M arketing your fitness business is all about getting what you want. It's about getting your clients to give you referrals. It's about getting search engines to give you traffic. And it's about getting local businesses to give you business.
But before you can get what you want, you've got to give people what they want. It's really about the giving hand. See, back when I was in the process of growing my personal training facilities. I was determined to get fifty lead boxes out in local small businesses. I struggled for weeks just to get a couple of boxes out. In fact, most businesses turned me down -- they didn't want anything to do with my lead boxes.
I later found out that I was approaching these businesses completely wrong. Once I had figured that out, I had lead box real estate in every business and a 220% increase in lead generation -- not bad, right?
Here's what I did differently: I started offering the business owners two things before ever mentioning that I wanted to host a lead box in their place of business.
The first thing I would do when I walked into a local tanning salon, day spa or hair salon was introduce myself, tell them what I do and that I have an email list of local residents who are interested in fitness, fat loss and overall appearance and ask who I would talk to about referring their business to my email list. You could imagine how every business owner would light up with the thought of getting referrals from me at no cost.
Then I'd offer the business owner the opportunity to workout at my facility for free for the next six weeks.
By this point I had won the business owner over big time by offering him or her more leads and to help them get back into shape. And just before leaving, I'd turn to the business owner and say: "Would it be okay if I were to bring in a raffle box and set it up in here for the next six weeks so that your clients could have the opportunity to win a month of boot camp training with me?"
More often than not, the business owner would say yes, and they'd in fact go the extra mile for me and encourage their clients to fill out a form to win a free month of boot camp.
That's the kind of relationship you want to have with small businesses owners and with anyone who you want to give you leads, referrals and endorsements. It's really about coming to them with the giving hand and answering that question that EVERYONE is asking in their head: "What's in it for me?"
Bedros Keuilian teaches thousands of fitness trainers systems and strategies to grow their business and get more clients. Get more client getting tips, ideas and strategies from Bedros at PTPower.com
