Making your personal training marketing effective and showing results takes a lot of dedication as well as consistent customer experience. You need word of mouth advertising, and you also need a lot of exposure. Marketing automation can help with that and keep costs down. Many personal trainers do a lot of traditional media advertising yet neglect their online presence. As the marketplace changes, online marketing becomes more and more relevant and effective. Here's a five step boot camp for your marketing to get it in shape, saving money and time with marketing automation.
1. Start doing marketing writing
You might think that working as a trainer means that you spend all your time in the gym. But the truth is that one of the most effective ways to get word of mouth going online is to appear on search engines. In order to do that, you need quality website content. Having your own website and maintaining a blog are huge boosters to your credibility and your online presence. You can also put out a newsletter that is automatically sent out to your clients on a specific day every month. This kind of writing is an important communication between you and your clients that educates them on your fitness program and special promotions, and allows you to continue giving them pointers outside of sessions. Clients appreciate personal communication.
2. Offer programs nobody else does
You can go into personal training, and you'll get some clients easily. Others, though, will want to know what makes you stand out. How are you different from the other trainers in the area? What sets you apart? Well, maybe it's your reminder program, going out as SMS messages reminding clients of their caloric intake, or to drink water, or to be active. Maybe it's your thank you emails and your informative blog posts. Maybe it's the newsletter you put out. Maybe it's the specialty training programs you offer in your promotional marketing. You want to set yourself apart from the competition. That will make people pay extra attention.
3. Plan and execute events
By using our event planner to plan out community events and get non-clients engaged, you have a perfect opportunity to gain more clients. Hosting events also shows your community that you're involved and approachable. You also show an interest in prospective clients, which will make them feel more valued. It will help build a rapport with them, and could turn some into long lasting clients. Events also help to create outspoken marketers through word of mouth. It will also help you assess how best to approach leads who display interest.
4. Remind clients of appointments
A large problem many appointment-based services face is that they lose money when time slots get booked and not used, particularly if they are not paid in advance. You can ask for payment in advance, but clients are often uncomfortable with this. What is the next best solution? Send automated reminders to clients via SMS, email and even voice, with a prerecorded personal audio message reminding clients of their appointment. This will ensure that your clients don't miss their appointments and therefore will increase your revenue.
5. Interact with your clients on social media
Social media is the largest word of mouth market available to you. In order to tap into that market, you need to truly engage your clients. Posting all your operational messages (event announcements for the month, schedules and so on) can take a lot of time. But what if you could automate those routine posts with the knowledge you have ahead of time, so that announcements go out on time? You have extra time to reply, to post contests and share stories, as well as use your social media page to announce cancelled appointments. It's easy to automate the routine postings.
There are more possibilities, and by reading more about marketing automation you might think of some we haven't covered. See what we can do for you, and let us help you grow and expand, developing your personal training marketing habits until you're a formidable marketing force.
