The Right Way to Spend Your Fitness Marketing Dollars

Recently a client was asking for my feedback and opinion on a display ad that they had run previously and was up for renewal. The ad was of the typical type that most gyms and personal trainers do. Logo in the top corner, some features or services in bullets, an address, phone number, hours, tagline, but no offer.

My response was simply not to run the ad.

Here’s the thing, when we think of advertising we think of the ads that we’re exposed to. All those commercials from the major brands and franchises, naturally we associate that with our business and assume this is what we should do also. The problem, we don’t have units nationwide and our advertising budget is just slightly smaller.

From right now forward you need to shift your whole attitude when it comes to marketing. Any marketing you do is for one of two purposes

1)      To increase the size of your list. These ads are very low barrier of entry where you are generally giving something away in exchange for someone giving you their contact information (primarily just email is your best bet to get the biggest response.) By building your mailing list you are earning the opportunity to talk to people over and over again to establish a relationship that will lead them to you when they need your service.

Let’s compare that for a moment to the ad I mentioned my client was going to run. That ad was going to cost more than $1000. The hope is that by creating awareness it may generate new sales over the course of the year, however the problem is we will likely never really know if it worked and if we would have sold those services anyways as when someone looks and converts on a branding ad they were already actively looking for the service anyways.

By comparison if I offer you something high value in exchange for your email I can now contact you as often as wish at the push of a button and for no extra cost, I don’t have to hope you are looking for my service today. Isn’t it obvious why spending that same $1000 on advertising geared toward list building would be much more effective? Things like e-book offers, free giveaways, etc.

Now here’s the best part, a list building strategy is completely trackable. Since the ad I’ve been criticizing was a print ad let’s assume our list building program will run with a similar print ad. Instead of features and benefit the ad should provide information about a big problem your most likely customer faces, then offer a solution in terms of your free ebooks, videos, etc. Even wrap it up with high profile consumer goods like Apple products and you have a really solid giveaway that will garner tonnes of interest.

Now in that ad we can direct them to enter online, or by phone. In either case we can measure, by tracking page visits we know how many people responded to the ad, by comparing that to the number of people that entered you can learn how valuable they thought the offer was and converted. And over time as you email them you can (thanks to email software) see how many open the email and how many respond further to any offer you give them. Now with simple math you could work backwards with the cost of your ad instantly knowing if it was a good investment or not.

Now the second type of ads you should run…well you’re just going to have to wait until next week to discuss that.