Marketing & Sales
Inspired Service, Part Two: Leadership With Heart
In Part One of this five-part series, we proposed that the quality of customer service—the core of which is to make members feel special—is the most significant factor in a company’s bottom line. We discussed “how” customer service must evolve to reflect a company’s values more powerfully, and “why” it must evolve: so that people are inspired to become members.
Networking Know-How
Many experts suggest that networking is a great tool for growing a business. But the process can be awkward or uncomfortable for some fitness pros.
Frank Pucher, CEO of 121 Personal Training in Roseland, New Jersey, offers his top tips on becoming a master networker:
What You Should Be Doing With That Email List
Despite what you may have heard, email marketing is not dead. It is alive and well, and it can be extremely effective in helping your clients keep their fitness—and your brand—top of mind. As of 2013, there were 3.6 billion email accounts (Hubspot 2013), which is why email marketing is used by the biggest names in the business.
You may already have an email list but feel unsure what to do with it, or you may be starting from scratch. Either way, this article will cover how best to use email marketing to grow your business.
Three Steps to Be Media Ready
“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.” —Seth Godin
What is public relations? And why, as business owners, do we need it?
“What special promotions do you use to draw new training clients?”
I use flash sales, which consistently help me attract new clients. Offering a deep discount through a flash sale for customers who sign up within 48 hours always encourages even the most intimidated client. I normally hold a sale whenever I have space for a new person. The dis- counted price lasts for varying lengths of time (1 month, 3 months, 6 months, etc.). I advertise on my website, Craigslist and Facebook and even in “old-fashioned” fliers. This promotion hasn’t failed me yet; if anything, I have too many new clients. You definitely have to know when your caseload is full.
Enhancing Your Brand
As a personal trainer, you’re faced every day with the challenge of selling yourself.
To keep your income flowing, you strive to keep your current clients, hunt for new clients and develop new program ideas. But there’s a big difference between cash flow and long-term profitability. The personal training business is increasingly competitive. Personal trainers who compete on price, train too wide a variety of needs or say that their program is “great for anyone” don’t have a good grasp of personal branding. If you’re underpaid and
undervalued, this might be you.
Social Networking for the Pilates Pro
In this age of social networking, it is imperative to connect with clients outside your facility via the Internet. Gone are the days of relying only on fliers and posters to tell clients about your offerings and events—now it’s all about engaging with clients on your blog, your Twitter feed or your Facebook page.
Analyzing Flash Deals
Fitness professionals around the world have jumped on the flash-deal bandwagon to try to generate more business and attract new clients. It looks like an attractive arrangement: Flash deals, such as Groupon or LivingSocial offers, put your business in front of a whole new audience, bring some new faces through the door and help you grow and expand your client base and revenue.
Growing the Pilates Market
Ken Endelman has not taught a single class in his 37-year Pilates career, but the Pilates world would not be the same without his leadership and contributions. In 1976, when Endelman was working as a furniture designer and craftsman in Los Angeles, a prospective client asked him to build a reformer—something with which he was completely unfamiliar.
A Personal SWOT Analysis
As a Pilates instructor, you’re continually striving to enhance your clients’ well-being. But now and again, you must take some time to do a little soul-searching and assess what is best for you. What are your needs, wants, goals and aspirations? Maybe you’re ready to further your education or you’re eager to work with a new market.
Using LinkedIn for Financial Success
LinkedIn calls itself the world’s largest professional network. Launched in 2003, it has over 225 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. LinkedIn can be a very effective marketing and networking tool for your business if you follow these basic steps.
Develop a Client-Focused Profile
The Thinner Winner Contest
Drive your revenue, boost your membership and help your community slim down with a weight loss contest. In just five easy steps, you can promote, run and celebrate a community-wide Thinner Winner contest. The details can be tweaked to fit your community.
Launch a Thinner Winner contest now or transform an existing weight loss contest.
How Does Thinner Winner Work?
Blogging for Financial Success
Blogging can provide a host of benefits for personal trainers and athletic coaches. It is a simple way to position yourself as an expert, and it’s an inexpensive means to boost your brand identity. You can also boost your income by using your blog to generate saleable content for booklets, minibooks, articles, manuals, eBooks and printed books. Apply these 15 simple recommendations, and build a blog that leads to business and financial success.
Refresh and Revitalize Your Identity
Has your client intake list leveled off? Or worse, taken a nosedive? While your skills and expertise may be up to par, the message or image you present might be hampering your progress.
“[The health and fitness industry is] a particularly crowded professional space, so standing out with a different message is really tough,” explains Lauryn Bennett, startup brand strategy consultant at www.lauryn
bennett.com. To really stand out, she urges, professionals must analyze and create a more appealing identity. Bennett offers this advice:
Small-Group Secrets: Marketing
Marketing is the process of reaching out to new, potential customers. Done right, it’s a systematized, targeted and reusable way to gather fresh sales leads. But marketing small-group training (SGT)—the profitable new industry trend wherein one trainer works with three to 10 clients at a time—has its own special considerations.
Use Subbing to Market Yourself
Almost every role and function within the fitness industry involves marketing. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fitness director promoting a group exercise program, a manager preparing for a membership drive or a personal trainer attracting new clientele—baseline knowledge of marketing is vital.
Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents: An Update
The Federal Trade Commission has released its Review of Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents, and the conclusions indicate that there is still much to be done if industry self-regulation of food marketing to children is to become an effective way to protect the health of minors. The 2012 report is a follow-up to the FTC’s 2008 report, which Congress requested in response to dramatic increases in childhood obesity rates.
Four of the Marketing Methods
How to Get on TV
As a health professional who made the transition to television reporter, I was asked to host a “Fitness in Media” seminar at the 2011 IDEA World Fitness Convention™ in Los Angeles. I taught fitness pros how to procure a television spot on either a news report or an entertainment show. I then asked participants to submit a one-line pitch using what they’d learned.
How to Plan Your First Health Fair
“Me, plan a health fair? You must be kidding!”
That’s what I said when I was asked to organize our fitness facility’s first health fair.
Direct Mail: Now Fitter Than Ever
During my decade of experience in marketing, I’ve seen a lot of failures—and many more successes. With the Internet, the art of fitness marketing is more complex than it once was. However, many of the basic principles still apply.