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Hey, welcome to Simply Strategic. I'm Maryjo Lewis, and this is the marketing podcast for fitness and wellness professionals who are done guessing and ready to build something that actually works. Let's get into it.

There's a trainer I still think about from my years managing a fitness center. She was good, like really good. Her clients got the kind of results that you could see, and the kind that make other people in the building start asking her questions about how to work with her, or about her techniques.

And she was trying with her marketing. She left business cards all around town, different stores. She consistently posted online. But here's what her marketing asked people to do: follow her. That was it. That was the whole ask. Every once in a while, almost in passing, she might mention that there was a way to work with her, but she didn't explicitly tell people how to work with her.

She relied heavily on word of mouth, which don't get me wrong, word of mouth is the best kind of marketing you can absolutely have. But she relied on it mostly because the online side scared her. Even though she wanted to scale, and she knew an online offer was her next move, she just didn't know how to position her offer online and how to bridge the gap between follow me and work with me. So nothing was converting for her at all online.

All that skill, all those client results, all that effort, and none of it was turning into new clients.

Here's why I'm telling you this. Standing in that gym, I couldn't have named what I was watching then. But years of marketing work later, I can. Her content was actually never the problem. She was sharing real value from real expertise. What she didn't have was a direction, somewhere for all of that effort to lead.

And I watched versions of her story play out over and over again. Talented coaches, people genuinely great at changing their clients' health, posting online because they felt like they should, or maybe trying something they saw another coach do, and wondering why none of it was adding up for them, and what was the problem with them and their marketing.

But let's be real for a minute. Here's the problem. Coaches are trained to coach. Nobody teaches you how to market strategically, right?

If you're a personal trainer, you could talk all day about anatomy and physiology and kinesiology. If you're a nutritionist, you could talk about macros and proteins and fats and healthy fats. But if you don't know how to market it, it's not gonna get you new clients.

Maybe you've lived some version of this yourself. You're showing up online, you're posting, you're doing what everybody says you need to do, but in the back of your head you're wondering whether this is even worth it.

So much effort, so much time, for very few, if any, results.

So let me say to you what I wish I could have said to her back then. You're not bad at marketing, you just need a map. And a map is something you can create. That's why this episode starts with clarity. In my work with coaches, everything begins with clarity, and clarity starts with three questions.

Now I want you to sit with these questions, not nod along while you fold laundry or cook dinner, but actually sit and think about them.

Question one

What do you want your marketing to accomplish in the next 90 days?

I'm not talking about "grow my audience." I'm talking about something specific that you can measure. Is it book three new one-to-one clients? Is it fill your group program? Is it get your email list to a number you can name? What is it that you want your marketing to accomplish in the next ninety days?

Question two

Who are you talking to, and what specific problem do you solve for them?

I'm not talking about "you're talking to women who want to be healthy." A lot of women want to be healthy. The more precise you can get, the more your marketing sounds like speaking to one person instead of shouting into a crowded room. So maybe you're a personal trainer. Do you work with postpartum women to help them lose the baby fat and get back to their pre-pregnancy health? What problem do you solve, and who do you solve it for?

Question three

Which one or two platforms matter for reaching that person right now?

Not the ones you feel guilty about neglecting, but the ones where she actually spends her time and pays attention. You need to know where she's at. If you're over here posting on LinkedIn and she's on Instagram, that's not gonna do you any good. You're not gonna get clients by being in the wrong room. So you need to find out what rooms they're in and get access to those rooms.

I'm gonna say these three questions again, because maybe you're busy right now and you can't jot them down.

Question one, what should your marketing accomplish over the next 90 days?

Question two, who is it for, and what problem does it solve?

Question three, which one or two platforms can reach that person now? That's the list. That's what you need to focus on right now.

In my work with coaches, I use a framework called the Growth Compass. It's four points, and each builds on the last. Clarity is north. It's the direction that every other marketing decision you'll make points back to. Now, over the next three episodes, we're gonna talk about the other points. Next week we're gonna talk about alignment, then structure, then execution. But everything starts here.

Without clarity, your marketing is just a guess.

And your coaching business deserves better than a guess. Like I said, next week we're going to talk about alignment: how to choose the marketing that fits your life, your strengths, and the rhythm of your coaching business. Because staying consistent has a lot less to do with discipline than you've been told.

Between now and then, you have one homework assignment. Sit with those three questions. Take 10 quiet minutes and write down a real answer for each. That's the move that starts building the map.

So that's a wrap on today's episode of Simply Strategic. If you are not subscribed yet, please hit that subscribe button so next Monday's episode can find you. Let's make it simple.