results.

The 5-step method for using FB groups to get clients

Here are the 5 steps I’d recommend:

1. Find your groups

2. Admin intro

3. Check out the rules

4. Post

   1. Intro

   2. Value

   3. Proof

   4. Ask

5. Sell by chat

Let’s break each of those down:

Step 1: Find your groups

If you log into Facebook and head to the groups tab, you can search for groups local to you.

Ideally, you’re looking for 5-10 you can use.

As an example, I live in a town called Trent Woods. 3 groups are perfect for me, but I also live close to a bigger town called New Bern. This has many more groups, which are also perfect for me.

Step 2: Admin intro

Find the admins of each of the groups you’re planning on using.

Add them as a friend, and ping them a message.

Say thanks, tell them a bit about yourself and your mission and mention your goal is to add value to the group through helpful fitness & health advice.

Businesses never do this, so it helps set you apart. And it gives you more credibility when you start posting.

Step 3: Rules

When I used groups to get clients last year, I found one that was perfect for me. But, I had to pay the admin $20 to advertise my PT business.

I only knew this because it was mentioned in the group rules.

Other common rules usually limit posting to specific days or prohibit advertising altogether.

Make sure you respect these. FB group admins are people who take their roles seriously lol

Step 4: Post

Your first post will be a simple, friendly “Hey I’m [name], a PT based out of [location] who’s mission/ speciality is [this thing].”

Ideally, you attach a nice headshot of yourself in your PT gear.

But you could also take a more personality-driven angle and post a casual picture of you (perhaps sipping wine, eating cake or playing with your kid.) If you work with a specific group of people (e.g. parents - it makes perfect sense to attach a picture that aligns with that.)

Your second post is going to be a value-driven piece of content.

Its goal is to shine a light on you as a helpful, knowledgeable trainer.

A how-to, short guide, framework, group of lessons or mistakes always works well.

For example, you could write a post on:

• How to get started in the gym (when you’ve not been in months)

• How to lose weight and keep it off

• A guide to kickstarting your fitness

• A guide for parents on time-efficient workouts

• 10 lessons you’ve learned working with 100s of PT clients

• 8 mistakes you made when you first started lifting weights

Your third post is going to be a piece of social proof.

Take one of your clients and write a post about where they were when they started, where they are now, how you helped them and where they are going next.

Maybe they were petrified of the gym before starting with you.

Maybe they hadn’t stepped foot in a gym in years.

Maybe they’ve lost 20lbs.

Maybe they’ve made exercise a consistent part of their life for the first time.

This post serves as a way to position you as someone who gets results with real people.

Then, your fourth post is going to be an ask.

This is where you’ll write a post calling out a specific group of people to help them with a specific problem.

Lastly, you will take the people who comment or show interest in what you’ve offered in the ask post, and use sell-by-chat to convert them.

All this means is you’ll talk to them in Messenger, away from the group.

I’d recommend reaching out ASAP (speed of response is ALWAYS important in lead gen), asking a few questions about why they enquired, and then looking to get them on the phone or in for a consult. The sooner this happens, the more chance you’ll have of converting them.

One more point on this stage - get comfortable following up. You might need to send 3 or 4 messages to someone who has raised their hand and said they are interested. Unless you’re told to go away, send more follow up messages than usual. People live busy lives nowadays and suffer from incoming message overload.

There you have it.

A 5-step process for using Facebook groups to get more PT clients.

I’ve had a few mentoring clients test this recently and have seen really positive results. It is absolutely worth testing if you want more clients.

I say the word ‘test’ as this is an important way to frame your lead gen. Marketing is often one big experiment. You never quite know what’s going to work.

But you’ll never know what works if you don’t get out there and start testing.

H/T to Craig Rimmer of the Facebook group Profitable Personal Trainers for the helpful education on using Facebook groups. Craig’s recent training helped me turn my messy system into a simpler 5-step one.

Social Post

Great post on how to focus on the process from Steve Magness.

“Good results take consistency, not heroic efforts. Success isn’t determined by one big day. It comes from stacking month after month of solid days.”

This spoke to me on so many levels.

From building a client base to improving the gym.

It’s not one big launch or workout that gets you where you want to be.

It’s the mundane, everyday, consistent stuff that does it.

Thanks so much for reading.

Until next Friday, Stuart.

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