Why is boot camp marketing so important? Because, getting new leads for your boot camp business is a never-ending, ever-present need that all businesses have, particularly businesses selling a service. For this type of business, it is not enough to simply pay for your business license, put up your utility deposits, hang a sign and open your doors. Every day that you are open, there is a need to be hunting for “fresh meat” just in order to keep from becoming a “dead fish”.
That is why it is interesting to read about the strategies of successful people like Bedros Keuilian, a boot camp marketing expert known as the hidden genius behind many of the most successful six and seven figure earning fitness trainers worldwide.
According to Bedros, it is no longer a matter of “if you build it, they will come”, it is a matter of “build it, market the hell out of it, and then they will come”.
Bedros’ Boot Camp Marketing strategies do not advocate a lot of costly promoting in traditional media, in fact, some of his best strategies cost no more than the time it takes in sending an email, making a phone call or mailing a personal note to clients.
He believes the most important thing is to have a plan of attack that you try, you tweak and you track in some kind of organized manner. Lack of planning is the cause of 85% of fitness trainers’ businesses failing, according to Bedros.
Mutual Relationship Boot Camp Marketing Strategy
Forming mutually beneficial relationships with clients, prospects, local store owners and the community as a whole, he says is important since at the end of the day, all marketing and the success of your boot camp marketing success boils down to two things:
- The relationships you have with your clients, prospects, local businesses and community.
- The systems that you create, discover, learn, and ruthlessly deploy.
The boot camp marketing systems he recommends deploying starts with using all of what came “factory installed” with you. Hopefully, that includes a personality that enjoys talking with others including business owners and well-known community leaders. It also means forming relationships with clients that make them so grateful for the help, they received from you that they are willing to refer others to you. Getting these kinds of referrals to work can be the key to keeping a fresh supply of new customers coming in that can double and even triple the size of your business.
To that end, Bedros’ Boot Camp Marketing techniques encourages the use of personal note writing and posting on a client’s Facebook page personal words of encouragement designed to cement the kind of trainer/client relationship that could foster a fresh supply of referrals. He also recommends giving the current customer irresistible offers to give to their friends as an added bonus such as $100 gift certificates, discount packages like a week of boot camp free or 21 days for $21. In addition, referral contests give existing customers incentives to keep the referrals coming.
However, Boot Camp Marketing strategies do not stop here. In fact, Bedros recommends keeping several “poles in the water” at one time and for the long term in order to be successful. For example, one the most successful programs recommended involves making “human billboards” out of well-known faces in the community, your family and friends. Particularly helpful for filling that first boot camp fitness session, offering either a discounted or even free training session can snowball into double the participants if these walking talking human billboards successfully lose a noticeable amount of weight for their friends to notice and the “billboards” recommend the fitness trainer to their friends. Creating this kind of buzz or viral marketing is what boot camp marketing is all about.
Boot Camp Marketing Door to Door
Another tactic for gaining fresh leads involves going door to door to all the local business owners and asking permission to put a box raffling off services in their store. These types of boot camp marketing strategies not only give you fresh leads but can also add to your exposure. Of course, not every storeowner is going to be willing to go along with this idea, even if you sweeten the deal by offering something to them in return, for example, a free week of training. Regardless, if they do not allow you to put the box in their store it has not cost anything to ask. The value of the leads from the stores that do let you put a box in their store will be worth the effort, however, and again will have cost you nothing except your time.
In order to get reactivation’s it is a matter of showing your former clients how much you value them by sending out a letter to them offering an irresistible offer such as a free week of boot camp with personalized meal plans and measurements. In addition to the letter mailed directly to them he also recommends emailing and calling in fact doing all three forms of communication in order to reactive a client.
For lead generation online and off, the boot camp marketing strategy is to offer a free piece of information to entice prospects to sign up for a newsletter, an eBook, or a contest. After getting this information, the boot camp marketing store owner will then use this information to send the prospect an irresistible offer by both and email. Calling the prospect and talking to them is also a good way to close the deal.
If you follow the advice of Bedros’ Boot Camp Marketing strategies, you will use what assets you have to keep a continuous supply of leads coming in everyday. Depending on your personality, your reputation as a fitness trainer or whatever service you have a reputation for providing, your connections, relationships, and customers however, is not the only way to succeed in business. In addition you will need to be constantly coming up with testing, tweaking and tracking the kind of bootstrap boot camp marketing techniques that Bedros’ has recommended along with a few of your own.