Welcome back to 🚀 Progress. My weekly update where I share my stories and behind-the-scene insights into my journey playing the Internet game and seeking to provide value for this world as an entrepreneur/creator.
Every week I will transparently show my progress from the beginning on.
Topics of the week
🏃♂️| Building a Running Brand – Reflection on Goals, Audience and Funnel
🏹 | What are my priorities?
Building a Running Brand
Thoughts on goals
More and more I am becoming aware of brands on social media that unite a community and become running groups where people meet and follow their passion together.
Originally, I wanted to set up my own running group to make more contacts in the running scene in my area. There isn’t really anything like that in my home town, but there is in a neighboring town:
A running club with ambitious runners is taking over nearly every local race. It seems that this club is getting bigger and bigger and has a special spirit.
They are also present on social media and their followers are growing. They share their running stories online, inspiring more people to join them. It not only serves just as a self-promotion tool but as a hub of motivation, inspiring members to stay committed to the sport.
Start globally or locally?
The example above is an example of how a community can develop locally in a city. The ambition here is not initially to increase the reach of the brand.
However, there are other examples that spread from local, urban to national level. Another well-known running brand, for example, offers to act as an ambassador for the brand in order to bring the brand to larger cities across the country.
The other approach would be to build up the brand globally. Which path would you have to take for this? Is this the right way? That’s the question I’m currently asking myself.
There are now many brands that build a community around their product (be it clothing or something else) and offer events, meet-ups, Discord channels or Strava clubs to bring the people who follow the brand together.
Sharing experiences and learnings
As running has been my passion over the last few years, it is easy for me to put my experiences, views and skills into writing.
This is currently my strategy for creating content. As is often the case, I didn’t really think about a proper strategy, I just got started.
Progress on TikTok and Instagram
It’s been one week since I started posting on TikTok and Instagram. I created some posts about my learnings in running and got 65 followers together on both platforms.
The one post which worked best was a post on how to run a Sub 3h marathon and a “Did you know” post about the Sub 3h marathon. They now have over 15.000 views and more than 300 likes together. Actually they are the posts that I had to put in the most work.
It seems that this Sub 3h marathon topic has some potential to work on. Even though this topic I think is a very niche topic it’s something that a lot of passioned runners are interested in. A goal that is unimaginable for many runners who start running, but for those who are passionate about running and have been doing it for several years. It is one of THE sound barriers in running for amateur athletes.
Building a sales funnel
I have long wondered whether it makes sense to build a funnel for the people who are interested in running a Sub 3h marathon and to summarize the knowledge I have gathered over the years as an ambitious runner in a course and training plan.
A funnel around this topic might be looking like this:
Awareness:
Content Marketing on TikTok or Instagram (later maybe paid advertising)
Interest:
Landingpage/Website with sign up for free email course
Desire:
Free email course, lead magnets with simple information products in a one or two pager
Action:
Buying a training plan or coaching program
Now that I’ve taken the first step on the awareness level and am generating views, I’ve moved on to building a landing page and setting up an email waiting list. This is currently available at http://united-in-pace.com. I have to admit that my choice of color reminds me of another brand from a different area, but that can still be changed.
The next step is to generate views on the landing page and sign up for the waiting list. The problem here is that TikTok only allows the integration of links from a number of 1000 followers. So some work is still needed here.
On Instagram, the integration of the website is always allowed, but it is much more difficult to generate views here. I need to familiarize myself more here. At the same time, it is also very difficult to use both platforms equally.
What I have to learn is driving traffic to a landing page now and learn to analyze data in Google Analytics.
Even though this all seems like a kind of good idea some questions came up which I have to answer in the following weeks:
– Who is someone who earned a lot of money by doing training plans?
– What is another product that only I can build from my knowledge?
– How does this scale? How big is the market? Is this market too crowded?
– Am i in control of the business? Wie hoch ist die Abhängigkeit von Instagram/TikTok-
– How can I detach from the business and outsource tasks?
– Who is my competition?
– Is this the thing I want to do in my life?
– Do I think that reaching the Sub3h marathon goal is worth pursuing and do I want to be the guy who educates people on that topic?
– What content do I want to provide? I am not the person who wants to put his face in front but but wait: Why not? I believe there are many learnings open up. Improve free speech. Improve camera performance. Maybe starting with doing audio.
– What is unique content on running that doesn’t exist on the internet? Can I provide this? How can I stand out from the competition?
What are competitors doing?
Here are examples what competitors are doing with their brands?
Minted running by Marcus Milione
- Selling clothes online and in a pop up store
- Selling supplements with Minted Health
- Substack writings about behind the scenes: https://www.mintedminutes.com
- YouTube behind the brand videos
Jogging Room by Stephen Scullion
- Selling courses: Running Masterclass / Marathon plan / Half Marathon plan
- Does Content on Youtube and Social Media
Kraftrunners:
– Selling clothes and merchandise
– Organize events for runners with other brands
– Selling training plans
I will analyze more what competitors are doing in a separate article.
🏹 Strategy update – What are my priorities right now?
1. Creating unique content from my point of view to attract an audience for the running brand
2. Building products / lead magnets based on running
3. Writing weekly status updates in my Newsletter Progress and documenting my journey (Helps definitely to reflect what I’m doing)
4. Posting on X under my own name
English 
German