But How Many People Have You Actually Spoken to Today?

Why would you send out a Facebook ad trying to convince strangers on the Internet that you’re an expert before people who already know you even know what it is that you do for a living?

On a daily basis we get questions in our free Facebook group (www.facebook.com/groups/onlinepersonaltrainer) asking how to get clients.

Usually the question looks something like this,

“I’ve tried everything. Have my website set up and sending out Facebook adverts and can’t get any clients. How are you guys getting clients?”

My response is always the same: “How many people have you spoken to today.”

–radio silence, or sometimes I’m told ‘well, nobody I guess.’

Here’s the truth my friend, trying to figure out the best Facebook ad that works right now isn’t how you build a business. Even if you’re able to figure out how to “master Facebook advertising” today, things will change tomorrow and you’re going to be forced to reinvent yourself. Back to square one.

Paid ads are a tactic, nothing less and nothing more.

I’m not against them. I use them. They simply don’t come first. Talking to people does. Developing unbelievable relationships, relationships, and trust does.

Here’s the easiest thing to start doing every day: Have a conversation with at least 5 new people.

This is what Anabela Souto, an online trainer living in Montreal, Quebec (Canada) does, and here’s what she had to say:

 “I love this. I now have 7 new personal training clients by doing exactly what  Jon Goodman suggested. It works.”

Put five paperclips on the right side of your computer. After you have a conversation, move one to the left side of the computer. Once all paperclips have shifted, you’re done for the day. Repeat the next.

Moving on, let’s talk a bit more about why paid ads are a terrible way to base your business success off of.

Ad platforms have gotten easier to use and, as a result, more people are using them. This means that not only will ads get more expensive over time, but users are going to get more and more accustomed to seeing them and ignore them even more than they are today.

Not good, and definitely not something to stake your success off of.

When Was the Last Time You Bought Anything Purely From an Advertisement?

For some reason bad marketing teachers seem to think that it makes sense to teach marketing tactics that they themselves would ignore.

What do you think when you see an ad from somebody about something you’ve never heard of?

That’s right, you don’t think. You ignore. That’s the point.

Basically nobody makes purchases for anything from any company after seeing a random advertisement anymore.

Referrals, recommendations, and mentions are where it’s at. I don’t see a movie unless at least a few of my friends have already seen it and said it was good. I’d never hire an online trainer I’ve never heard of because they sent me an ad no matter how good the sales copy is.

So when I market I don’t expect anybody to enrol into the Online Trainer Academy without getting to know me for a while and contacting at least a few past students (you can meet 137+ here and are welcome to contact any of them: https://onlinetraineracademy.theptdc.com/success-stories).

This is how purchases are made. If you begin to market when your thing is ready then you’re 6-8 months too late.

So paid ads aren’t bad, but they are an add-on to what’s already there. And they are part of a bigger strategy.

Why Most Misunderstand Cost Per Impression

Let’s get technical for a moment. Advertising spend can be measured a few ways but the most common is a metric called cost per impression or, on Facebook, cost per 1,000 impressions.

This doesn’t mean that 1,000 people pay attention to your message, just that it flowed through their feeds at some point. The goal is to get you CPM as low as possible while maintaining lead quality.

Now you could do this a few ways. The most common highlights the biggest mistake a lot of marketers think: single, narrow-minded thinking.

Common bad thinking is that if I want to get my CPM down then I need to send a bit better ad with a bit better headline, or picture, or description. This is fine, and it might help you out a bit in the short-term, but you’re still going to lose.

If you want to win, the way to maximize CPM is to craft a business model where you pay once, and get impressions for years. Reputation does this, so does great content (it gets created once and is costly to produce but can result in thousands of impressions on an ongoing basis). While I’m obviously bullish on content, it’s not 100% necessary. There is one other way…

…In the Toronto Talk (bonus when you buy the books here: www.onlinetrainer.com/hwot) I went on record to say that I spend very little on conventional paid advertising and most of my marketing budget, about $40k/month, is spent on sending gifts and relationship building. If I can send somebody a beautiful gift that costs me $20 how many impressions will that gift provide vs. that same $20 spent on a paid ad?

That’s the question that you should be asking and when you do, you will quickly see that even though there is a larger up front cost, the CPM is a fraction of what it would be in a conventional paid ad.

Want an example?

Give a welcome mat to a customer, your best client, for example.

That customer steps on it every time that he or she enters or exits their house. So do guests who comment on the welcome mat and guess what happens next? The person who bought the welcome mat is brought up in conversation.

I’m just not talking about this stuff, it’s what I actually do.

OTA grad Carolina Belmares is crushing it right now. In addition to meshing the Precision Nutrition ProCoach Software with the biz dev tools in the Online Trainer Academy, Carolina has a full online clientele and recently was even able to take her whole family on a vacation to Mexico as a result. Super cool. She’s also building a reputation as an expert with her own network of coaches who respect her.

Carolina loves tacos, so I got her this welcome mat.

–How many dollars would I have to spend on an advertisement to get that same effect? This is how you must be thinking.

Highly Wealthy Online Trainers are confident enough to move slower, ignore the incessant noise, and ignore the marketing ads that try to get them to pay to learn the “latest” best secret for getting clients. Highly Wealthy Online Trainers play the long game and are willing and wanting to think different and act different and take better care of people for the benefit of us all.

Yes this takes work. If it were easy to get gobs of clients by firing off an ad and paying a few bucks then don’t you think that everybody would be doing it? I’ve been doing this since 2011, which is an eternity in Internet years. In that time, I’ve seen countless fitness pros come and go and I’ve seen almost as many fitness business coaches come and go.

Why do they all fail, give up, and leave? It’s because they never took the time to build relationships with readers and customers and it’s because they didn’t understand the fundamentals of CPM and how it relates.

Yesterday my team and I submitted the Fundamentals of Online Training V2.0 textbook for print as we continue to prepare for our biggest enrolment period of the year for the Online Trainer Academy in November (wait list here: www.onlinetrainer.com/academy) and in this new textbook there’s an entire chapter added called Client Appreciation and Gifting.

This stuff’s not just important, it’s everything.

-Coach Jon