Want marketing ideas that will put you leagues ahead of your competition? Ideas that are completely out-of-the-box but still work?
Everyone is searching for that big viral marketing pitch that will bring them leads in bunches. But if you want your boot camp to strike marketing gold, then you need to think beyond what your competition is thinking about.
There are three specific things that most people don’t even think about when they market their fitness business. Be warned: these strategies might increase your profits and win more leads to your location. If you want that (of course you do!), then keep reading.
Research What Other Industries Are Doing
Thing number one is to look outside of your own industry. Oftentimes when an entrepreneur is in only one industry, they only focus on what everyone else in their industry is doing, right? That’s called marketing incest.
Before they know it, they’re doing what their competitors are doing. They’re doing what that other trainer down the street is doing, what that other boot camp is doing—and their marketing message becomes no different than anybody else’s.
But if you look outside of your industry, you’re gonna find that other industries have unique and special ways of marketing that you could apply to your own personal training or boot camp business.
For example, one thing that worked for us about two years ago was to introduce plastic gift cards to the fitness market, since we found out no one was using actual plastic gift cards to market their personal training or boot camp services.
So we started to create plastic gift cards that looked like legitimate gift cards. They even had the black magnetic strip on the back. All of a sudden, that gave us way more value than just writing an ad that said, “Hey, you can get $100 off your first month of boot camp.”
When we would pass these plastic gift cards out to our clients, and then they would pass it out to people that they wanted to refer, these people, as far as they were concerned, were holding $100 in their hands. That feels a lot more tangible.
We got that idea from a totally different industry, not the fitness industry. So I challenge you to look around in your community, go through the local magazines and newspapers, and see what other successful businesses are doing. The tanning salon, the hair salon, the cosmetic surgeon…what are they doing that you can implement into your business to stay head and shoulders above the rest?
Grab the Low-Hanging Fruit
The next strategy I want to share with you is about the low-hanging fruit—the missed opportunities in your business that don’t take extraordinary effort to capitalize on. When we think with the mindset of “Hey, I wanna get more boot camp clients,” we go back to the same stuff we usually do. If that stuff works, that’s awesome, but I’m willing to bet that you have yet to tap into a whole bunch of opportunities to scale your business further.
A great example of grabbing the low-hanging fruit is having an email list—even a small email list of 100 or 200 local business owners, clients, prospects, past clients. If you start nurturing that email list and showing them content, giving them value, educating them, positioning case studies in front of them like social proof and testimonials from existing clients, and then making them offers, you’ll usually get 5, 10, 15 new clients off of a small email list.
That’s a really low-cost marketing strategy, right?
Another great way to win more leads to your business is to recognize your clients on Facebook. Let’s face it, Facebook is the platform where people hang out. It’s the second home that people go to. So all you’ve gotta do is take pictures of your clients right as they’re working out, post it onto their Facebook wall, and give them some appreciation and recognition with a comment, saying, “Hey Mrs. Jones, you did awesome at boot camp today. Just wanted to thank you for being a great client.”
Now, obviously some of her Facebook friends are gonna comment or like that picture you put up there. All you have to do is check if they’re local to you, then private message them and say, “Hey, thanks for supporting your friend and my client, Mrs. Jones, and because you did that, I’d like to offer you a week of boot camp to try out so you can see if it’s right for you.”
I bet you’re gonna get a ton of clients by interacting with them on a platform like Facebook. The reason I know this is because it works for us with our Fit Body Boot Camp locations.
Condition Your Clients to Give You Referrals
The third and final thing I want you to focus on is referrals. That’s really low-hanging fruit, because the only times referrals don’t work well is when you make a half-hearted attempt at getting them, or if you haven’t conditioned your clients to give you referrals.
There’s one thing I want you to get into the habit of doing from today on. When you get a new client on board at your boot camp, say, “Hey Mrs. Jones, welcome aboard. As I help you get in the best shape of your life and give you the fitness and fat loss results that you want, can I count on you to refer your friends, family, and co-workers to me so that I can get what I want, which is to grow my business and get more awesome people on board that are just like you?”
By doing this, you’re conditioning your new clients to eventually refer you people. This way, when you run a referral contest down the line, when you give out your plastic gift cards or send out a handwritten “thank you” card—something like, “Hey Mrs. Jones, thank you for being an awesome client, here’s a $5 Starbucks gift card for you for being so cool. Oh, by the way, I’m never too busy for your referrals.”—they’re gonna think back to that day when you said, “Hey, can I get this commitment from you?” and they’re gonna refer more people to you.
Those are the three big out-of-the-box ideas I want you to think about and use in your business. If you want more ideas like these, read through more posts on this blog—I’ve got a ton more boot camp marketing ideas here for you to take for yourself.
Committed to your success,
Bedros