Coaching call: What can I do to keep my audience engaged?

Today I'm coaching Jess Greene who is a business consultant as well as a bikini bodybuilder. Jess' vision is to work with clients to prioritise health and well-being whilst achieving their business goals. With two such different audiences, she is struggling to resonate with both and maintain an engaged audience in the lead-up to her launch.

In this episode we chat about:
– The power of letting go and intentionally focusing on engaging with your ideal audience
– How leveraging through your current audience can promote growth
– Why highlighting your unique story can give you kudos against your competitors and resonate with your ideal customer
– Implementing strategies to convert warm leads and the benefit of creating a nurturing funnel

 

Today, I'm coaching one of my Launch Magic students who is in quite an interesting niche where she has two separate audiences, but also a little bit of overlap between the two audiences. So today we're chatting a little bit about how she can start to find content that really resonates with her unique audiences. And how she can start to keep this audience engaged, leading through to then them either buying from her, buying her program or choosing to work with her and how to really refine that entire process. 

“Thanks for having me. My name is Jess Greene. I have just recently started my business called Grow by Design. So I've recently left my corporate job and gone out on my own in terms of creating a business around business consulting.

And I'm also a bikini bodybuilder, so I have a very intensive kind of athlete background as well. So I'm now in the business of pulling my athlete life and my corporate life together and creating an amazing kind of offering for people that combines business and health, which is very exciting. I love that, and I think it's so needed.”

So when you reached out to me, you explained that you were struggling a bit with growing and reaching and connecting with your key audience and then keeping them engaged before your Launch. I'd love if you could give us a little bit more background and explain in your own words really what you're struggling with that I can help you with today.

Yeah, so I think because I have those, different worlds. I've got two quite different audiences as well. And so I'm connecting and sharing both of those messages. It makes sense when you have a whole conversation with someone and you can say, obviously it's important to have your health and look after that side of life.

But also having your business and helping that grow and have business conversations with my audience is quite challenging if I just talk health and wellness. To some people, it disengages the business audience and then talking just business to the health audience sometimes gets lost as well.

But it's so important and so powerful to have both but I guess just connecting and explaining the whole message every single time is quite a challenge. And often having different platforms to having Instagram and LinkedIn and just tailoring the different messaging across all the platforms and all the people.

The power of letting go and intentionally focusing on engaging with your ideal audience

So your ideal clients, are they somebody who is either into health or business, or is that ideal client, that kind of segment of your audience that is into both. 

Yeah, it's sort of into both and it's generally business owners who are running their own business and know that they need to prioritise their health, but just don't get the chance to, and they also know that they need to be working on their business, but they're stuck working in it, doing all the day to day things.

And so that opportunity for sort of growth and strategy, never. They never get time for it, but they also never get time to look after themselves. So they value their health because they know it's important, but also that kind of balance of prioritising it sometimes gets lost in the busyness of running a business.

And then I think just generally by the nature of people that do follow me, they happen to be in the industry of personal trainers or gyms. I have a lot of experience in the food background. So,  they're generally that sort of business owner but it's not an exclusive problem just to help and fitness businesses, that's for sure.

Yeah. So, the people that you can help best in your offers, they are people who have any kind of business and they are interested in health and their wellness, like their overall wellbeing, right? They're not somebody who has a business but couldn't care less about their health.

Who are just happy just to kind of continue those people who really want to be, I guess, great in all areas, like who really want to, they want the business, but they also want the health and the happiness and the body that they want and they want all of that sort of stuff. So really those kind of people who are, I guess wanting it all, because it's possible, but it's just a bit more of a juggle. 

So when you're struggling a little bit with that content, and you were saying a bit before about how, you know, when you post just business stuff, the people who don't have a business don't engage. And when you post health and wellness stuff, like not all the business owners engage.

How leveraging through your current audience can promote growth

But are those people your ideal client? That doesn't sound like they are, doesn't sound like they're the people who we really want to be reaching in the first. 

Yeah, well, that's probably, true. 

So it's kind of been, I guess, letting go of. There's probably a lot of people who are in my audience who it's maybe not super relevant for, and so I guess it's kind of getting used to that.And then, yeah, if it's not relevant, then. That's fine. And that's scary because it's accepting that actually we don't want to try and create content that's going to keep everybody in our audience happy. We want to create content that's going to keep our ideal clients happy, and it's going to engage those people.

And it might look like your content's not engaging anybody. It might look like this is not reaching anybody. It's not getting as many likes, nobody's commenting on. But what it's doing is it's reaching the segment of your audience that is interested in that. And previously the people that it was reaching weren't necessarily going to be the right people who are going to buy from you anyway.

And I mean, the tricky bit here, of course, is that in the future, if you are going to create an offer that is just for health and wellness, people who don't have a business or an offer, that's just for business owners who aren't interested in health and wellness. Or maybe if you have those business owners and you're trying to bring them along on the ride and educate them on why they need to prioritise it, then that's also like another bit of a caveat there, and you do have to juggle that.

But if you only plan on really selling this one offer to that very specific ideal client, then I think that would really add a bit more focus into your content. If you are really just thinking about what does this person need to hear from me? Not what can I post to keep all the different segments of my audience happy.

It's a good reminder and it's kind of I guess letting go of that and once it took me a while to really find and understand that niche, but once the people who it resonates with, they get it a hundred percent and it really speaks to them.

So, I guess it almost feels like back to the start or starting from scratch. I've got a lot of people who are engaged in that message, but also now there's an opportunity to go and find new people and the people who it doesn't resonate for being okay with letting them go

And, and you know, it might not resonate with them right now. Like it might be somebody who hasn't yet started a business but maybe in the future they will. And maybe that's when you'll start getting in front of them again. Or maybe  somebody who's got a business and right now they're like, oh, I'm just too busy.

Like, I'd love to have the time to be interested in this, but it just not a priority right now. Maybe it will reach them later when it is the right time, but for now, I think putting more energy into those right people can. It's almost like doubling down on what works. You said, you know, that messaging resonates with them and it feels so aligned with them.

I think that's something to focus on and thinking about the people in your audience right now who are like that ideal client, you know, they've got their business and they're interested in health and wellness, where did you mainly find those people? Like how have you reached those people previously?

Generally it's been either through networks and people that I know through my business world and people who have referred me. And then a lot of it so far has been word of mouth, which is amazing in terms of once people work with me, they're like super excited to tell everyone about it and really share it.

So it's definitely been more organic kind of offline in terms of connecting with people who know and work with me or know of me and then have found me that way. So probably translating that  online space or the digital space is quite challenging and it's, I guess there's a lot of people who, yet, once they know me or they work with me, they're like, oh, amazing and refer me, which is really cool. 

So translating that to an online audience, I found quite tricky as well. And, but I mean, there's such a value in those offline things. And then we can also start to use all the tools and systems that we have in our online businesses to start to amplify the effects of that.

So if you start to think, okay, I'm already getting word of mouth marketing happening, which by the way is so rare, and when you've got that, it's awesome. So then we look at, okay, how can we use the tools that we've got in our online business to amplify that word of mouth marketing? Is it that we are reaching out to past clients and saying, Hey, if you refer a friend to download my free ebook, you get a little bonus, something, for example. 

How can we incentivize it? How can we make it go further? 

If people are giving you word of mouth recommendation, asking them for a testimonial as well, if you don't already have one. Maybe grabbing a video testimonial sharing that online.

All of these little things are taking what's happening offline and it's turning it into the online world. And then thinking about, you know, networking. You said that was another great way you grew  earlier on. 

Why highlighting your unique story can give you kudos against your competitors and resonate with your ideal customer

Well, how can we use the online world to grow that network even further? 

And that might look like reaching out to people who are in your network and asking them if they know anybody else who would be interested in what you do, and maybe introducing you. 

If anybody in your network has a podcast or a YouTube show or a blog, for example, reaching out and pitching them for a guest article or a podcast interview or a YouTube interview, or even doing an Instagram live with them, these are all different ways you can start to get in front of those audiences, and if you've already got the relationships and got the network and they've got the audiences, then it just becomes a matter of showing up and giving value to their audience.

There's definitely lots of different ways that you can be creative with it. And I think it's now about just not being shy. And I think having all those different parts of, I guess what I do, I've always been hesitant to share all of it, which I think I've kind of have to get over myself in the last couple of weeks and months. 

Actually, I am great in business or I am more a body builder's kind of owning all those different parts and being okay to talk about it on all the different things and asking people for those testimonials and sharing, being okay to share all of the different work that I've done with people because it's very cool. And so it's, I guess helping them share their message as well, which makes a big impact.

And you know what? Like it's scary sharing all of those different parts, but that's what makes your story unique and that's what makes somebody who resonates with you more likely to buy from you than from a competitor that might have almost the same kind of offering, right? 

Whereas there might be so many people out there who are like, oh, here's a course on how to build a business or business strategy, for example. But there might not be anybody else out there who has your unique experiences. All of the different things that you've been through, all of the various qualifications and things that you've done to get to the point where you are here.

And I think not sharing that whole story is doing yourself such a big disservice. It's really diluting your messaging and most, you know, it's kind of watering yourself down. Be for everybody, rather than being okay with the wrong people saying, look, I don't resonate with you. I'm going to go over here. Which is normal.

Like that's good. We want that. Because then for the right people, the people who are like, oh, Jess has such a cool story. I like this. Like this girl, I can resonate. They're much more likely to come to you. So you actually don't really want those people working with you anyway. It wouldn't quite work. 

Implementing strategies to convert warm leads and the benefit of creating a nurturing funnel

And now I know another one of the things you were struggling with was generating warm leads now. Something I do want to say on this is we, it's really hard to generate warm leads. Like we generate cold leads and then we warm them up. That's kind of how it works. So I'd love to know, like, other than obviously showing up on social media and your posting content there, other than that, what else are you doing to warm those leads up at the moment?

Yeah, I think it's probably where that was is moving people because obviously everyone starts kind of cold and then moves into a warm leads. But once I have, I've got quite an engaged, like warm audience. But then it's that next step of like actually converting them that I'm probably really struggling with where everyone sees the value and they're really interested and they're kind of right there. 

I've got lots of people sitting on the fence or just a community of people who see that value and they're kind of in the bubble but haven't converted. So, I just kind of got a bit of a hustle on and gave myself a deadline.

So I've got a masterclass next week, which is now great to be able to funnel everyone who's a warm lead somewhere and probably just be able to have these conversations and actually be able to share and showcase what I do because I kind of, yeah, it was just having lots of conversations with people.

But I needed to funnel them, give them a reason to buy or I needed to create some more value for them so they could really see what it is that I offer. So, instead of jumping on like an application call straight away, it was like, okay, I'm going to give a masterclass a go, which will be hopefully a place to put, to send all my warm leads to give them more value to help showcase that. 

What is that process from that piece of content that they're reading through to them buying? Like what are those next steps? So obviously at the moment you've got the master class where you're giving them that call to action. And I'm assuming previously you said, the application call or discovery call, whatever you want to call that. So then, you know, were those the only two calls to action that you're giving? 

Yeah, at this point, yeah. So like either listening to a podcast or connecting via some content on, on Instagram or LinkedIn or something like that.

I think by the time actually if people are committing to a call, they're kind of already part the way through because it is such a personal thing to do to jump on a call and I find that's the way that I can definitely identify as we said, like that they're the right fit for me and for them.

It's almost like a two part approach, right? You want to make sure that the people who are jumping on the calls are pre-qualified to the extent that you know they've got the budget and you know that they're serious. Which, I mean, yes, like you said, when they're booking in the call, they're already fairly committed. But we also want to make sure that the people who are sitting on the fence about booking the call have everything they need to know to make that decision about booking the call or not. 

Because it is still a commitment to book that call in. So when you give the call to action, to book a call in,  where does that link take them to? Is it to a sales page? Is it like a calendar link?

Yeah, to like a sales page. 

Okay, cool. And then on that sales page, what is the key messaging? Like, what is the reason somebody is going to want to work with you, what's the thing you're selling them on? Yeah. It's, it's that personalised approach. So, the whole process and it's the opportunity to work through in a really personalised, really streamlined way.

All of their goals, all of the things that they want to be. What's the outcome for them once they finish working with you, like let's say they sign up, they work with you for what, 12 weeks, six months, how long your like packages are?

They have a happy and healthy business growing in the business, and they have a happy and sustainable life. So they just feel more in control in their, their body and their health and their wellness, their mindset, their relationships, but also their business is growing and they are getting through all the things that they do, it's on their to-do list that they never got to, but they actually have clarity and purpose in their business as well.

So I think like next steps for you looking at how you can improve that conversion rate of the call. Maybe adding a few questions before somebody books in for the call to pre-qualify them and make sure that they do have the budget and that it’s a priority for them to take action now.

I'm really curious to find out what's holding you back? And some of them might say budget, which is fine, but you might get some other insights. They might not understand what they're getting out of it, or they might not understand why the one-on-one approach is so valuable. So there's a lot of different things there that it could be.

And then also looking at how can we get more people onto that page so that more people can then book in for those calls. So checking that you are giving that call to action regularly. Same with the masterclass. Once you've got that is we are talking about it a lot. We want to be making that the natural next step from all of our free content.

And then just optimise. It's like a little funnel, right? We get people in the top, they click through, and then some of those people will click through onto the the application call, and then some of those people will convert into buying from you and it's not going to be a hundred percent of the people who click on that link are going to work with you one on one, and you don't want that because they're not all going to be the right fit.

You don't have enough hours in your week to do all of that but we want to make sure that the ones who are coming through are the right fit. 

It's definitely about kind of letting go the people who aren't in the bubble, who aren't going to be those people who don't want all of those different things that I'm offering and then really just speaking to the ones that do, the ones that get excited about the opportunity to have health and wealth and just talking to them, nurturing them, and then making sure that the flow and the systems help capture them really clearly, helps communicate it properly and, go from there and doubling down on all of those offline things and bringing in some of the online business tools to those offline things that have been working to grow your audience previously.

So we want to make sure that all of that messaging is so aligned with who that ideal person is. That's your main bit of homework. 

If it's not going to match my target audience, I'm not going to going to make sure it's not there.

 

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