by cabelmcelderry | Aug 17, 2010 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training
When you first become a personal trainer it’s difficult to grasp that you really need to be an effective marketer to turn this into a career path rather than a hobby. It has taken me a long time to really understand what it means to be a marketer. Lucky for you I tend to be a little stubborn and seem to learn slower so by continuing to read and attend Profitable Personal Trainer events you will learn and progress much faster than I have.
Many small businesses use the dartboard method of advertising and promotion.
Today let’s discuss one of the main differences of advertising or promoting your business and marketing your business. Many personal trainers (and for that matter small businesses) typically advertise or promote with what I refer to as the dart board method. Let’s try this haphazard idea and see what happens, it either succeeds or fails which determines whether they do it again or if they move on to generate a new idea.
Now if you are marketing your business the process is different, it’s methodical, it’s a system and it removes a great deal of emotion in evaluation of the results. It may start with the same idea, but the application is never haphazard, it’s calculated, focused, systemized and includes a series of events rather than just one event. Let me try to explain.
Let’s say your latest offer is a 21 day boot camp program. Many trainers might look at this and say, “I normally charge $200 I’m going to offer this for $150, that’s a great deal.” Truth is no one will care; there are deals available every day. Let’s say you run it anyways and happen to sign up 5 people and they love your program and all of them stay with you after at $200/month. You just generated $1000/month more in sales, seems successful right?
An astute marketer would make this same offer with a series of events that will greatly out perform the above offer, watch what happens. (To make it even more interesting this trainer is only going to keep 80% of the people that take advantage.)
Initially they offer the same 21 Day program for free, but only for the first 8 people. It should be easier to attract the 8 as it’s now entirely free. So no money up front but they will keep 6 which now produces $1200/month after the initial 3 weeks.
The program doesn’t stop there a subsequent ad or offer is released saying, “Last week we offered you a 21 day program free but only had room for 8 people, these spots were filled quickly. We are going to open up a new time slot making room for 6 more people at $87.” (This ad would be run whether they did recruit the 8 or not, the point is to motivate people to action by using an event, scarcity, deadline, consequence.)
This offer is still far less than the competitor trainer, and because of the use of scarcity in the first and second offer the people that were thinking about it last week are now pushed further to action because they are worried they will even miss out further. By recruiting 6 more people this trainer just added $522 in immediate sales and another 5 people per month or another $1000/month. Would you rather have $1000 up front and $1000/month or $522 upfront and $2200/month?
Depending on the continual response rate the marketer continues to squeeze customers from the prospect funnel with subsequent offers in a continual format. This is the difference between what most trainers do and what you should do. Each promotion should be a targeted series of events with an expectation for an outcome. Each offer needs to be extremely high value, use emotional language and provide deadlines and scarcity to push to action. But at the centre of all of this is a system, marketing your business once again requires systems. When it’s a complete system it’s never a failure because you can eliminate emotion and evaluate each response by the real facts and results. From there each new offer is just another version of this system; soon you will find yourself easily out promoting, out branding and out performing all of your competitors in a fraction of the time. The proof is in the pudding using these very tactics we’ve recently grown our studio’s monthly EFT by double digits during the worst months of the year for our industry and in a “poor” economy.
So are you going to continue to advertise or start marketing?
by cabelmcelderry | Jul 15, 2010 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training
Yes Star Wars is my favorite all time movie!
If you’ve been reading Profitable Personal Trainer at all you know that the fitness marketing strategies I like to employ the most are the ones that revolve around giving over the top value to your prospects. It’s not rocket science, its simple rapport, invest in people and they in turn will invest in you. As Zig Zigler so profoundly says, “the more you help others get what they want the more likely you will get what you want.”
Now it is that simple, and yet it isn’t. If you’ve been planning re-packaged short term free programs to massively attract new leads, if you’ve been offering up blockbuster high value trial packages so it’s a no brainer for people to try your services, don’t forget you still have to ask them or present them with an offer to continue. In other words at some point you still have to sell.
High value marketing systems will continually allow you to create a steady influx of new prospects and will rapidly position you as the good guy expert in your community. But without a conversion plan you will only see about 10-15% of your clients turn over into loyal paying clients with little to no effort.
Each time you execute a high value free program (like a 21 day rapid fat loss bootcamp) at just over the half way mark you should be converting clients. Now here’s the easy steps to making sure 80-90% of your people stay:
1) Make sure your service is over the top, they have to absolutely love what they are doing when they are training with you. (duh)
2) Make sure they get results. Give them all your best stuff and go the extra mile with accountability to ensure rapid results do happen. (duh #2)
3) Present them an irresistible offer. Discount their first month, offer them extra bonuses that cost you nothing. (An Infrared Sauna works so wonderful for this, in Red Deer a sauna drop-in cost like $15, but 10 sessions in the sauna costs me about $1.00 worth of power.) Free bonuses from professional partners. The e-book you recently wrote. The 100 healthy recipes you compiled from all across the internet. It doesn’t take much to really crank up the value.
4) Present everything to them with emotion.
Mrs. Jones you came to me 50 lbs overweight, you are on high blood pressure medication and type II diabetes runs in your family. It’s been just 2 weeks and you have already dropped 11 lbs, and just last week I noticed you were able to complete 40 squats and on day 1 you could only do 2. You mentioned you are sleeping better and your clothes are getting loose. I know you’re not yet done your trial but I am so proud of your results I wanted to give you this…(insert high value offer). There is no pressure at all to continue but man your results are going so good, I really want to see you lose that 50lbs in no time, don’t you agree things are going well?
How can she really say no? The only likely objection might be a financial one which means either the value you are providing isn’t high enough or she can’t afford it.
5) The secret weapon, the downsell. – Some clients may genuinely not be able to afford your most typical program, so offer them something for $97 a month. Even if it’s a nutritional meeting once a week, or a couple of bootcamps and a follow up call. The point is if they’re getting results and having fun they will continue but they are not going to tell you how much they are willing to pay.
Bottom line is you have to close, I see too many trainers lately applying some of the great fitness marketing strategies that have been listed here but they are not booking the sales consults to convert their leads to paying clients. Your goal has to be at least 1 new sales appointment per day.
by cabelmcelderry | Jul 13, 2010 | Personal Training Business Tips
In 2007 One-to-1 Fitness came to be, 2000 square feet, every penny we had to our names on the line and nothing but hopes, dreams and healthy dose of fear for the future. What a ride it has been, from 3 trainers and no staff, barely 100 appointments a week to now 11 trainers, 2 support staff, 2 massage therapists and routinely over 500 appointments a week in double the space. Last year I am proud to say we were a strong finalist for the local chamber awards for Small Business of the Year.
The question on your mind might be would I recommend opening your own studio to everyone? That’s an easy answer, no.
I wouldn’t change for a moment any decision we have made (even though there are plenty we could have done better or done without.) the experience we’ve gained at every step has been invaluable and will shape multiple new opportunities in the future.
The main advantages of owning your own studio are:
1) Leverage – You may now hopefully leverage your time and the time of others to produce bigger results, higher volume leading to greater sales and a very predictable income.
2) Flexibility – If you focus on building a proper business plan and work to systemize your business throughout you enjoy the flexibility of being away when you wish, possibly for extended periods, or being able to leave on a moment’s notice always knowing your clients will be taken care of.
3) Assets – All the money you have tied up in equipment, your regular volume of sales (if you use EFT) will provide value to financial institutions allowing you to continue to grow fast than you could without.
4) Income Potential – Within a system you now have the opportunity to earn significantly more income. To a degree your income potential is only limited by your ability to push the business forward but this potential also comes with a price, sometimes worry and responsibility.
5) Something Saleable – And of course the big goal for any business owner, someday being able to sell your product to someone else and finally enjoy the fruits of your labours monetarily.
Now before you go sign the lease on your studio location and open up shop don’t forget to review the potential obstacles in your way.
1) You are the last to eat – Heaven forbid business or the economy takes a down turn. As an employer you now have a responsibility to your staff all their needs must often be met before your own.
2) Does risk bother you? – Expect to sign general security agreements that tie every asset you own to the business, are you prepared to risk your home and every asset you own on your new venture?
3) Start up costs – Even a successful business will often owe its owners or shareholders a significant amount of money for years. Are you comfortable with the idea of tying up tens of thousands of dollars in your new venture?
4) Your success will be limited by the strength of your team. – Unfortunately your vision or opinion may not always be shared by others. Yes you are the boss but you can’t force anybody to do anything. Company culture is more important than you will ever know and not entirely in your control. How will you balance the social structure of a growing team?
5) You are the owner, manager, trainer, boss, crook, janitor, chief marketer, systems analyst, and nearly any other role, title or comment you can imagine. As soon as you apply director to your name you are the one that ever aspect of your business must matter the most to. To how clean your sinks and toilets are to when the vacuuming was last done, to how you will track and outpace rising employee costs (EI, CPP, holiday pay etc, on average every dollar you pay an employee will cost you 15-20 cents more. How money do you currently earn each month? Apply that math for a moment.), to customer service and quality control. Be prepared to make late night journeys for when the alarm goes off or the roof decides to leak, plan on dealing with any unhappy customer when someone makes a mistake, and be prepared to receive the least amount of appreciation.
Hmmm, after looking at just some of the aspects of the good and the bad how do you feel about the idea of owning your own personal training studio?
If you are now wondering, would Cabel do it all over again? The answer is a resounding yes, there are still far many more days I wake up excited about the potential before me than there are days I cringe in the corner in fear. Just be prepared for both!
by cabelmcelderry | Jul 8, 2010 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training
Whether you are a personal trainer or not you may find this post helpful when it comes to setting up your first website.
Just about every hosting company out there offers some kind of simple tool to quickly build an attractive website and maybe even have it operational in the next 60 minutes. Though I am not intensely familiar with all of these basic HTML editors I can tell you that their ease of use may seem appealing but over the long term they will require far more knowledge and time commitment to produce a website that works the way you want it to.
The problem with the HTML editors is they are not made to provide easy optimization for the less tech savvy individual. If you understand the ins and outs of website coding and optimization you can easily overcome this but I would still argue that WordPress will handle it easier, faster, and better. If you are not familiar with the term Search Engine Optimization understand that an optimized website will be more likely to be found on the first search page and will typically drive visitors to your website that you didn’t send there by word of mouth.
Personal trainer websites should be on wordpress in my opinion.
Using WordPress makes adding new pages and items to your website nearly as easy as writing an email. Visually it can be reconfigured with drag and drop widgets and only the smallest amount of direct HTML knowledge is really required.
Now when you combine WordPress with a number of powerful plugins it really goes to work for you. Starting with All in One SEO Pack you will be given the opportunity to give each new post a search engine crawler friendly keyword title, description and even a list of specific key words. Additionally you can also configure a number of options like to create meta tags from your post tags for instance. Meta tags are placed specifically for the search engine crawlers to read, identify and categorize your website and its content. None of these happen with a website builder included in most host packages unless you do it all manually.
Other plugins like SEO Images and SEO smart links will create automatic keyword links within your content, allow you to apply keyword titles to your images and so on. All these little things will likely go unnoticed to you for a time but you will see the effect they soon have in your site rank and its ability to generate traffic (ie. Potential customers) to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are thousands of plugins available and not just for better ranking but also for time saving features like posting video content as well as all kinds of elements to utilize social networking to its fullest.
In my opinion WordPress is far superior if your goal is to build a website that brings you customers rather than one you like the look of but nobody ever sees.
by cabelmcelderry | Jun 24, 2010 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training
How many of these things are you already doing well?
June and the summer months are some of the toughest months for many personal trainers. I’ve been receiving all kinds of emails from trainers asking what they need to do differently to survive these difficult months. In the main time we’ve had a near record breaking month at One-to-1 Fitness for new business, the formula is simpler than you think. Below is a 15 point checklist, read each one and then ask yourself if you are doing this effectively, if not spend a few minutes jotting down how you might implement this or do it better, commit to this for the next 60 days and by September you will never believe the summer is bad for personal training again.
- Always Build the List. Your most important marketing task for successful anything (in this case personal training) is the campaigns that build your list. The list is king, the bigger it the easier, and more importantly, the more predictable sales/client attraction is.
- Recognize and reward. Every living being on the face of the earth emotionally thrives on recognition and reward; we are hard wired for it. Recognize your clients and your staff as often as possible. Build a cult following by providing reward, this can be as simple as a thank you card or a big gold star.
- Remember that success likes speed. Don’t wait too long on ideas, develop a plan and take immediate action. As one idea or campaign blends to the next the momentum will carry you to massively grow your business.
- Continually ask for testimonials. Social proof will allow you to sell anything. Results are an incredibly powerful tool, share those results with others and your services will sell themselves.
- Get out of your comfort zone. Volunteer, join social clubs, attend networking functions, book free seminar sessions and lunch and learns. Try to talk to at least 10 new people in your community each day. Get out there and get known.
- Deliver, big time. Call your clients, see how they are doing. Email them or send them text messages. Remember you are building a relationship, strong client relationships will keep them with you forever. These little things provide so much additional value your clients will make you the talk of the town.
- Always be asking for referrals. Find subtle and creative ways to ask for referrals and make sure it’s always on your clients minds.
- Use email marketing for constant contact. Email marketing is one of the most powerful cost effective tools available to you (and why your list building is so important.) Keep your list warm by constantly providing them value through killer content. This maintains and elevates your expert status and ensures business longevity.
- Sell the lifestyle not the session. Selling packages of sessions is dead, automated monthly billing (EFT) is the key to success, get it in action immediately, and at first even as simple as post-dated cheques while you work through the steps with your bank.
- Use high value free programs and special repackage offers to quickly attract tonnes of new customers.
- Develop win-win relationships with local businesses and develop a large scale bonus program for clients and prospects. Use these bonuses and special offers to convert new prospects to new EFT agreements.
- Write specific goals. Just like you tell your clients set your own goals and then work backwards week by week to develop your plan to achieve that goal and hold yourself accountable.
- Don’t re-invent the wheel. Use the tools of others, attend conferences, get a coach, look at a franchise.
- Systemize everything. Think of each process like you are going to have to complete it a 100 times or more, develop a system around each action, process, or marketing campaign. Soon situations are just a repeat process and planning becomes what system to engage next. You will soon be able to see weeks and months ahead.
- Most importantly, never give up!
