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Marketing plans for a Fitness Business |
Written by Mikel Bruce
Thursday, 29 May 2008
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Marketing is the lifeblood of every business and it is critical that a growing personal training business is devoting certain time, energy and financing towards building their business. It is important to remember that nothing stays the same. Everything by the nature of their existence is either growing or shrinking and your business is no exception and if you are depending on hope or good karma to build your business, than you may be missing some important elements. Creating good karma is based on taking action and when it comes to marketing and promoting your business, there are very specific actions that can be applied to create growth, even with limited time and a limited budget. If you look at the process of marketing your business from the perspective of both art and science, it can be helpful in deciding how to get started. From the artistic point of view, it is important that you are incorporating your creative abilities and personality into your marketing process. This will make it easier and more natural for you to do ‘the work' of marketing when you are going with the grain versus against it. This can manifest in any number of ways, for example, if you are expressive and articulate, you may consider filming some video-based promotions such as teaching and/or speaking and adding those videos to your website and promoting them on the search engines. Or, if you have skills in writing, you might write a monthly newsletter and send it out to your students and prospective clients and include submitting these to the Article Directory Websites. Most trainers struggle more with the scientific aspects of marketing, which is unfortunate, because building a PT business is in many ways a scientific experiment and if you were to approach it scientifically, it would make it much easier to succeed. Scientists always start by collecting data and tracking statistics. This might not sound very interesting but there is a saying that if you want what others don't have, you have to do what others are not willing to do. Most businesses, unfortunately, don't succeed and in many cases it is because the business owners don't stretch beyond their comfort zone. In order to start gathering data, here are some very important questions that you can ask yourself: 15. How many new clients do you need (ideally) each month to grow your business? 16. What is your attrition rate or how many clients do you lose on a monthly basis? 17. How many leads/calls/inquiries do you receive on a daily/weekly/monthly basis? 18. What is the conversion ratio of leads to new clients (# of leads/ # of sales)? 19. How many new clients do you actually acquire on a monthly basis? 20. Is the number of the new clients acquired less than the number of new clients needed? 21. What marketing techniques are you using to generate new leads? These questions typically provide you with specific reasons as to how your business is doing in terms of growth and why you may or may not be growing at the rate in which you need/want to grow at. Most trainers fall short in regards to attaining the number of new clients that is needed on a monthly basis and this is usually the cause of significant stress. Most trainers are either not incorporating any type of marketing process or are implementing too few marketing techniques. Mikel Bruce with WebFlexor PT Websites (www.websitesforpt.com) recommends implementing at least three active marketing techniques. Below is a list of several different marketing techniques to consider: * Telemarketing * Search Engine Marketing * Presentations * Corporate Yoga Marketing * Press Releases * Networking * Article Marketing * Student Referrals * Print Advertising * Affiliate Marketing * Media Advertising * Signage/Walk ins * Directory Listings * Yellow Pages * Email Marketing * Video Marketing Many of the effective and most cost efficient marketing strategies being used today are web based marketing techniques. If you are looking to develop a professional web presence and succeed on the web, WebFlexor PT Websites specializes in affordable and quality websites for Personal Trainers. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
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