There are a few glaring personal trainer marketing faux pas that crop up everywhere, over and over again. But what can seem like a small fitness marketing offense to you could actually be costing your personal trainer business loads of new clients — a price most early-stage startup PT's can't afford to pay.
To find out which marketing mistakes are truly embarrassing, I asked a panel of personal trainers, the My PT Website Facebook Group (feel free to join us) for major marketing don'ts. Their top 5 answers are below:
#1 Business Email
This one comes up a lot. I see it all the time when I first start talking to new potential personal trainer website design clients. They often reply to me with joepersonaltrainer(at)gmail(.com) or fitness2021(at)hotmail(.co.uk).
Free Gmail and Hotmail accounts do NOT look good to your clients. It's just not professional, clients know they're free and while it's not going to be the deciding factor when a client chooses whether or not to train with you, at the back of their minds they will always know that you were too tight to spend £5/year on a business email.
What To Do About It
| If you already have a website then you have a domain name. It's quite likely that your domain provider offers free email with the domain so log in to your dashboard to have a look. If you don't have a site or a domain yet and you don't plan on having one in the near future, head on over to 1and1.com and buy your name as a domain name. 1and1 offer free email with a domain so you can be the proud owner of hello@yournamept.com. |  |
#2 Not Following Up
After generating a new lead, you must effectively follow up on it. While this may seem straightforward, a lot of personal trainers seem to be not replying to emails and Facebook message because they don't want to seem too annoying or desperate.
Or they have no way of tracking people who contact them via their website that they simply forget about who has been replied to and who hasn't.
What To Do About It
First of all, you should never feel desperate following up. I've never heard of nor experienced an agreement fall through because I followed up too much. If someone claims that they decided not to purchase because I followed up too much or too frequently, they were never going to buy and just needed an excuse. In most cases, I get complimented for being on top of moving a deal forward.
| That being said, there's no magic to following up. They key is to remember that you're a sales person and your job (the whole point of your conversations with customers) is to see if your a good fit for their business and how best to expedite that process. |  |
I personally use Vcita (the little "Let's Talk" tab at the bottom). Every enquiry goes in to the client management system and the system emails me when I need to follow up.
#3 Your Website
There are a few exceptions to this one as I personally know some PT's who have successfully built their own sites and got new leads from it.
But speaking in general, most PT's don't do well when building their own websites. Their websites look and feel unprofessional, they don't position well in search results and they very rarely get new leads from them.
 | Naturally, I'm bias because I'm a personal trainer website designer, but think of it this way; If you need a new roof, hire a roofer. If you try to do it yourself it's quite likely you're going to have a leaky roof. If you need your car fixing, hire a mechanic. |
So why, when it comes to websites, one of the most important marketing tools for a personal trainer business, do people still insist on doing it themselves?
What To Do About It
Get a website designer. Seriously, find a professional and get it done properly. The time you save can be better spent providing the best possible service to your existing clients.
The start ups who are reading this might be thinking a website costs too much but when you think of how much time you spend doing it yourself, being frustrated and researching best practices, £300 won't seem so much.
What To Do About It
Get a website designer. Seriously, find a professional and get it done properly. The time you save can be better spent providing the best possible service to your existing clients.
The start ups who are reading this might be thinking a website costs too much but when you think of how much time you spend doing it yourself, being frustrated and researching best practices, £300 won't seem so much.
#4 Listening To Too Many Gurus
There are SO many self proclaimed fitness marketing experts out there. Some of which are genuinely awesome, others. . . not so much. But with all of that conflicting information, it's easy to suffer from a serious case of analysis paralysis. Your clients can see when you're being inconsistent and it doesn't look good.
What To Do About It
Differentiating between what works and what doesn't can be tricky but there are a few things you can look out for:
- Do they practice what they preach? Some fitness marketing experts will endorse a certain tactic while not actually using it themselves. Do some research and see what they're doing. Do they claim to be an expert with Facebook? How much engagement do they get? You get the idea
- Too good to be true? If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you see offers like "20 new clients per month" think logically and not emotionally.
- Success photos. My favourite. Pictures of fitness marketers doing there work on their lap top on the beach or stood in front of expensive cars should ring some alarm bells. Genuinely successful people don't use their success as a marketing tool. It's just not professional.
- Testimonials. While genuine testimonials are a good thing, don't forget that when a marketer is trying to promote his system he will shout from the rooftops about the one or two that made it work but happily ignore the dozens that tried it and didn't succeed. Capitalising from the fact that anyone who fails won't want to share their failure at the risk of looking stupid.
# 5 Waiting To Go Viral
| Web traffic, video views and re-tweets do not all come organically. Personal trainers need to create compelling content. The they need to promote it to a highly targeted audience that may begin snowballing by word-of-mouth. Startup PT's don't always realize that engagement is earned, and that there's a lot of marketing that goes into even the most innocent of viral videos. |  |
What To Do About It
If you want anything to start getting traction, make sure you do your part in making people aware that your content even exists.
Writing great content is the first step to creating viral content. Appealing to your clients emotions is typically what elicits a response of some kind. My most visited blog is 5 Retaliations To Juice Plus Claims. Why? I upset the people that sell Juice Plus and excited the people that don't like multi level marketing.
If you want anything to start getting traction, make sure you do your part in making people aware that your content even exists.
Writing great content is the first step to creating viral content. Appealing to your clients emotions is typically what elicits a response of some kind. My most visited blog is 5 Retaliations To Juice Plus Claims. Why? I upset the people that sell Juice Plus and excited the people that don't like multi level marketing.
Over To You
What marketing mistakes do you think should be on the list and why? Comment below.
