Fitness Marketing Using Radio Transformation Contests

A Guest Post On Fitness Marketing By Ben Warstler

Step 1: Contact local radio stations and offer a spot in bootcamp to personalities (we used the morning show) for free in exchange that they talk about your program on air (their experiences).  OR you can offer to pay for a satellite broadcast at your bootcamp location. (You could hold a bootcamp open house or client appreciation event).

Sidenote- offer them free bootcamp first and don’t mention the idea of free advertising until you are in negotiations.  They may have another idea and listen to their ideas first rather than expecting free air time.  But if you can get them to talk candidly about your program and their experiences, that is better than any advertising commercial you can ever make.

Step 2: After getting to know the radio personalities in your bootcamp, offer the idea of a transformation contest.  You can say something like this:

Hi (name), I was thinking the other day about the Biggest Loser television show and how we could do something like that over the radio for your listeners.  What do you think?

Usually their interest is heightened by this: Radio, like television is always looking for new ‘out of the box’ ways to separate themselves from others.  This is a great outlet for that opportunity.

Since you are working with the personalities in bootcamp, this will make it easier to market because a lot of it will be done for you by the personalities telling their own transformation story on air to the listeners.  So coming up with ads for the radio won’t have to happen initially.  The DJ’s will leverage their experiences and that will be advertisement by itself.

Step 3:

Once the transformation contest is a go, set up a blog on blogger.com or wordpress and an application on Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com ) with questions that the applicants to the contest will fill out.  There are three things that must be set up here: two of them by you.

1. The link from the radio station website (the radio station had a banner made for the contest and put it on their website), to the blog specifically for this contest.
2. A blog specifically for this transformation contest (ours is http://thebiggestmoosers.blogspot.com )
3. An application at Survey Monkey that all potential contestants will have to fill out.  You will weed out the contestants until you get it down to 8 semifinalists.  There will be a link on the blog sidebar to this application at Survey Monkey so when the announcement is made on the radio, the traffic is driven to the radio station’s website where they click the banner which is linked to the blog and they will then click the application link on the blog to apply.

Step 4: Three weeks prior to the start of the contest, announce the contest on the radio (DJ’s will do this- you can be on air too to help with announcement), and direct listeners to the radio station website banner, which then takes them to the blog which has the link to the application.  It is important to express to the listeners that contestants must be as detailed as possible and that only 8 semifinalists will be chosen and only four finalists from the 8 will go through the transformation contest.  Set deadline of two weeks to fill out applications.

Step 5: At application deadline, choose the 8 semifinalists and call them on air to capture emotion of being selected a semifinalist.  Inform listeners and contestants that a poll will be set up on the blog to vote for the final four contestants.

Sidenote: The DJ’s will probably already do this, but mention to them that recording the semifinalists reactions to use later as part of advertisement for the contest. Again, emotion will capture interest of potential clients.

Step 6: Set up poll on blog sidebar with a selection for each of the semifinalists and put their story on as a blog post.  Keep stories anonymous (as much as possible- contestants will tell their friends which contestant they are, but we can’t control that).  Set deadline of one week for listeners to vote on the four finalists. 

Step 7: After one week has passed, take down poll on blog and call four finalists on air to capture emotion (use as part of advertisement later).

Step 8: Call contestants later that day to set up initial meeting and introductions as well as orientation to the program.

Step 9: Use blog to keep listeners informed on workouts and results/updates (we use a lot of video and pictures).

Step 10: Schedule monthly live visits to radio station for updates for the listeners (all contestants are on air together).  During the contest, the radio will continue to run ads that will drive traffic to the blog and websites (bootcamp website).

*It is a great idea to encourage each contestant to start their own blog and write about their experiences in the transformation contest.  You can then link their blog to the main transformation contest blog.

Step 11: Set up live with radio station during workout so listeners experience a workout without working out.

Step 12: At end of program winner receives large prize package (mostly donated by sponsors or radio station- we’re doing free bootcamp for life, day trip to spa, and gift certificate for new wardrobe- plus others).  Announce date for next contest to get potential clients excited and constantly staying in touch (radio, blog, newsletter list, becoming a client).

There are dozens of ways to run Transformation Contests and most of them will help you grow your fitness business, keep your clients more focused and help you generate publicity in your area.  Focusing on this fitness marketing technique has served me well and I know it can do the same for you.  I hope you enjoyed the blueprint and I’d love to get your feedback or questions below

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