How to Get Clients During the Holiday Season (3 Steps)

During the holiday season it’s quite normal to see a reduction in new enquiries and as a result, new clients for your fitness business. Because of this, it can be tempting to fork out some money on Facebook ads or send more and more emails in the hopes of gaining more interest for your services.

But how you spend your marketing budget can either be a huge waste of money or a pre holiday success! And it all depends on who you are marketing to.

In this post we're going to talk about the best people to market to right before the holidays, why they're your best audience and how to turn them in to paying clients.

Create Your Pre Holiday Audience

So most people don't want to be spending money just before holidays like Christmas and New year? They're all too busy or too stressed to commit to your services, right?

Wrong.

While it's true that someone who has never heard of you before would be difficult to sell to right now, there will be heaps of people who know, like and trust you enough to purchase your services.

There is huge different in mindset between brand new eyes on your business and people who have read a blog, received an email, watched a Facebook live video, joined your group or visited your website.

So if you have an email list, a custom audience on Facebook, or a list of phone numbers for leads who showed interest but didn't buy from you... they are your target market right now.

Even before Holiday periods!

Instead of spending your ad budget on attracting fresh new leads to your personal trainer business, invest your time and money in the people who are already aware of your business and whom you have some rapport with.

While the pre-Christmas period isn't ideal for making sales, people do usually have more of one thing...

TIME.

Time off from work.

Time to think about their health problems. And they really do. Feeling fat, having low self esteem, feeling ashamed of wheezing from a flight of stairs and other health related problems do not go away just because it’s the holiday season.

In fact, they are even more prevalent because distractions like work aren’t on the list of excuses any more.

Now that we know our best clients to market to during the holiday period are people who already know you, we need to invite them back in to your sales funnel. Here’s how:

Step 1: Email

Almost everyone has a list of emails. Whether it’s neatly organised in an email provider like Mailchimp or spread among your contact list on your phone, dig out the emails of ALL of the past leads who showed interest in your services but didn’t sign up.

Use the Magic 9 Word Email. The 9 word email was devised by top marketer Dean Jackson and it goes like this:

Subject: Hey 

[NAME],

Are you still looking to [YOUR SERVICE]?

Phil

That’s it. 9 words. Maybe a few more if it takes a phrase to say what you offer. 

This works because it is so simple and direct, the person reading is compelled to respond in the affirmative if they are still looking for what you offer. 

Try to tailor EVERY email to what you remember that client wanted to achieve for maximum effect. And yes, that does mean manually sending emails ;)

Step 2: Phone Numbers

Making calls is one of the quickest ways to get someone back on board on your services.

In fact, you’ve probably seen some of the online marketing “experts” talk about how their personal trainer client made $4,000 from making a few calls. Well, here’s the big secret:

Just call up your past clients, go through the usual pleasantries and then use the same script as the 9 word email.​

Hey [NAME]. How are you? How’s the weather? Etc, etc.

Listen, are you still looking to [YOUR SERVICE]?

You are? Excellent, we have [OFFER] at the moment because we’re trying to help as many people keep fit over the holidays as possible…

That’s it. This is what those marketing experts get their personal trainers to do to make loads of sales. Although they do often teach and encourage those personal trainers how to hard sell to their leads but that’s a whole other topic!

Step 3: Facebook Retargeting

Remember, the people who are most likely to buy from you right now are people who know of you so this next step is only going to work if you’ve been building a custom audience of website visitors for your Facebook ads.

Create an ad for anyone who has shown interest in your website in the past. Offer a free consultation to your custom Facebook audience. 

This is important: You should be sending your ad to a custom audience. Ideally people who have visited your web pages.

Here's how my custom audiences look.

Convert Leads to Clients

If you can implement all three of the steps above, awesome. At least 2 or 3 of your contacts will have been on the fence for some time and you could be just in time for them to take action.

If you can sell your services there and then using any of the methods above, great. But if not, do whatever it takes to get that person signed up for the long term.

Remember, you're running a business and it's better to make 50% of something than 100% of nothing.

Contrary to popular belief, discounts are absolutely fine. Especially if you can entice someone to stick with you for some time. A short period of discounted services could lead to a handful of clients with a much higher lifetime value.