Offline Personal Trainer Marketing
Is your current personal trainer marketing strategy producing continual growth in your business? I’ve really noticed something with a lot of fitness professionals lately, and in some ways even within my own business. With a number of personal trainer marketing experts sharing ideas and business building strategies there has been a huge shift to using the internet to attract new clients and grow your business. Now there is nothing wrong with this, in fact if you don’t have an effective website, aren’t using online classifieds and Facebook you are likely really missing out when it comes to gaining new clients.
The problem is I see so many fitness professionals so focused on online personal trainer marketing strategies that it is literally becoming their only vehicle for lead generation and business growth. Is this happening to you? It got me thinking about the really successful people I know, even the internet marketers I know. Almost all of them had something in common; their first big success wasn’t online at all. In almost all cases the most successful people I know grew their initial businesses offline, belly to belly, the old fashioned way.
So consider your own efforts, remember that building a successful business is about creating a marketing engine that continually produces perpetual growth. It’s critical to consider using more than one medium, so if your current efforts are really focused online than try to systemize some of those processes and then turn your attention back to developing your offline efforts.
Here are 6 effective offline marketing vehicles that I have and continue to use:
1) The Lunch and Learn – Hands down this was one of the most effective tools for me to establish myself as a personal trainer repeatedly in 3 different markets before settling in Red Deer. If you’ve had but one client who’s experienced great results I guarantee you’ve been asked questions or overcome obstacles experienced by almost anyone trying to reach a fitness goal. Develop this information into 2-3 20-40 minute presentations and then get out and share it with anyone who will listen. Talk to businesses, call local clubs and service groups, talk to schools (specifically teachers and parents if possible), fundraisers, chamber events, and so on. Some people say no but don’t let that discourage you keep asking, I guarantee this can radically change your business in 30 days or less.
2) Networking Groups – It seems there are more of these than ever. As a personal trainer you are an expert at building relationships and rapport. Perfect for networking groups, get out, meet people, and share what you know. Distribute your business cards but what an even better time to distribute gift cards, or run a referral program.
3) Strategic Business Alliances – share credibility by forming relationships with complimentary businesses. Promote each other knowing your clients might be their audience and vice versa.
4) Leadboxes – An inexpensive branding tool and a continual source of leads, the key is the right offer and the involvement of the business displaying the box. Get them involved in your programs, have them contribute to the prize package so they work harder to promote it.
5) Endorsed Mailing – Have you worked with certain professionals forever? Have you trained any of their clients to amazing success? Would they consider sending an endorsed letter to their clients introducing them to you and your services? You often don’t know until you ask.
6) Direct Mail and Addressed Mail Campaigns – There is a cost to these, but because there is a cost it also limits how much competition you will have for your given industry. A well designed direct mail or addressed mail piece can produce thousands of dollars in sales. Canadapost allows you to target specific routes and postal codes so you can target your audience to those within your target area. www.infocanada.ca provides addressed mail lists for many regions with an amazing amount of demographic data so you may select a very targeted audience.
Have you used any or all of these strategies? Have they worked for you? What pitches worked the best? What other offline personal trainer marketing strategies do you use? Your comments will help others and theirs might be the next breakthrough for your business. Pay it forward and share. 🙂
Inspiration and Everything You Need to Know
An amazing reason to continue to help other trainers.
Yesterday afternoon I received the text I’ve attached to this post. My coaching client Sean out in Vancouver crossed the $100,000 threshold, what an amazing feeling this must be for him. In just 5 months Sean went from 3 personal training clients buying a handful of sessions at a time to building a real business boasting reoccurring contract revenue to the tune of over $100,000 annually. He’s quickly outgrown his schedule to the point where he has had to hire trainers and become more focused on systems, marketing and handling the rigours of continual growth. Not bad what he did in 5 months only took me years by comparison, yet if you moved him to a brand new city tomorrow with no connections I bet he would agree that he could duplicate the same or greater success in the same or less time.
So how did he do it, some kind of magic? A whole bunch of luck? Is he a superior trainer? Truth is he’s just learned some of the simple secrets that allowed him to avoid the common pitfalls most trainers make.
If I was to move somewhere else and start brand new here’s what I would do (and in fact it is what I’m doing as I’m planning my next facility in a new market right now.)
1) I’d do some keyword research using the Google external keyword tool. Then based on search volumes, the number of results, and the consistency of those search results I’d get a general idea of some of the competition in my desired market.
2) I’d use wordpress with an optimized link structure and optimized content and setup a website and see how quickly I could rank in that new market.
3) I’d use FitPro Newsletter to create some high value low barrier opt-ins to begin building a list in that market.
4) I’d use Facebook advertising to drive more targeted traffic to my website as well as a Facebook fanpage with a customized optin to build my list even faster with the smallest budget possible.
5) Next I’d head there and setup a bootcamp which I’d fill with human billboards from free online classified ads.
6) At the same time I’d visit many local businesses and offer free lunch seminars to establish myself as the local expert, at the same time I’d offer them a trial of my bootcamp.
7) Once I had 20 human billboards I’d begin an email referral contest and build my list even faster.
8) Then I’d start an email marketing program using high value low dollar promotions to enrol a large volume of people.
9) At first contact I’d begin using my 3 Point Conversion strategy to convert them to paying EFT clients.
10) Now with an immediate base of revenue to offset some operating costs I’d be looking for a brick and mortar building to setup shop in so I was no longer restricted by weather, time or anything else.
11) Once setup in the building I’d begin using resources like www.infocanada.ca to run addressed mail campaigns or selecting the wealthiest communities and run direct mail campaigns.
Maybe this sounds easier than it is or more likely we make it more difficult by letting our own fears or the ideas of “waiting for the right moment” get in the way.
The truth is it’s far easier to succeed than you think and the two biggest factors are:
- How fast can you implement and execute?
- Stick to the simple things they are always the better ones in the long run.
Today Erik at www.FitnessBusinessInterviews.com published an interview we did a while back, it pretty leaves no stone unturned about how I built my business and how you can too.
Personal Trainer Marketing: Website Relevancy
What does personal trainer marketing have to do with the library? Likely more than you currently understand. If you’re interesting in an effective online personal trainer marketing strategy than you better understand how keyword relevancy works when it comes to your website.
Let’s say for a moment you are fairly new personal trainer in the industry, you are keen, knowledgeable, eager and ready to change the world. Chances are you will make many of the same mistakes I did, printing business cards first, then posters for the gym, maybe having a brochure made and talking to a few local businesses about displaying your propaganda. If you’re really savvy you might setup a website on some free hosting site using their overnight website builder, you’ll like come up with a cool name like I did “Cabel’s Fitness F/X” and was even lucky enough to buy www.fitnessfx.com way back when. Trust me this is not an effective personal trainer marketing strategy, but don’t feel bad because most of us start this way and usually struggle.
Once you realize this isn’t going to be effective you will probably go looking for information, instead of going to the actual library (do they still exist?) you will probably consult the online library of the internet. You’ll search for things like: how to sell personal training, how to get more personal training clients, personal trainer marketing, and personal trainer advertising. Low and behold Google performs like magic and delivers big, you never leave the first page, you navigate to different sites (that might even have been how you first found www.ProfitablePersonalTrainer.com) and begin to learn why what you are doing now isn’t working. The answer is in the process you just completed.
The search engines work like the old drawers of index cards in the library, they categorize information and website in multiple ways on how relevant they are to any topic but the search engines can of course do it way better. Now instead of a book being manually entered in a certain category the search engines can look, analyze and digest an endless number of variables and instantly compare to ensure they answer they give you is the most relevant to your query. Here is a list of things you should be aware of, some do’s and don’ts that will ensure people are finding you.
1) Don’t host on a free website host, often these sites have coded directions for search engines to ignore them or they aren’t listed for their relevancy to personal training but are listed for relevancy to easily building websites.
2) Understand what meta tags are and fill them with relevant information. Don’t make your “Meta Name” Cabel’s Fitness F/X instead make it Red Deer Personal Trainer, that’s what people are searching for. The same is true for the description and the keywords. Don’t know what meta tags are, Google it. J
3) Search engines look for NATURAL repetition, key word being natural. Have you noticed within this article I have used the words ‘Personal Trainer Marketing’ several times? Do you notice for the most part it still reads pretty natural? Though I’ve used it more times than I should have I wanted to demonstrate the point for relevancy, because the search engines see that ‘personal trainer marketing’ has been used repeatedly throughout this article it’s likely that’s what the article is about. Though be careful as these days they know some internet savvy people are on to that and if you just repeat the same phrases over and over they simply begin to overlook your articles because they determine you are just trying to manipulate the system rather than providing relevant, valuable information.
4) Which becomes the next point; ensure you use keywords in article titles and throughout articles but be sure they are still packed with value. The search engines will begin to watch how many people visit certain content, comments, link backs etc all add points to that piece of content for relevancy and ensure higher rankings.
5) What you don’t see. Your website should also revolve around keywords on the inside. Images should have key word file names; actual pages should have keyword file names and so on. Think of it like an investigation the more times a search engine sees that you keep mentioning a particular keyword phrase; in your content, in the file structure, links, meta tags and so on, do you see how a human would decide that this must be quite relevant on that topic? Now to get to the number one spot on the first page well you just need to be more relevant than that guy, meaning more content, better file structure, and it helps to have been around longer too.
Ok this is a super watered down version of how the internet is like a library and how to start building a more effective website. There is tonnes more to SEO than this but just this one thing will make a gigantic difference for just about any personal trainer in Canada as still many markets are just not that competitive yet for internet search traffic.
Personal Trainer Marketing: 3 Point Conversion
No I’m not confused trying to explain the inner workings of either basketball or football but rather going to provide you a whole simple system that can fuel your personal trainer marketing engine.
As you know Bedros Keuilian has been my mentor for a number of years, recently he was in Calgary and we put on a business building workshop together for fitness professionals. In his usual fashion he left inspired and came up with something cool to give back to the fitness industry.
On his way home he crafted an awesome new client getting email series, the 28 Day Flat Belly Formula.
To compliment that program and his others that many of us have used with great success (The 14 Day Fat Flush and the 21 Day Rapid Fat Loss Program) I wanted to share with you the sales and conversion strategy we use with massive success at One-to-1 Fitness. (HINT: Bookmark the links above and this post so you can refer back to them any time you need to run a massive revenue generating promo.)
Personal trainers are often afraid to give away an extended period of service for a deep discount or no cost but if you truly understand and have a clear path to conversion than you will realize high value offers are not really discounted or free but rather are a deferred payment plan which can make consistent aggressive personal trainer marketing very cost effective.
Any time you sell or provide a high value discounted trial offer, before you even run the campaign you should develop your 3 Point Conversion strategy. This will work for pretty much any campaign in any medium. By now you better know what EFT is, and you realize that growing your EFT is the gateway to greatness, so naturally every campaign really has one final business objective: a larger EFT. (Of course service, value to the customer, etc should go without saying.)
In a 3 Point Conversion strategy the goal is to aggressively convert upon the first meeting and if that’s not possible to set the foundation and rapport with the prospect that conversion is practically assumed. This is not a pushy sales tactic, it is always win-win in an effort to be the assistant buyer that ensures people feel comfortable enough with you, know that you have their best interests at heart all in the name of being able to make a difficult decision or avoid procrastination any longer.
Conversion Point 1: The Consult Offer – We have achieved about 80% or more of our conversion on any promotion before our clients have even completed a workout in any trial program. If your offer has attracted prospects to inquire about your service it obviously provided enough value to overcome their fears of whether they trust you or not. Through the use of a meeting that helps the prospect become more aware of their emotional connection to their goals it likely won’t take them long to realize that the trial offer is not going to allow them to reach their goals. At this point you’ve also spent the least amount of time or investment on the prospect, if they are to make a long term commitment to you today you have the greatest amount of profitability. There is a strong win-win for you and the prospect to form a long term relationship at this point; the missing ingredient is trust. In a effort to make up for the missing trust this is where you should be providing the largest amount of additional value and the most emphasis on risk reversal to simply overcome the trust barrier with a “deal they can’t refuse.”
If this at all seems more difficult than it seems think about the last major items you bought as a consumer and the time it took you to make that decision. At some point we’ve all been sold faster than usual by a salesperson that was genuine, sincere and just helped us realize if we wanted to reach our goals we needed to act now.
So here is the premise of the consult deal:
Trade your whatever deal you came in today for this better deal. (ex. 10 class for 10 bucks, trade for first month at $14 then auto billing at 10-15% off normal rates) and you really want to add any bonus you can provide at no cost to you. Strategic business alliances work really well for this, tanning programs, haircuts, dollar value discounts on complimentary services, gift cards, trades, etc. The goal is to add about 2-3X the value of the desired monthly commitment. For example if I want them to pay $200/month I would try to provide a total value of $400-600 of extra value in this first offer.
Conversion Point 2: The Feedback call – If they don’t convert at the consult don’t worry, it simply means in spite of the extra value they still don’t know you or trust that you and your services are the answer and the extra value wasn’t enough to overcome that to the point that they were comfortable to take a chance that day. This is not uncommon in our consumerist society because we are all faced but so much advertising in an attempt to relieve us of our precious disposable dollars, once bitten twice shy.
Those that don’t convert at consult should start right into the trial program, and you should make every effort to provide your best possible service to build as much rapport with them as possible. At a little over half way through the trial you (better yet an assistant) should call them and ask what they love the program. You should always be happy to receive either positive or negative feedback, though negative may not help with converting that client to a long term EFT program it will provide even more valuable information to improve your product.
When the client gives you their positive feedback they’ve now put themselves in a positive state of mind in relation to thinking of your services this is your chance to remind them that they are not likely to reach their goals or experience the full benefits of the program during the trial.
At this point you ask them if they’d like to get on board, explain that many others jumped on board at the beginning of the program (which will be true based on our results) and as a result they can still get an amazing deal but spots are filling up. This offer should be similar to the first one but with about 1/3 less additional value. I recommend keeping any price point reductions the same as the initial offer but decrease the amount of the additional value offered accordingly. When met with resistance, see the TOP SECRET close at the end.
Conversion Point 3: The End of the Road – Anyone who didn’t yet convert at conversion point 2 should continue in the program of course, continue to do everything you can to provide them the best possible service. The last offer will place them in a position of a fear of loss, from which if they still don’t convert you should use any information you’ve gathered during the trial to overcome possible objections for time, price, or services. The final conversion process is best handled in a “near end of program results consultation.”
Again begin by asking what they loved about the program, once they have affirmed they have enjoyed and found value in the program create the fear of loss with the following scarcity type of script:
“Well you’re almost done, my promo spots have really filled up, I have only 2 spots left, I know you’ve been doing awesome, you should stay. I can save you $50 off your next month and give you 10% off my regular rates but only if you commit today as I can only promo these 2 more spots.” The deal is now not quite as strong as Conversion Point 1 or 2, the point is to get them a little remorseful that they should have committed sooner when all the extra value was provided as they now realize they do trust you and have seen value in your service first hand.
And here is the TOP SECRET CLOSE that you should be ready to use at any of the 3 conversion points that almost guarantees conversion.
If met with resistance bust out the good guy deal, Conversion Point 1, though it contains the highest value it should also be an offer you can live with at any point during this process. If it’s not I highly suggest adjusting your rates or building more strategic relationships to ensure you can provide all that additional value without sacrificing profitability.
“Well I am not supposed to do this, but I’ll tell you want, because your awesome I will give you the first offer today (Conversion Point 1() but you must get on board today, is that cool?”
Suddenly the relief from fear of loss that they should have jumped sooner puts the prospect at total ease and you both win. They reward you with their business and a bigger EFT and you reward them with an awesome experience, great value and dynamite results.
That’s it, the super simplified system for 3 Point Conversion, just rinse and repeat with all your promos and you’ll see why there are no free programs just powerful deferred payment plans.
The Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop – April 2011
What a weekend!
Well if you missed out on Saturday’s Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop I wanted to give you a recap.
Bedros Keuilian is one of the world's leading fitness marketing experts and has been my personal coach for over 3 years.
We were very fortunate to have North America’s top fitness business coach Bedros Keuilian in Calgary; not only an extreme privilege but the guy barely made it, for some reason Canadian Immigration seemed to think the information he was bringing was so valuable that it was barely legal! (Well no not really but he always has some rather amusing experience at the border and secondary inspection. 🙂
So here’s how it went…
We started off with something critically important to you, your business and your clients…recognition.
Throughout the day 4 of my superstar coaching clients were recognized for their successes over these last months. Humairah & Faraz have learned so much about sales and client attraction it’s crazy, Chas has continued to streamline her facility from the depths of a monthly burn rate to reaching profitability, Tim has paid of 10s of thousands of dollars in debt in just month and Sean basically went from zero to nearly $100,000 in program sales in just 4 months, talk about action takers! (And silly me forgot to make sure we got pictures to save the moment, perhaps the individuals mentioned will proudly provide some with their award. J)
Bedros Keuilian killing it at Cabel's Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop
On to content…I started off by sharing the 5 key things that trainers need to understand and do in order to quickly reach the 6 figure mark and beyond, this applies whether you’ve been in the industry for years or were certified last weekend.
1) Don’t be afraid to fail, simply keep taking action!
- This means imperfect action is better than waiting too long to make it perfect.
- This means don’t screw around because you are afraid which leads you to being “busy” and kills action and all momentum.
- This means be 110% committed to your business but any new idea only needs to be 70% ready to put it into action, the best place to see and fix the problems is when they arise not sitting around guessing what they might be.
- This means success loves speed, outsource where possible so you can be doing more things
2) Identify “Your Most Likely Customer”
- This means completely describe them with a word picture as completely detailed as possible. And by that I mean try to explain exactly what you seen to your best friend if you drove by your customer standing in their own backyard watering their lawn. What type of clothing, what they enjoy, and every possible detail. Your marketing, promotions, everything needs to appear where your prospects frequent and in language that will both appeal and make sense to them. This is the basis of grassroots marketing and how you make a limited to no marketing dollars maximize their efforts.
3) Build a list and they will come.
- Seminars and strategic alliances with local businesses work amazingly well to quickly build a list and a reputation offline.
- Kijiji, Craigslist, Facebook and Adwords dominate for cost effectively finding new customers in your area, experimenting with these mediums can lead to quick and massive success.
- Leverage technology, use email software and the ability to schedule content delivery in advance to chunk tasks and make your day more efficient.
4) The More you give the more you get.
- This was the biggest take away in the 5 basics. After many years I didn’t get it either but there is one thing that has proved true over and over again, the most profitable and successful fitness professionals are the ones that get busy the fastest. The easiest way to get busy is to train people for free. Think about it your biggest immediate obstacle is no one knows you or your ability (and you may even doubt yourself) but even with that if you offerred 5-10 sessions free most people are likely to accept. You now have 5-10 opportunities to show them how great you are and why they should pay to continue, I think there is a far better chance in communicating this message in a free session than there is in a printed ad, a radio campaign or other generic marketing medium, don’t you agree? The bonus is that the people around you that suddenly see that you are really busy naturally assume you must be good at what you do because you suddenly were busy over night.
5) Nothing matters if you don’t take action.
- I know sounds repetitive but most people leave a seminar like this so inspired to wind up the next day feeling so overwelmed they don’t know where to begin, this point of fear (essentially or old same limiting mindset) prevents them from taking any action at all. So here’s what you need to do, go through your notes if you were there or pick 1-2 things from this article if you weren’t and write it on a small piece of paper. Make that your top tasks to start tomorrow, it’s only 2 things not much you can procrastinate on or avoid you must begin with one or the other. If you simply did this every day just imagine how many great things you could accomplish.
Next Bedros took over and really knocked it out of the park with helping you to understand and shift your mindset. Even though him and I have spent a great deal of time talking about these things and I’d even heard this content before for some reason this time it really hit me differently. The underlying message is that we will at some point always revert to our “scarcity mindset” or whatever that starting point is that proves to be the toughest obstacle when it comes to reaching our goals and dreams. It’s important to find away to continually develop your mindset of “abundance” by surrounding yourself with people you wish to emulate while limiting your exposure to people and situations that would have you return to your “scarcity mindset.”
If this all sounds like gibberish to you, you need to check out the audio/book Bedros highly recommended; Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. (Trust me it is captivatingly interesting and will change your life.
Once afternoon hit we took things in a more serious direction, I gave everyone a look at the in depth systems behind our million dollar training studio. How we manage everything from recruitment to compensation, automatic billing, planned and controlled growth, client retention, trainer retention evaluation, sales, marketing and so much more. The best part I explained how we can analyze the performance of our business in 10 minutes or less from anywhere in the world and then coach our team as needed.
I noticed a number of people experiencing the signs of mass writing cramp as they tried to document each detail, though for some this lead to confusion it illustrated the importance of defined systems as you grow and that the ceiling of your growth will only be dictated by the systems you apply.
To wrap up the day Bedros took everyone through his specialty, the path of ascension and how we go about attracting prospects and leads and the exact steps to convert them to paying clients. Not just scripts, tactics and ideas were shared but the exact breakdown and mechanics of building a full sales format system
I think all attendees would agree that it was impossible to have been at the Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop and NOT taken at least one thing away that could potential double, triple or massively blow up their business.
You guys are so awesome, what an amazing day I appreciate you all so much! Look forward to more, I’m currently looking to schedule 1-2 more live workshops before the end of 2011.
How-to Spend Your Marketing Dollars the Right Way – Part 2
Effective fitness marketing doesn't require you to be a crappy car salesman.
Ok last week we talked about how we all get sucked into running awareness, branding type advertising campaigns because that’s what we’re constantly exposed to by big business. We also discussed why a low barrier of entry list building ad can be far more effective and how easy it is to measure it.
This week we’re going to talk about the other major campaign structure, and that’s the one that instantly creates sales. All of your campaigns revolve around one critical component, solving a major problem face by your most likely customer. Your marketing should reflect that. It’s not about you or the name of your business nearly as much as it is about educating, you earn their interest, trust and loyalty and they will be looking to learn who you are and remember it. Far longer than any flash in the pan branding campaign you or I could afford to do.
If you want to sell from an ad you must always provide an irresistible offer, each ad at best is a short flash in the pan. You are banking on the people seeing your ads are actually looking and ready to buy your services. On that note you have to do everything possible to move as many people to action as possible. If you previously missed it you should read this blog post:
The free session doesn’t cut it; the 10% discount is garbage. You have to give something today that shows so much value that I would literally be stupid and remorseful to pass it up.
Find ways to give high value trials of 2 weeks or longer, package them with value add services from strategic business relationships to up the ante even more value without costing you anything.
Now if you’re like most you are resistant or hesitant to give so much away for the fear of working for free forever. If you are afraid of this you don’t yet understand the process or you’re not very good at delivering results to you clients. If it’s the later then stop reading and pull out the classifieds, it’s time for you to get a different job.
For those of you that are afraid to give away so much service, understand it’s never free it’s a deferred payment plan. Your goal is to overwhelm your new client in their trial with tonnes of value and then provide multiple offers throughout the trial to encourage them to stay. This is far more effective than trying to sell a package in your ad for the simple reason that there are 2 primary reasons prospects don’t buy immediately:
1) Not enough perceived value. In an ad they will judge you and your value before they ever meet you, if it’s not enough value they quickly move on. Within an extended trial you can provide multiple offers stacking the value to find the point which offers enough value for your prospect to instantly convert. Which leads to the second point.
2) Lack of trust. The only other reason they don’t convert is that they don’t trust you yet, but within an extended trial you have an extended opportunity to win their trust and loyalty.
Tracking and evaluation of the campaign is easy, again all responses to the ad will come by phone, email or website. You can get a special number for people to call and track the number of calls versus the number of people that actually commit to the trial and then how many of those commit to a long term package. You could from that calculate your cost per lead, your ad conversion, and ultimately sales conversion down to the exact dollar to compare to the cost of the campaign. By setting up a separate email you could easily do this by email, or by using a dedicated web landing page you can go further to track how many landed on the page, inquired, signed up for the trial and then converted.
There you have it, the easy way to analyze any marketing campaign. This is just a very small fragment of the systems and analysis that can be accessed in our licensing program. If you’d like to no more check it out on the Business Essentials page.
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.
EzMode Fitness Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most cost effective and time efficient ways to provide over the top value to exisiting clients and easily attract new ones. Especially if you are still training a lot of clients personally you should be using email marketing to really maxmize your time so you don’t fall victim to the “desperation wave”. (Watch the video, you’ll see what I mean.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrP63ySU3jE[/youtube]
There are a number of different options for email marketing software, Aweber and iContact are among the most well known and the cheapest. However inspite of the slightly higher cost there is none that remotely compare to the done-for-you, specific to fitness professionals features that FitPro Newsletter uses. You should be using FitPro Newsletter, it’s hands down one of the best products available for new or veteran fitness professionals.
A Birthday at the Summit and Your Business Systems
Ok wow, that was kind of a blur, it’s Tuesday already. A five day break in California including massive motivation from the 4th annual Bedros Keuilian Fitness Business Summit.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2nkpp0O8CI[/youtube]
I was given the honour of being invited to present for the second time, this time on Sunday morning, my birthday of all days. I’d be lying if I said hundreds of fitness professionals singing happy birthday to me wasn’t cool, or that the dozens of positive comments, questions, appreciation, praise or best speaker votes didn’t make up the absolute coolest gift ever. You guys rock, thank you so very much! Truth is there just isn’t any other way I would have wanted to spend my birthday.
Next to seeing the animals on safari in Africa the San Diego Zoo is one of my favorite places on earth.
I spoke about 10 of the many critical systems that have been responsible for the rapid growth and success of One-to-1 Fitness. My aim was to teach ever person in that room how they can learn to analyze and evaluate how their business is working or performing in 5 minutes or less from anywhere in the world. Additionally how they could then simply be the coach and facilitator for a whole team without ever setting foot in the door, ensuring their business works even when they don’t.
Things like:
Tracking sales and understanding and dissecting conversion stats and practices. The value of using a preformatted sales system and what makes it effective, from verbal to body language and certain cues and practices. I explained how to take all the new lead generation and marketing tactics they learned from great speakers like Bedros Keuilian, Lindsay Vastolla, Cara Eckerman, Alex Maroko, Josh Carter and Frank Kern and evaluate, track and dissect the relationship between cost per lead, click through rates, and conversion for multiple mediums. We touched on EFT billing and how using +/- tracking can quickly display the growth and health of your business and allow you to completely understand and analyze the retention rate of your business and what exactly you can do to improve it. Next we covered effective recruiting, pay per performance and the secret to minimizing turnover while maximizing team loyalty.
Me and some of my awesome fitness marketing coaching clients on the red carpet at Bedros Keuilian's Fitness Business Summit.
Needless to say if you were at all curious about how we’ve achieved such rapid success with our studio or the inner workings our new licensing program no stone was left unturned.
Presently I’m overwhelmed with emails, questions and testimonials which is great because it tells me the information was both needed and highly valued. Thanks for the best birthday ever, thank you Bedros for all you do for this amazing industry it’s so awesome that you are coming to Calgary again next month for another www.ProfitablePersonalTrainerWorkshop.com.
I leave you all with a little tidbit for this week, I know how overwhelming it can be to be excited about new information only to realize that because you are overwhelmed it becomes really hard to implement. Here’s the easy way to start:
1) Consider each thing you do today and each day forward that you will have to complete it 100 times or more. (For instance you likely shower every single morning, you probably store hang or keep your towels in the same place, you probably turn on the water, shower, use shampoo etc all in the same order. Believe it or not your whole life revolves around systems, why doesn’t your business?)
Being a life long Flames fan what better way to wrap up an amazing birthday then enjoying the game in Anaheim.
2) Write down the steps to completing every task in your business, easiest is to start with the silly little ones you complete all the time. Answering the phone, taking payments, setting appointments and so on. The steps don’t have to be right they just have to be the current steps. Each time you execute that task follow the steps, as you find better ways to do it, revise, add or eliminate the steps. Now you have systems. Do the same for your marketing promotions, your training systems, your HR processes and so on. The time you invest now will save you big later and give you the edge over your competition.
If you missed out on Fitness Business Summit you still have a chance to learn about the vital systems I talked about at the www.ProfitablePersonalTrainerWorkshop.com and learn from the leader of the pack Bedros Keuilian. April 30, 2011 in Calgary, Alberta
Business Game Changer: How-to Get More Hours in A Day
I recently shared my secret to not being overwelmed with a huge “To-Do” list with one of my coaching clients. It was so simple, yet so effective, he labelled it a total “Game Changer.” Watch this short video where I explain exactly how to become more productive and gain more hours in a day.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSUahloCx4s[/youtube]
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