What Can A National Transformation Contest Do For Your Fitness Business?

The Campaign

Earlier this year, some of our clients and FR franchisees participated in our first ever National Transformation Contest. Hundreds of fitness professionals were given the opportunity to host a local contest, which not only led to a lot of leaner, healthier bodies throughout the country, but also gave fitness business owners the chance to generate new business, increase membership sales, build relationships and good will in their communities, and reinforce a results-driven culture within their facilities.

Fitness professionals teamed up with Personal Trainer Foods, a business that delivers 28 days of pre-cooked, healthy, and preservative-free meals of protein and produce to homes throughout the United States. The PTF program allows fit pros to earn commissions while providing a done-for-you nutrition solution to their clients who are trying to transform their bodies.

National campaigns tend to generate a lot more buzz than other promotions, so we provided fit pros with a complete 30 day promotion plan to endorse the contest in their communities, allowing them to extend their reach to many new clients while also reinvigorating current members. Included in the plan were email sequences, joint venture strategies, and press releases, among several other marketing materials. The benefits to those businesses that participated were significant.

For example:

• Ryan Ketchum and Wil Fleming, owners of Force Fitness and Performance in Bloomington, IN, had 54 participants, 38 of them new clients.

• Ken and Kerri Grall, Fitness Revolution franchisees and owners of Edge Fitness in Sun Prairie, WI, had 36 participants, 10 of which were new.

• Chris Arnold, a Fitness Revolution franchisee and the owner of Physically Fit Personal Training in Shelton, CT, had 40 participants, 21 of them new.

• Anthony Dix, a Fitness Revolution franchisee and the owner of Coulee Region Bootcamps in La Crosse, WI, had 42 total participants (18 new and 15 reactivations). 

Also equipped with an 8 week training and nutrition program to give to participating clients, fitness professionals were able to begin the contest in February without spending a significant amount of time trying to come up with the contest details.

"What made this contest so appealing was the fact that we received access to everything we needed to run the program… marketing materials, an 8 week nutrition program, a guide to organizing and regulating the contest, handouts to give to participants, and even sales systems to ensure we would be able to continue helping the new clients achieve other goals even after the contest ends," said Ryan Ketchum.

"The Fitness Consulting Group team even sent out weekly tips, updates, and scripts we could use to continue keeping our clients motivated throughout the contest. The new business this helped generate was much better than many other promotions we’ve run in the past."

The National Transformation Contest Winner

In addition to cash rewards and other prizes individual fit pros made available to winning contestants, the winner at each location was entered into consideration for a national grand prize, the opportunity to be in a commercial for Personal Trainer Food.

The contest officially ended April 1st, and finally, with all the data collected and analyzed, Fitness Consulting Group is ready to announce the 2012 National Transformation Contest Winner: Jodi Trippany of Bloomington, Indiana! Jodi trains at Force Fitness and Performance (member of the Fitness Revolution Nation), owned and operated by Ryan Ketchum and Wil Fleming.

The three other finalists in the contest included Scott Prouty, who trains with Trevor Wittwer at Functional Fitness (also a member of the FR Nation) in Redwood Falls, MN, Marlin Diekfuss, who trains with Mark Lopez at Fitness Revolution New Tampa in Florida, and Joe Mangan, who trains with Ryan Riley at Riley Athletics (FR Nation)in Seattle.

Throughout the 8 weeks, Jodi added extra days to her training program, began training for the Tough Mudder, and added Personal Trainer Food to her nutrition program.

According to Ketchum, "Jodi is 100% dedicated to reaching her goals. Her husband, George, is a huge factor in her success as well and has personally lost 80lbs in his time at Force. These two are our Power Couple.  Over 130lbs were lost between the two of them, and they made incredible changes."

"The energy and enthusiasm that Jodi has for training are unmatched.  Jodi completes our boot camp workouts with a weight vest on to ensure she is getting the most out of the workout, and she never misses a day. She and George are a motivating force in our boot camp program and push the entire group to an entirely new level."

Before starting her transformation, Jodi weighed in at 178.8 pounds and measured at 36.5 inches around her belly. By the end of the contest, she finished at 146.4 pounds and 29.25 inches for a grand total of 32.4 pounds and 7.25 inches lost!

When Jodi was asked the difference between this contest and other programs she had participated in, she replied, "Personal Trainer Food! Using Personal Trainer Foods gave the contest a new spin to my approach. It made the process easy by not having to think about my meals. The food was always ready, making it simple. There was no guess work involved."

"I don’t think it would have been possible to achieve the results without Personal Trainer Food, the Force Fitness team of coaches and administrative staff, my fellow boot campers, and my husband and committed boot camp comrade George." 

Congratulations, Jodi Trippany! We look forward to seeing you in the commercial!

Would you like to be involved in our next National Transformation Contest?

With our first National Transformation Contest in the books, we are planning on taking the second to another level! Would you like your local fitness business to be a part of something bigger? What about your clients… would they like the opportunity to transform their lives like hundreds of others contestants and have the opportunity to be recognized on the national scale?

What can participation in the next National Transformation Contest do for you and your fitness business?

It will…

1. Save you time- It’s as SIMPLE as it gets; our "done-for-you" National Transformation Contest Blueprint gives you everything you need to run the campaign

2. Make you money- You’ll get an influx of paid leads, will have the opportunity to sell new memberships, and you’ll make money on the back-end through Personal Trainer Food and supplement sales… but best of all, these systems are built into the blueprint!

3. Build community- Nothing builds community like people working together to change their lives. A transformation contest will help your business reinforce a culture of results.

The FCG Family is blazing a new trail for fitness professionals. Together, we work to cultivate relationships, discover untapped market opportunities, create effective solutions, and maximize the success of fitness professionals and their clients, our business partners, and our team. 

We want you and your clients to join us in our next national transformation contest.

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

A Post On Getting Referrals By Pat Rigsby

As fitness business owner we all want more referrals. They’re the easiest prospects to sell, they are more likely to refer others and they’ll stay longer and pay more while they’re clients.

Unfortunately, referrals aren’t as easy to come by as they used to be. In years gone by all you had to do was offer up a prize or reward and your current clients would line up to send you new clients for a chance to win what you were offering or a crisp $50 bill.

It’s not quite that easy any more.

You can still be a referral driven business, but you need to set the stage to make that happen. Here’s a primer to get you started.

Referrals can be broken down into two categories:

1. Incentivized
2. Inspired

Inspired Referrals are the Viral payoff for giving your clients an extraordinary experience.

Inspired Referrals will come by making sure you and your team treats everyone like close personal friends, you deliver the results the client initially came to you for and make your clients feel like your facility is their home away from home.

In fact, a training business that excels in those areas alone can build a great client base with a fraction of the marketing cost typically associated with business growth.

Incentivized Referrals, however, can give your business a great boost too, especially as you’re still positioning yourself as the premier training solution in your community.

But in general, you can’t expert to build a business solely from incentivized referrals.

Unfortunately, most of the talk about referral marketing only focuses on incentivized referrals and the short-lived fireworks they can provide.

Don’t get caught up in the hype and think that alone will carry you.

So remember, the first thing you should do is focus on Extraordinary Service, and Client Experience. Once you are in a process of gradually improving those things, then add in Incentivized Referral programs in any of the following ways:

1. Point of Sale Referrals
2. Contests
3. Rewards
4. Gift Certificates / Gift Cards
5. Bring-a-Friend

Just remember that when you “bribe” your clients (let’s be honest, that’s what you’re doing here), you need to help make the experience fun for your clients and those that they refer. Referring shouldn’t be your clients pitching or hard selling your business. It should be education, shared positive experiences and an opportunity to experience what you do with as little risk as possible.

So that’s it – a simple formula for Referrals Made Easy that will send you new business month after month.

]]> http://fitbusinessinsider.com/referrals-made-easy/feed/ 0 http://fitbusinessinsider.com/fitness-marketing-plan-for-maximizing-value/ http://fitbusinessinsider.com/fitness-marketing-plan-for-maximizing-value/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:34:38 +0000 admin http://fitbusinessinsider.com/?p=7826

A post on developing your fitness marketing plan by Pat Rigsby

What if you could automatically make each prospect you get three to four  times as valuable?  That’s a fitness marketing plan you’d put into action immediately, right?

Well – to make each prospect you get as valuable as possible, you need a plan because it doesn’t happen by accident…so I’ve shared a blueprint you can follow.  Your own fitness marketing plan.

Basically, you have a funnel your prospects go through already, whether you realize it or not.  Most of your prospects go through the same type of process, whether it’s really efficient or not very efficient at all.

So what we want to do is to make your marketing plan a drop dead simple, step-by-step funnel that every prospect goes through where you have the highest possibility of maximizing the value of their relationship to your business.

Your Fitness Marketing Plan

Step One -Have a Powerful Lead Magnet

Your lead magnet should be your ‘bait’ that attracts the type of prospects that you want in your business and starts to position you as their ideal solution. This Lead Magnet typically will be something that is offered on your website, but you could offer something different for public speaking engagements or other live opportunities.

Step Two – Make Your Front End Offer

After getting your Lead Magnet, the prospect is immediately directed to your Front End Offer.  This is their low risk opportunity to experience what you have to offer.  Common Front End Offers are one or two week trials, $1 trials, a month of training for a discounted fee or for businesses that are exclusively one on one or semi-private, an assessment and a couple of sessions. If the prospect does not immediately take you up on the Front End Offer, they go to Step Three.  If they do take you up on your Front End Offer, the immediately move to Step Four.

Step Three – Follow Up

Your follow up should be comprised of email, phone calls and possibly direct mail.  The objective of your follow up is to get the prospect into your facility or camp for a low risk opportunity to experience what you have to offer.  You do this by highlighting the benefits of what you offer, display some social proof and finding your prospect’s pain.  Everything in Step Three is designed to move people to the Front End Offer.

Step Four – Offer Your Core Program(s)

Once someone has experienced your Front End Offer, they should be ready to move to one of your Core Programs.  With this in mind you should make an offer for your Core Program(s) after the completion of the first day of the Front End Offering.

Many prospects will already know that you’re the best solution for them after a single day of working with you, so you should always provide them the opportunity to move into one of your Core Programs after their first experience.

Step Five – Follow Up And Convert

Some of the prospects that take you up on the Front End Offer won’t immediately be ready to upgrade and enroll in your Core Program(s.)  To address this, you should follow up with them and make a personal contact with them no less than every 3 days and make at least one offer to upgrade every week.

Step Six – Point Of Sale Upsell

One of the most effective ways to increasing the immediate relationship value with your clients is the Point of Sale Upsell.  Fortunately, there’s a very simple system to achieve this.  The upsell should be products or services that will help your client get results event faster. 

This could be a nutrition coaching program, supplements, more sessions during their first month or even a workshop to improve their proficiency faster. Typically, this upsell offer should be 50% – 100% of the value of their first month of your Core Offering.

So if your Core Offering is $199 / mo., then your upsell should be anywhere from $99-199.

This is an often overlooked, but critical part of your fitness marketing plan – so don’t ignore it.

Step Seven – Point Of Sale Referral Request

Someone is never more likely to refer than right after they’ve become a client so it’s critical that you ask for referrals at this point.  You can either ask for names and contact information of people that your new client feel would be a good fit for your services and you can follow up with them – or you can provide the new client with a couple of gift cards that they can share with people that they think would benefit.

After this point you can maximize your fitness marketing plan by:

Creating Referral Opportunities Every Month – Holding a Charity Bring A Friend Workout every month, holding at least 2 referral contests each year, recognizing your clients who refer publicly (make a big deal out of it) and asking in an individual setting – either though direct mail or in person – periodically will maximize referrals.

Hold A Workshop Each Month – Rotate between things like:

1. Resistance Band Training Workshops
2. Kettlebell Workshops
3. TRX Workshops
4. Nutrition Workshops
5. Smoothie 101 Workshops
6. Recovery & Regeneration Workshops
7. Etc.

All of these can help you sell retail offerings like bands, foam rollers and nutritional products.  They’ll also help your clients get results faster while generating more back end revenue for you.

Connect With Your Clients – Send a fitness marketing newsletter, send personal emails, cards and texts.  Take your clients out for coffee or lunch.  This is also my favorite way to get your clients to open more doors for you. 

Ask your client if you can take them out for coffee and get their advice.  Let them know that you want more clients like them and would love to get their advice on how they think you can reach that market.  By asking their advice you’ll usually get even better feedback than if you simply ask for a referral.

Deliver an Extraordinary Experience – Even though this is a post of developing your marketing plan, I’d be a fool if I didn’t remind you that your best marketing tool is the experience your clients have when working with you.

So now all you need to do is reexamine your personal fitness marketing plan and make sure it looks somewhat like the model I’ve described. Then the key is execution.  It doesn’t matter if you have the best plan in the world if you don’t’ execute it.

The sooner you implement this formula, the sooner you’ll maximize the value of your client relationships!

Tell me what you think below…

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

A post of creating a fitness marketing system by Pat Rigsby

Getting fitness professionals to actually employ a fitness marketing system is a chore. It’s not something that they’re normally inclined to do or that they enjoy

I get it.

So how can a fitness pro be motivated to market it a way that will be effective?

Enter The Interval Fitness Marketing System.

This approach will be something that we’re going to deliver in a Done For You format for Fitness Revolution franchisees – but it’s something that you could employ on your own successfully as well.

First, let me give you a little back story though.

In my experience, the thing that prevents fitness pros from adhering to their own fitness marketing system is consistency.

They don’t want to do the things necessary to get big results day after day, week after week, month after month.

It’s really a lot like training clients, right?

Outside of the best clients, if they don’t have a deadline or a goal – keeping them focused and consistent can often be a challenge.

One of the ways that we’ve seen many fitness pros overcome this challenge is to hold short term events to get clients focused. Transformation Contests, 21 Day Challenges, etc.

These work well for a variety of reasons – in large part to the fact that there is a deadline. A light at the end of the tunnel for the participant to focus on. Because of this they can focus all their efforts on succeeding in the challenge. They’re temporarily motivated to follow the plan more closely than they would at any other time.

Right?

So why not follow this same approach with marketing?

That’s the basis of the Interval Fitness Marketing System.

You basically go into a full marketing sprint several times per year and then you market at a much lower intensity the rest of the year.

You aggressively run 4-6 compressed, intensive promotions each year – and you hit them incredibly hard. The rest of the time, you downshift into doing simple stuff.

Here’s how this could potentially lay out:

You pick 6 big events for the year. Maybe something like this:

2 Transformation Contests

2 Short 21 or 28 Day Promotions

1 Referral Contest

1 Reactivation Campaign

In January you run the first Transformation Contest. You hit it hard.

• You hit current clients with email, face to face, internal signage, personal calls and even direct mail.

• You do an email / direct mail campaign to unconverted leads and former clients.

• You run a Facebook ad campaign, leverage social media and press release the Contest.

• You reach out to joint venture partners and send a promotion out through their lists.

• You set up a strong referral program for your current clients.

In March you run a Referral Contest.

• You lean on all your JV partners for donated or discounted prizes.

• You distribute gift cards, done for you emails and other tools to make referring easy.

• You come up with a reward system for anyone who refers a lead and every referrer is entered in the contest to win some big prizes.

In May you hold a 21 or 28 Day Swimsuit Ready Challenge.

• Again you hit current clients with email, face to face, internal signage, personal calls and even direct mail.

• You do an email and call unconverted leads and former clients.

• You run a Facebook ad campaign, leverage social media and press release the Challenge. Maybe you even get some local celebrities to participate.

• You reach out to joint venture partners and send a promotion out through their lists.

• You set up a strong referral program for your current clients where they can participate free if they refer a friend.

In September run a Team Transformation Contest.

• Each team must have at least 2 non-clients.

• You get current clients to form teams through the same marketing channels you used in January.

• You invite unconverted leads and former clients to be part of teams.

• You again a Facebook ad campaign, leverage social media and press release the Contest.

• You reach out to joint venture partners and see if they want to field a team.

• You come up with great prizes for the winning team.

In October you run a Reactivation Campaign and do a 3 Letter Sequence to former clients.

You mix in 3 emails and a personal call.

Then in early November you run 21 Day Finish Strong Challenge where you market the exact same way you did in May, but this time using the Holidays as the end of the contest.

In between and during – you’d just do some simple stuff like run a Bring a Friend Charity Workout each month, do some networking and maybe some email fitness marketing and social media.

That’s the Interval Fitness Marketing System.

4-6 full out sprints throughout the year and then you just do the simpler stuff the rest of the time.

What I love about this is it gives you something to focus on for a short period of time – but each of the bigger events will produce a bunch of leads you can continue to market to the rest of they year in your newsletter and for future events.

So if you’ve had trouble staying consistent with your marketing – give the Interval Fitness Marketing System a try. I think it might be exactly what you need to get your marketing in gear.

Let me know what you think below…

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

At this point Deal of the Day offers are pretty commonplace among the fitness business pros that I talk with. 

But even with them being so common most trainers struggle to extract even half the value they can provide to a business.

With that in mind I’ve put together a little primer on how you can get value from Groupon, Living Social and the rest as the market has matured.

Determine What You Want – Are you looking for 200-800 leads?  An influx of cash?  Would you rather get fewer leads, but at a little better quality?  You need to know what you’re trying to get out of a Deal of the Day offer before you ever start.

Remember, They Need You More Than You Need Them – Very few businesses are as well equipped as a group training business to sell through a Deal of the Day site.  For their main offers, these sites basically want to sell ‘Look Good, Feel Good or Taste Good’ packages – and a lot of the providers of those are less anxious to do a deal than you’d think.

Most massage therapy businesses are ill equipped to handle big volume.  Restaurants costs go us proportionally to their sales and they don’t really offer continuity.  So a lot of these types of businesses negotiate with the Deal of the Day site to make the offer work for them – and you can too.

Remember, without something to sell, these sites don’t exist and there are a finite number of businesses in each community – so they need you in order to be successful – so negotiate to get the deal you want.

Build The Right Offer – Pretty much anything you sell through one of these site will convert best if it’s a full month deal.  My suggestion is not to offer unlimited.  A deluxe package that includes 3 days per week of bootcamp should convert well if you add a few bonuses like:

• An assessment
• An orientation
• A meal plan
• A motivational program (you could just send a series of emails)

I’m sure you can think of others.  Something like this will usually sell for $25-49 and generate the highest volume of leads. If you want fewer leads, offer something at a price point from $49-99.  This would typically include semi-private or even 1 on 1 training.  Typically your offer will sell between 15-35% of normal value.

Add Time Slots – My suggestion is to add additional temporary time slots if you have an influx of leads. The key word here is temporary.  Tell your clients your adding these time slots for 4-6 weeks to accommodate the influx of new people and the new times will disappear unless you hit a certain number of ongoing members for those times.  This will help you keep your current people happy.

Staff Up – If you need to add staff – do it.  Get superstar campers to help out as needed with orientations or as assistant coaches. The way to manage an influx is to plan for it.

Have An Online Registration Form – Ideally the Deal of the Day site will allow you to have a link on the page to a registration page on your site where the buyers can activate their coupon.  On this form you’ll want to capture name, phone and email at minimum.  On the thank you page, I’d do the following:

Step 1: Have a One Time Offer To Upgrade – have a sales page where the Deal of the Day buyer can upgrade their membership to 3 additional months where they pay just $1 for the next month and regular price for the following 2 months.  While you won’t convert a lot of these, you’ll get a few.

Step 2: Give Them a Special Bonus Page – after they exit the one time offer or take the upgrade, have the new buyer land on a final thank you page that has the following:

• An Opt In Form For A FREE Unannounced Bonus – a special report from Prograde. Prograde offers a couple great free special reports that not only will deliver some value to your new client, but will also ‘tag’ the lead under you in Prograde’s system so that Prograde will start marketing to them and you’ll get the commissions to any sales that are made…while they do all the work.

 

• Tips On How To Get The Most From Your Program - this is a big win/win where you can strengthen the relationship with the new client by giving them valuable tips and suggestions – and you can also promote things like Meal Movement as key success factors to get them most from the program.

Plug Them Into The Conversion Funnel – Ideally, you’ll then move the prospect into this type of Conversion Funnel:

Step 1: Initial Call To Build Value – If you have a number of leads that is manageable, you should try to spend 15-20 minutes on the phone with each new client during an initial call to ask them what their goals are, why achieving those goals is important to them and then explaining how your program will help them achieve what they want.  You’ll also schedule them for an initial orientation.

This step will help you get far more people to show up and pre-sell your program so that when you make an in-person offer they already feel comfortable with how your program will help them achieve their goals.

If you don’t have time to talk to everyone – call as many as you can and send questionnaires to the rest.  To convert at a high level you need to ‘find their pain’ and be able to explain how your program will alleviate it.

Step 2: Make a Confirmation Call – Everyone should receive a confirmation call to remind them of when they need to be at orientation, what to wear, where you’re located and anything else they need to do to get the most from the experience.

This will help alleviate some of the anxiety associated with a client coming to a first session.

Step 3: Run An Orientation – An orientation is the perfect bridge for your new clients to get them into your regular programs.  You can go over expectation, common exercises and do a mini-assessment where you at least assess how they might do in your regular program.

This time is also when you’ll really emphasize how your program will help them achieve their goals. You can make some personal connections. It’s really a great opportunity to separate yourself from any other fitness experience they’ve ever had.

At the conclusion of the orientation, make an offer.  Something simple like this:

“We really appreciate you becoming part of the Fitness Revolution Family.  If you already know that our program is going to be a good fit to help you achieve you goals, I’d like to make you a special offer.  You can trade in your one month membership for an additional month FREE if you enroll in our 3 month program.

Then you’d be able to train with us for the next 4 months and have only 2 monthly installments of $179 in February and March.

If you’d like to take advantage of this, you can turn back in this form today or by the end of our class on Monday.”

You’ll convert some lead right there and some others by the end of the next session.

Step 4: Send a Follow Up Text - Something simple like:

“Just wanted to let you know that you did a great job today.  Can’t wait to see you Monday!”

The highest attrition point fitness pros see from Deal of the Day buyers is those that buy but never show up.  The second highest?  People who never come back after Day 1.  This will help improve that.  It will also help sway those people thinking about taking you up on your special offer.

Step 5: Assessment / Consultation – Ideally the assessment would happen before someone is actually starting your program – but if you don’t have time due to volume, try to meet with everyone who is active to do a personal goal and physical assessment.  This will help not only deliver a better training experience – but will also help you build value in your program and form a stronger personal connection.

During this session you can give them a second chance at the initial special offer.

Step 6: 7 Touches in 21 Days – During the Deal of the Day Client’s first 21 days, you should set a goal of 7 touches.  This can be any combination of:

• Personal calls from you
• Personal emails from you
• Personal texts from you
• Assessments / consults
• Newsletters
• Thank You Cards
• Brief personal chats before or after sessions

Something that I’ve fallen in love with as a ‘touch’ recently is a tool called Postcard on the Run:

http://www.postcardontherun.com

You snap a photo with your smart phone and you can send it as a postcard straight from your phone for $1.49.  This is a great personal touch that will certainly separate you from your competitors.

Step 7: Make A Second Offer – Around the end of week 3 you can make a second special offer.  My suggestion is to phase it something like this:

“I’d like to go ahead and get you enrolled in an ongoing program so you can continue to see results.  We have a 2 session per week option for $129 and a 3 session per option for $179.  If you’d like to go ahead and lock in your spot I’ll go ahead and give you the first month for $39.  Which option would you like to continue with?”

By asking in the 3rd week, if they say they need to think about it, you still have a couple sessions remaining to secure their enrollment.

Step 8: Final Offer - On the next to last day of their Deal of the Day membership you should remind them of the offer you just made and let them know this is their final opportunity to get their next month at the discounted rate.  The deadline will convert the people on the fence.   If you have a downsell offer like a DVD of your own, a Fitness Coaching Program or a Bootcamp To Go type of program – sell it here.

Referrals, Connections & Back End Offers - Once someone becomes a client in one of your 3, 6 or 12 month programs – you should be leaning on them for:

• Referrals – as at the Point of Sale and periodically thereafter.
• Connections – opportunities to do speaking engagements, connect with charities or run corporate programs.
• Back End Sales – Nutrition Coaching, Workshops, Meal Movement, Supplements like Prograde, Bands and anything else that will complement their current program.

Maximize Their Value – Hopefully you convert 20-40% of the Deal of the Day Buyers that attended your camp into 3, 6 or 12 month clients. Using the above mentioned conversion process will certainly help.  But even with those conversion rates, you still have 60-80% that didn’t buy so we need to maximize their value.  Here are a couple ideas:

Follow Up With Low Risk Offers – If you run Transformation Contests, 21 Day Drop a Dress Size Deals, Workshops and other offers like that – make sure you’re sending them to this list.  If you get $47-197 from a half dozen of these prospects every time you run an offer – you’ll end up generating an additional $5000 – $10,000 from this list.

Sell Affiliate Promotions – Again – our goal at this point is to generate value from these leads so you can run offers to affiliate products like:

• Information Products like Fit Yummy Mummy
• Supplements like Prograde.
• Products like bands.
• Other solutions like Meal Movement.

These people have shown an interest in fitness and fat loss, so if you continue to present them with offers for solutions or tools that can help them with their fitness or fat loss goals you’ll generate some sales. This just requires to keep mailing them a newsletter with good information  – which you should be doing anyway.

If you approach Deal of the Day Offers like this, then you can potentially generate revenue at 12 different points:

1. Initial Split with the Deal of the Day Site
2. One Time Offer At Online Registration
3. Prograde sales through Unannounced Gift Report
4. Sales at Orientation
5. Sales at Assessment
6. Sales at Second Offer After Week 3.
7. Final Special Offer Opportunity
8. Downsells at Final Meeting
9. Referrals from Clients
10. Upsells to Clients
11. Low Risk Offers to Unconverted Leads
12. Affiliate Offers to Unconverted Leads

At least 12 different ways to profit from Deal of the Day buyers – and that’s not counting back end offers individually.  A little bit different than the way most people approach it, right?  Most take the split from the Deal of the Day site and maybe make a single offer and convert 5% of the leads.  Don’t make that mistake – follow this plan and make Deal of the Day offers work for you.

Good luck with your fitness business.

Tell me what you think below.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

A Post On Personal Trainer Marketing By Pat Rigsby

You know how sometimes things seem so big, so daunting that we almost get paralyzed and stop making headway on them entirely?

When I talk to a personal trainer marketing his or her business, it often seems that way.

Well, I’m going to do my best in this post to simplify the whole ‘personal trainer marketing thing’ once and for all.

First – let’s get to the bottom of what marketing really is if you’re a good trainer or coach.  Marketing is simply exposing people to your service and why it’s better than all other available options.

I don’t really care how you do it.  If you’re really good at what you do and someone experiences it… I’ll take my chances on you likelihood of building a successful business.

So with that as the basis of a successful approach to personal trainer marketing, the real need is to get people to ‘test drive’ what you do.

Where do you get these people?

Well, it astounds me when fitness pros ask about doing a 5000 piece postcard mailer or running a newspaper ad but they’ve never actually told everyone they know about what they do and how they can help them.

Seems pretty backwards to me.

The Power Of Your Network

A salesman named Joe Girard was the first I ever heard talk about the concept of the ’250 List.’  Basically, what Mr. Girard said was that everyone knows 250 people, at least in passing.

So if you know 250 people, why start by trying to sell people that you have no relationship with?

You may be thinking ‘I don’t know 250 people.’ Maybe, but humor me.

Open up a spreadsheet on your computer.

Pull out your cell phone and open up the contact list.

Start copying all the contacts and their contact information onto your new list.

Once you’re done, open up your email account and do the exact same thing.

Finally, log into Facebook and LinkedIn and do this exercise one more time.

At this point you likely have 250 or more people – even if you weed out your pseudo-friends from Facebook.  If not, you’re probably darn close.

If you’ve put the names of these people in the first column on your spreadsheet, use the second column to list their phone number and the third to list their email address.

If you’re missing one or the other – no sweat.  We’ll use whatever you have.

Now, if you want to do extra credit work, list their occupation in the fourth column, and any other things you know about them in the fifth (Do they have kids? What church do they attend? Are they a youth league coach or involved in the Chamber of Commerce?  List that here.)

This Master List – your 250 list – literally can be the hub of your personal trainer marketing efforts.

How so?

Here’s how you could use it…

1. Personally reach out to everyone (yes, everyone… don’t try to pre-qualify people here) and make sure they know about your business and how you can help people.  Invite them in for a free trial of some sort.  Tell them they’re welcome to gift a free trial to any friend, family member, co-worker or neighbor they think might benefit from what you do.

By the way – personally means personal calls, personal visits, personal cards or letters or personal emails.  There is nothing less effective than a mass email that looks like a forward.

2. Segment the list into A’s, B’s and C’s.  A’s are the people that you’re closest to, that are your ‘Raving Fans’ and the ones who will help you any way they can.  B’s are the people that know what you do, value it, but may not be referring to you or aren’t really ambassadors for what you do.  C’s are people who you’d think of as acquaintances.

Sit down over coffee or lunch with the A’s and tell them about your vision for what you want your business to be.  Let them know about things you want to do.  More public speaking, launch a youth program, start doing corporate fitness… whatever you’re working on.  Ask them for any advice or help they can offer.  Many will jump right in and assist you.  Let’s say you want to start training young athletes and tell an ‘A’ member of your network.  They’ll say something like, “I know Coach Jones over at the High School.  I’ll introduce you.  And my brother in law is on the board for the local youth soccer league.  I’ll connect you with him.”

Basically – they can open the doors you want opened.

With the B’s – see how you can help them.  Work to turn them into A’s.  Offer help.  Educate them.  Just strengthen the connection.  Some will become A’s and all will become better ambassadors for your business.

With the C’s – get to know them.  The difference between them being a C and a B is almost always familiarity.

3. Every time you’re looking to do something, from the public speaking or launching a youth or corporate program I just mentioned to looking for a new facility location or running a charity event – put it out to your network and almost always someone will be able to connect you with what you’re looking for.

4. Stay in constant contact.  There is noting worse than someone who only contacts you when they need someone.  I remember a marketer a couple years ago that only mailed his list when he was pitching something.  Not cool.

My belief is that you should reach out to people ‘just because.’  You never know when something may present itself.  Let me give you an example:

Way back in December of 2004 Damon Moschetto became our account rep for a nutrition company we decided to work with.   In spite of Damon making fun of us for not being very technologically savvy, we became friends.  After a couple of years we moved away from than nutrition company when we started consulting with and selling Prograde – but we remained friends with Damon.  We’d talk every month or two, never really with the thought of some immediate business benefit.  Fast forward to 2011 and Damon is on board with us working on a couple of big projects and a valuable member of our team.

All because we stayed in contact.

You can stay in contact through personal calls and emails.  Visits for coffee or lunch.  Sending an email newsletter.  Just stay in contact.

But don’t stop there.  With the people you do know, work hard to learn more about them and also about how you can serve them.

But the power of a network is not only about who you currently know – it’s also about those people that you can meet and get to know.

I often tell fitness pros that we work with that a good goal is to add 1-2 people to your network each day.  Think about it. If you add just one person to your network and you actually cultivate that relationship – over the course of a single year you’ll have built 365 more relationships over the next 12 months.

365 relationships is enough to build one heck of a business with.  Your initial 250 network members are enough to build one heck of a business.

Why again were you going to start with Craigslist ads, lead boxes and direct mail?

If ALL you did for the next 12 months was to relentlessly network – you’d be one of the top 1% of the industry when it came to personal trainer marketing.  Guaranteed.

But that’s not what I’m suggesting you do.

No  – as much as I love networking and recognize that it’s the most powerful marketing tactic available to you… I’m not a fan of putting all my eggs in any one basket.

So here’s what I teach to the people I coach:

At any given time you MUST have at least 2 External Marketing Strategies and 2 Internal Marketing Strategies running.

That’s the bare minimum.

So what are the External Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies we like?  Here are a few:

• Networking – we covered that.
• Public Speaking – networking on steroids.
• Joint Ventures with congruent businesses.
• Fundraisers in your community.
• Deal of the Day Sites – great if done well, but unfortunately not in your control.
• Business or School of the Month programs.
• Direct Mail – I don’t talk about this much because it’s a little more advanced and requires a little more investment than some of the others, but it’s a winner if you’re good at it.
• Facebook Ads and Focused Social Media Marketing

There are others – but those are solid to start with.

And what are the Internal Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies we like?  Here are several:

• Point of Sale Referral Offers
• Referral Contests
• Bring a Friend Events
• Transformation Contests
• Referral Gift Cards
• Reactivation Campaigns

Again, there are plenty of others but you get the picture.

So we’ve covered the fact that you need to begin with marketing to your network.

Then we addressed the fact that you need to have at least 2 External and 2 Internal Marketing Strategies going on at any given time.

For a personal trainer marketing their business, the other thing needed to be successful is a means of measuring or tracking the effectiveness of what they do.

Unfortunately, that’s not something most fitness pros love – so we’ll make it really simple.

At bare minimum, you need to know how many leads each of your 4 monthly marketing strategies produces.

Of those leads, you need to know how many come in and ‘test drive’ what you have to offer.

Finally, you need to know how many of those ‘test drivers’ actually sign on and become your client.

So you need to know number of leads, number of ‘shows’ and number of closes.

That’s it.

Sure, there are about two-dozen other things that you could track and get value from, but these 3 are the big ones.

So let’s summarize this little crash course on personal trainer marketing…

Key Point #1: Marketing a personal training business is not rocket science and shouldn’t be difficult if you focus on a few key things.

Key Point #2: Start with your personal network.  List everyone you know, cultivate those relationships and make sure they not only know what you do, but also are personally invited in to try what you offer out.

Key Point #3: For your ‘A’ players, empower them to be ambassadors for your business.  Work hard to move your ‘B’ players to the ‘A’ level and your ‘C’ players to the ‘B’ level.

Key Point #4: Commit to adding one new person to your network each and every day.  Follow up with them and turn new contacts into powerful relationships. Again, like your current network, cultivate the relationship and get them to experience what you have to offer.

Key Point #5: Along with networking, you need to have a few other marketing strategies in place.  Our minimum plan calls for 2 External and 2 Internal.  Have 2 of each in play each and every month.

Key Point #6: Track the numbers (leads / shows / closes) for each of these 4 Strategies.  If the numbers are not good, either improve the strategy or replace it.  If the numbers are good, pour more resources in to the strategy and play to your strengths.

Finally – a good starting point for most fitness businesses would be a goal of 25-30 solid leads per month.  If you’re getting 25-30 per month and you’re building significant value, providing a great experience and at least somewhat proficient at closing sales – you’ve got what you need to build a great business.

So that’s personal trainer marketing simplified…what do you think?

Let me know below…

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

A Post On Fitness Referral Strategies by Pat Rigsby

Tomorrow we’ll be launching Fitness Business Blueprint, but even though things have been busy around here with the big launch I still wanted to share a really valuable post on one of my favorite relatively passive fitness referral strategies that you could use to kick off the week.

Fitness testimonials are one of the most powerful fitness referral strategies you have at your disposal. If you’re like most of the fitness pros that read this blog, you take a lot of pride on the service you provide and the results your clients get.

If that’s the case you deserve testimonials. But there is a difference between deserving them and getting them, so I wanted to give you a simple plan to start capturing testimonials.

Your Fitness Testimonial Acquisition System

Step One: Choose a couple of specific times when you will ask for testimonials. Here are three easy options to start with:

Option 1: When someone reaches a goal or hits a benchmark that is important to them.

Option 2: When someone thanks you or compliments you on your business / service.

Option 3: When you finish a training phase or phase of bootcamp.

Step Two: Ask for the testimonial. A script or email could go something like this:

I really appreciate your kind words. Could you do me a favor and write down why you enjoy training here? I’d love to have your comments and share them with others that could benefit from what we offer.

Or

Congratulations on just completing ___________________. You did a great job and I couldn’t be more proud of your progress. Because you’ve done so well I was wondering if you could you do me a favor and click on the link below and answer a couple of questions about why you enjoy training here? I’d love to have your comments and share them with others that could benefit from what we offer.

LINK to Survey

I really appreciate your help!

Sincerely.

YOUR NAME

Step Three: You share a testimonial form for them to complete. Here’s one to model:

You can make this a paper form or set up a form online through Survey Monkey or Google Docs.

This simple approach will consistently get you testimonials that you can use in marketing materials, on your website, in email promos and on your Wall of Fame in your facility.

All you have to do is put it into action.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post – we’re launching Fitness Business Blueprint tomorrow. Don’t miss the opportunity to save $100 on this awesome resource and grab a couple of really cool limited time bonuses.

Open your email tomorrow…

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

If you want to enjoy a successful and lucrative personal training career then you need to do some work.  There’s a lot of competition (which I think is a good thing as it weeds out the pretenders) and a number of factors that play into your success (or lack thereof.)

Here’s a list of 12 Steps that – if you adhere to them – will lay the foundation for a great personal training career:

Step #1 – Be A Great Coach: Being great at your craft should be the foundation that any successful business is built on.  If you deliver a poor quality of service, marketing and sales ability can temporarily keep you going, but eventually people will figure you out.

Step #2 – Create Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Your USP answers the question, “why should choose you over any and all of your competitors?” This is the foundation of all your marketing efforts during your personal training career.

Step #3 – Develop Systems For Everything: Every aspect of your business should be systemized.  You need to have systems in place for how you acquire prospects, how you convert them to clients, how you deliver your service, how you ask for referrals, how you collect payments and more.  Any task you perform in your business should be turned into a system if you want to enjoy any freedom in your career as a personal trainer.

Step #4 – Leverage Your Network: Your personal network holds the keys to your business success. Your friends, family members, neighbors, past clients, current clients and anyone else you have a relationship with can literally provide you with anything you need to achieve fitness business success. Whether you need to find a new location, are looking for more clients, want to do more public speaking or anything else – someone in your network can open any door you need opened.

Step #5 – Maximize Your Client Value: As a fitness business owner, your goal should be to maximize the total profit produced by each of your clients over the lifespan of them working with you. You do this by getting your clients to refer more often, improving retention and up-selling &cross-selling.

Step #6 – Eliminate Risk: If you’re like most trainers and coaches that we work with, you’re great at what you do (or aspire to be)  – so make sure people get a chance to experience it.  Offer free or low cost trials to eliminate the up front risk of someone working with you.  Once they’ve experienced what you have to offer, they’re almost a lock to become a client.

Step #7 – Embrace Selling: If you really do have the ability to help people achieve their goals faster and more safely than the competition then you’re doing them a disservice if you don’t sell them into your programs.  Selling really is simple though – connect with someone, learn about what they need and show how you can provide it.  It’s not much tougher than that and will make you’re personal training career much, much more successful.

Step #8 – Understand That Everything Is Marketing: The way you dress.  The cleanliness of your gym.  Your energy and enthusiasm.  How you answer the phone.  It’s all marketing and you need to be putting your best foot forward all the time.

Step #9 – Every Day Is Your Best Day: Assume that each and every day is the day that someone decides whether they want to continue working with you or find some other program.  Assume it’s the day that someone decides whether to bring a friend or upgrade their program.  Every day you have to ‘be on’ because every day is the day that decides your business success.

Step #10 – Referrals Should Be A Big Driver In Your Personal Training Career: If you’re great at what you do and you’re providing an extraordinary experience to your clients, then referrals should be a big part of your business.  You should be holding referral events, asking often – and in different ways – and rewarding generously.  Get testimonials, post on your clients Facebook Wall, create a Wall of Fame in your facility… the key is to make the clients happy and then get them to share their experience with their network.

Step #11 – Be Somebody: Becoming the go to fitness professional in your community may take some work – but it will be worth it.  Attend events, have a presence in the Chamber of Commerce, write articles, send press releases and start speaking.  There’s nothing wrong (and a lot right) with working hard to be seen at the only true answer to your community’s fitness needs.

Step #12 – Manage Your Time: Each evening, map out your following day.  Prioritize your tasks and schedule everything you need to do.  Anything worth doing is worth scheduling.

There are dozens of other things I could tell you if you want to have a successful personal training career – but these 12 steps are enough to get you started and set you on the path to success.

Well – let me add one more, just for fun: You Get Paid For Done! All of these steps are great in theory, but if you don’t actually execute – none of it matters at all so focus on what you finish.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

The other day someone asked me what the top 10 traits of a successful fitness professional are. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to answer. There are so many things that go into being a top flight personal trainer – I had trouble narrowing it to 10. Below is what I came up with – but I’d really like to hear your thoughts. So review my Top 10 and then let me know what traits I missed in the comments area below.

1. Education: The fitness pro’s education is not only extremely important, but it should be continual. Great personal trainers and coaches keep learning because they have a passion for knowledge, are driven to help the people they work with and want to stay ahead of the competition.
2. Integrity: Integrity is vital for the fitness pro. Integrity is a concept of consistency of values, actions, methods, expectations, outcomes and principles. It’s sense of one’s truthfulness and honesty in relationship to one’s motives and actions. Without integrity you really don’t have anything.



3. Experience: There are many factors that go into developing a great program for clients. The more experience you have, the more effective you’ll be in developing a program and an environment that maximizes the likelihood of success for each and every client.
4. Teaching Skills: There are plenty of people out there that can get themselves in great shape and perhaps they have the knowledge necessary to be a top flight personal trainer or coach – but unless you can teach, it doesn’t matter.
5. Communication Skills: Good communication is good business in fitness or any other industry. Good communication skills are necessary throughout the entire process of bringing a client into your business and throughout the entire relationship.
6. Passionate: Great fitness pros must be passionate about who they work with and the service they provide. I truly believe that if you are coaching people or working in a business that you are not passionate about, it will show through in everything you do.



7. Organized: A successful fitness pro should be organized. They have to manage dozens of clients’ programs, but equally as important – they have to manage the same number of client relationships. Successful fitness pros also have to manage the operations side of the business, fitness marketing and all the other details that come with running a successful business.
8. Great Motivator: As a fitness pro, it’s your job to bring out the best in people. You have to get them to step out of their comfort zone on a regular basis. This only happens if you’re a great motivator.
9. Work Ethic: Having a strong work ethic turns average trainers into great trainers. Someone that is continually about to improve, get things done, exceed expectations, and push themselves, will always stand out from the crowd.
10. Enjoys Helping: Great trainers and coaches genuinely enjoy helping others. Gaining satisfaction out of helping others reach their goals is a trait that all great fitness pros have.

So there are 10. I’m sure that I missed some critical traits because a great fitness professional wears a lot of different hats and it requires a number of characteristics to be a truly great fitness professional.

So with that in mind, do me a favor and tell me what I missed – or share your Top 10 Traits below:

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

One of the biggest hindrances to fitness marketing success I see made is not knowing ‘who your who is’… or who you are actually for.

This is a lesson I learned way back when I was coaching college baseball, and a lesson which every time I’ve deviated from I’ve suffered.

When I coached, I built a very successful program by recruiting blue collar type players.  Young men from middle class or lower middle class families that were usually hard workers, had been overlooked by bigger colleges and had a chip on their shoulder – determined to prove that they were better than some of the ‘hot prospects’ that had kept them in the shadows.

I knew this was my type of player.  It was who I identified with.  Who I was most effective coaching.  In fact, it’s probably who I’d been just a few years prior.

This worked for me.  Recruiting those types of players was comfortable for me. Coaching those guys was fun… we even finished 5th in the World Series one season with a team comprised almost entirely of those types of blue collar players.

The only time I ever really deviated from that recruiting strategy was the point when coaching stopped being fun.  After having a decent amount of success, I was now able to get the attention of some of the more highly touted recruits.  I was a pretty good salesman so a number of them ended up choosing to become part of our program.

Biggest mistake I ever made as a coach.

These guys were the polar opposite of the players I’d enjoyed coaching.  They felt a sense of entitlement.  They had never really faced any adversity, so they weren’t mentally tough.  They had poor work ethics since they’d always been able to succeed on talent alone.

Make no mistake – I’m not trying to run them down.  They were very talented ballplayers… I just wasn’t the right guy to coach them.

We still won a lot of ballgames, but for the first time in my coaching career – I was ‘watching the clock.’  You know what I mean… counting the minutes until whatever we were doing was over.

Needless to say, once I figured out the error of my ways I fixed it.

Now, the fitness marketing success that we enjoy coaching professionals is founded in being very clear on ‘who our who is.’

The people that Nick and I choose to work with – and who, not coincidentally, are attracted to working with us – have the following characteristics:

• They’re ‘doers’.  They’re action takers that aren’t afraid of doing work.
• They’re entrepreneurs of aspiring entrepreneurs.
• They’re serious about their craft.  They care about being a great trainer of coach.
• They believe that providing a quality service is the foundation of a successful business.
• They’re willing to do what it takes to get better and to reach their goals.  They not afraid to invest time, money and energy in reaching their goals.

Over time we’ve figured out who we’re NOT for:

• Personal trainers who are not entrepreneurial. (By the way, this is the vast majority of trainers.)
• Those trainers who are not really focused on being a great trainer of coach.
• Personal trainers that are entirely focused on sales & marketing and don’t prioritize client experience or satisfaction.  (Strange coming from a business & marketing guy, right?)
• People who are out to just make a quick buck.
• Trainers that are eternally chasing the ‘Four Hour Work Week’ and aren’t willing to work.

There are plenty of other coaches or marketers out there that can serve those people – but they’re not a good fit for us. In fact, determining who we’re for has been kinda liberating.  It makes everything I do much more fun.  I can write to an audience and not have to compromise what I’m trying to say.  I can go into calls, coaching session or events genuinely excited to talk to people or spend time with them because they’re our type of people.

It’s really the foundation for building a business we enjoy.

My wife has done this with Fit Yummy Mummy.  She speaks to a very specific audience.  Moms.  But not just moms.  Pretty much they’re moms like her.  She’s not attracting moms that have personal shoppers.  She’s not attracting cardio queens. She’s attracting busy moms that are willing to lift weights and work relatively hard to reach their goals.

Now this is a little different than the typical stuff you’ll see on niche marketing.  Typically, discussions on niche marketing center around targeting an audience like women, or moms, or baseball players.

That’s a great start, but what I’m talking about goes beyond that when it comes to achieving fitness marketing success .  Determining your ‘who’ can be, in part, targeting a niche market like that – but it’s also about creating a culture that attracts a certain type of person… and repels a certain type of person.

I could be defined as a business coach (among other things) that’s niche market is personal trainers.  But like I mentioned before, we attract personal trainers that have certain characteristics and we repel personal trainers that have others.

This happens because our ‘who’ is weaved throughout what we do.  What I write.  How we coach people.  The way our events are.  Everything is designed to be for our ‘who.’

So this is where the work begins for you to achieve your own fitness marketing success.  Who do you want to work with?  Can you describe them in detail?  Once you know you your who is…

• Your website should reflect who ‘your who’ is
• The language you use to describe your business should make it clear
• The things you post on Facebook should showcase and attract your who
• Any advertising or marketing materials should speak directly to them
• The culture you create in your business should cater to your who

I’m not telling you to blow up your current business and run out everyone that doesn’t fit your ‘who.’  No, just start creating a culture that will strengthen your relationship with them while weeding out the people who aren’t a good fit.

Once you do this, you’ll start enjoying your fitness business more.  Achieving fitness marketing success will be easier than you ever imagined! You’ll start viewing your clients like your extended family – I know I do.  Your business will start attracting more people that are a great fit because your current clients will rave to their friends, family members and co-workers about their experience.  Running your business will be a lot of fun… just like it should be.

Am I crazy? Let me know below.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat