Learn This For Instantly Cheaper Advertising

Thanks to technology as small entrepreneurs we have more opportunity than we have ever had before to prosper; if you understand the cost dynamics of your personal trainer marketing.

I find most trainers are very afraid to spend money on marketing, yet when they do it’s often on high dollar, unpredictable, hard to measure things that seem to “feel right” or make sense at the time. Things like direct mail, print ads, billboards and flyers.

Personally I much prefer more direct response driven channels where I have nearly instantaneous measurability and control. Things like social media ads, pay per click, and email marketing.

But no matter the medium you choose there are some basic things you should understand:

• Leverage group programs. For group programs your cost of operation is generally near static whether you have one person or twenty five, which means that you can technically “afford” to discount a trial to any dollar amount you choose, even free, without occurring a flurry of additional cost.
• Realize you have to use compelling offers that appeal to the world’s desire for instantaneous gratification. Low cost and high value trials, the ability to book instantaneously, the enticement of an additional desirable gift if I take action right now.
• Combine with tangible items to drive up the cost of your service trials. Because we can’t see, touch or feel a service as a consumer it’s normal to have a hard time conceptualizing it’s value, but add a tangible hard good and that changes entirely.
• Understand the basic metrics of conversion. How many people see the ad, how many people take the next step (such as contacting you or leaving contact info), and finally how many people purchase your short-term offer as a result. All the people that see your ad divided by those that pay is your conversion rate, there’s not a right or wrong number, but the goal is to meet or beat your previous best each time you use that medium.
• Most importantly understand your upfront cost per lead. Take the total number of purchases and divide it by the total cost of the campaign. Any time you can breakeven or nearly breakeven you are doing great. It’s usually here that many people get squeamish, they cringe at the cost of the ad without realizing that when total sales are considered (and combined with group training in particular) each lead may have only cost a few dollars or in cases if only mediums may even have generated a small return.

Beyond the initial response of the promotion authors like Jay Abraham will get you thinking about the lifetime value of each client. So each one of those leads that moves from a trial to a long-term client brings tremendous value to your business.

Previously if the costs of marketing have frightened you, as you follow along here you might be starting to think that all this is suddenly a lot less scary. Well truth is, it is, at least conceptually.

The problem arises when you spend to the edge of your budget on that campaign that’s a zero performer; we’ve all had them. This is why I love most digital mediums so much. Most digital mediums allow you to progressively change budget and make nearly real time changes periodically through your campaign, talk about increasing your chances of success!

At the end of the day all you can do is make your best guess, try and try again, but the great news is with a little application of simple math and a basic understanding of the items above you can greatly reduce your margin of error.

Hope this helps, the more successful you are the greater hope that together we can change the world!

Cabel