3 Keys to Running an Online Transformation Challenge

3 Keys to Running an Online Transformation Challenge

Levi Memmer creator of the Online Transformation Challenge System

 A few years ago I decided I wanted to start online training but I knew I would need to show up different than most online trainers. Instead of doing shirtless youtube videos showing how I can get MYSELF in great shape, I wanted to provide a low cost, low risk opportunity to show our potential online clients  I actually knew what I was doing and could get THEM in great shape.

Behold…Online Transformation Challenge.

Since we started running online transformation challenges a few years ago, we’ve continued to make small changes and improvements to how they are delivered. Maintaining high quality and attention to detail in three main areas has been the foundation of our success.

Getting Clients

It’s hard to run a transformation challenge with no clients.  First, who is the client you want to train? Who is your avatar? Once you’ve figured that out, then you can move on to how you’re actually going to get them.

We’ve found getting online clients is even more difficult than getting new clients to your physical location, so having a great marketing plan is essential. For attracting online clients we focus on two main areas:

1. Email marketing
2. Social media marketing

Email Marketing

First and most important with regard to email marketing, you MUST be consistently sending newsletters to your e-mail list full of education, inspiration, motivation and more.  If they haven’t heard from you in three months and you email them about your online transformation challenge out the blue, you’re going to show up like 99% of the email marketers in their inbox.You will also be deleted like 99% of the email marketers in their inbox. Providing good content on a regular basis is essential.

With regard to the emails themselves, it’s important not to just send straight-up-marketing-email everyday for four weeks straight. Â We normally send 2 marketing emails per week for four weeks with quality content emails on the days in between. At the bottom of the emails we use lots of teasers, such as Our online transformation challenge is coming up! Click HERE to see all of the details. or If you’re ready to make serious changes in your physique and overall health, our upcoming online challenge may be a perfect fit for you. So even though the emails aren’t marketing emails, we are keeping the online challenge top of mind for the reader without beating them down with sales pitch after sales pitch. 

Social Media Marketing

Where is your target market?  Facebook? Instagram? Snapchat?Somewhere else? For us it’s facebook and instagram.  Once you’ve determined where your target market actually is, you have to figure out what speaks to them. What is going to make them click on your ad versus continuing to scroll? A great example is a mistake we made when we first started doing online challenges. We used a stock image of a very fit women doing an exercise. The ad tanked. One of my friends in the fitness industry advised me that he had had a lot of success using images of people who were NOT very fit in his ads. 

I reluctantly followed his advice and had tons of success with that given ad. The ad of the fit women didn’t speak to my target market. They thought they may not be a good fit because everyone who did these challenges was fit just like the woman in the ad picture. On the flip side, the not-so-fit ad picture spoke directly to my target market. She looked a lot like them. She was someone to whom they could relate.

Delivering The Goods

Once you get the clients, you have to get them in the best possible shape you can in the time you have with them. For our online transformation challenges, that’s 28 days. How you deliver the workouts and nutrition info can make or break a clients challenge experience.

We’ve found that it’s best to leave as little guesswork as possible in the areas of workout and nutrition. The less you leave to the clients interpretation, the better. Leave no stone unturned. It’ll be lots of work up front but will be more than worth it once the challenge starts.

Nutrition

Whichever nutrition system you really believe in will be what you need to use for your online challenges.  Don’t use the new hot trend in an effort to attract more clients.

Lay it out VERY clearly. Make WHAT TO EAT lists. Make WHAT NOT TO EAT lists.  Make FAQ lists. Make Grocery lists. Make an approved foods list. You’ll never be able to answer all client questions with these lists but get as close as possible. The more confident your clients feels in their understanding of what you want them to do the better their experience. Side note: we deliver all of our nutrition info in a PDF. Nothing fancy, but gets the job done.

Workouts
Similar to nutrition, you want to leave as little guesswork as possible.  With that in mind, we decided to film every single exercise and hyperlink them in a PDF doc.  We filmed everything from warm-up exercises to finishers and everything in between. That way if they are unsure of an exercise when looking at that days workout, all they had to do was click on it and a video would pop of of that given exercise. Not only did we film each exercise, we also filmed workout overviews of every single workout. This is a 3-5 minute video that covers the entire workout. It includes what to do, what not to do, very brief descriptions of exercises and other coaching points for that workout.  It was a ton of work but so worth it for our online challengers. Keep in mind also, once you have all of the videos, you have them! You can add to them over time as you come up with new workouts.

Developing Relationships

Great fitness businesses are built on relationships!  If there;s one major drawback with online training, it’s the difficulty in developing relationships.  It’s certainly not impossible, but you’ll have to be much more intentional about it. Over the course of an online challenge we do two main things to develop relationships with our challengers:

1. Send out a daily email. These can be educational, inspirational or just checking in types of emails.  I recommend asking a simple question in each email. If you’re writing about vegetables, ask them what their favorite vegetables is. If you can get them responding to your emails and get a dialogue going, that’s even better.
2. Create a private facebook group for your challengers and be SUPER active on it.  Post 2-3 times per day. Do at least 3 videos of you talking about whatever you want (related to the challenge of course).  The more they see your face, the more they feel like they know you. This is actually feedback that we received from our challengers.  They loved the videos.

There you have it!  Over the years these three things have proven to be the successful foundation for each and every transformation challenge that we’ve done. 

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Levi Memmer is creator of the Online Transformation Challenge System He is the owner/founder of Intensity Training Systems in Crowley, TX.  His mission at ITS is to help his clients become stronger physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.   He’s owned and operated ITS for 6 years.