I don’t think most personal trainers understand the value of split testing. This is such a powerful tool that can sky rocket your personal training income, and it is now easier then ever before.

Think about this, you sit down to meet with a potential client for a free consultation. You give ‘em your best sales pitch but you just can’t close the deal. What if you could say “Wait, let me start all over again” You give them a totally different spiel and they love it and sign up for 36 sessions. Your service was the same, your everything was the same except your delivery. That would be like a “real life” split test. We haven’t progressed that far yet but we can do this very thing online, in our ads, our emails and on our websites.

If you were buying a lemonade and there were 2 stands and one had a sign that said..

Home-ade Lemonade, Fresh Squeezed, Ice Cold and Natural!

the other stand had a sign that says..

Hot and Thirsty? Try Our Lemonade, It’s Fresh Squeezed and Natural!

Which stand would sell more lemonade? Truthfully, I don’t know. The second one makes me sort of thirsty but the first one says Ice Cold… It’s a toss up.

The only way to know is to split test the two signs against each-other. Meaning show 50 people one sing and 50 people the other and see which sign sells more.

Sometimes the difference its remarkable and sometimes the result is insignificant. However, even a small increase can lead to big dollars.

If you are not split testing you are missing the boat, it is an absolute must!

Get on it..

Keith

p.s. there are free split testing tools like Google Website Optimizer

I have to admit I’m a bit fired up about this. About 1 yr ago it used to be easy to get high quality traffic to your website, now things have changed…

The Rules Have Changed, and He (or She:) Who Knows The Rules, WILL PREVAIL!

Many of my personal trainer coaching clients ask me “How Can I Get More Traffic to My Personal Training Website“? I tell them to get a pen and a pad ready and then I share my top 5 traffic generation strategies with them.

Each strategy is very in depth and would require that this blog post be about 20 pages long. But to keep it simple I will give you the “meat and potatoes” now and write a follow up post later with more of the details.

So here are 4 rock solid website traffic strategies to bring consistent, qualified visitors to your websites (personal trainer websites or any other for that matter)

Traffic Strategy #1 - Content

You may have heard this saying before “Content is King”. This still holds very true for getting traffic online. The more relevant content you have the more organic search traffic you will get. You can also leverage your content by offering it to other sites in exchange for reference back to you.

Warning: Do not create garbage content, you may get traffic but the visitor will see your site as a spam site and leave anyway. Yes, you can sneak spammy content by google and trick them into ranking your website. But I assure you, it is not the risk. If you get black listed by google, you will regret the day you tried to fool them:)

Traffic Strategy #2

Blogging - You don’t have to be a techno geek or a 16 yr old gamer to be a blogger. First of all a Blog (short for web log, aka web journal) is quick and easy way for you to add content to the web without understanding how to create websites, or edit html code. You would be surprised, if you write about interesting topics people will read it, and often return. You can either install a blog on your existing personal training website or keep it separate. The benefits for keeping it separate is that you are creating a back up in case your main training site drops in rankings, the down side is that it may take a while for the personal trainer blog to rank.

Traffic Strategy # 3

Pay for your traffic - I can see it now, you’re already nervous since I said the word pay. Google adwords is the most targeted form of advertising EVER. As long as your website converts prospects into clients you can make pay per click traffic work for you. You can set your exact daily and monthly budgets as well as monitor the effectiveness of each ad. The best part is that it is immediate. You could start a brand new personal training website and drive traffic to it in an hr or less

Traffic Strategy #4

Other Peoples Traffic - Since you are mainly selling personal training ( a regional service) it wouldn’t make sense for you to buy banner ad space on ediets . com or major other health and fitness sites. But what about another local site that is moderately relevant to personal training. Ex. If Sally has a health food website in your area and she gets local traffic from people that are interested in health, why not ask her to let you put a banner on her site. You can do a swap or even pay her for it. Odds are that her website doesn’t actually bring in much money so she may be thrilled if you offer her 100-200 per month.

Of course, before you pay for any banner ads you will need to know their traffic stats. I will try to write an entire post on this subject soon.

There are many other strategies for getting traffic to your personal training sites. First focus on the 4 strategies mentioned above. Then, you can try some of the advanced marketing strategies.

Best of Luck

Keith

Personal Trainer Marketing

ATTENTION PERSONAL TRAINERS!

Are the web-forms on your website killing your game?

So you’re at a bar and you see a real attractive man or woman at the far end of the bar. He or she has made eye contact with you and there is obviously some interest there. So you begin some light conversation, you have a lot in common and you decide to ask for future meet up. Would you say, “I really think we have a lot in common and I would like to get to know you better, why don’t you give me your name, cell number, work phone, address, fax number and the name of your first dog”.

Of course, you wouldn’t! But I will tell you if you manage to get all that info “You’re a true player”!

You wouldn’t do that in real life, so why would you do it on your website? If you are trying to get people to make initial contact as a sign of interest in your services, why make them jump thru hoops, or give up all their personal information. This is an ABSOLUTE CONVERSION KILLER!

After the first contact you can gather as much information as you want but if your form asks for more than, name, phone, email, and best time to reach you…. you are probably asking for too much and may be hurting your conversion rate.

Yes I know all about pre-qualifying leads, and if people are serious about personal training then they will leave a number, yada yada yada. Guess what, this is a new era and people are private with their info until you have established trust. Unless you plan on doing direct mail (which hardly any personal trainers do) why would you ask for their address on the initial contact form?

Take a look at your own forms and see if you are asking for too much. As always, test long forms vs. short forms and see what works best for you.

Keith
Personal Trainer Marketing Coach

Personal Trainer Domain Names – 3 Tips to Making Great Money With Domain Names

How much is your domain name worth? If you closed your business tomorrow would you be able to sell your domain?

I bet you probably never even thought about it. Most people don’t. Here’s why you should…

Domain names can sell for hundreds, thousands, even millions of dollars. Granted you had to be real early in the domain buying game to have scooped up a diamonds.com (sold for 7 million) However, internet domains are sold like real estate, they can be flipped, appreciate, depreciate, and sold for big dollars.

I own a few that hold some descent value. (225 in total) The most I have been offered to date is $2000 though I have not actively promoted any of my domain names. On this particular one I’m holding out because it is worth more.
So how do you know what your domains are worth? Here are a few key tips…

1. How clickable is your personal trainer domain name? Meaning if you sold it, would someone be able to use it? If your domain name was an ad, would you want to click on it?

Ex. JoesPersonalTraining.com This domain name may be good for joe, but it would not hold a lot of value in the open market. In contrast, something like www.personaltraining.com holds much more value.

2. Does the domain get traffic? People love to buy domain names that already get traffic. It means that they are probably in google’s index and that they have the potential for better search engine rankings. Domain names without traffic are like billboards on dirt roads with no passing cars. There are many exceptions to this rule and most of my domain names don’t have traffic or a website even and they are still valuable. If you have a great domain name, it doesn’t have to have traffic to be worth a lot of money.

3. Are all the good domain names taken? I have to admit it seems like all the great domain names are taken, but that’s not the case. You just have to be a little creative and sometimes lucky. Less than 1 yr ago I was able to purchase (register) a great domain name … www.ThePerfectWeddingDress.com

Now come on, what woman would not click on an ad with that domain name. There are plenty of geeks I mean people like me that stay up to the wee hrs of the morning trying to think of new domain names. I look at it as a lottery ticket, it only costs $8 to register a domain name. If you can flip that domain name for a couple grand or more I’d say it is worth it

Let’s look at my wedding domain and a few of the factors I mentioned earlier.

Is it highly clickable? YES

Would I be able to sell it to just about anybody? YES

Will it stand the test of time? YES

So if you are interested, bidding starts at 5k. Just kidding, no im not?

I have spent many a late nights on godaddy racking my brain for great new domain names. Do I recommend you deprive yourself of sleep, or break up your marriage over domain name addictions, of course not. In fact, you should probably spend the extra time growing your existing business. But if you ever have an idea for a new domain name, personal trainer related or not, go to godaddy and see if it is available.

Best of Luck!

Keith

If you have been following our teachings for a while, you know that crappy looking websites can outsell great looking sites any day of the week. In fact we have done very well with a few websites that would make a graphics design professor sick to their stomach. I prefer pretty but not too pretty. One of the big mistakes I see people make, is using the wrong images in the wrong places.

Remember, people react differently to certain pictures. For example, if you have a personal training site and the only descent picture you find is of an old couple stretching, so you put it on your site. Well, what happens when a 28 yr old man comes to the site looking for a trainer that is going to help him pound on the muscle? Can he relate to the picture of the old couple…probably not. That picture may send the wrong signal and he may abandon ship.

When in doubt, no picture is better than a bad picture. Don’t lose any sleep over it, just remember that the pictures you use ARE important. The best option for personal trainers is to take photos of some of your sessions so they can see what it might be like to workout with you. Your website visitors will relate to the “real people” in your photos.

If you do need photos you can buy them pretty cheap at places like www.istockphoto.com

or get some free at http://www.sxc.hu/

p.s. Im not mentioning any names, but this might be the right time for me to tell you… if you have a picture of yourself with no shirt on, glowing with spray on tanner, you are probably losing leads. (just my opinion)

Keith