How to Create an Intro Offer That Gets New Online Training Clients

Marketing

Nov 10, 2021

By Tim Saye



Online personal trainers who are just starting often have to trial and error before finding a successful low-barrier entry offer that gets new clients without fail.

If you struggle to bring new people into your online fitness programmes, this article is for you.


What is an Intro Offer?

An intro, or in other words, an entry offer, is a service that you provide to enquiring prospective clients so they can get to know you, your methods, and experience how you can help them achieve their fitness goals. 

This can be as little as a goal-setting consultation for one to one services or a limited-time program or challenge for a group program. The purpose of the offer is to show those that take part how you work with clients and build rapport, so they decide to buy into one of your standard offers.


Do All Online Personal Trainers Need an Intro Offer?

Well, that depends primarily on whether or not you have enough clients.

If you're new or just graduated a bunch of clients, then you can benefit from having an intro offer.

If your capacity is nearing full, you can choose not to provide anything at a reduced price.


How to Create an Intro Offer That Gets New Online Training Clients

It would be best to consider a few factors when figuring out an offer best suited to your online fitness business and your ideal clients.


#1. Your Main Services

The intro offer needs to provide a peek into what people would get if they enrolled in one of your primary services. You'd want to keep it simple for yourself and the people as well.

So, if you offer 1-2-1 personalised online coaching, a suitable entry offer would be a goal-setting consultation, strategy or discovery call where you get the chance to interview the prospect and learn about their history, goals, and inhibitors. 

If you provide group coaching with monthly membership and you have a system built out your current clients already use, adding extra members to it for a limited time is a great choice. This way, they can experience the community vibe, see how the workouts, support and check-ins work and understand whether it's for them or not and the other way around.

If you're not yet established online and looking to run group programs, challenges can provide a great offer. A 10 or 14 day challenge is a great way to quickly build up a community from scratch. Following this with a group membership program can allow you to build up your client numbers and community quickly.


#2. Your Capacity

Your capacity likely changes over your career, so you might occasionally want to evaluate whether or not your entry offer needs to be amended.

If you're getting started as an online personal trainer, you might have time on your hands and require cash flow. Personal training, even if it's online, is still about the people. The fastest way to build trust and rapport is to speak to people. So, in the beginning, you can offer phone or video consultations to any new enquiry.

Once you're busy, you may not have the time to speak to everybody. In that case, you can add an application step into your initial offer to ensure only those who take that step are serious about goals.

When you look at trial memberships, you can manage your capacity by taking in new clients at specified dates rather than on any day. It will help you structure time spent with clients and new prospects. Again, if you're new and need new people in your programmes ASAP, minimise the barriers for people to enrol as much as you can.


#3. Pricing

Before you decide how you want to price your entry offer, you need to ensure that your primary services are priced appropriately. It doesn't hurt to do the Math regularly, maybe every 3 or 6 months, to know that you're charging what's best for both you and your clients.

You'll need to factor in the time you spend working with clients, your experience and skills, all your business expenses and overheads and then see if the price you had in mind is worth it for you. Then it's also crucial to check what's on the market and whether your target audience is ready to pay that price. Once you've that figured out, you can start thinking about pricing your offer. Let's look at the two examples we already mentioned.

- Goal-Setting/ Consultation Call
Many online trainers offer consultations for free because they are happy to dedicate that time to get to know a potential new client. It's also helpful to offer it for free if you want more people to claim it for a bigger pool of potential clients. This might be a good idea if you're new in the online fitness arena, at least initially.

Once you're busy and almost at capacity, you might want to charge a set fee for the initial consultation, but you can still offer to refund it in the event of signing up.

- Membership Trial
When you offer a trial, whether that's 14 days or a month, charging roughly 50% of your monthly membership is a good idea. Prospective clients will feel your kindness. However, if the gap is too big between the offer and the monthly fee, you might not be able to convert those in your trial into long-term paying clients.

- Challenge
If you're new to online coaching setting up a free or very low cost challenge can be a great way to get interest and testimonials to quickly grow and establish your coaching online. Making it free should help you attract lots of potential clients and show them you're the trainer to get them results.


#4. Promotions

Now that you've created a fantastic offer, you need to find ways to promote it so your ideal clients can hear about it. If you have a website, ensure you have a banner on the Services and the Home pages. 

Keep posting about the opportunity on every social marketing channel you use and not just once but regularly. You can also use Facebook Ads and Google Adwords, especially if the programme starts on a specific date.


#5. Continuous Engagement and Follow Up

Following up will be the crucial step regardless of what you offer. You will want your prospective clients to know that you're paying attention, you care about their success, and you'd like to welcome them when they're ready.

If you had a 1-2-1 call, always send a thank you email and a recap. Then keep checking in for some time to see how the prospective client is doing.

You'd like to show people how you engage in the community for a limited-time membership trial. Welcome them to the group, ask them how they're doing during the programme, remind them on the last week that their trial is about to expire and if you feel that might be needed, offer them a 1-2-1 chat before it ends.

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