It seems like I read the same stuff when it comes to marketing for one-on-one and bootcamps. Some I have had luck with and I others I have not. Here are some common ones that I keep seeing over and over again:
- Referrals
- Free Workout
- Discount Rate - Short Trial Period
- Enthusiasm and Friendliness
- Business Card
- Flyer Outside The Club/Studio, Posters Inside The Club/Studio
- Newspaper Column, Ads & Adervertisements
- Cross Promotions
- Health Fares, Seminars
- Phone Calls to Business
I'm curious what has worked for all of you. I'm looking for ideas that are cost efficient. I've been told that going out and offering free workouts is one of the best ways, but I'm no salesman. I feel like a fool when I try to get someone to come workout for free. I feel like they aren't listening and just think I'm trying to sell something, and when I tell other trainers that they say, "don't sell, just be passionate and let me know how you can help them". Well, I can tell you that I am very passionate and I do tell them how I can help them achieve THEIR personal goals. It gets me no where. I think it's because I'm naturally a shy person (when walking up to a stranger/ not in the gym or with clients), and that has been hard to overcome.
Referrals have worked pretty good, but I'm looking for ways to attract those initial clients or for getting new clients in other ways then referrals. It seems like I'm just not finding what works for me to really get the people in. The results with clients are great as well. They get weekly emails with motivational quotes, recipes, support. The diet is laid out. The workouts consist of a dynamic warm-up (based off the work of Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson), 30-40 minute workout typically a timed circuit, tabatas, supersets, etc (high intensity intervals), and then some corrective stretching if it's needed. Men lose about 30 lbs in 8 weeks, women lose about 25 lbs in 8 weeks, and my clients seem happy so I don't think that's the problem.
Any advice, ideas or help?
Some of the things on your list don't work well for me, either. Free workouts are offered by everyone so they aren't anything special. And as you say, most people think you're trying to sell them something (and ...well...you are) so to them it isn't really "free" anyway. I'm toying with the idea of giving a free month to four people to initially set up my bootcamp class. That really would be giving away value and doesn't cost anything but my time. Maybe it will work. Or not. Bootcamp is a tougher sell than my kettlebell classes, at least for me.
Newspaper ads didn't work for me at all. I got two calls, only one even came in. And she didn't stay. Newspapers are dead.
Referrals have really worked for me but you have to attract the right kind of people initially. For example, insurance agents and travel agents know tons of people and if you get one or two of them into your gym, they can generate lots of referrals quickly. Office workers tend to generate less because they see fewer people in the course of the day.
What about those in business for themselves...not working for a club?
I'm asking all of this because I'm curious how trainers running their own studios bring people in when first starting out. I've always worked for a club so I can always walk the floor, talk to members, and a lot of people come in and do trial periods.
But what if you don't have all of that? What if you are in your building and everything is up to you? From my list above those haven't worked that great for me except referrals and trials. Take that away and I feel like I have no effective method for attracting clients.
Everyone does offer free workouts so I find it hard to even get people in for free workouts. Once people come in and try a workout the deal is almost done unless they don't have the means to afford it. I just feel like there should be an easier (more effective) way to get people in than what I've been trying.
I write a weekly fitness column for our city newspaper but even that doesn't get people in the club. I get people all the time saying they love my article or if I show some of the articles to a prospect they may recognize me from the paper, but no one actually comes in from that. It just seems like I'm missing something.
Let's forget the accidental client (e.g. saw a flyer or card in a shop). Let's assume an interested prospect wanted to find a place like yours.
How would you find you? How would I find you if I was looking for you?
Craigslist? Internet search engine? Ask around? Who would I ask? Who would have an answer/opinion that I'd trust? How would I find you if I was looking for you? And then be there.
What about people finishing rehab with a sports medicine Phys Therapy clinic? If you give the PTs some education about who you are and what you bring to clients as a next step in conditioning and function would they keep your brocures on their desk? Would they mention your name to their clients when they have the "we're done with our 6 weeks - here are your next steps" talk?
What about the local high schools? Can you work with their teams for off-season conditioning? Are you interested in youth sports? Even if you aren't charging for that, their parents will know who you are and what you do - and then they might come to you or refer to you.
Or provide warmups and drills for the local AYSO teams and go to some games. Parents will see you and know you.
What about one of JP's favorites? He talks about giving "brown bag" talks for local businesses. Just basic fitness talks for 30 mins or so to get your name and your business out there and get known.
I'm not a trainer so I've not tried any of them. This is all blue-sky brain storming (BS BS if you will) - I have no idea what it would take to do some of them - but you have to be find-able.
My website and blog bring in the most new clients for me. I also post on a general local forum about fitness topics and sometimes people follow the link in my signature. Those plus referrals generate the majority of my new prospects. Notice how none of them cost money.
I get the best immediate results from Craigslist, Google Adwords (I spent $10), a Google Business Listing (free) and various free personal trainer directory sites. My website was thrown up in Wordpress in an afternoon - literally. I only made it to supplement a flyer I'd posted in the gym and to build an email list. Just Google personal trainer in your area and see what comes up first. Get listed in any of those directories that don't charge.
I haven't put a buy now button on my site but that's my next step - I'm thinking that will work for the small group/boot camp stuff - people lose interest/motivation very quickly, so I suspect we really need to get them when their buttons are still "hot".
I've been doing a free outdoor small group sorta kinda boot camp thing via Meetup.com. There are tons of potential weight loss clients on Meetup.
My goal with that is to just get people familiar with me AND get some experience with the group thing - not something I'd done before. I'm learning a lot, so certainly worth the hour of my time per week. I don't sell but have actually out and out told them they are my guinea pigs. I cripple them and they keep coming back. I guess they're masochists or something? Only thing I might do differently is charge a small RSVP fee to discourage no shows at 6am workouts.
Thing with meetup is the group can have any focus - walking, hiking, frisbee, whatever - it doesn't have to be a selling/promotional thing - at least not outright. There used to be a group in my area called Adult Recess - had over 100 members. 100 people looking to get active and have fun. I'm guessing there might be a boot camp session or two in a group like that?
And doing it via Meetup gives me email access to them - they get links to my (lame) website, promotional stuff when they join the group and with every workout announcement. I figure this to be more of a long term marketing/networking/word of mouth thing.
Offer free seminars open to the public. "How to Build a Six Pack". "5 Things You're Doing To Sabotage Your Weight Loss", etc.
Do whatever you can to get people to know you exist. Offer to do an info session for local politician's constituency, and invite the media. Free PR for both of you. Now especially is a good time for that if you have any local elections happening.
I get the best qualified leads online - a lot from YMCA members or other non-trainer gyms - than I do in the gym I currently work out of. In fact, every client I have I had to bring in myself! So, I guess I'm the opposite of you? I can't get my gym members to do anything but free stuff. I have no clue how to sell to them.
Maybe for you it's just a matter of getting used to a different approach to "selling" or marketing? I was indie before the gym and didn't have a problem finding prospects - I just had no great way/place to train them. I have a feeling the approach to in gym stuff must be different. Given that I can't figure it out, I'm looking into renting time in a private studio.
I had to turn down 4 people last week - 3 from online, one from a flyer - because they didn't want to train at my and/or any gym. So, they're out there - just not all gathered in one location!
"Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough. They're there to keep the other people out.” -Randy Pausch
I was thinking about meetup type groups when I was driving home.
I was thinking where in your area would active people go and what would they do - and can you join them?
Hiking groups, outdoor enthusiasts, recreational softball or volleyball or ultimate frisbee?
If those are potential clients for you - then be there.
I have a similar question, I sell fitness equipment new & remanufactured, how can I offer my products to small to mid-sized gyms like yours without being the annoying sales person who calls to bug you? I advertise on craigs list, ebay, we have a website, and do google advertising. We service and maintain many local mom n pop gyms around here so word of mouth is a big help.
The gyms we've helped grow said that flyering locally has given good results but the FREE online ads really have a lot of results for the money (free!!) Good luck in promoting your new gym.
Jason,
Breakfast clubs, Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Clubs... There are a number of places where you can go talk to a group to scare up some quick business. You've seen some of my talks, so you see that it's nothing really fancy.
Once you establish yourself in that business macroverse you can start to fine tune your marketing efforts to the businesses tied to the people who belong to those groups. The good thing about that is that someone is promoting your talk from within because they've seen you talk and they liked what you had to say.
I'm doing some really cool marketing stuff right now but I can't really talk about it publicly yet as I want to fully develop this new business model. Suffice it to say, I have never been in such high demand. I am much more specialized now, and I'm finally reaching the people that I wanted to be training all along. Careful about bogging yourself down with a club. It can start to become a real albatross! Mine was a perfect case-in-point. I would not have been able to get to my current clientele had I still been chained to that gym, worrying about things like late employees, rent, not enough clean towels, and all the bullshit minutia that goes into running a business.
You can get a trainer page on many sites for free that has all your basic information (philosophy, prices, location, contact info, etc), but go buy an URL that is catchy/memorable and forward it to that page. (www.nuttingsportstraining.com or something like that). Other than that, a blog is okay, but I have found that few people actually read those things unless the blog is just really good. For an example of an excellent blog I recommend Galya's blog... My favorite one on the intarwebz right now. www.eatloveandtrain.com. Having some embedded video (a la youtube) you can show examples of your classes. It is very easy to do, and it is cheap advertising. Put that link on your shirts, car, biz cards, hat, in your sig lines on various forums, etc. Drive traffic to it.
Jason,
Looking over everyone's input, there are a lot of good ideas. With marketing your business, it is really just a matter of doing 20-30 different marketing strategies to get new clients. That really is the key, depending on a referral only business, or one or two different marketing strategies really isn't enough to build a constant flow of new clients.
In addition to what everyone else has said, I'm just going to say one thing. Maximize the amount of information you have online. As Dave said, newspaper advertising is pretty much dead, and doing direct mail campaigns or coupon books can be pretty expensive. You can get several new clients a month by maximizing your online information. Here's a check list for you:
1. Website W/Video on First page of you and happy clients
2. Blog with fresh content updated weekly
3. Video Blogging (there are about 30-40 different sites like youtube)
**the key with video broadcasting is using several different key words to post your videos on, do it specifically for you area." Personal trainer, your town, your state & zip code"
With all of this content, you really can take over the search engines in your town. If you want to get more information you can check out my blog linked to my user information. Hope this helps.
That all is such great advice. I think I also need to start joining more "business groups". I guess I was hoping for an easy fix. The thing with me is that I am no talker. My passion is to train and when I have to try to market, talk to people to get them to come in, etc I feel out of place and awkward. I'm just naturally shy when I'm not in my element. I did just start a webpage www.jasonshealth.com which has some info, but still needs some tuning. I guess in my perfect world I would train athletes and kids. In my area though there isn't a revenue for it. It is mostly weight loss. I enjoy that too, but most of the weight loss clients are intimidated by my training methods as they are a little unorthodox (compared to traditional training styles here in my town). I'm not willing to change philisophies though. I know they get better results than the old bodybuilding routines. As far as health fares or seminars I haven't had any luck with them.
JP, I actually never had the opportunity to hear you speak at a business. It was always Kenny. I wish I did get that opportunity though. Is there any way you could do a post on how to give your "brown bag" speeches to companies or groups?
I've just joined this forum trying to look for places to get my fitness news, but recently found this, has anyone else seen it already? I've never heard of it before, am I completely out of touch?
Marketing Strategies that have worked for you...
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