Read the following two marketing messages and tell me which one feels more powerful to you:
Option A:
Fit Body Boot Camp offers personal training at the lowest possible prices. We provide the most powerful weight loss workouts available and we have the best nutritional consultations money can buy.
Our Unstoppable Fitness Formula guarantees results. No one else can make that claim.
Option B:
Have you ever gotten real weight loss results from a gym?
Well, Fit Body Boot Camp isn’t a gym. But it is where you’re going to get the kind of fitness results you see on those cheesy TV commercials. (Yes, your abs can actually look like that.)
If you don’t know, Fit Body Boot Camp is personal training that won’t bankrupt you, workouts that will get you the body you want, and nutritional meal plans you’ll love to eat.
Which of these do you think would bring you more clients? Or better yet, if you were a prospect, which one would compel you the most?
I know which one would work better. See, I wrote one of these options while purposely committing the same fatal mistake nearly all fitness marketers commit when marketing. Did you spot it?
Well, let’s look at what’s different between the two:
(more…)
I want you to think for a minute about what marketing truly is for you at its simplest and most fundamental level. You probably own one or more Fit Body Boot Camp location and all of your prospective clients live in or near your neighborhood. They all live, work, shop and play within a reasonable distance of your home and your Boot Camp.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Every individual with the potential to become your next successful, long-term client is a member of your very own local community.
So what should that mean to you and how does that help us understand the fundamentals of your small business marketing? Well, I hope it’s obvious by now, but what I’m trying to get across here is that marketing, in its simplest sense, is nothing more than reaching out to and getting involved with your community.
Now lets complicate things a bit. While in principle all you need to do is get involved, in practice, there are very particular ways you should go about doing this. It isn’t just about reaching out to anyone anywhere, it’s about finding the people and the places within your community that will respond to the right marketing techniques.
So let’s explore some great strategies that will equip you with awesome ways to get involved with your community and market your Boot Camp.
#1) An effective and relatively simple way to get some attention on your Boot Camp Business, to build relationships with other local business, and get involved with your business and consumer community, is called Cross Promotion.
The process is easy.
(more…)
Usually when we think about boosting our boot camp revenues, we’re talking about bringing in new clients, either by increasing the number of sessions we do, opening another location or just putting a big marketing campaign into play.
But there is a really cool new way to increase your income by thousands of dollars per year in the next six days, without doing one more thing as far as boot camp marketing. One of the coolest things about it is that you don’t even need one new client.
There is a fantastic new program available to us that was created by the brilliant Jeff Sherman. It’s called the Fitness Game Changer and it’s something that you can offer your existing clients right now to really boost your revenue. In fact, the holidays are the perfect time to roll it out.
Jeff has made an additional $48,000 so far by offering the program to his existing clients.
The Fitness Game Changer is an 8-week program that will help your clients blast through plateaus, reboot their motivation or get ready for a special event by turbo-charging their results. It’s a fantastic nutrition and accountability program that is getting great results for clients all over the country.
While they’re getting great results, you’re making money and getting a ton of testimonials, social proof and word of mouth.
The beauty of it is that you don’t need to do anything other than show it to your existing clients, sign them up and then copy/paste/send the program components to the participants. (more…)
When I talk to people about marketing a personal training business, I get a lot of nuts-and-bolts questions about where to market, how many posts to put on Facebook, how to get more followers and so on. Those nuts and bolts questions are important, but the principles of effective marketing come first and you have to have them firmly in your mind before you do any of the nuts and bolts.
Here are what I consider to be the four most important things to keep in mind in order to create your marketing plan and then maximize its potential.
You are selling outcomes, not products
At least nine out of ten personal trainers in your area are competing on price and features (like the latest fitness fads or on-site child care) and their marketing reflects that. YOU need to be in the business of selling outcomes and your marketing should reflect that.
When you focus your marketing on what you can help your clients achieve (and what you are helping your current clients achieve), you take yourself out of all of that competition and set yourself apart. People like on-site child care and they like knowing that the latest fitness fad is available and they’re willing to pay rock-bottom prices for it when rock-bottom prices are offered.
But you’re offering results and people are willing to pay much more for those. So focus on what you and only you can deliver to your clients and then use plenty of social proof in your marketing. (more…)
Typically, we make resolutions at the New Year and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the time for making boot camp marketing resolutions for 2015 is now, so that you can begin planning for new things, wrap up any unfinished business and make sure that you have the resources and knowledge you need well in place before the new year begins.
Now, you may not be in the practice of making New Year’s resolutions for your business marketing. It’s really not that different than creating a new marketing plan each year, which is something you should be doing. But let me help you by giving some direction, to help get you started on the process of evaluating what you’re doing now and what you should be doing next year.
Evaluating What You’re Doing Now
The first thing you need to do is take a good look at all of the components of your current boot camp marketing plan. Are you building an email list? Are you sending out high-value content and low barrier offers to your email list on a regular basis? Are you advertising and if so where? Are you building and using your Facebook page, Google+, YouTube following?
Take note of every single thing you’re doing to market your business and then evaluate your return on investment of every single one. Don’t forget that you’re investing your time in marketing as well, so even the free marketing strategies have some cost in time.
Once you’ve gone through this process, you should know every single thing you’re doing to market your boot camp, how each one is performing and which marketing strategies or venues are being neglected. Now you can begin making some intelligent and informed boot camp marketing resolutions for 2015. (more…)
Bedros has spoken several times about the extremely effective fitness boot camp marketing that can be done on Facebook. But it’s possible to create a great following on Facebook and get lots of great comments and interaction without actually making any money from it.
At the last Fitness Business Summit, Josh Carter, perhaps THE Facebook marketing expert in our business, spoke in depth about maximizing the potential of Facebook for getting new clients. Bedros just uploaded the entire one-hour video and I strongly recommend that you go watch it here. His nuts and bolts advice is invaluable.
But in the meantime, I want to share with you his simple and effective plan for using Facebook as a fitness boot camp marketing funnel. It’s a deceptively easy, five-step plan that turns Facebook onlookers into qualified leads for your business.
That’s really the main crux of Josh’s talk; that all the Facebook fans in the world won’t make you money unless you are creating a funnel through which they become actual leads. Even though we talk a lot about the value of organic promotion (posts that your friends and clients share with their friends), organic promotion doesn’t actually get you the multitude of prospects that Josh’s plan is going for.
The fact is that only about 10-15% of your Facebook fans see your status update or motivational post. So even if you have 5,000 followers, only 500 or so are being reached. Why? Because Facebook wants you to pay for wider-reaching or more targeted ads.
At first, you might think this sucks. But targeted ads are well worth the money. In fact, Josh likens Facebook to a money machine when targeted ads are used. As he says, “You put ten dollars in and get eleven dollars out. If you had a machine that did that, how often would you put a ten-dollar bill in the machine? As often as possible.” It’s called investing in your fitness boot camp marketing and it’s a smart investment. (more…)
In my last blog post, I explained how selling personal training through an online program can bring you long term passive income as well as new clients for your fitness boot camp business. To recap what I explained in the last post, there are several benefits to offering personal training through an online coaching program:
- Immediate income generated through sales.
- Long-term income potential through building trust and credibility.
- Passive income from your program with no significant work needed from you.
- Potential new client income through program’s visibility on Facebook and other social media.
- Potential new long-term clients by converting online members to boot camp members.
But first you need to decide what type of program you’re going to create and then how to set up the marketing and delivery for that program. Fortunately, Shawna Kaminski, the FBBC owner who earned $7,000 in 72 hours with her online coaching program, was kind enough to offer up a blueprint for both.
Creating Your Online Coaching Program
Selling personal training through an online coaching program isn’t that much different from coaching clients in your boot camp. Think about what you provide your clients in your boot camp in order to get them the results they need: nutritional guidance, a great workout, accountability, motivation and support from both you and fellow clients. These are the things that need to be included in your online coaching program. You can even create a partnership with a local nutritionist. They can create the nutrition plan, you create the workouts and both of you market to each other’s mailing lists.
The type of nutritional plan and workout that you create for the program will depend on your expertise, your group’s goal and their demographic. It will depend on whether you’re doing a fat-burning program, a strength building program, a special abs program and so on. You could also skip the specialization altogether and make your selling point the fact that people who aren’t ready/comfortable with/into a group training environment can get all of the benefits of your boot camp right in their own home.
Prior to creating her online coaching program, Shawna polled her mailing list and got their basic information and also asked them what their specific fitness issues and obstacles were. Then she took that information and created a program that would meet the needs of the most people.
Structuring Your Online Coaching Program
It’s important to keep things as simple and consistent as possible, especially your first time around. Shawna set up a 90 day coaching plan, which she priced at $99/month, paid up front at $297. She changed up the workouts every few weeks and a created a scalable nutrition plan. She met with her coaching clients daily in a private group on Facebook to provide that accountability, motivation and support that people need to succeed. (more…)
There are all kinds of incredibly effective fitness marketing tools at your disposal. You could go spend one hour on RenegadeFitnessMarketing.com and learn enough to triple your business this month. You could check out some of the done-for-you marketing products available on this site and have in your hands everything you need to take your fitness business to the next level.
But if you don’t have the #1 most important fitness marketing tool – the right mindset – none of that will do you much good.
What I’m talking about here is getting rid of self-doubt. Specifically, two kinds of self-doubt. Doubt in your value and doubt in your abilities. Either one of them can cripple your business by keeping you from using the tools and strategies other people have used to become very successful.
Doubting Your Value
Maybe your mindset issue is doubting your own value. Not as a person, but as a trainer, leader and teacher. You don’t go out there and market yourself and your business because you don’t think you have anything valuable to share. You don’t talk to people about what you do or send out informative emails to your subscribers because you doubt the value of what you have to say.
Here’s what I have to say: the next time you walk into your fitness business, take a look at the clients there. Look at the client who’s laughing and smiling because she lost another inch or finally managed to climb a rope. Take a look at the guy who was fatigued and eating nothing but junk when he walked in three months ago.
What do you think your value is to them? What is the value of what you’ve helped them achieve? What will that value be five, ten or twenty years from now, when they’re living active, healthy lifestyles? (more…)
I’ll bet at least a few of you are thinking, “Hey, none of my workouts could ever be called ‘relaxing’.” But that’s not where I’m headed.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that selling personal training is all about pointing out all of the great features and services you offer: lots of session times, low prices, early and late hours, or convenient location.
But that’s not why people buy personal training and 99% of the time, it’s not what makes them choose one fitness boot camp over another. It’s also not why people buy a particular vacation.
People choose a vacation because of two things: the results they want (where the vacation will take them) and the way it will make them feel.
People choose a personal trainer for the same reasons. If you’re trying to close someone based on anything else, you’ll most likely fail.
Think about some of the things a good vacation does for you:
It gets you somewhere (helps you reach a goal).
It helps you to get away from your everyday world and its to-do lists.
You meet new people you would not have met otherwise, who make you feel like you’re among friends. (more…)
