These days I am all about predictable marketing. I always want to know exactly how I'm going to generate additional consultations each week to ensure our facility keeps growing.

Now when I work on producing a lead generation strategy I try to consider these important things:

1. What can I do that will catch people's attention and ensure they take notice
2. Offer big, big, value to ensure significant participation and lot's of buzz
3. Have a follow-up strategy for everyone who participates

With each new promotion I create I try to ensure that participants feel comfortable giving me the information I need to contact them directly. This might be by phone (preferred above all), email or even just Facebook.

I reward one or a handful of participants handsomely and then deliver unexpected value to just about everyone who participates which is the big win-win and often the missing critical component I see with many marketing campaigns.

At a recent mastermind meeting we were talking about Facebook when an idea occurred. Let's run a free training give away.

The premise is this: We'll generate fan base by encouraging people to like our page (nothing new here), every 10 or 25 people that like our page one lucky person is going to win a high value prize like a month service package worth hundreds of dollars. Now this isn't earth shattering either and to be clear this service package will be based on services that are group or have little hard cost for us.

The magic isn't in any of this but rather in what I will do about the 9 to 24 people that didn't win the service package.

Within the admin features of your Facebook page you will be able to display the last 25 people that liked your page. I propose we contact each of them directly with a special message saying they've also been awarded something special. Our favorite offer for this is a Body Diagnostic, this includes a full body composition, a postural assessment, an individualized training session, and nutritional consultation. For someone who hasn't worked with a personal trainer before it's a tremendous amount of value, in fact we list it as a $299 value.

There's no obligation at all for this person to buy anything from us, this will be made clear, but it gives us a very important opportunity to meet people and get to know them, allowing them to feel comfortable with us and ultimately present to them any number of options to continue using our service at a price point that works for them.

Every promotion like this only need be executed once to gain an understanding of how many entrants and messages will be required to produce a certain number of consultations. Develop 3-6 promotions like this and every month becomes entirely predictable.

I love predictable marketing because not knowing how your business will perform next month or next year is way more stress than I want to deal with.


Cabel Mcelderry, now known as the Profitable Personal Trainer, struggled as a solo personal trainer for nearly eight years before learning the strategies he needed to transform his barely six-figure business to a seven-figure (and growing) training studio in just a couple years. His studio (One-to-1 Fitness), now 5 years old, has won multiple awards for business excellence. Cabel has been recognized as one of the top 100 fitness entrepreneurs in North America and is currently one of 50 nominees for Optimum Nutrition's Canadian Trainer of the Year. Cabel still trains a handful of clients as his passion to help others will never fade but has also evolved. Cabel now also mentors fitness professionals in an effort to help them achieve similar or better results than his own. www.ProfitablePersonalTrainer.com

Topic: Entrepreneur Web Column

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