Old salt checking in - Personal Trainer Community - Forum

[androyd_nyc]

Good Day-
I'm Andrew and I am a Personal Trainer-- it's been two days since my last session! :wink:

I've been in the industry since 1981 one way or another, with brief bits outside [i.e., military service- altlhough i consider that also fitness oriented-- and some stints in Finance that i finagled]

My background includes both 30,000 plus client contact hours [in club and independent] as well as 4 years management experience running the PT program for the luxury flagship brand of a 300+ club publicly traded nationwide chain.

in short, while i know i don't know everything, i do know that i have a lot of boots on the ground experience.

Experience that I'm happy to share with anyone who cares

So why am I here? partially from a desire to mentor other trainers and partly from a need to learn how to better market my product as well integrate technology into my work life.

I predate all these wonderful tech tools that you guys take as a given and while not tech illiterate, i suspect that there may be gaps where I'm missing the trees and the forest.

Why marketing issues?
I was very fortunate over the years to have little to no need to market myself-- when i ran a club membership sought me out after watching me work and clients get results.

It was all referral business from there-- until i closed out my training portfolio to head into finance a couple of years back [I love training folk, but let's not kid ourselves-- PT is an hourly wage business with no leverage opportunities; anything else you do within it isn't quite the same as that contact training hour and that hour is what i dig]

so my "hustlin' skillz that pay the bills" are a tad-- rusty?

I'll be starting a new thread in the Business forum on the topic and I hope to hear from all of you with ideas that have worked or that haven't-- the more the merrier.

[Christina]

Hi Andrew,

I only have a second b/c I have to train someone. I just wanted to take a moment to welcome you to the forum. I will check back in this evening and try to answer any questions you may have.

Christina

[megfit]

Hi Andrew,

First of all, make sure to read some of my articles in the articles section. I have several on marketing, etc.

Second, you need to set your plans down on paper. What do you ultimately want to create, now? Before you can plan how you're going to market your services, you need to know where your ultimate destination is.

Then you need to determine, of all the clients you see, who is your ideal client. Men, women, kids, particular fitness levels, particular income level, particular personality type?? If you closed your eyes and envisioned your PERFECT client, what does that look like. This is extremely important, because you need to know who you are going to speak to in your marketing materials.

The third step is to dig in and become VERY clear what it is about you that your clients have all loved about you. You need to know this so you can capitalize on it in your messages.

Then, seriously, anyone who has a business HAS to put a business plan down on paper. I know many trainers say, 'oh, I don't need to do that, I know what I want to do'. However, are you doing this for fun or for your future?? If it's just for fun, then no loss if either the business doesn't grow OR (which is very common) you grow so much you don't know how to handle it. Plus, you dig into issues while writing a business plan that you won't KNOW you need to address UNTIL they come up in the future.

The advantage of the business plan then leads to the creation of your marketing plan. This is the meat and potatoes of your business. HOW will you achieve your goals and objectives you've outlined in your business plan? The marketing plan details the strategies and tactics you'll take to achieve your goals, and will also help you set criteria from which you can measure your success or failure of that particular strategy.

As for the 'hows', I sense that part of your question has to do with online marketing? Easy: Get yourself a website set up. You will HAVE to answer the issues I've posed above to write your text. I have a great ebook on everything you need to know to start up a website, OR how to set up criteria to hire someone, AND how to write your website text for your home page and about you page. It's critical that you word your site in a way that will keep visitors interested. They all want to know, 'what's in it for me?'
Here's the link to my ebook: http://www.websitesmade-easy.com/

Once you have your website up, you then can create a mailing list to start gathering interested people. Before someone will hire you, they want to KNOW you. You need to instill trust. When you have a website, you then can start writing simple articles and submit them to article submission sites, which will draw traffic to your site. Also check out sites where your ideal clients hang out and submit articles to those sites, too.

Finally, regardless of the online presence, if you already enjoy some name recognition in your area, capitalize on that. Get out there and let people know what you're doing and who you're looking for! You have to tell people you want clients! Offer to speak at community organization meetings, contact the local paper and find the reporters who would be interested in using you as an expert to quote in their stories. There are tons of ideas. I have more in my book, Just Jump, actually.

Anyway, I'm sure there's more I could say, but I'm out of time, again.

Margie