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Is The Fitness Industry Ready For The Boomer Explosion?

Is The Fitness Industry Ready For The Boomer Explosion?

Published by on February 4, 2013 | Leave a response

Do you presently train many boomer or senior clients? Do you know how to effectively attract what is likely to become the largest unserviced training client market on the planet? I know this is an area of my business that could stand significant growth and learn about this I’ve turned to my friend and colleague Dr. Dan Ritchie.

Here’s what he has to say…

dan-ritchieIn 2013 Baby Boomers will be turning 68 years old.  The largest segment in our economy, with the largest percentage of wealth will be turning to the fitness industry for help with their aging bodies.  The number of quote “special populations” that will be seeking out fitness professionals is about to reach a tipping point.  Here is just a sampling of some of the conditions a boomer client might present with:  Joint replacements (often 2), osteopenia, sarcopenia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, arthritis, Parkinson’s, peripheral neuropathy, cancer.   Many will present with multiple challenges, this all on top of a deconditioned body with limited fitness ability.   However the situation is not bleak or discouraging if one is readily prepared for the challenge.   This is not your average client seeking a flat tummy, or sexy love handles.

I like to show boomer or senior clients that they are on a progression or a trajectory through the aging process.   Now there are some things you cannot modify or change on that aging course.   For example you cannot change your gender, your age, genetic factors, vision problems, but as fitness professionals we can impact lifestyle and facilitate a training program that will maintain high levels of function for your clients into their 90s.

This model I use in every consultation with a client over the age of 55.   This really shows that as individuals there is a tremendous range of function that our future may hold, and exercise may be the difference between golfing in our 80s-90s or a nursing home.

 

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This chart depicts the trajectory that you are on as you age.   You notice there are two trajectories pictured one that drops below the disability threshold and one that stays above it, which one would you choose?   I fully believe that most older adults should follow the higher trajectory, and in many cases lifestyle is the significant separating factor…..so in a simple sense that choice is up to each individual.   I actually believe this should make for a lifetime client.   If you sign someone up to train at the age of 65 you might have them as a client for 5-20 years!  This is not the 34 year old looking to drop weight and then drop you as a trainer.

I believe the “new senior” client will want nothing to do with the senior fitness programs we have seen in the past.   Boomers are not taking aging lying down, to give you an example two recent clients were training for outcomes such as climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro (current client age 55) or riding bikes for several hundred miles in France countryside (current client age 70).

I believe the Fitness market for Boomers and Seniors is poised to explode for those fitness professionals that are prepared.  This isn’t going to be a small niche market, but it will be where the most successful and stable fitness businesses will thrive for years to come.  Keep in mind the young baby boomers are still late 40s early 50s and will want to stay young and active for 40 more years (or your entire career).

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Dan M Ritchie, PhD, CSCS, HFS-ACSM

Dan Ritchie, has a broad background in the fitness industry including training and management in commercial and university/hospital-based fitness, for-profit, not-for-profit and educational facilities. His primary areas of expertise are in personal training for special populations (pregnant women, those with chronic disease and/or disorders such as Parkinsons, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, Fibromyalgia and Alzheimers, etc.). He has participated in state funded research on exercise for Alzheimer type severe dementia and regularly presents at national and regional conferences. He is a past Board member of the Midwest American College of Sports Medicine and was nominated for the ACSM National College Board of Trustees in 2008. He has been the Enhance Fitness Master Trainer for the State of Indiana since 2007. While at Purdue, he received a Lynn Fellowship and a National Strength and Conditioning Association research grant, and in 2009 his Ph.D. in Health and Kinesiology, with a minor in Gerontology.

His experience also includes:

  • FallProof Instructor Certified, from California State, Fullerton, 2006-present
  • 2005 Thesis of the Year Award from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
  • 2004 Graduate Student of the Year, American College of Sports Medicine, Midwest Chapter
  • 2005-2007 Student Affairs Committee, ACSM
  • 2005-2007 Board Member Midwest American College of Sports Medicine,
  • 2008 Nominated for ACSM Board of Trustees
  • Enhance Fitness Master Trainer for State of Indiana 2007-current

Presented at Amercian College of Sports Medicine, National Strength and Conditioning annual meetings, Athletic Business Conference, National Council on Aging annual meeting, World Congress on Physical Activity and Aging

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Building your mailing list

Published by on February 2, 2013 | Leave a response

As a personal trainer, you need to be constantly working on building your mailing list. Your mailing list is of primary importance to your fitness marketing methods, so you need a way to measure if your current strategy is working or not. There are many ways that you can build your mailing list, which are explained below.

Offer an incentive to sign up

If you have a sign up page or pop-up advert on your website, the easiest way to increase your sign up rate is to offer an incentive for people to sign up. Some of the things you can do are to offer a free report, free audio, video or something else of value. It needs to be something that people will receive instantly once they input their name and email address.

Add a money value to your newsletter

A very method of increasing your mailing list is just to add a money value to the newsletter that you send out. Of course, if you do this as part of your fitness marketing strategy, you need to offer information of real value. It is fine to make offers in your emails, but you also need to offer high quality content on a consistent basis.

Use PPC marketing

In order to build your mailing list, you need to bring in more traffic to your website. The easiest way to do this is with pay per click marketing. You can set-up an account in minutes and start driving traffic in under thirty minutes. As long as you have the funds, you can drive as much traffic as you want. This is a great way to test the offer you are making on your website.

Contact other marketers

If you want to build up the size of your mailing list then you can contact other fitness marketers in your community. Offer to give them some content in exchange for them sending the material to their subscriber list. This is a great way to get high quality subscribers on your list without spending any money. Remember that you need to target local businesses if possible, so that you can contact the new subscribers and try to sell your personal training sessions.

Use articles

Another very simple method to increase your mailing list without spending any money is to create and post articles on the Internet. Inside the articles you can post a link that goes directly to your sign up page. This will direct people to get more information from you, if they liked your article.

Take out an advert in the newspaper

In order to build a list of local subscribers you should take out an advert in the local newspaper. If you can get a job as a weekly writer or columnist then this would be even better. The idea is just to offer good information and then tell people where they can learn more from you. Using this fitness marketing tactic is an excellent way to increase the sign up rate of your mailing list.

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GSD is How We Roll!

GSD is How We Roll!

Published by on January 29, 2013 | 1 Response

You know I’ve learned so much from my mentors over the year’s, this again comes from my association to Bedros.

Just before Christmas I received a small package in the mail, a gift from my coach. A simple Christmas card and a new iPod shuffle. I didn’t think much of it at first other than it was a nice sentiment.

As you know recently I just returned from an adventure in Peru. While packing for that trip I decided I was going to take this new iPod with me to listen to some music and audio programs during the trek to Machu Picchu. When I unplugged it from my macbook I noticed it was actually engraved on the back, “GSD is how we roll!”

GSD-ipodGSD has become the motto of the group; it stands for Get Shit Done! How do you do this in your business? And do you really, or are you just constantly busy doing things that aren’t propelling your business forward?

I gotta be honest there’s still too much I do in my business that I shouldn’t be doing, and I know the same is true for you. I guarantee there are things you do each day that, for one, you don’t like doing. They might be essential tasks but it doesn’t mean you should be doing them. The masterminds always remind me how important it is to delegate and outsource.

I’ve always thought I was weird (ok let’s face it not thought, I know I’m weird), I’m really not capable of working efficiently for long hours the way some people are. When I work too long on one thing I become diluted, distracted, frustrated and when I am frustrated the engine stops; nothing get’s done.

I’m also a product of scarcity, I grew up with nothing, I had a belief that the world was cruel and it was unlikely I’d succeed. Somewhere along the way I overcame some of that through perseverance and determination but my scarcity mindset still sometimes prevents me from being “wasteful” and paying others to do things that I shouldn’t be doing.

Do you truly want to be successful? If you do you must overcome this scarcity mindset, you must kick your own ass, you must be ruthless.

I insist at the beginning of every month you consider what you do each day. Make a list of all the things that are your responsibility. If you’re like me and still get fearful about giving things to others; force yourself every month to pick a task to pass off to someone else. Narrow down what you do to just a handful of things grow your business. The truth is all of us only have a few good hours a day, a few precious hours we can really focus and really Get Shit Done. Maximize those hours and maximize your desire to succeed by passing off all the things that take away from that. If you don’t enjoy it someone else should be doing it. If it stresses you out because it takes longer than you expect (like uploading videos and posting these posts on my blog) pay someone else to do it. If you feel like you can’t afford to pay someone to do it then look at my previous posts and create a goal to offset the cost and give yourself a deadline.

It’s so funny and takes way too long to realize but the more stuff you pass off that distracts you from what you’re good the more money you will make.

This has to be done every month because we’ll always have things that will creep their way in to and start to take up our precious magic time. Focus, refocus, slash, burn, eliminate and conquer! GSD is how we roll!

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Promoting your personal training business

Published by on January 26, 2013 | Leave a response

In promoting your personal training business, you need to think about your current customers and clients. This is something that most personal training businesses overlook. In other businesses, this is known as ongoing customer relationship management and it is very important if you want to increase the lifetime value of each customer.

You also need to focus on your current customers above all else, as these are people who have proven to pay you in the past. While you should try to create new customers from prospects, your best efforts will be served by focusing on current customers.

While every subscriber on your email list is important and can result in sales, you need to focus on your current customers. Remember that your customers have already spent money with you and are likely to do so again if you retain a good relationship. As such, you need to offer them more value on a consistent basis.

While many businesses only focus on attracting new customers, you need to offer value to those who have already bought from you. This is how you will increase the lifetime value of each customer. You can offer value throughout the relationship in the form of free tips, gifts and advice.

There are many businesses that don’t focus on marketing to current customers, as they are worried about losing them. You need to offer more value to people in order to retain their business and keep them as loyal customers. As such, you can simply offer a more advanced training session for those customers who “want the advanced tips” and are ready to really improve.

You also need to give away free items to your customers as a way of saying thank you. This is a great way to manage your customer list. People love to feel they are part of an elite group and special in some way. You can offer certain special offers or give them free training sessions in certain circumstances. The specifics are up to you, but ensure that you treat your best customers in a special way.

Managing your customer relationships means having their interests in mind and this is something that you can cater for (with articles, videos, special reports and consultations). Everyone on your email list wants to solve the problems with their fitness and health. This is where your products and services come into play. You need to stay active with your customers and ask them what current issues they are having that you can help them with.

Ensure that you serve as a trusted friend and advisor. This is the best type of relationship that you can offer them, and you will make more money as a result.

Remember that you need to focus on your current clients as much as you do when marketing to new prospects. Remember that it is much easier to retain a current client than it is to generate a new one. It is also much cheaper and requires less time.

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How-to Open a Standalone With Minimal Risk

How-to Open a Standalone With Minimal Risk

Published by on January 22, 2013 | 1 Response

Recently I was in Miami attending Bedros Keulian’s and Craig Balantyne’s 100k Info Mastermind. During one of the breaks I was speaking to one of the members of the group who was facing an interesting situation with his training studio.

Health Club or PT Studio use this simple science of Personal Trainer Marketing and dominate!

Health Club or PT Studio use this simple science of Personal Trainer Marketing and dominate!

When we spoke at the last meeting he was discussing the possibility of moving his studio, he was having some issues with the landlord for the space he was leasing. I learned in Miami that this had escalated to where the lease was actually terminated in the first week of January with only 10 days notice, obviously this left him in quite a bind. Peak season and totally stuck to promote and grow his business.

He was telling me about the alternate locations he had scouted, one in particular that sounded very appealing. Good location, good cost structure, didn’t require too much build out, one major problem the distance from his present location might cost him the majority of his business and he was a little fearful about committing to the lease without having a major prospect list in the new area.

My response to him was why not negotiate a 60-day trial with the landlord, setup a preview type centre and run a 6 week challenge bootcamp? Yes there’s still risk in that without a list there’s likely to be some investment using marketing mediums such as direct mail, facebook and online classifieds but at least the risk is mitigated because the whole thing can be wrapped up with little to no penalty in 60 days.

The real value is that the right offer can easily bring in 20-100 people for a 6 week bootcamp which you can then pitch your conversion offer that logically makes sense. We’re testing this location and the program, if you love the program here’s the stay on board offer if we achieve (breakeven minimum) we’ll stay and here’s the plan for the facility.

Naturally don’t bill people for continuation until it’s confirmed you’re going to stay but the point is here is the exact plan as to how you could test market any brick and mortar spot with minimal risk. Any place that’s been empty for any length of time will likely have a landlord willing to negotiate. Use banners and your web presence to provide the credibility to your participants to see the vision of what you’re creating and at the same time use the short-term program to reassure them that they’re not being scammed.

Sure it’s not without further obstacles but the point is if you’re thinking of a brick and mortar location or moving a present location it doesn’t have to be a scary “all-in” investment like many believe, I hope in a few weeks to give you an update on what exactly happened in this situation.

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How personal trainers can generate website traffic

Published by on January 19, 2013 | Leave a response

In order to generate more website traffic, personal trainers need to know the specific details of how to improve their fitness marketing strategy. There are some simple methods that you can apply, and which generate great results.

One of the best ways that personal trainers can generate websites traffic is with videos. This works especially well for fitness marketing, as it is something that people search for in Google. If you upload your videos to YouTube then they will often be ranked very highly in the organic search results.

This means that anyone who searches for a certain type of fitness video is likely to find yours. Once they watch the video, you can offer a number of ways that they can visit your website. You can talk about your website on the video itself. You can also add a link across the bottom of the video, which is displayed throughout the video. You can also link to your website from the video profile.

Another great method of generating website traffic is to write articles. These articles don’t need to be long, and in most cases, 400 to 500 words is enough. You can write about a specific set of exercises, or focus on one particular topic inside the article. At the bottom of the article, you have the chance to link to your website. Articles are free to write and publish, and they can generate a lot of free traffic. They also get passed around the Internet, so they have a viral element to them.

One of the best things that you can do is to create a blog. Blogs are great ways to update your subscribers on a daily basis. This will ensure that your content is found in the search engines on a regular basis (as Google loves blogs). Once you link to your website, the search engines will also index your website on a regular basis. Not only that but blogs encourage people to comment on the content that you create. It is therefore very easy to generate a community atmosphere with a blog. If you do this, people will come back to your blog often. You can also add an opt-in form to your blog so that more prospects sign up.

The next thing that generates website traffic is simply communication with other fitness marketers in your industry. You can find many other people that sell to the same customers as your own. For example, you may find a yoga teacher or a nutritional expert in your local area. You should contact these people and offer to do an exchange.

Create a deal that lets you promote your newsletter to their subscriber list. This is a great way to tap into an existing list of prospective clients in your local area. This is a much more effective method than randomly trying to generating website traffic (which may or may not be targeted to your local area).

If you use the fitness marketing strategies that have been outlined above, you will notice that your website traffic increases at a rapid rate.

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Be SMART, don’t be Dumb!

Be SMART, don’t be Dumb!

Published by on January 15, 2013 | Leave a response

NumbersIt’s peak season and what’s the one thing every great trainer is good at doing when it comes to helping clients establish the value of what we offer? Ok I know half of you are thinking results, but even results don’t mean a lot if we don’t have a goal in the first place.

Even the most basic personal training certification generally teaches you the SMART acronym for setting goals; do you actively do this with your clients? More importantly do you actively do this for your business? If I walked up to you right now and asked would you know what your business growth/sales goals are for 2013? Do you know what your revenue or profit goals are? It’s easy to pick a number but if you’re following SMART you’d also know how to measure it.

Here are some of the things I use to set goals in my business:

Sales Goals

Each month has a defined sales target, each quarter has it’s own target as a sum of the months. Within that quarterly goal we have percentage targets for each of our primary services (One-on-one, semi-private and boot camp.) This information is used to plan marketing campaigns to ensure our lead generation and client attraction is congruent with our end goal.

Retention/Referral Goals

Attracting clients is one thing, keeping them is another. If you’re small you might easily be able to keep a quick tally of the number of sessions, weeks or months each client stays with you to determine an average for a month, quarter or year. As we’ve grown larger we just began considering the number of cancellations each month versus the service we were providing to consider a rough average of the amount of service provided before cancellation. Our training core has direct goals to minimize cancellation with a correlation to offsetting cancellation by generating referrals. By having access to this information we’re able to set goals and focus our efforts by developing tools and resources that make generating referrals or repairing failing relationships easier and more consistent.

Revenue Targets

If you have projections for sales and track actual sales you’ll know your average sale amount. Combine this with retention and you know the average value of your customer. Consider this information and you can either set realistic revenue targets based on the above or choose a revenue target and work backwards to know how many sales you must generate, how many clients or even ultimately how many leads you must attract to reach your goal.

This information is super powerful it quickly provides a clear picture that can define the simple tasks to do on a daily basis to ensure your business is travelling the path you want it to.

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It’s game time! Tips for understanding costs of customer acquisition.

It’s game time! Tips for understanding costs of customer acquisition.

Published by on January 11, 2013 | Leave a response

We’re now just past the first week in January, the beginning of the ultra peak season in the world of fitness. How has your business performed this week? Did you meet or exceed targets? Do you have targets?

2013 has had a very exciting start for One-to-1 Fitness, in just 8 business days we’ve seen more active leads than all of January 2012, and we’re nearly 70% of the way to our sales goal for the month (I should have set an even bigger goal.)

Why the big change this year?

fitness-marketing-calTruth is we all become complacent (yep even me.) My marketing in the past has been solid using well written copy and appropriate offers but usually still organized only a couple weeks before and not coordinating mediums very well. (Not to mention relying heavily on just one or two.)

The difference this year is that I organized much earlier. I eliminated emotion by planning my strategy in advance with none of that pressure that resides in the back of your head saying, “oh shit, it’s January I really should try to get a bunch of clients.”

Well in advance it was easy to see how to overlap mediums, it was easier to plan and budget making the utilization of email, facebook, email, print and even direct mail all possible and all work together.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like spending money on advertising, yet if you knew it would always work wouldn’t you spend whatever amount was necessary to attract as many clients as you want?

One of the big changes for me is I started to consider the costs associated with attracting a new client. It’s not necessarily super accurate and it doesn’t have to be but it’s easy to figure out.

Consider how much money you’ve spent on marketing in the last 90 days or last year. Add everything up. For things like email campaigns where it seems like there is no cost try estimating the number of hours it took to run the promo and complete the sales process and imagine paying someone to do it; consider those costs as part of your marketing costs.

Now simply divide the number of new clients you attracted by the amount you spent on marketing and you have a basic idea how much it costs you to attract each new client.

Here’s the opportunity…January to March is the biggest quarter in our industry, awareness for our services is at an all time high. There’s no better time to test campaigns and see if you can match or reduce your cost of customer acquisition than now.

What I’ve taken to doing is creating a spreadsheet and laying out all my promotions based on the weeks of the year and using different colours in columns to represent different mediums and then start planning how they’ll overlap. By doing this I can estimate costs and start building instruction sets.

10classOnce I decide on the promo I systemize it in the following manner:

1)   Write the copy. (Ad, emails)

2)   Create an instruction set on how to sell the promo ie. Basic presentation language, instructions for entering in the CRM system and any applicable upsells.

3)   If it’s short term I setup an immediate conversion offer and the format which it’s to be presented in.

4)   OH SHIT! I try to imagine what could go wrong, what disconnects could occur that could leave a lead frustrated and in turn brainstorm solutions to make great customer service easy.

These instructions are given to my admin team to execute, but honestly even if you’re on your own you’ll save time, headaches and increase consistent service if you develop this plan for yourself.

Before you is an amazing opportunity to utilize this strategy for February, March and beyond. If my studio that’s already known to be very successful can see such a dramatic bump from using a system like this imagine what you can do!

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Simple System Creation

Published by on December 12, 2012 | Leave a response

One of the things I spend the most time doing with my coaching clients is talking to them about their personal trainer business system. Having multiple systems in your business can spell the difference from good and great customer service and mediocre to massive success. I’d like to help you ensure that in 2013 you’re positioned for massive success with the best customer service.

In this video I specifically talk about how I create my marketing budget, looking at highlights, creating promotions, adding them to my calendar, creating the instruction set for each promotion and most importantly considering each step or decision as though I will be faced with the same problem a 1000 times or more.

Our very perfectionist controlling nature makes it hard to imagine creating repeat systems but trust me once you get a taste for it you’ll never have it any other way.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/vvNCDTVUbwo [/youtube]

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