This morning I was rummaging thru the pile of junk mail that was sitting on my coffee table when I found what might be the worst direct mail piece I have ever seen. A local limo service ran an ad promoting $3 off your next limo ride. I saw this same ad a while back and sworn it must have been a typo. (I may have even blogged about it) I mean seriously, $3 off!

First of all, If I’m spending $75 for a ride to the airport… I’m not too concerned with saving three whole dollars. Granted, it is better than not having a promotion at all.

But how about a promotion that works…

Ride with Us and We Will Provide a FREE Juice of Your Choice, A FREE Paper of Your Choice and We GUARANTEE to be there 5 minutes early…

My point is, if you are going to spend money on direct mail. Make sure your offer is strong. These are the most important things to consider when using direct mail to promote your personal training business.

Who are you mailing to? Do they need your product?

Will they Open it, or Will it go straight into the recycling bin? 

Will they read it?

Would you take advantage of the offer and why?

What is the Call to Action?

How will you track the effectiveness?

If you take into consideration those main direct mail questions, you will have a much better chance of having a successful direct mail campaign.

Hope you enjoyed this personal trainer marketing tip!

Keith

Personal Trainer Marketing Coach

What’s better than a TOP 10 listing in Google? 2 Top Ten Listings in Google. Competition is getting fierce and it’s no longer good enough to just have one site (or advertisement) appear in google’s search results.

Now of course im not suggesting that you need 3 or 4 websites, I mean it’s hard enough to deal with the one you have, right? But you should not put all of your eggs in one basket. Only bad things can happen when you rely on one website. What if your server goes down for days? (yes, it does happen) What if google just decides to drop you out of their rankings? It is a robot after-all, and guess what, when your website’s rankings fall, you can’t just pick up the phone and call the Google guys and expect them to say… We are so sorry for dropping your rankings and nearly putting you out of business, how can we make it up to you? In fact, you would be lucky if you ever even found out why.

You can protect yourself by having multiple sites or advertising on other people’s sites that have great rankings for your keywords. I have a few clients that have 3 (up to 6) of the top 10 spots for their keywords. Now, that’s an effective strategy.

The days of 10,000 dollar websites are over. Besides with blogs, and article/content sites, local listings, etc you should have no problem getting a few slots in the top 20 at-least.

Don’t wait, the sooner you start the sooner you will see the results.

For more personal trainer marketing tips and strategies, leave me a comment or a question and I will be glad to help…

Keith
Personal Trainer Marketing Coach

If I read one more keyword stuffed, no substance, personal training webpage I’m going to lose it. Do people really think google is that stupid, that you can just jam the word “personal trainer” into your website 100 times to get search engine rankings? Since SEO (rankings) is determined by computer algorithms and search engine robots I suppose that there is a chance that this sleazy tactic could sneak by. In fact, it can happen… I see it every once and a while. So for those of you that do this, Congratulations! You BEAT Google… and now you have a page that ranks great but will not get you any new clients.

Here’s a better approach to getting better search engine rankings. First, let’s think about Google. What does google want? Besides, dominate the whole world. Google wants to be the best search engine, and provide users with the most relevant content.

Think about it, if you provide great quality content to the world. Google will appreciate it and reward you with better rankings.

That is the one SEO that hasn’t changed over the last 5 yrs.

Take a smarter long term approach and it will pay off greatly!

If you have more questions about SEO, or how to get better search engine rankings for your personal training website, drop me a comment.

Thanks!

Keith

In case you haven’t noticed there is a major shift going on in the world. That is the way that media is delivered to consumers. In simple terms, people used to have to watch or listen to whatever the mass media wanted you to. Not anymore, now you practically control the whole game. You want to watch something about “kitchen makeovers” you go online and find it. Smart business owners are taking advantage of that and they are using video to gain a HUGE ADVANTAGE over their competitors.

This is just the beginning, the sooner you jump on board the better…

If you are not using video in your marketing you are missing out big time. It’s not expensive like it used to be, all you need is a basic digital camera, a cheap tripod (not always) and a free editing software. By the way all pc’s come with windows movie maker and it is pretty easy to use once you play with it for a minute.

As always, if your not good at editing, find someone else to do it and you can produce your own video footage, or personal training commercials for a great price.

Get to it,

Keith
Personal Trainer Marketing Coach

If I had to attribute my success to one thing it would have to be a strong work ethic and drive. Without that you really won’t get very far. The second most important factor is education, and I’m not talking about schlepping around a bunch of books on a college campus. (though I did that too)

I’m talking about picking a topic and learning it inside an out with books, courses, research, trial and error, etc. In the past 4 yrs I have attended countless marketing/business seminars, spent way more than you could imagine on marketing products and courses, and they were worth every penny. By attending these conferences I have been able to pick the brain of some of the most successful people in the world.

One of my favorite entrepreneurs is Nido Quebin, and one of his lines that I have embedded in brain is that “If you want to be successful you must hang around people that are successful. This is an absolute gem. I know it sounds obvious, but take a look around you if you are successful, odds are the people you spend time with are also successful.

Recently, I was able to listen to George Ross (Donald Trump’s right hand man) speak about the art of negotiation. First of all he is brilliant and you should definitely pick up his book “Trump Style Negotiation”.

I also met Kristi Frank from Season 1 of The Apprentice, who is also extremely bright, and very nice as well.

Kristi Frank from the hit show “The Apprentice”

Thanks alot camera guy, do you think I could have made a goofier looking face before you snapped the photo…:)

Surround yourself with great people, and I don’t mean rich people. I’m referring to people that are successful in all aspects of life and learn from them, soak everything up that you possibly can.

Keith
Personal Trainer Marketing Coach