The Value of Multiple Mediums

Ever feel like you get shiny object syndrome? You know what I mean, where this new idea comes along and you jump at it, and then another idea so you jump over there.

It sort of seems to me that a lot of the fitness professionals I’ve met seem to organize their fitness marketing this way. Heck, even I’ve been guilty of this.

If you’re going to make a career in this industry I hope this will help you both acknowledge a flaw in your fitness marketing strategy as well as give you some direction on how to correct it.

Nearly five years ago now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I started to meet, read and follow some of the most successful marketers in the fitness industry. I learned a lot from them especially about building lists and using email marketing with tools like iContact, 1shoppingcart and FitPro Newsletter (which after failing to keep a newsletter consistently on track for longer than a month I am so thankful for FitPro and it’s done-for-you content.)

Soon email marketing became a really prominent part of my overall fitness marketing strategy, and it was incredibly successful, but ultimately it’s very flawed. You see, most commonly fitness professionals get stuck in what I call the “desperation loop.” The desperation loop is where you realize you need clients (generally because you might be financially strapped or seeing your income decline) so you scramble to create some sort of aggressive, lowcost promotion to attract clients.

If things go well you attract a bunch of clients and life is good, you’re busy so your attention to future marketing wanes and you carry on until again you realize, due to financial distress, you need more clients.

Now, in a city, a solo trainer could likely do this for years. In fact I did. But why would you if you only knew better? Your fitness marketing strategy needs to become just as regimented, calculated and methodical as the training and nutritional habits you are teaching your clients, and for the same reason, synergism.

There is no doubt that when you utilize basic forms of marketing on an ongoing basis (things like classifieds, lead boxes, strategic partnerships, business cards, brochures, posters) and combine that with your focused efforts (high value email, direct mail, addressed mail offers at periodical times) and then wrap them together with branding and awareness efforts (like black signs, sandwich boards, lawn signs, radio campaigns, bus benches and so on) you have a system that generates a predictable, sustainable, profitable, long term business.

Now I know if you’re a solo trainer or perhaps even have a small team or studio the challenges of managing a fitness marketing budget, it’s easy to spend thousands of dollars with little to no return, so start small. If you do a little searching you may find that large corporations will often spend 8-10% of total revenues on marketing, we’ve never done this with One-to-1, and likely never will, however this might give you a place to start, you might set a goal of setting 5% of total revenue aside for marketing.

Start with what costs the least and build a foundation, set a target to create custom lead boxes for your business and have 30 or more placed within your community. This can provide a slow steady trickle of leads to your business as well provide a very inexpensive method of branding.

Use online classified like kijiji or craigslist and just make it a habit to consistently post ads on certain days of the week.

Leave cards and brochures with trusted colleagues and then utilize all this extra awareness with targeted email and addressed mail campaigns. When you can deliver someone an offer that also is exposed to your name and image sometime and somewhere else during their day you increase the chance of them buying, this is what synergistic marketing is all about.

Start small and as revenues grow so will your marketing budget allowing you to utilize more expensive mediums and for a greater overlap of campaigns. Just pull out a calendar and start blocking of days and weeks for ideas that you can run now, this is way easier than you think (it just feels intimidating so don’t think, do.)