36 Different Ways To Get A Flood
Of New Personal Training Clients
By Eric Ruth
In order to give stability to your business, you must diversify your marketing. Cash flow is always an issue, so you’ve got to test and track until you find messages that work to bring quality prospects into your marketing funnel. Once you’ve isolated messages that work, then you want to apply those messages to other media.
Media are the various vehicles by which your message is conveyed to your market.
If you rely on just one or two methods of attracting clients, you undermine the stability of your business.
Think diversification. A good analogy is investing. You wouldn’t put your life savings in just one or two stocks, would you?
How many “doors” do you have open that people can walk through and give you money?
The more “doors” you have open, the more stable and productive your business becomes.
Let me give you an example of massive diversification.
At a recent Dan Kennedy seminar, a very successful karate school owner (who specializes in teaching kids) read the list of things he does to bring prospects and clients into his business.
It was shocking in its breadth and diversity.
Here’s the list:
- Val-pak coupons – definitely a viable medium for fitness professionals. At about 5 cents per household, you can get a lot of exposure very inexpensively.
- Radio spots – if you do your homework, you can get some very good rates on radio spots. It’s a little more advanced, but it can work very well. This karate school owner is using a spot that is very creative. It includes testimonials he received from clients as if they were left on his answering machine. “Hi John Smith Karate school, this is Mary Jones. I wanted to tell you that little Joey is now cleaning his room regularly, doing much better in school, and even got the local bully to leave him alone since he started taking lessons from you. Thanks a lot.” Beep. “Hi John, this is Carl Rogers. My daughter Sally has so much more self confidence since taking lessons from you. Thanks.” Beep. Then John makes a short, benefit rich pitch, driving listeners to his toll free hotline number with a double offer of a free report and free lesson. (Note that the testimonials focus on CORE benefits: discipline, focus, confidence – these are what the parents really care about – not that their kids become fighting machines. What are the CORE benefits your clients are really after?)
- Changing banners out in front of his studio – in my area I see Dominos pizza doing this all the time and I’m amazed more retail locations don’t do it. Hanging a banner with a compelling OFFER out in front of your establishment is essentially FREE advertising. (Note that it says “changing” banners. He routinely switches them up to keep it fresh and exciting. People are always interested in “what’s new.”)
- Newspaper ads with free lesson/free report double offer.
- Toll free number – very important for lead capture including caller ID, so you can get the phone number.
- TV spots – again, this is advanced and expensive to produce a commercial, but late night spots can still be had on some local stations fairly inexpensively. As with radio, if you are diligent about investigating the opportunities, you can capitalize on this medium.
- Postcards with specific offers.
- Referral-reward systems – this is really powerful. Remember that referrals SHOULD BE the life-blood of your business.
- Kid’s Birthday Parties – by hosting a birthday party for the kids who take lessons from him, he gets the kids to bring all their friends (and their friends’ parents) into his studio, make special offers to them, capture their information for his database, etc. This is REALLY powerful. Think about how you can apply this method to your business.
- Free Movie Night – same idea as the birthday parties. He shows the movies in his studio, supplies the popcorn, and covertly sells, sells, sells.
- Pizza Parties – same idea as birthday/movie.
- Special Events – he’s the martial arts coach for the New Orleans Saints football team and brings some of the players in for autograph signing sessions. Do you know any local celebrities? How else could you apply this to your business?
- After-School Martial Arts Program – he teaches at the local school as a “service” to the community. This gets the school “invested” in the process of signing kids up for the program via their internal marketing.
- Summer Camps – think about it.
- Newspaper Inserts – this is very different from newspaper ads and has proven to be exceedingly effective.
- Advertising at local schools – many schools have newspapers that sell advertising.
- Joint Ventures – with dance academy, gymnastics schools, churches, etc. If you’re not doing joint ventures, you’re missing out on one of the premier methods for acquiring new business. (i.e. He goes and does a demonstration at the dance academy, dance academy instructor does demonstration at his studio – they both promote this event to the parents beforehand and follow-up with a special offer.)
- Free Seminars To Parents – on fitness, nutrition, etc. This is promoted as a “community service event” and brings in many pre-qualified prospects.
- Take-One Displays In Related, But Non-Competitive Businesses Which Target His Ideal Clients – maybe one of the most overlooked and easy to do marketing methods. Here’s what you do: approach business owners who serve your ideal clients (upscale beauty salons, fitness equipment retailers, massage therapists, GNC type stores, chiropractors, etc.), show them your brochure and how you can “key-code” the brochure so you know the origin of the lead, ask to display the brochure in a take-one holder in a prominent area of the business, for each new client you acquire from this method you give the “referring” business owner a “referral fee” of X dollars or X number of free training sessions (barter).
- Lead Generation Boxes – same basic idea as take-one display, but the box has a special offer (Win One Month Of FREE Personal Training Services!)
- Billboards – this is advanced and not something I recommend, but this karate guy has found a way to make it work. (It’s difficult because your message (offer) has to be so succinct, direct and compelling that a driver “gets it” in one look. Very, very hard to do.
- Fax Broadcast – there are few less expensive lead generation methods than this, but unfortunately, there are legal issues surrounding this medium (think spam), that make it dangerous to use to a “cold” list (I highly recommend you don’t fax broadcast to a cold list). However, if you have a list of warm prospects with whom you already have a relationship, there are LOTS of ways to make this work very, very inexpensively and with astounding results.
- Phone Broadcast – many local businesses use this with very good results, although I think it’s a questionable way to generate leads (and may actually be illegal in some states – be careful).
- Web Site – if you don’t have a web site set up by now, you’re missing out on a great way to save a lot of money in printing and postage and also a great way to diversify your marketing attack.
- Email – there’s no getting around it, if you build a great email list you will have the cheapest way to contact your prospects/clients on a frequent basis that you will ever find.
- Expert Advice – the karate guy writes columns (plural, more than one) for local newspapers extolling the virtues of martial arts, fitness, nutrition, etc. and he ALWAYS gets his contact information included!
- News Releases – c’mon, this is FREE advertising. You should be sending out at least one per week to every local newspaper, radio station and television station in your area. People get too easily frustrated with this method because they don’t get published right off the bat. But I assure you that ONE great news release can catapult you from obscurity to stardom overnight. Local faxes are FREE. There’s no reason not to do this.
- CD’s – containing testimonials, motivation, success stories, educational/training info, etc. Very easy to produce and very powerful. Some people just don’t read. But they’ll listen to your CD’s. Diversify!
- Two Yellow Pages Ads – that’s right, he has two YP ads. Martial Arts is one category, I’m not sure what the other category is – maybe fitness. YP is EXPENSIVE, but it can work. As long as it’s used properly – think lead generation.
- Newsletter – we beat this horse all the time, so no need to expound.
- Follow-Up Lead Capture – everyone drops the ball on this. You CAN NOT follow up too much.
- Phone Procedure – he has a SCRIPT that anyone answering the phone follows exactly (or he busts some karate on their butt). You must capture information from every caller. Do you have a system for this?
- Buddy Day/Family Day – this is when the client (kid) brings a buddy or his family to the studio for special days so they can EXPERIENCE martial arts. Very powerful.
- Membership Clubs – I’m developing an entire product on this because it’s ssoooooo powerful. Think about how you can enroll clients as “MEMBERS.”
- Leadership Classes – he teaches leadership.
- Close-Quarters Combat Classes for Airline Travelers – he’s capitalizing on the current situation. Very, very smart.
Bottom line: to be stable and highly profitable, you gotta have a lot of stuff going on all the time. Brainstorm ideas using this list as your guide.
If you’re saying, “Eric, this is all stuff a karate guy is using. I’m not a karate guy!” Then you may be a hopeless case.
Successful marketers – successful businesspeople FIND WAYS to apply what is working in other businesses to their business. Don’t reinvent the wheel. It takes too long and it’s too expensive. MODEL SUCCESS!
Take massive action to diversify for stability.
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