Don’t feel bad if you are a little unfamiliar with some of the techy terminology that we use, just ask us to elaborate and we will. This post is in response to one trainer’s question.. “what is the difference between Google’s Adwords and Google’s Adsense programs”

This whole internet marketing game can be confusing, I hope this helps.

Google Adwords (aka Payer Per Click) - is a means of bringing more visitors to your site on a cost per click basis. Here is how it works. Sally does a search for a “personal trainer in Sacramento” she sees an add on the right hand side of google and clicks on it. That click cost Mr. Sacramento Trainer a certain amount of money, any where from .01 - $1.00 or more (probably somewhere near the middle)

This is a great way for Mr. Sacramento to get new, targeted traffic to his site and new personal training leads. It can be costly and you need to know what you are doing or find someone who does.

Google Adsense - is a way of making additional money from the visitors that are already on your site. Here’s how it works: You have a personal training site that gets 100 visitors per day, some will contact you for more infor about your programs, the others will just leave. With google adsense, you can create an account and show google ads inside of the content area of your website. When people click on the links you make money. It is as simple as that. Keep in mind you are not going to be able to retire off of adsense income with a site that only has 100 visitors per day. You also need to consider if the addl adsense income is worth giving you potential leads a “distraction” that will take them away from your website.

Both of them, if used properly can be very effective. I suggest you learn a little more about them and then setup a free account and fool around if you are interested. Please comment if you have any questions, suggestions or additional tips and we will address it. Thanks

Keith

I have been getting a few questions about landing pages, or “squeeze pages” lately, so I figured I had better address it here in the blog. A landing page is a page on a website that has limited content and only one goal in mind, to get the visitor to submit their name, email and or personal info to you. The benefit to a landing page is that it is simple, there aren’t many other links for people to click on or banners they could be distracted by.

How do I use a landing page?

It is pretty simple really, come up with the general content for the page and have your webmaster create a page on your site that doesn’t have the other navigation tables. The page should only include your header image, the landing page content and opt in form, and then the footer (you may want o include links in the footer to your privacy policy and disclaimers) Once the page is created you can split your ppc traffic, 50% goes to your home page and 50% goes to your landing page and see what happens. Our experience has shown that landing pages almost always pull better conversions than sending traffic straight to the home page.

What types of content should I put on the landing page?

I will use a made up personal trainer to demonstrate an example of what I landing page may include: I wrote this in less than 5 minutes so please don’t grill me on my copy writing skills.

Local Personal Trainer and Fitness Expert Reveals 10 Exercises You can do in 20 Minutes
That Will Shed Unwanted Body Fat and Speed Up Your Metabolism!

My name is Mickey Mouse, and wanted to take a minute to show you a short video of how our personal trainers at Mickey’s Training Studio transform Orlando are transforming the bodies of local Orlando residents.

In this video you will learn how our trainers create custom workouts for our clients that target their trouble spots, like that annoying fat under the arm, or that pesky fat around your waist. You will also see that personal training is not about clanging around a bunch of heavy weights, it’s about being guided by someone that knows what to do and which exercise and techniques will deliver the best results in the shortest amount of time.

Press Play to watch the video below.

INSERT SAMPLE VIDEO HERE

INSERT SAMPLE TESTIMONIAL HERE

For the month of February we are offering Free Personal Training Sessions to help change more bodies and improve more lives in 2008

If you would like to try a free session or would like to learn more about our personal training programs fill in the form below.

INSERT FORM HERE

You can also put bullet points, testimonials, audio, etc on your landing pages. The key is to keep it clean and simple, and make the reader feel like they have to fill out the form. Tip. You cant just say fill out this form to learn more about our personal training, you have to give them a reason why, tell them what they will learn and how it will benefit them.

There some really savvy ways to test different landing page concepts that we will cover soon. Keep an eye out, and please comment to this post if you have something of value to say. Good luck,

Keith

I wasn’t going to write about this today, but I just had to get this off my chest. We had a call from a client who was considering dropping their #2 ranking adpage because they only got one client from it this month. We caught the client off guard when we asked “what is the average lifetime value of a customer?” She said, “im not sure”. I couldn’t be too hard on her since most businesses never take the time to figure this out. This is something you definitely want to calculate and improve. Don’t worry, I’m no MathWiz either. At the very least, I would create a spreadsheet of all your active clients (clients that came directly from your marketing dollars), and tally how much they have spent on your service including sign up fees, sessions, renewals, and the amount you generated from their referrals. Take that total and divide it by the number of clients in the spreadsheet. Here is a simplified example.

Sally Jones - $1500 in sessions plus $500 by referring Jim Jones = $2000

Jim Smith - $150 (no renewals or referalls) = $150

Tom Thumb - $300 in sessions plus $150 by referring Tammy Thumb = $450

$2600 Total Earned

$2600/3 = $866 = avg lifetime value of a client

It is up to you to determine whether your avg lifetime value is high or low, but now you will know how much each new client is worth to you on average.

Here are a few ways to increase the average lifetime value of a client.

Renewals - First calculate how many sessions people buy before leaving and going out on their own. If your data shows that, for example, 75 % of your people quit after 12 sessions, give them an irresistable offer to renew before session number 12. Of course you will need to try and get a feel for your clients and offer the incentive to the ones you think are going to cancel. By the way, when people do stop using your services, you need to find out why. If you ask them they may not tell you the truth, some people just won’t. So instead, create a page on your website called www.yoursite.com/feedback and tell them to please provide feedback and make it anonymous where you don’t ask for name or email on the form.

Referrals - This requires an entire section of this blog, so for now I will just say if you are not providing incentive, your clients will not help you grow your business. I’m not saying you should bribe them. Something as small as buying movie tickets for them will increase the chances that they bring you up in conversation. Keep in mind there is a difference between providing a gift after they have done something for you, and providing a gift to help create the action of referring.

There are certainly more complicated ways to figure out what a new customer is worth but this will be a great start. If you don’t want to go thru the trouble of gathering all this data from your existing clients, start with the next new client you get and go from there. Best of Luck!

Keith

My space is great right, all these gorgeous girls want to be my friend. It is soo weird, they all loved my profile and would like to get to know me. Ok, by now you should know that I’m kidding. I signed up for myspace about 4 years ago when it was mainly just musicians or bands trying to promote themselves. Now, myspace is one of the most ground breaking businesses in history.

Believe it or not, there are reasons why you should be spending time on myspace and youtube other then meeting girls or guys (or both - if you’re into that). It is obvious you should have a profile created for your business, there is a chance you could get leads from it. But more important than that, your myspace profile can actually show up in the search engines.

Want proof? Here’s a trainer who ranks in the top ten for Personal Trainer in Toronto.. and it didnt cost them a dime in google adwords or seo.

In another window, pull up google and do a search for “personal trainer in toronto”. You will see the video listed in the 6-7 spot. There are simple techniques that I have used to drive tens of thousands (sometimes more) to my sites.

Of course, there is a trick and we explain how to use myspace, youtube and dozens of other social networking sites to grow your personal training business… in out Top Trainer’s Club!

If you don’t have a myspace account, create one today. Then be on the lookout for more training blog posts in the near future.

Get to it,

Keith

This lil’ bit of info is so valuable. Do you know why your website visitors leave your site without contacting you or without buying something? Was it your sales copy, did they not find what they were looking for, were your prices too expensive?

I know, I know… how the heck are you supposed to find that out if they don’t contact you at all. It is simple and takes very little work. One way to do this is to use what is called a pop under or exit pop. No, not a pop up, they are more likely to get blocked.

In simple terms, when they close your site a page can appear and it should say something like…

Going so soon? Did you not find what you are looking for? Please tell us why so we can make this website even better.
No name or email required.

You can also encourage them by giving them a free gift, like a special report.

Why does this help you? Most people will be honest, if you get a lot of people saying “im not sure your programs are for me” you should do a better job of telling people what they can expect with your program. You will get all sorts of great info using this strategy.

It is also like having dozens of people acting as your webmaster, they will tell you if a link is dead or a picture won’t load, etc.

Get started on this as soon as you can.

Keith