MARKETING FOR PERSONAL TRAINERS
in 2018
One thing we have learned after operating our business for many years is that the most important aspect to owning a business, without a doubt, is the ability to successfully market your services.
Today, I would like to share with you what marketing really is, what has and hasn’t worked for us, what is working now, and what we are planning to do with respect to marketing in the future. If you aren’t spending money on marketing and time on learning more about marketing, then you aren’t running a business- you are just engaging in a hobby.
The question of marketing came up recently when one of our clients asked us about his ad campaign and how he could narrow in on his metrics to ascertain whether they are spending enough on ads. And with this question, we realized that many people just don’t know the crucial elements to marketing successfully. This is where we can help because we spent years making mistakes and finding successful practices.
In the past, we spent a lot of money on mailers and attending networking meetings, and there is some value in that. But in those days, you wouldn’t see any return on your money for a long while, and it was a waiting game, hoping that your investment would pay off. Today, Facebook marketing has made it so much easier to see how your money spent pays off. With Facebook’s metrics and ease of content, it is so much easier to get your message out to the masses and attract more people. When we first started marketing on Facebook, we hired Facebook agencies and paid fees for experts, but we learned that some of these “experts” could not do the job that we could do ourselves. Would we recommend some of these agencies?
Absolutely. But through trial and error, and lots of money spent, we discovered that some are better than others and not to be fooled by expert claims.
Many people falsely assume that Facebook is a tool that feeds you leads. Not true. You need to work on it to target leads, and what you really need to target leads is branding and content. So what is the difference between branding and content marketing?
BRANDING
Branding is whatever defines your presence: your logo, colors, and slogan, for example. You absolutely want to use branding so that you become easily identifiable. When people see the golden arches, they know it’s McDonald’s without having to read the word, “McDonald’s.” That is an ideal form of branding. But marketing, on the other hand, requires action on the part of the prospect. Good marketing pulls the prospect in and calls on them to perform a function in order to get something of value. And the best way to do that is through content marketing.
Content marketing provides something of value. Many people believe that content marketing is utilizing automated hostings, but that is not the case at all. Automated hosting information can be received from anywhere. Articles that say “Drink more water” or “Cut back on calories” are a dime a dozen, and they don’t engage people and get them interested in learning more.
Content marketing, on the other hand, is all about stories. It involves sharing valuable information and how you are an expert in sharing that info. It should be personal, inviting people in, and systematic, utilized once or twice a week. At the end of each piece, there should be some kind of call to action that asks people to do something, like log into a facebook page or text you to learn more.
So in the end, marketing is the name of the game. First you need leads, and to get those leads you must systematically put out content with a specific call to action. Once you have those leads, you need to spend money to campaign, including on Facebook.
Then you need to gather information from the metrics to determine what is working and what is not. It is in part trial and error and in part strategy and determination. But a few hundred or thousands spent can mean a lucrative ROI.
NEW CLIENTS = LEADS + SALES + MARKETING
Marketing isn’t learned over night, but it can be learned. Inside our private Facebook group we share different strategies on content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing for fitness professionals.
Join Here: www.FBMNATION.COM
