As a health or wellness pro, I know that you’re doing your work because you love helping people. You know what’s possible when you are able to serve your clients or customers, and you are great at what you do.

But that doesn’t mean you know how to market your services or your business so you can help more people. Even if you’ve built a business mostly through word of mouth, you do need to know how to market your business to increase leads and turn those into clients served.

What are leads?

In a recent Facebook Live, I talk about how to market your business so you can get more leads. 

But what are leads? Leads are defined as potential clients or customers you’ve attracted who is interested in what you are selling. It just means you have more people showing interest in your services or products. Once you have a lead “on the hook,” you’ll need to sell. But for today, I want to just talk to you about marketing to get leads.

How to get leads for your health and wellness business

To get leads (or more eyes on your business), you need to market your business. I like to think of marketing as the tortoise and the hare: you have the organic way of marketing, and then you have the faster way. Often, the hare way costs you money — i.e. paid advertising, features on popular publications, paying a PR team, etc. And those hare methods aren’t always right for your business or needs.

So let’s talk about the tortoise marketing method: knowing your audience and communicating with them.

The best free marketing tip I can give you

If you want to build a client base and attract more interest for your products or services, you need to work on your messaging. I see many health and wellness pros get hung up on the services or products they provide, creating very literal explanations for what they do.

But the truth is: We are selling the outcomes. We are selling the results. At Pilates in the Grove, for example, my team is not selling the manual therapy, pilates, etc. We are selling the outcome — we are showing people what it means to feel great and be more comfortable in their bodies. Therapy and pilates are the tools, yes, but they are not the end result.

If you want to grow your leads and attract more clients, you have to sell people what they want. Your services or products may be great and people may be interested, but they’re also more interested in what those things can do for them.

There’s one more thing to generating more leads for your business: once you know how to talk to your audience and understand what they want, you have to meet them where they are.

We don’t want to just focus on talking to customers to book them. We want to build a community. The businesses who have a strong community are the ones that are thriving right now! So… how can you build a community, talk to your customers in ways they want, and meet them where they are?

It’s time to dive into social media!

Four things you can do today to market your business that will cost $0

The four tips I’m about to show you will help you build engagement, followers, and potentially even leads. Ready?

Step 1: Go to your preferred social media platform and comment on or reply to FOUR people’s posts. Make sure they’re either your current customers or they’re your ideal customer.

Step 2: If anyone has commented on your posts, reply with an entire sentence to those people! Make sure to use their name.

Step 3: Go comment on FIVE people’s posts who follow you. Even if they didn’t comment on your posts, even if you don’t necessarily follow them, go comment on their posts and cheer them on.

Step 4: Search a hashtag on Instagram that is relevant to your brand and follow it. For example, I follow #stayfit305 so I can see Stories that are shared to that hashtag in the top of my Instagram feed.

I want you to do the same: Find a hashtag that works similarly for you, whether it’s local or directly in your niche audience. Don’t browse “#catsofinstagram” or something. Browse a relevant hashtag to your health or wellness brand. 

From there, I want you to browse through the recent Stories on that hashtag and send a DM reply to FIVE people. Not just the little clap emojis; write out a short reply! 

Marketing doesn’t have to be hard

I know there are a ton of marketing strategies out there, and many of them feel super involved, overwhelming, or expensive. All of these ideas cost you $0. It might cost you a few minutes, but it won’t cost you any money — and it’s really not going to take you very long! You’ll be amazed at how this helps start conversations with people, and how that compounds into more leads and more business.

I’d love to hear how this works for you, and what surprised you about the process! If you want more tips like this, make sure you’re following me on Facebook and Instagram. I go Live every Tuesday on Facebook to share helpful tips to help you grow your health or wellness brand.