Bring Your Best You Your No.1 Healthy Lifestyle Blog
“It takes money to make money”. It seems like plain common sense: Newton’s third law as applied to business. It’s also utterly and completely false…at least when it comes to fitness marketing.
At this very moment, thousands of personal trainers believe they need pricey promotional tactics to stay competitive, and are quickly draining their bank accounts as a result. The line of thinking is that plastering your business across every available surface and second of airtime will increase your visibility and thus your client base, but in the end, this approach simply isn’t effective enough to justify – or recoup – the cost.
A smart personal trainer will take advantage of a variety of low- to no-cost marketing strategies. Instead of pouring money into marketing sinkholes, make use of these inexpensive methods to bring in clients.
- Create a blog.
You could always hire a professional to build you a multimedia-heavy business website…for a few thousand dollars. That if you’re reading this article, that probably means you can’t afford that kind of expenditure.
Forget the high-priced homepage. You don’t need one. With a blog, though, you can do everything you can with a fancier website – bring in new clients, connect with the ones you have, spread awareness of your business and more – and it’s absolutely free to make one.
And the best part? Making a successful blog takes only slightly more Internet savvy than reading this article. As long as you post new content on a regular basis – including health tips, fitness info, and a dash of shameless self-promotion – you’ll create a resource that’s valuable to your readers and makes money for your business.
- Offer “bring a friend” training days.
Want to give potential clients a free trial of your services without losing time or money? Set up a monthly “bring a friend” session for your clients – and tell them to invite a buddy who wants a killer workout for free. Training two people simultaneously doesn’t cut into your schedule, and the odd pro bono session might be exactly what you need to turn that friend into a client.
- Set up a referral web with other health professionals.
Whatever kind of fitness professional you may be, fitness isn’t all your clients need. You could try to broaden your focus beyond fitness, but you’d only render yourself less effective as a fitness professional. What your clients need is professionals in other fields – massage therapists, chiropractors and so forth – and you can forge an alliance with them.
Instead of trying to expand your services to encompass absolutely everything your clients may need, you can construct a network of personal health experts in a wide variety of fields. You scratch their back, and they’ll scratch yours: establish a system where you direct clients towards the services they need – nutritionists, masseuses, physical therapists and the like – and in turn, those services will refer their clients to you. A cross-referral network is even better than advertising: it lets you expand your client base through the success of other businesses.
- Advertise on Craigslist.
Why run your ad in high-fee newspapers and magazines when you can advertise online for free?
Devote some time to creating an enticing, benefits-filled ad for your business, and showcase it on Craigslist for the world to see. You’ll be reaching hundreds – if not thousands – of Internet users, and you can post your advertisement as often as you want without incurring any costs. All you have to do is give some contact information – a phone number, an email address, a link to your site, take your pick – and you’ll have free advertising guaranteed to bring potential clients to you.
- Dive into the sea of social networking.
-Facebook
-Twitter
-LinkedIn
