Improving your fitness boot camp marketing methods should be a top priority if you’re looking to grow your business. Plain and simple. If you’ve owned your boot camp for a while now, then you probably have a few tricks up your sleeve for gaining a few new clients here and there, but if you haven’t taken the time to create a solid marketing plan then you’re leaving thousands of dollars on the table. Money that will allow you to hire the staff you need to give you the freedom you want as a business owner. Money that will go to your competitors if you don’t up your fitness marketing game. So let’s get to it!

Have a Plan

Okay, so the best way to improve your fitness boot camp marketing plan is to actually have one. Why is having a marketing plan in place so important? Well, for one- it lays out your budget and ensures that the money you’re spending on marketing is done wisely and appropriately.

A good fitness marketing plan should include things like knowing your target market and ways to reach that market (strategies) and goals that you’d like to achieve within a given timeframe. Another benefit to having a marketing plan is the fact that you can track what’s working and what isn’t, which is something that all boot camp owners really need to pay attention to. It’s all too easy to lose focus when you don’t have a plan so crafting one will ultimately keep you on the right track. And keep a steady stream of clients coming through your doors.

Stop with Traditional Marketing

One of the best ways to save money on marketing is to go ahead and call it quits with newspaper ads, print ads, and direct mail marketing. Unless you’ve got the budget and don’t have to think twice about it (because “traditional” type of marketing is pretty expensive), then you should switch your focus onto other methods that will give you a better return on your investment like email marketing and marketing through social media.

Both extremely cost effective, email marketing and marketing your boot camp through social media is definitely the way to go in today’s fast paced world. Don’t have a Facebook Fan Page set up for your boot camp yet? That’s your very first step. Promote it to all of your clients to build a little buzz. People love showing off so start taking pictures of sessions and post them to your page to show what a fun experience working out at your boot camp really is. (Get your client’s permission first, of course.) Share inspirational quotes and any tips or tricks you may have for losing weight and watch your Fan Page grow like wild fire.

It’s a little different with email marketing, but the principle is still the same. You want to collect your current and past client’s email information as well as any prospects that you may have and start delivering amazing content that will make your lists want to open and read. You can do this by offering up something of value for free. Know a simple trick to help people lose weight? Write up a free fat loss report and offer it as a download on your website in exchange for someone’s email address. Then start sending helpful articles on fitness and dieting and anything that you, as a personal trainer, think your clients should know or might find interesting.

Be consistent with your email marketing and send your content out on a regular basis. The more regular you are, the better because you’ll find that people will actually start to look forward to your emails. For every 4 pieces of great content that you send out, you have the opportunity to mail out for a promotion that you might be launching. And that’s what pulls in new clients and reactivates old ones.

Focus On Referrals

Referrals make up a huge chunk of business for most boot camps so including strategies on how to get more referrals in your marketing plan is a great way to make sure that you’re giving them enough focus.

Referrals can come pretty easy when you create an unforgettable boot camp experience- one that’s high energy and gets everyone in your sessions involved. Be the one to put a smile on your clients’ faces and they’ll rave about you to all of their friends and family. Also, make it a point to mention to your new clients early on that your business runs on referrals so you set that expectation right off the bat.

Here's a video of Fit Body Boot Camp franchise founder Bedros Keuilian, where he reveals the boot camp business model

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This entry was posted on February 26, 2014 at 4:07 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Business, Boot Camp Marketing, Boot Camp Strategies, How To Start a Fitness Boot Camp Business by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet