By Jeff Burlingame, Two-Brain Mentor
Filling programs can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a strategy or plan. In order to get the most involvement and the most signups for any program whether it be a barbell club, a 6 week course, seminars, or even personal training and nutrition programs, we follow this template.
6 weeks out
Host a 20 minute session with all of your coaches to test out pieces of your upcoming course. Be sure to record this session so that you can use clips from it as marketing content. Post the clips from this recording publically on your social media profiles at least once a week for the next 2 weeks.
4 weeks out
Host a free 30 minute clinic with your mavens (your seed clients). If you’re not sure how to identify your mavens, click here for more information on that.
You’ll want to record the free 30 minute clinic and ideally get some good photos as well as video that you can use. Make sure you get video of mavens who have tried a new progression and were then able to accomplish a movement they didn’t think they were able to before. Try to capture as many before and after videos and photos as you can because these speak to the efficacy of your program.
This is before and after style content is what you’ll be posting 3 times per week for the next 4 weeks which will take you right up to the launch of your new program.
2 weeks out
Host a free class or event where you can test this new program out on your members. You’ll want to make this a public event so you can bring in more non-member leads. Keep this free class or event to a maximum of 30 minutes and be sure to have a sign in where you can collect attendee names, phone numbers, and emails.
The people who show up for this free class or event are interested and are hot leads at this point. Create an email newsletter to follow up with these people each week coming up to the course and even afterward because they may not be available for this program, but they may be interested in the next one.
Hosting a free class or event is great but you have to make a clear call-to-action so that you give these leads an opportunity to become customers. Have a sign up link on the page for your free event and at the end of your free event, bring them all together and tell them about this new program and how they can save their spot.
We recommend having a higher price for non-members and a lower price for members since they are already paying for crossfit. This can both take care of your existing members by making them feel valued and encourage non-members to join as a member.
Finally, you’ll award 1 maven the course for free. You can do this in any way you choose but I prefer to award it to the most interested person and do it privately. The benefit of awarding an interested maven the course for free is they are far more likely to sing your praises and promote your course to your members for you. Mavens are more socially involved with other members than most members are so this is natural for them and they do it with a positive energy.
As part of the agreement made with this maven, they’ll talk to all of the members as well as post about the course on their social media profiles exposing you and your course to more people. Keep in mind that you’ll want to cycle through your mavens for each program launch so each of them gets the opportunity to take a course for free while sharing it with others. We’re upfront with our mavens about this and they know it’s a perk that they get. We also have a private Facebook group for our mavens so that we can communicate with them easily as a group.
Take this 6 week pre-launch template and put it into place for your next launch and you’ll see much better results than you have before.
If you need more help, we are here for you.
