How do you get more clients from Facebook (and from other social media platforms)?
Check this out. Here is what I’ve learned about Facebook. Facebook is like this awesome coffee shop. Whether your favorite coffee shop is Mr. Coffee, Starbucks, or Coffee Bean, none of that matters.
You’d probably never walk into a coffee shop and say, “Hey everybody, why don’t you buy something from me right now.”
You would never do that because it’s a social environment. If you were to do that in a coffee shop you hang out at, well the people that you normally associate yourself with and hang out will think you’re nuts. They’re not in a place to buy; they’re in a place to socialize and communicate with you and connect with you, quite honestly.
That’s what Facebook is, man, and that’s what you have to start thinking about when you start running ads on Facebook.
I see personal trainers writing posts like, “You can get 10 sessions from me for $1,000.” Listen, it’s social media—we want to socialize and get to know each other. I want to build a know, like, and trust factor there.
There are trainers that will say, “Man, Facebook doesn’t work for me”. Don’t go into the coffee shop and start yelling an offer out. Instead, educate people and get them to know, like, and trust you. Make them an offer for something really cool that they can try out for free.
You ever walk into Starbucks and see how they walk around with a little tray of small cups of their newest frappuccino or whatever the heck it is that they’re selling there? You ever wonder why they’re giving that away for free? It’s a social environment.
They just want you to sample it. Who knows, you might want to go order more of it, right? That’s how Facebook works.
Now let me teach you about that funnel. What do you start first?
First, whether you’re a personal trainer, a boot camp owner, or a personal training studio owner, you need a fan page.
Your fan page has to be targeted to people in your community who are your ideal clients. Now, for our Fit Body Boot Camp owners, our fan pages target women between ages 28 and 62 in a three-to-five mile radius of where an owner’s boot camp is located.
All the images are really bright colors, and the testimonial pictures that we show are of Mrs. Joneses who lost 15, 20, 30, 50, 100 lbs.— all with before and after pictures. Very rarely will we show a guy who lost a lot of weight.
Now, do we have male clients? Absolutely, but 85% of our clients are female, so we’re going to build our fan page around whom the majority of our clients are. Even the inspirational messages that we share are more in line with what a woman would want to hear, rather than what a guy would want to hear.
What that does is it gets people to share and like you, and before you know it, their friends and family are on board.
Let’s say you built a fan page of 500 or 1500 people who like your fan page and are within three-to-five miles of your facility. Now you’ve got a list going.
These are your fans. Think about that word: they’re fans. Wouldn’t you be cool to your fans?
Imagine if Bruce Springsteen stopped everything at one of his concerts and took out some t shirts, but instead of throwing them out there for free, he was like, “Hey, come up here and pay me 50 bucks for a shirt.”
That’s uncool.
These are fans that have already paid to be here. What they want to do is spend some time enjoying the music. They might be selling some stuff in the back, but he’s definitely not going to stop the party to make more money.
You have to think of it that way for yourself. What we do on the fan page is add value. You might record some of the workouts that you do at your boot camp or your personal training facility and say, “Hey, try this ab exercise that we just did at our facility.”
Post an inspiring or uplifting quote, picture, or YouTube video. Share some before and after pictures from your actual clients, which will give the people of your community hope that they can do it too. Write an inspirational email to your email list that you can cut and paste onto your fan page.
You’re adding value all the time.
Every now and then you’ll actually write an ad, but don’t make it 10 sessions for $1,000 or anything stupid like that. Do something that actually works.
Promote you low barrier offer. It could be a 14-day fat furnace, a 21-day rapid fat loss program, a 16-day sexy slim down, or a 28-day flat belly program. Your low barrier offers should be under 30 days long and under $100. Also, name them those cool, sexy names that I just gave you.
Just say, “Hey, I’m running my 14-day fat fitness program, and it starts next Monday. I’m only looking for 19 clients and it’s only $47 to train with us for 14 days.” That’s a pretty low barrier offer.
You know what’s cool about that? Now that there are 500-1500 fans in your community, you can also boost that post and say, “I want to show this post to everybody else who is female in my zip code and in a particular age group.”
Now you’re targeting your ideal client. Now you can say, “All right, now run this ad between now and Sunday, because the program starts on Monday.” It’s really simple.
You might attach a picture from your boot camp or your personal training center where one of your clients is working out, along with some written copy about your 14-day fat furnace.
Don’t ask them, “Hey, who’s interested? Just leave a comment.” Forget that.
Set a start date, then let them know it’s $47 and say, “Click here to get more information.”
When they click, they’re going to go right from Facebook to a web page. On that web page, they’ll learn more about your 14-day fat furnace program. They’ll see a bunch of before and after pictures, social proof that you’re the badass that you say you are. Then they’re going to get the offer to buy the 14-day fat furnace or the 21-day rapid fat loss program for that discounted price.
Right when they click the buy now button, guess what they’ll see? Not the shopping cart, but an opt-in where they’ll opt-in first. They’ll give you their email address, and you can build your email list up. Then, they’ll go to the shopping cart and pay their $47.
Why is that important?
Well, there’s about a 68% shopping cart abandonment rate online. This means that out of 100 people who go to your shopping cart to purchase, 68 of them are going go, “Changed my mind, going back.”
Wouldn’t you rather capture their email address so you can market to them as they get to know, like, and trust you? Give them content and send over your FitPro Newsletters? Over time, some of those prospects might convert as well.
Focus on having them give you their email address. The rest of the people who will buy your 14-day fat furnace will.
The funnel on Facebook is really simple, man. Look at it as a community. It’s not going to work if you just launch a Facebook fan page and then immediately try to sell a little bit of your offer. It’s like that coffee shop.
It’s like your living room if I came over for coffee. We’re going to socialize, we’re going to be cool, and we’re going to build value. You have to build trust with your clients.
Once your clients know, like, and trust you on that fan page, once you’ve come to me with a giving hand, once you’ve added value to your community through all your motivational tips and YouTube videos and before and after pictures, then and only then will you make a monthly low barrier offer. That will help draw people from your fan page to your sales page, and then hopefully into your shopping cart.
That’s the funnel that you want to look for. It doesn’t matter what type of training you offer: this works. Quite frankly, this works across many different verticals, but that is the funnel and the formula for Facebook.
Committee to your success,
Bedros