Streamlining Your Core Offer Builds Powerful Marketing

It’s easy to think that offering a wide range of services and programs will help you attract more clients and make more money.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it usually works. More times than not you end up with the opposite result when you offer too many types of training programs.

Having multiple programs makes marketing more challenging. You either end up diluting the marketing by trying to speak to everyone, OR you have to stretch your messaging to cover each of the programs individually. Both are not ideal.

There are times when having multiple programs can benefit your business. But just as your clients have to be ready to be able to handle complex movements, your business has to be ready to handle the additional complexity that comes along with marketing, selling, delivering multiple core offers and doing it well.

So let’s talk about what to do BEFORE you expand the scope of your offerings.

Strengthen Your Offer

Your core offer is the economic driver of your business. It’s the ONE program that drives your success. It’s the best solution to the problem your ideal client is trying to solve. So, yeah, it’s pretty important.

Notice it isn’t plural - it’s not core offers.

There are a lot of studios out there that make a huge mistake by not clearly defining their core offer for many reasons but mainly out of trying to appeal to everyone. They are seen as a jack of all trades, master of none. And tragically they never are top of mind as a solution for anyone in their target market.

You want to dominate your area with your core offer. It’s meant to be the number one thing you are known for - the secret sauce that differentiates you from the pack. Your best core offer is focused and specific.

How do you build the perfect core offer? Build it around:

The results your clients want
The results you’re best at attaining for your clients
The method you use for getting those results

It’s where your strengths solve the biggest need for your target market. Once you’ve got that dialed in you need to evaluate your core offer by asking things like:

Can you build a sustainable business with it?
Can you deliver it long term?
Do your circumstances (space, time, etc.) allow you to deliver it well and consistently?

Once you build a core offer that can deliver in these main areas your next step should be focused on marketing to support that offer. The goal is to grow this offer in a way that leads to an increase in revenue.

The Power of Focus

When you have a clear offer to communicate you can clearly share its details without confusion or losing sight of the goal. When you know what your clear goals are, then connecting with your ideal clients is just around the corner.

Imagine focusing all your marketing activities on one goal. Everything you do to get new leads should be focused on growing one program and mastering that before adding in additional offers.

As a rule of thumb you should have 3 active marketing channels in place at all times: Online, External and Internal. Each of these channels should be designed to get someone to take the next step with you through your marketing funnel all the way to your core offer.

Ex: Automated email opt-in to front end offer (intro offer/ new client special), and then your front end offer is designed to move someone to your core offer.

Here’s a quick graphic that shows alignment for your marketing funnel:

When Should You Add Programs?

You should add programs in two cases:

When you need to complement your core offer with supplemental programs
After you have mastered your first core offer, are prepared to scale your business and begin building a second core offer

Earlier we spoke about how you can’t (and shouldn’t) try to appeal to everyone. When you do that, naturally there will be gaps in your offerings but, those become additional offer opportunities when your business is ready to handle that added demand.

An example of this might be that your first core offer is 1:1 training three times per week. Due to that, you probably have a few hours open in your day. Running group training programs for those that maybe can’t afford 1:1 or prefer group is a great way to build out your schedule, continue to increase revenue, and serve your community with a second offer.

During the process of mastering your original core offer, you should have also built a team, systems and structure to support the business which allows for even more potential programming and growth when adding onto things you know work.

In business, everyone thinks they want fast growth and overnight success but the real goal is to have systems in place that serve as a multiplier for you - not a drain of resources.

PRO Tip: It is more valuable for you to have one clearly defined core offer and a well designed intro/ special that feeds it than it is for you to have multiple not so clearly defined offers without a well designed intro to feed your business. In this model of too many competing offers, most businesses see what is commonly referred to as “feast & famine seasons,” plagued by the constant need to hustle for business as opposed to building a steady client base.

What’s the take-home message?

Success of any business is built on streamlining processes that support you doing what you are truly good at. Don’t be overwhelmed with the idea that you have to “be everything to everyone,” because we all know that’s not an actual reality.

By maintaining focus and discipline on what moves continually propel your business (and revenue) forward, you are efficiently using your business resources which help you clearly see the needs of your clients. By putting the time and energy into truly understanding what serves your community, you will simultaneously identify ways you can expand your offers that will compliment what you already do and help you scale.