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Marketing Advice: How to Go Guerrilla

Marketing: one of the most crucial aspects to the long-term success of your fitness facility. But where do you start? There’s direct marketing, consumer marketing, B2B (business-to-business) marketing, online marketing and more. However, one essential form of marketing that is commonly overlooked is guerrilla marketing, unconventional marketing that relies more on creativity than a big budget.

Selling Personal Training Services With Flow

Do you love personal training but dislike selling your services? To help people, you need to train them, and in order to train them you need to sell your services. You know you can’t be a wallflower, but you don’t want to be pushy, either. The good news is that you can learn “Buy-Chi,” the art of selling personal training with flow.

IDEA FitnessConnect

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that fitness trainers and aerobics instructors will be among the 30 fastest-growing jobs by 2018 (Boston Globe 2010). The estimated 29.4% increase in these fields could multiply the industry’s efforts in targeting the world’s health issues, but could also heighten the need for greater regulation and stronger alliances across all fitness and wellness professions.

Create and Market a Client Brag Book

In the world of marketing, many devices and activities fall under the broad category of “promotions,” and not all are created equal. Samples, coupons, cash refund offers (rebates), price packs, loss leaders, patronage awards, free trials, POP (point of purchase) promotions and demonstrations are all promotional activities.

Social Circles: Market Your Department

Many fitness facilities have built a social media marketing presence, and some are doing a good job of keeping their “real estate” current and dynamic. But not many facilities can claim a multilevel, departmental approach. Why not establish a separate page on your website for the personal training department?

Making Partnerships Happen

Few things in the world are more valuable for the fitness entrepreneur than a network of high-quality business partners. The saying “It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know” is especially true in today’s business world. Furthermore, the depth of your network’s network may be the most valuable asset of all.

Using Talk Radio as a Marketing Tool

What if you could talk your way to new customers, enhance your credibility and add value for your current clients—all for less money? Hello, talk radio. If you have the gift of gab and can hone it to the talk radio market, you may have found a niche that will set your business on fire.

Creating an Adwords Campaign to Build Your Practice

In this article you’ll learn how to use Google’s Sponsored Link advertising to build your personal training practice.
Sponsored Links are advertisements that appear when you do a Google search. The ads contain content that
is pertinent to the keywords used in
the Google search. Figure 1 shows the Sponsored Link ads that appeared when I searched the keywords personal trainer troy mi.

Podcast Yourself

 6  Inspirational
Power Points
Let Failure Guide
You to Success
 9  Training for Growth
Seasonal Change:
Winter Doldrums
12  Internet Marketing
Creating an Adwords® Campaign to Build
Your PracticePersonal trainers acquire a wealth of information and fitness experiences over their careers. Most are willing to share their expertise if they know it might help enlighten a colleague or motivate a gym member.

What types of social networking do you use, and why?

We choose social networking vehicles based on what is popular with our mainstream target market. Right now this includes Facebook, a little bit of Twitter (but we are not big fans) and LinkedIn®. We think MySpace is dead, so we just do not use that site anymore.  

We use online social networking to create awareness of our presence as professionals in our community, as well as to educate clients and potential clients about our philosophy and the benefits of what we call the “continuous modification of functional exercise.”

Top 10 Ways to Drive Revenue in a Downtrodden Economy

Man, times sure are great, aren’t they? You’re doing what you love working in a thriving industry of infinite opportunity, getting paid tons of money and also making a real difference in people’s health and fitness.

Pricing Your Services

Pricing your services is a complex subject and, as a result, few organizations price as accurately as they should. Determining a good and fair price for your services requires consideration of a number of different items, including your costs, the value perceived by your customers, alternatives available to customers, your regional cost of living and the effects of any competition.

Fine-Tuning Your Business

I have been blessed with 20 years of business, a great client base and a plethora of growing and learning experiences. Although I never feel that I have done all…

Beating Burnout

According to the 2008 IDEA Personal
Training Programs & Equipment Survey, personal training continues to rank
highest among health and fitness programs offered (Schroeder, forthcoming). In
addition, the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics (2007)
forecasts a promising future for trainers, estimating a 27% increase in
employment of fitness workers …

Is Your Face on Facebook?

To be successful in business, who
you know is often more advantageous than what you know. For fitness
professionals, a strong personal and professional network is helpful in
building clientele. In an industry where sp…

Building a Full Schedule

Obtaining a full client load is a crucial aspect of a personal trainer’s job, but getting those clients can often seem the most laborious and difficult task of all. Whether working the floor at a large, full-service gym or striking out as an independent contractor, each trainer must find a way to attract new clients or all the hard work and dedication put into earning his title will be for naug…

Publicity With Panache!

When I think of publicity, a favorite quote comes to mind by Vivien Kellems (1896–
1975), a noted U.S. industrialist and lecturer: “Of course I’m a pub…