Personal Trainer Marketing, If I Owned a Health Club…
Health Club or PT Studio use this simple science of Personal Trainer Marketing and dominate!
If I owned a health club instead of a private training studio I would use many aggressive personal trainer marketing strategies to step outside the box of the industry and dominate. The advantages a health club has are: the cost per membership is lower, the maximum number of members per square foot is greater and you can capitalize on people not coming, kind of…and sadly many health clubs are in all kinds of trouble right now.
Well here’s what I would do…
I would aggressively promote a different atmosphere; I would make sure people received value in their memberships and seen results. Uh huh nothing new right? I would do this by employing trainers that would be scheduled for floor hours and provide personal training services for free(whoa, radical I know), hell I’d even pay them out of the gym coffers to do one-on-one sessions for free to customers on a first come first serve basis each and every day. (Something that I have never seen any gym do.)
I would aggressively promote my club to businesses and local groups with free trials. Not a free drop in, not a free week, not a free training session but outrageous value, maybe a free month or a month and 5 training sessions and beyond. (Simple truth, the only reason consumers ever say no is that you have not presented enough value.) I would carefully manage these leads and develop an automated follow up protocol that would take seconds to manage using technology. I’d then employ a full time sales person whose primary job would be to keep generating these leads by visiting people in the community; as well as contacting and executing a carefully planned conversion strategy at the end of each trial period. (This would easily keep your EFT pool growing each and every single month.)
In fact if you are serious about your personal trainer marketing whether you own a club or a studio why wouldn’t you use a very similar strategy? Does it really cost you any more to offer promo spots in your semi-private or group personal training sessions? Or large group classes like fitness boot camps? It’s the ultimate leverage model and if you are wondering if it works, well how do you think One-to-1 Fitness has and continues to grow so fast?
Give then receive, the more you give the more you receive. Invest in others and you can never go wrong.
That’s it, the simple science of effective personal trainer marketing and health club promotion all in a few paragraphs.
How-To Use Facebook to Easily DOUBLE Client Retention
Ok today is another awesome video segment from our live mastermindin Las vegas last weekend. Let me introduce my good friend ‘7 Figure’ Sam from Chino Hills, CA. Sam and I have been comparing notes since I opened my studio three years ago, you see he’s a big inspiration to me because our businesses have been so similar. The beauty is he’s a few years ahead of me, any major problem I’ve had to date, sometimes the elements of growth I am working on I’ll bounce of Sam because he’s been there, he’s been through it and always has the missing link because to him it’s just old news.
One of the key elements of Sam’s incredible success (and likely what lead to the ‘7 Figure Sam’ moniker) is that he is a client appreciation and relationship specialist. Every time I talk to Sam he always has a new cutting edge way to show more people greater appreciation and support in less time, he efficiently maintains dozens of effective relationships with his customers which in turn keeps his referral engine racing at break neck speed.
This video will give you an absolutely killer way to leverage Facebook to easily double your client retention rates.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAtjR14ydXU[/youtube]
Three Critical Components of a Successful Fitness Marketing Campaign
A special guest post that will teach you how-to ensure every fitness marketing campaign is a total success. I just got back from beautiful Las Vegas for our elite live mastermind meeting. 29 highly motivated entrepreneurs sat and discussed the inner workings of their businesses and shared their top secrets for rapid growth and world domination.
Fortunately I had my handy FlipCam and cornered a few of the participants, today I want to share with you this segment from my trusted mentor Bedros Keuilian on the three critical aspects to ensure your fitness marketing campaigns are a success.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqFrTILdzKw[/youtube]
Fear, Doubt and Action.
Well I am just getting set to head out to Las Vegas to see all my colleagues in Bedros Keuilian’s ‘Seven Figure Mastermind’ group. It’s no secret at all that I believe a big reason my life has changed so much in the last three years is that I’ve turned to coaches and trainers that allowed me to overcome many fears, doubts, and insecurities when it comes to business.
As fitness professionals we know full well the value we provide to our clients in terms of knowledge, support, accountability and reassurance when it comes to pushing them to reach our goals. As effective coaches it’s all of those things that we then hope drive our clients into taking action, implementing immediate change into their life and voila! Each time someone does rapid physical change occurs.
After 19 years in the fitness industry, after being near bankrupt, dealing with bill collectors, wondering how I was going to buy groceries next week, to being defeated to the point of leaving the industry not once, not twice, but three times, I can tell you I have a faced fear a few times. Sometimes I’ve won, other times I’ve completely failed. Sometimes I was so dejected I would even spend a few of the final dollars I had to my name on a single lottery ticket. Not because I really believed I would win, but simply for the positive feeling of “what if?” Just that moment to dream would be enough to inspire me to pick myself up and take the next action, even just a little one.
A wise piece of wisdom someone once told me, “You know what a rut is? It’s a grave with the ends kicked out.”
I’ve had training clients and now coaching clients who have expressed to me their fears, in days past they’ve told me why they can’t do something, why now is not the right time. Next week I might be having that same conversation with one of my coaches, its human nature.
Frustration, discouragement will inevitably occur and that’s why we are needed by our clients; that’s why you need colleagues to turn to. If you are stuck in a rut now or the next time you experience that feeling remember those wise words that someone once told me, “You know what a rut is? It’s a grave with the ends kicked out.”
Fear is natural; fear prevents us from action, the number one rule of success in business: Continue to take action. It’s true, and if you doubt it for a second look at your client success stories, the biggest successes come from frequent repeat action.
As Jim Collins talks about in his book Good to Great, it’s all about continually pushing on the flywheel; inevitably momentum occurs and swiftly carries you forward. I’m off to Vegas to share the tale of the wonderful momentum we are now experiencing after months of trying to correct a few little problems, the inspiration carries and I know they will provide tonnes of new ideas that will continue to carry us all forward.
Forget your fears, push them aside, take action today. Right now make a list what are the 5 SPECIFIC things you need to complete in the next 7 days to push on the flywheel of your own business? Don’t be afraid it’s never the right time!
Three Words That Will Make You a Tonne of Money
This morning I received an email from one of my subscribers explaining the classic collections situation that occurs within the big box gyms. You know the one I am referring to, member signs up, member doesn’t use membership, either credit card expires or other billing situation occurs, gym calls member and threatens to send member to collections. Pretty standard since most big box gyms have iron clad member contracts that you cannot get out of.
Another situation that was told to me recently, long term active gym members cancelled their membership at their local gym. The owner believed the cancelled their membership because of a conversation between employees, as it turns out their cancellation was due to being frustrated that the gym was always publically acknowledging the progress and achievements of all the athletes that train there but not the achievements of the every day people.
This brings me to the three little words that will make you a tonne of money as a personal trainer…
Appreciate your customers.
It’s that simple, as personal trainers we have an amazing opportunity and our industry is rapidly growing and here’s why. The classic gym is failed to realize what many personal trainers have, we are most profitable when people actually use our services and get full value for them. They then refer and send many others to use or services, it’s that simple. Our whole process of tracking goals and providing accountability is the very thing that could greatly increase revenues of any public gym but it seems far from their attention.
Here are7 ways to appreciate your clients:
1) Create a Facebook fanpage and acknowledge achievements frequently.
2) Send a thank you card to anyone that signs up. (Even better is to include a value add to really make them feel appreciated.)
3) If they cancel or miss an appointment always call and follow up and see how they are doing. In fact just do this seemingly randomly to really go over the top.
4) Send regular text messages or emails to acknowledge their efforts and thank them for their business.
5) Provide automatic, unpublished rewards for referrals.
6) Acknowledge your mistakes and give them extra value if you need to solve a problem.
7) Never let them miss more than 1-2 sessions without substantial follow up to make sure they are satisfied with their programming.
This may sound like a lot of extra work but the truth is it’s far less expensive and far more valuable to keep the customers you have than it is to find new ones. And the best part is if you work more on keeping them happy they will find new customers for you and everybody wins!
The Personal Trainer Technician
I want you to look at your schedule today and for the next few weeks and I want you to schedule a few hours each week to work on the most critical project for your business, your business plan. I would say the majority of personal trainers I’ve met as well as other entrepreneurs don’t have a functional business plan. I think the reason for this is that we are all (as Michael Gerber says in his book the E-Myth) technicians at heart. We are very good at doing the work but in the transition to entrepreneur we struggle to duplicate ourselves or grasp the idea of repeat systems as opposed to just doing it ourselves because we will do it right.
Many people feel that if they are not looking for funding of some sort that they don’t really need to spend time drafting a length and in depth proposal. If this applies to you it’s time to shift your mindset. Though after three years of operating One-to-1 Fitness I’ve rarely referred to our business plan I can assure you that plan has been a strong contributor to our success.
Writing a business plan will identify many problems before you face them, before they cost you thousands of dollars. The budgeting and financial projections provide clear and concise goals and allow you to answer the question, “is this business viable and worthwhile?” You will begin to generate ideas about systems and marketing based on sales projections as you can’t help but think, “how will I handle that many people?” or “if we grow this fast I can’t possibly handle it all who will I need to hire? How am I going to hire them?”
Even if your business is already up and running you need to write your business plan, the value of being able to look at present and future is a critical component of your system for long term success as a Profitable Personal Trainer, fitness marketer, and entrepreneur.
Some of the resources I’ve found valuable for writing my business plan were:
- Business Plan Pro a small piece of software that helps you get out of the gate by simply completing the blanks and forming the base structure of your business plan.
- A simple spreadsheet to being estimating revenues and expenses. If you’d like my current budgeting spreadsheet I am happy to share it with you simply contact me with ‘Budget Spreadsheet’ in the subject line.
- A book called Building a Dream (actually a textbook from a college class) by Walter S. Good
- And another book called Business for Beginners by Frances McGuckin
Local Personal Trainer Dominates Real Estate in a Depressed Market
At least this is what I believe the headline would be if I ever decided to sell real estate. Right now my wife are building our one-off-the-dreamhome-home and are in the process of selling our current home in a very depressed real estate market. We’ve been fortunate, since we purchased our very first home we have always worked closely with an office known to be Red Deer’s top real estate team. What has been interesting is talking with our real estate agent about marketing and comparing that with our own successful fitness marketing strategies. There are many similarities. I believe, in many ways, selling a $3000-$5000 personal training program is similar to selling a half million dollar home. The tools and steps needed to be successful in real estate, in my opinion, are quite similar to sucessful fitness marketing in our own depressed market.
1) Identify, enhance and affirm prospect emotions – Both personal training and buying a home are incredibly emotional decisions. In either case you must listen and communicate effectively with your prospect. Identify their needs allow them to get in touch with their pain or fears of the decision that they face and provide the correct affirmations that allow them to decide your solution is THEIR answer. This doesn’t mean you should be insincere or manipulative, in fact quite the opposite the more honest and transparent you are the more effective your fitness marketing will be.
2) Provide value when none is expected – Every week I continually share content with my faithful subscribers, every week I share that same content with people on Facebook, Twitter and in person. People have come to know me as an expert within the fitness field, in many cases, long before they ever considered ever using any services that I’ve offered. (Needless to say when they did discover they needed those services they came to me.) You can advertise to create top of mind awareness or you can earn it by being the person that always GIVES the answers to the questions you didn’t even know you were asking.
3) Form strategic alliances – If you want quality leads and customers get them from people with similar quality lists. By being the person that gives the answers via content you earn influence over your readers who will trust your suggestions of other services. Imagine if other similar businesses were comfortable suggesting you to thier lists? Of course there is instant credibility and opportunity for business growth for both.
Let’s face it generally personal trainers are still many years behind when it comes to effective fitness marketing. I truly believe if I moved from personal training to another service or sales industry I could be just as successful in record time, no matter the market conditions, just by using the same steps, systems and concepts. So can you!
Relationship Building, Team Building, Community Support
September 25, 2010 from 10-2 PM at 4343 78st Crescent, Red Deer
Right now we are getting close to our 2nd annual fundraiser and I am very excited about it. You see it’s always been part of our business plan to get involved in the community and find our own little way to make a notable contribution. (This should be in your plan too.)
The organization we decided to support is the Food Bank. Last year in particular the Food Bank took quite a hit with the onset of economic recession. So we did what you would expect and designated a day for free services in exchange for donations, nothing fancy there. Additionally we organized what we called the Client Revenge Trainer Challenge, where all of our trainers squared off against each other in a fitness challenge and our clients got to watch, holler, ridicule, count (terribly like we do) and generally enjoy the shoe on the other foot so to speak.
We were pleased, in just over three weeks we raised over 800lbs of food for the Food Bank and a few thousand dollars. We never expected the additional rewards that came unknowingly with something like this.
There is no doubt that it feels great to give back to the community what had never occurred to us was how incredible this event would become in terms of team building and the relationship with our customers. That enhanced relationship has produced dozens of new prospects and referrals. In all, this effort to say thank you to our community and lend a helping hand also turned out to be one of the most efficient and cost effective marketing campaigns we’ve ever ran. It also built a stronger bond amongst our team members than any other activity to date.
To organize your own winning charitable activity there is only one major ingredient or hurdle you need to tackle. Create a closed loop fundraiser, meaning one that can’t fail. The key ingredient to the success of last year’s event was relieving the “what if it doesn’t work?” early. All we did was specify that if people didn’t donate on the services by donation day we would simply donate a portion of the regular fees associated to their sessions that day and for the trainer challenge each person participated simply contributed 10 items, so there was no way the event could fail. Those couple little things were all it took for us to pull the trigger with peace of mind and the rest is history.
This year a new idea has made it even bigger, we’re now inviting others to prepare teams for a community fitness challenge against the Fire Department, we’ve moved it offsite we’re attracting many businesses and local media. We’ve made it clear that we don’t need any special acknowledgment or recognition as much as we just need people to take the idea and make it their own and come out. I have no doubt that the event will be a success and the potential for it to rapidly grow to a recognizable annual event is tremendous. From a purely marketing standpoint we don’t need special recognition for the event because it will simply happen regardless if people like the event and the lack of pressure or focus for any specific result will continue to make it the best company culture development tool you could ever hope to accidentally plan.
If you’d like to join us you too are more than welcome, you will find all the details here: Fitness vs Fire Event Page
There’s Plenty To Go Around
It may be hard to believe but I think you should get to know not just the complimentary businesses in your area but also your competitors. (The in-direct ones anyways and even the direct ones that you feel have the same level of integrity and commitment to our industry as you do.)
I remember way back when I first began personal training I was always nervous when a new trainer popped up. Truth is though, the more trainers there are the more awareness there is to personal training and ultimately the more targeted, warm prospects there are. When we opened our studio I recall having that same feeling of butterflies when our first competitor appeared, but well three years and many competitors later here we are and our business is still growing out of control like the clover was in my yard earlier this year.
Since forming my mastermind group and getting to know my coaching clients I see even more value of having a business relationship where there is nothing to fear in sharing your trade secrets. When I first decided to offer coaching I swore I’d never take coaching clients in my own market (currently I have 2). However even that worry was for nothing, I am watching them poise for success and by supporting and endorsing each other it’s just making all of us grow faster.
Meet the other businesses in your area, offer them value and work together to increase the volume of your marketing funnel. There’s plenty to go around and the moral of the story is that speed is required for success and a flintstone car goes better with more than one set of feet.
Start Making More Video
Video should be an essential part of your personal trainer marketing strategy.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEdWHUnxIQ0[/youtube]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- …
- 30
- Next Page »
YES! Contact me today to schedule a FREE no obligation consultation and trial workout.