Marketing is a confusing world especially if you’re specifically trying to promote your fitness business online. Perhaps you decide to go for article marketing because you’re a good writer. Maybe you’re great at making videos, and if  you like spending hours on social media sites you can also do well promoting your services via Twitter, FaceBook or the myriad of other similar sites. Marketing your fitness center sounds easy doesn’t it? It can be if you have hours to spare, but remember you’re not making any money while you’re experimenting!

Let’s take writing articles first. If nutrition and losing weight are a major part of your business, then article writing can work. But who do you submit your article to? There’s ezinearticles.com, buzzle.com, helium.com, Suite101.com, Articlesbase.com, Hubpages.com, Squidoo.com, Ehow.com and dozens of others.

For your videos, again you can submit them to any or all of the many video marketing sites – not just YouTube. There’s Vimeo, Metacafe, Ustream.tv, Viddler and a bunch of others that will all bring thousands of hits to your videos from all over the world.

But yours is a Local Business!

It’s great to see you’ve had thousands of hits and views of course, but if the time you’re investing isn’t bringing you clients and referrals, the few dollars you may make from advertising on your site isn’t going to cover the bills.

Local businesses must look at the smaller picture where the internet is concerned regarding fitness marketing strategies, or risk wasting time and energy that doesn’t bring results. The following are three of the best ways to get your business found online, that will bring positive results:

1.Mobile Marketing and Mobile Websites

There are more people with mobile phones today than own desktop PCs, tablets and laptops.  Nobody uses the Yellow Pages anymore, they access information via their smart phones the moment they need it and when they want to locate and purchase a product or service.

How does your website shape up? Have you even looked at it on a mobile phone? Older websites were not designed for access via smart devices, so if you’re just starting your fitness business you should ensure that your site converts across all mobile platforms. Mobile sites also offer the advantage of Click to Call, something a PC could never do.

To encourage people to access your site and call you immediately, there are a couple of basic things you need to do:

• Keep your mobile site simple
• Display contact information and details about your services, which should be clearly visible
• Include a concise list of the services you provide

Mobile Directories

If nobody knows who you are and what you do, how are they going to find you? Mobile Directories are essential for getting your name in front of those people. If two friends are sitting in a fast food restaurant bemoaning the fact they want to lose weight, if they decide to join a fitness program there and then you must make your mobile site accessible and easy to navigate. These ladies are ready to commit and spend dollars!

Using a mobile directory such as Foursquare also means that clients can leave feedback – and the more positive feedback you can get the more it will encourage others to use your services.

Want to offer incentives? It’s easy with mobile marketing by adding QR (Quick Response) codes.  Want people to sign up for your monthly newsletter? You can do that with a QR code. Want them to visit your FaceBook page or sign up for a special event? Yep, those funny little QR codes can do that in an instant.

Text Messaging and Mobile Marketing 

By using text messaging you can easily add names and numbers to your mobile list. It’s a great way to engage new and potential clients by reaching a large group of people instantly.  You can send special offers, tips and relevant information on a timely basis using text messaging and build brand awareness.  Add a QR code to your message and there’s no having to print coupons.  The client can simply show the code to your cashier to obtain her discount or special.

90% of text messages are read within seconds of receipt. Emails may never be opened or read after a special offer has expired. Just make sure the recipient knows who the text is coming from!

As with emails there are rules you must observe with mobile marketing. Familiarize yourself with Anti-Spam Legislation in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act before you start your campaign. People must be able to opt out easily, and please be considerate.

2. Email Marketing

If you write articles, make videos, blog or comment on relevant forums you should be doing this with one end in mind. That is to capture people’s email addresses and build a list. Email marketing is by far the easiest and most effective way to build your business and keep in regular contact with existing and potential clients. You should have an attractive website full of relevant information that you add to regularly, plus an effective lead capture page.

The best lead capture (or landing page) is where people should enter your website when coming from an article you’ve written or from links you’ve left on relevant sites. It should be simple, without extraneous advertising and entice the visitor to give you her information.

A very effective way to get people to sign up is to offer something relevant such as a white paper or free e-Book, and something that’s better or different from what your competitors are offering. The best fitness email marketing tool is Fit Pro Newsletter.  If you’ve written an article about relieving back pain, the benefits of using nutritional supplements or you want to debunk certain diet fads, with the Fit Pro Newsletter you’ll be able to link to and send those relevant newsletters to your list, in a customizable format, without spending hours of your valuable time writing, researching or paying for a graphic designer – it’s all done for you.

3. Optimize your website for local search

While you’re optimizing your website for Mobile Marketing optimize it for Local Search as well. If you haven’t done this already it’s really very simple:

Your phone number and street address should be on every page of your site and in text format (not within an image). This tells the search engines that you truly are a local business.

Make sure your Contact Us page has an image of your location with the address, email address, phone numbers and a Google map image of where you are. Create a page for each location if you have more than one.

Add your Business to Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s Local Directories

Be sure you claim your listing in the top three search engines’ local directories: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Each search engine has easy-to-follow instructions about how to do this and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. If you do nothing else for your business, do this.

There are dozens of other local directories that you shouldn’t ignore. Yelp receives approximately 16 million visitors a month, Merchant Circle 7 million, and there’s White Pages, Yellowbook, SuperPages, CitySearch, InsiderPages and many others that will give your business the ability to attract as many new clients as you can handle.

Clients can leave feedback on most of these listings. Always encourage positive feedback as it will attract even more clients. Check feedback regularly and thank the person who took the time to leave it and deal with any negative feedback in a positive fashion! Reputation management and positive branding are essential.

Above are three very effective fitness marketing strategies of getting your business found online. Apart from some directories that offer “enhanced” listings for a fee, none of these actions should cost you anything other than a few minutes’ work.

The best way to spend your advertizing dollars is to go with something that is cost effective and proven to work such as the Fit Pro Newsletter. It costs just a few bucks a month, but ask any fitness professional who uses it and you’ll find soon out what a great investment it is.

Use all these methods and you will have more clients than you can handle within a few weeks!

This entry was posted on September 26, 2012 at 11:22 am. 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 Marketing, Boot Camp Strategies, Fitness Marketing, Group Personal Training Strategies, Internet Marketing by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet