Success in any area of your life is about one thing and one thing only.
Get this right and your business, your health, your wealth and your overall happiness is pretty much guaranteed.
Get it wrong and no amount of slick marketing, sales talk or anything else can help you out of the hole you’ll no doubt find yourself in.
Of course, you’ve probably guessed what I’m talking about by now, but just in case, I’ll make it clear; I’m talking about communication.
Every single result you get in life is the result of how well you communicate the importance of something either to yourself (if you don’t tell yourself about the importance of one of your goals then your’ll no doubt drop off before you achieve it) or to others or, of course, how they do the same to you.
The trouble is, most communication is pretty poor.
S’funny when you consider that we live in an information age with more communication channels available to us than ever before but all the facebooking, twittering, blogging, emailing, texting and BBMing seems to be reducing the effectiveness of our communications rather than improving it.
We say more (MUCH more!) be seem to be understood less and less than ever before.
Bad for our relationships with our partners and children, bad for the development and growth of our fitness businesses and bad for any online endeavours you may be dreaming of too.
Bad communication is bad all round.
See, the thing is, we all judge our communication by our intent. We know what we meant to say and we throw our intentions out there as if those we’re sharing them with ‘get’ what we mean right away. The truth is, often they don’t, or if they do they only get part of it and may be missing out on the most important bits altogether.
When this happens, people fill-in-the-blanks themselves and simply make up the answers as they see fit.
So, what was (hopefully) a great piece of advice or instruction when you delivered it is now a less-than-effective (or even potentially harmful) piece of advice that no longer works the way you intended.
We’ve all had this, right?
>It’s frustrating as hell to know without a shadow of a doubt what you meant to say but to have someone repeat your words back to you with a completely new meaning attached, isn’t it?
But you know, this is happening hundreds if not thousands of times a day every day and probably nowhere more so than your written words on your websites, your blogs, your tweets, you status updates and even your marketing flyers.
You’re trying to say one thing yet people are reading your words a completely different way. This results in less comments, less follow ups, less requests, less consultations, less conversions and yes, less clients and less money.
I know this firsthand as I’ve been guilty of making intent-based communication mistakes in my own fitness marketing time and time and time again over the years.
I’d put together (what I thought was) great marketing materials and flyers and such then sit scratching my head trying to figure out why I had zero responses to them. I wondered why my (to me at least) very obvious marketing messages where not connecting with the people I was sending them to.
It just didn’t make sense!
Yet, over time I realised that I’d been making a BIG mistake in how I was putting my fitness marketing together.
I’d focused more on what I was trying to SAY than what the recipient was going to hear.
I’d focused more on trying to be understood than I did on the very subtle but exponentially more powerful communication pathway of making sure that I could never be mis-understood.
Think about it.
If, instead of willy-nilly throwing messages, posts, articles, flyers etc ‘out there’ into the ether hoping that those that read it would get what you were trying to say, you crafted each and every piece of the message so that it simply could not be interpreted any other way. It simply could NOT be misunderstood.
We’re talking ‘clean’ communication here. Clarity. Focus.
Do you think that would change things for you?
You know it would!
Every web page, every flyer, every ad, every blog post, Tweet and status update would deliver a precise message saying what you want to say, how you want to say it and bringing about the response you want to bring about.
Ultimately, it’s this clarity, this dedication to making sure that you cannot possibly be misunderstood that sets you apart from others. That makes you appear to be a consummate expert in your field to the eyes of those who read your messages.
And, make no mistake, it’s this clarity that makes you money!
There’s an old marketing saying that ‘the confused mind says no’ and this is absolutely true, yet how many of YOUR web pages, flyers, ads, tweets and such leave people confused about what you want them to do?
A lot, right?
Why not start today by going back over all your existing marketing material (starting with your website) and ask yourself these questions:
1. What was I trying to say here?
2. Could this have been read in any other way and if so, how?
3. How could I say this so that it can only be read in such a way that the message remains intact as intended?
And, of course, there’s another VERY important question we should always ask:
Is this the RIGHT message for the people I’m writing to?
(We’ll discuss this last question in another article coming up soon!)
Just by using those first 3 questions on your website homepage you’ll see that what you were trying to say can probably be understood in 3, 4, 5 or more different ways (particularly if you advertise numerous services on your site!) meaning that the confused mind will say no.
Apply it to your ads and flyers and you’ll see the same mistake repeated again and again and again, multiplying the confusion and multiplying the ‘no!’
Fix this.
Start today.
One page at a time, one ad at a time, one flyer at a time, remove the confusion and add clarity to everything you create.
Use the 3 questions and turn your fitness business success around fast.
It really IS that easy!
Get to it!
Dax Moy
Join My FREE Personal trainer Success Community TODAY!
P.S – So that I’m keeping with my own 3 questions, let’s have some comments from you guys letting me know what you understood, what you got and what you’re going to do with the information I’ve shared here.
My aim here is to create discussion, feedback and action (Just so’s were clear!) : )
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