Marketing & Sales
Multicultural Marketing
The United States is experiencing profound demographic changes, and if fitness centers want to remain successful they must take these changes into account. Minority groups are increasing in size?on their way to becoming the majority of the American population.
Get On Online Radio
Sample Guest Introductions
The following intro bios worked well because they are concise, easily read aloud and written to be heard, which is different from written to be read silently.
Marketing Secrets From the Pros
What can you do to bring clients through your doors? We asked studio owners and program directors to tell us their marketing secrets: What works to attract students to Pilates programs—and what doesn’t work?
Promote Your IDEA FitnessConnect Profile
By now you know it is to your distinct advantage to set up a profile in the IDEA FitnessConnect online directory. Whether or not you use all the features, it at least ensures you one more point of contact for potential clients. Why not take things to the next level and maximize how you promote yourself and your business? Here are 10 ideas (plus a bonus tip) on doing just that.
Generate and Follow New L.E.A.D.S.
The term social media typically refers to popular online tools like Facebook and Twitter™. However, social media broadly includes any form of media used to communicate and interact with an audience. When fitness professionals leverage social media tools to engage clients, colleagues and fitness enthusiasts, the resulting increase in the pros’ online presence can further their career opportunities. This is why IDEA FitnessConnect offers a range of social media tools to assist fitness professionals in generating new business.
Expanding Your Audience Reach
IDEA FitnessConnect (IFC) is reaching greater audiences by syndicating its information to top health and fitness websites. Think of it as embedding the directory within a third-party site, making it easier for fitness professionals to reach potential clients in high-traffic areas. This also positions many fitness pros in front of new markets.
You can select which websites display your profile information. By clicking on “Privacy Settings” in your profile page, you can enable (or disable) your profile on each website.
The Top 5 Truths of Best-Selling Trainers
One of the best sales lessons I ever learned came from watching an amateur 10K race from the finish line. The winning runners made excellent times, easily cruising across the finish line while barely breaking a sweat. The next group had obviously undertrained and overpushed, stumbling to the race’s end flushed and sometimes physically ill. Last were those who clearly embraced the joys of strolling and socializing, but who seemed unconcerned about how well they finished.
Winners Tell All
FFitness professionals often use success stories and client testimonials to strike an emotional chord with potential clients. Personal trainers who incorporate these elements into their pitches (often via “brag books”) may find them powerful during new-client interviews or business development meetings, according to Derrick Wilburn, MBA, IDEA presenter and director of education for Achieve Fitness USA (Wilburn 2010). But what if potential clients or business partners do their initial research about you over the Web?
A System to Manage Clients and Leads
A list of current and prospective clients can be invaluable to fitness professionals promoting upcoming events, distributing newsletters and cultivating member relationships. IDEA FitnessConnect’s client management system makes it convenient for fitness professionals to manage and grow their clientele directly from their profile pages.
Daily-Deal Sites: Benefit or Burden?
Regarding the news item “Leverage Daily-Deal Sites for Business Success [Making News, March 2011], my business partner and I have featured our company on a number of the daily-deal sites in Los Angeles and have had mixed experiences. While I agree it was a great way to expose our business to a huge market that might not know about our outdoor circuit training classes, it was a lot of work for very little return on investment.
The Four “PRE’s” of Sales Success
Whether you sell facility memberships or your own training services, at some point you’ll be asking a potential customer for money. Yet you may find yourself racked with stress about conducting such consultations, the thought of closing the deal bringing more sweat to your brow than your last blast on the cardio machines.
Internet = Next Training Frontier?
According to the 2010 IDEA Personal Training Programs & Equipment Trends report [IDEA Trainer Success, September 2010], only 19% of respondents offer online training programs. Nearly 50% provide online client reminders and information. These data may seem unimpressive now, but IDEA member Jason Bosley-Smith, CSCS, believes the Internet is the perfect venue for business growth. He recently traded his brick-and-mortar training facility for www.thefitrx.com, a website that provides online coaching and training, among other offerings.
Polishing the Facility Profile
Fitness professionals are not the only ones maintaining profiles on IDEA FitnessConnect. Program directors and club owners are also leveraging their clubs’ presence in this directory to feature staff, increase member leads and reinforce marketing efforts.
The Top 5 Closes for Personal Trainers
“Close” is a worrisome word in sales, often evoking cringe-worthy images of high-pressure boiler-room selling tactics, used-car lots and plaid suits. Canned one-liners aside, the “close” is simply the final part of a conversation when you ask the big question, “Yes or no?” As this involves securing both a decision and money, it can be the most stressful part of selling for both fitness pro and customer.
The Group Advantage
Given the sheer number of people using sites like Facebook and services like Groupon, fitness professionals are investing their advertising dollars in spaces where they can influence local groups and social networks. With better research into consumer insight (thanks to profile pages), personal trainers can identify their audiences and target their digital ad campaigns more effectively.
The Top 5 Sales Phrases Every Trainer Should Know
You stock your training tool kit with uber-adaptable equipment for every fitness level: a TRX, a stability ball, maybe some tubing or a yoga mat. Since you can never be completely certain what your fitness client will need on any given day, your go-to gear adapts to any training trial. But what about the tools you use to gain new training customers–do you have a stash of stand-by sales phrases that adapt to diverse personalities equally well?
What You See Is What You Get
Fitness professionals use online videos to share training tips, demonstrate exercises and showcase their choreography. Since sites like YouTube revolutionized the way people view, create and share videos online, use of the medium has skyrocketed. Today hundreds of millions of videos are being watched daily via mobile devices and video players embedded across websites (YouTube 2011). And now, via IDEA FitnessConnect.
See It, Read It, Like It, Share It
Rarely do we see content displayed online without an assigned “share” button or “embed code.” With one click, you can instantly share content from a website and post it to your Facebook page or Twitter™ feed. Sharing digital content by means of an online social network is an increasingly efficient way to distribute information. No more cutting and pasting URLs into e-mails or printing out articles for reference.
The Top 5 Sales Secrets of Successful Trainers
“They said they were interested, so why didn’t they sign up with me?” “They keep saying no.” “I just want to help people. What am I doing wrong?”
As a sales trainer, I have spoken with many struggling sales rookies. Having just completed their umpteenth unsuccessful consultation of the day, they often voice their frustrations with more than a hint of dejection.
Promote Yourself, Retain Clients
We’ve all seen it. A club’s group fitness schedule posted on the facility’s website with former instructors still listed. A personal trainer’s blog with last session’s boot camp dates advertised. Even when your efforts have successfully led people to your schedule or site, outdated class or event information may discourage any further inquiry into your programs.