The Five Biggest Marketing Mistakes made by Personal Trainers and Fitness Professionals
By Lea Woodward
Mistake #1 - Failing to Focus on the BENEFITS that your Product or Service offers your Customers and Clients
If you go to buy a TV, what are you actually buying? Are you buying the equipment…the combination of electronics and wires and the casing that surrounds it? Or are you actually buying the BENEFITS of the TV…the sound you will hear, the picture you will see, the pleasure you will get from flopping down in front of a widescreen TV to enjoy your favourite movie, perhaps the significance and joy that you get from owning a TV larger than the your neighbour across the road!
If you can understand the following principle, your marketing will instantly improve:
People don’t buy your product or service. They buy the benefits that your product or service offers them.
But this assumes you understand the benefits of your services yourself!
Do you know why your existing clients work with you? If not, ask them! You may find that the reasons differ…one may work with you because of the motivation you bring, another because of the fun you inject into their training, another because you help them feel better about themselves.
So spend some time getting clear on what exactly your benefits are and then make sure that you articulate them precisely in all of your marketing communications.
Mistake #2 Relying on just one or two main forms of Marketing
As a personal trainer of CHEK professional, you are probably using one or two main forms of marketing to grow your business. Perhaps you use word of mouth referrals or ads in your local gym?
If you really want to grow your business, your aim should be to set up a multi-level marketing machine that works tirelessly for you to generate new clients on an ongoing basis. And that combines several marketing forms in one.
You do not want to fall into the trap of so many trainers, who go all out to get new clients, spend their time training those clients & forget about marketing for a while, then when those clients leave, have to spend a few weeks or months getting more. Do you?
So what additional forms of marketing are there? Have a look at the following:
- Direct mail
- Referrals
- Advertising
- Pay Per Click
- Telephone marketing
- Email marketing
- PR
- Joint Ventures
What would happen if you were to double the number of marketing strategies that you currently use, consistently over the next few years?
Mistake #3 - Running Ineffective Advertising
Have you ever spent a few hundred pounds to advertise in the local Yellow Pages? Do you know how successful it was for you? What your return on investment was?
Many personal trainers & fitnessprofessionals get caught up in spending money they do not really have on advertising.
It can be a highly effective way of generating new clients and increasing your business but it can also be a costly mistake.
The main causes of an ineffective advertising campaign are:
- Badly written adverts
- Lack of testing to see how successful it is
Before you consider advertising in anything, consider this:
Make sure you write compelling & action-oriented copy. Get your prospective clients to take action once they have read your ad. Either calling or emailing to get a free report or some form of response. This is the only way you will know if your advert is working for you or not.
Make sure you get the headline right as this is your only chance to get somebody to read your ad. If the headline is rubbish, they will not read further than that..
Mistake #4 - Not Communicating Effectively with Existing or Former Clients
Your best immediate sources of additional profits and increased business are your existing or former clients. These are the people who you have already invested time, energy and money with to create a relationship. They know you, they trust you, hopefully they have enjoyed training with you. Because of this it is normally five to ten times easier to get an existing client to buy from you again, than it is to get someone to buy from you for the first time.
You might then be asking, if this is true, why do so few businesses do this well?
Think about some of the companies who do. Amazon for example. Do you get their emails telling you about new books they have recently released that might be of interest to you, based on your previous purchases? That is a great example of keeping in touch with existing customers.
Imagine th: if you could keep your existing clients in a ready & willing to buy state so that if you suggest a great new service or product, they are just desperate to buy would you want that?
So if you apply this principle to your business, here are some useful questions to answer:
- How often do you communicate with your existing or former clients?
- What do you have to offer your existing or former clients?
- What are you not offering existing or former clients that you could be offering them?
- When did you last send a letter to your former clients?
- When did you last email them? Did you measure the response?
- When did you last call them?
When you do communicate with them, what more could you be doing to clearly explain the specific benefits that they will experience?
Here are some more useful questions to maximize your relationship with existing or former clients: Do you spend at least 15 minutes each month thinking of an exclusive offer you can make to your clients? Do you say thank you’ to yourclients either by letter, email or telephone? Do you ask your clients for referrals?
If, as a personal trainer of CHEK professional you have a limited service or product line, do you know of additional companies, products or services that your clients could benefit from?
Mistake # 5 - Not using Email Marketing Effectively
Would you like to be able to communicate directly with your existing clients and potential clients for free, any time you like and as often as you like? Anywhere in the world? For free!!
Well, with email marketing you can.
The power of the internet is immense. Where else can you market to people who are looking for just what you provide precisely at the moment that they are looking for you?
Where else can you find out instantly whether there’s a market for a new service or product you are thinking of offering?
To make email or internet marketing work for you, you must:
- Capture the email details of every potential, interested client
- Use the emails to contact these potential, interested clients on a fairly regular basis
- Personalise your email communications
If you can avoid these 5 big mistakes when marketing your personal training or fitness-based business, then you will be ahead of most of your competitors and easily attract new clients.
Lea Woodward is the UK s Leading Business Coach for Fitness Professionals. She runs a 12 month Business Success Programme for a limited number of private clients and a 6 Week Ultimate Fitness Marketing Programme. To find out more about Lea, visit her website, http://www.LeaWoodward.com
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