I’ve put together an infographic that you can use to improve your fitness marketing. Whether you’re a: – Gym Owner – Crossfit Box Owner – Personal trainer – Bootcamp Owner

1. 29 Simple Ways to
Skyrocket Your Fitness
Marketing Report
By Mauricio Cardenal
www.theptadvisor.com

2. What’s the biggest problem that fit pros face?
Marketing.
Like a lot of businesses, fit pros often have a hard time standing out.
When you’re "selling fitness" it can be hard to compete with all of the other competition
doing what seems like exactly the same thing you are.
[Tweet "Why do so many trainers leave after their first year?"]
If you didn't already know, around 90% of trainers leave after their first year. You can
blame a lot of reasons for the high turnover, but one of the biggest is actually marketing.
Here is Wikipedias definition of Marketing:
Marketing: Is about communicating the value of a product, service or brand
to customers or consumers for the purpose of promoting or selling that product,
service, or brand.
Most fit pros will know the importance of marketing but sadly never learn how to do it
well or hire someone that knows how to do it well.
This is where they go wrong. This is also a reason why 90% quit after their first year.
I've put together an infographic that you can use to improve your fitness marketing.
Whether you're a:
- Gym Owner
- Crossfit Box Owner
- Personal trainer
- Bootcamp Owner
Check it out below:
Below are my thoughts on each point:

3. (There won’t be any word of mouth advertising here.)
1. Answer the most important question
Before we get into any type of marketing, we must start by researching our "perfect
client"... this will be your target audience. We have to learn everything we can about
them. By learning their deepest desires, we learn the importance of the why question.
What is the why question?
The why question, is the reason why people train with you.
It’s often surface-level reasons that are broad, such as “losing weight” but instead, a
deeper one like “getting noticed by the opposite sex” is more of a "why" question.
Don’t underestimate the power of sex appeal.
It’s an important factor in a lot of cases... and can even be the main factor in some...
personal training often being one directly related.
Once we have that important "why" question answered, we then have a foundation on
which we can build all of our marketing campaigns.
By learning these questions, you become more aware of the problems your clients and
prospects.

4. You learn more about their fears and needs. This means that when one of the "why"
reasons come up with a potential client, you will know exactly what to say in order to
secure them as a client.
2. Build a Customer Avatar
After learning the "why" question, you can start building a customer avatar.A customer
avatar is an "imaginary" profile of the clients that you want to work with the most. A
profile includes surface area questions and demographics. Demographics questions
include:
- Age
- Sex
- Ethnicity
- Income
- Single or married
- More personal things along these lines
And surface area questions could be one of the following for example:
How much weight do you want to lose?
What foods do you like?
What much muscle do you want to gain?
What types of training have you done before?
What do you enjoy doing as exercise?

5. Here’s a quick, 2-step exercise that can help you:
Step 1: Pick a name and write things you could know about this "Customer Avatar".
For example, his name could be Mike and was a former athlete. He now works as a sales
manager and is married with two kids. He made a commitment to himself that once he
turned 40 he was going to get in the best shape of his life and wants to hire a personal
trainer to guide him along the way.
Remember, this person should be your dream client... somebody who you know you
work well with, someone who stays a client for a long time and somebody who you
think you could enjoy working with.
Step 2: Next, go to Google Images and type of the characteristics that you just
described.
Once you’ve found someone that looks like the characteristics you described, print it out
and hang it on your wall.
This might seem like a silly exercise, but it’s important to visualize who you’re
targeting.
Ask some of the most successful people and trainers in the world and many will often
tell you that everything started off with a vision.

6. 3. Become a specialist
If you train everybody then you train no one.It might like seem a good thing to have a lot
of specialties and to not be boxed down, but clients and customers don’t see that way.It’s
much powerful if you specialize and niche down.
Personal training suddenly becomes a lot more when you "specialize" in a specific area
of it.
Why Should I Specialize?
The more you specialize, the more tuned in and aware you become of your client’s
needs. By learning and constantly working with the same type of people you see the
same types of problems, needs, and desires.
In no time at all, you will become a "pro" in this specific sector.
It’s also a great way to target the affluent. Dan Kennedy’s in his book No B.S. Guide to
Marketing to the Affluent mentions, that the affluent would rather pay top dollar for
expertise than waste and shop around.
If you're finding it hard grasping the idea:
Think about it like this... a handy man is often good at many jobs... wood work,
plumbing and carpentry... but a "specialist" in plumbing can get paid 3x as much just
because he has chosen that specific area to specialise in and become an expert at... even
if the handy man is overall, better skilled in general.
Bedros Keuilian has a good video on this. (Skip to the 15:07 minutes)
4. Build a Referral Marketing System

7. This is the most common way that fitness pros generate new leads. Like any business,
referrals are earned by delivering results while providing a great experience.
Most fit pros don’t have a system in place.
Instead, they rely on “word of mouth” advertising.
Word of mouth advertising is not a system since you can’t track where each lead comes
from. It is very hit and miss and with the high competition rates of other personal
trainers in the area, word of mouth advertising should never be relied on as a full-time
system.
Make it a habit and ask for referrals from all your current clients.
Pat Rigsby wrote a detailed 12-month referral marketing system here
5. Use Surveys
Surveys are another excellent way to research your target market and find out more
about your dream client.You can start by sending an email out to your list asking them
to fill out an online form.
You can use Survey Monkey or Google forms to do this quickly and efficiently. If, on the
other hand, you don't already have a list, then there are some more options.
You can make a poll in Facebook ads, you can send out leaflets to specifically selected
people and in reward of completion you offer some type of a legal "bribe".
Some good questions may include (for potential clients):

8. - What do you look for in a personal trainer?
- Why are you looking for a personal trainer?
- What is your goal when working with a personal trainer?
- Would you prefer a specialist or a more general personal trainer
- What type of approach would you like a trainer to take towards you?
Some good questions may include (for your current list):
- What is/was the reason for you requiring my services?
- What did you like best about the training methods?
- What could be improved?
6. Email Marketing
The most powerful online marketing method, email marketing is perfect for Fit Pros.
It doesn’t cost much to start and is proven to deliver results.
Email Marketing has been the proven way for years upon years that it is the best way to
nurture new leads and build trustworthy relationships.
Here are some tips on getting started:
 Use an email service provider like Aweber or Mailchimp to automate
and deliver emails.
 Provide valuable content that informs and entertains. Marketers call
this "infotainment".
 Write attention-grabbing headlines that provokes curiosity and
makes people open your emails.
 Include Call to Actions at the end of each email when you’re selling

9. 7. Learn to Copywrite
Do you want to learn how to print money?
Because that's exactly what good copy can do for your business. It’s an
automatic cash machine. You can use
your copywriting skills to write better:
- Emails
- Blog posts
- Sales letters
- HeadlinesI took Gary Halbert’s 30-day copywriting challenge to better my
skills.You should do something similar to improve your skills.
8. Facebook Ads
The most powerful lead generation platform for Fit Pros is Facebook Advertising. You
can use Facebook’s vast information to create laser targeted campaigns that
produce tremendous results.
There’s a lot of Fit Pros out there (more than you think) who still don’t use any type of
social media since they don’t see the value, but Facebook is more than just a social
media channel.

10. It’s a marketing beast.
And all Fit Pros should be taking advantage of this beast.
You can write a book on learning and using Facebook Ads and I can't cover everything
here, but here are some tips to get you started:
 Don’t use Facebook to sell. Instead, use it to nurture leads.
 Create custom audiences for your website visitors (set-up re-
targeting campaigns)
 Create a valuable lead-magnet to generate new leads
 If you're using Facebook Ads to generate local leads, remember to
use Facebook’s targeted demographics to create highly targeted
audiences.
 Use Facebook’s retargeting feature in every campaign
9. Google Adwords
Did you know that Google Adwords campaigns generated over $50 billion
in revenue in 2013?
Even though Facebook is perfect for Fit Pros, Google’s advertising channel
dwarfs Facebook.
One advantage that Google has over Facebook is that google searchers search with
buying intent.
You can directly sell off of Google and make a killing.

11. Facebook is more of a fun party where its hard to sell at but good to make new friends
and nurture these friends into sales whereas Google is a audience listening to your
speech with money in their pockets.
Below are 3 tips to get you started:
1 - Use your customer avatar as demographics when setting up your Google Adwords
campaign.
2 - Create effective sales pages including quality copywriting, testimonials, client
transformations and possible discounts on services.
3 - Design these ads differently to the Facebook campaigns. Direct these adverts toward
making the client make the initial, impulse buy instead of signing up to an email list.
10. Content Marketing/Blogging
Another fantastic way to market and promote yourself is to write a blog.
By creating a blog, you can build a reputation.
With a reputation, it will be easier to find and gain clients as well as have the
opportunity to charge more for your services as you may even end up
considered famous in certain circles.
It’s proven that people trust things they read online more than personal brands.
Remember, however, that there are thousands of other fit-pros doing exactly the same
thing. You must think outside the box in order to stand out.
If you're advertising to local clients try this:

12. Try writing about current, local events or trends going on in your area, you can try using
Google’s keyword planner to search for keywords that are being searched for locally and
then easily rank for these search phrases and aim to get the #1 spot on Google for these
phrases.
11. Attend Conferences
Although this may technically be under the category of a marketing strategy, there's no
better way to better yourself than attending conferences.
By surrounding yourself with successful people in your industry, you get to absorb their
lessons and learn.
I've personally attended the Fitness Business Summit, Changing the Game
Conference, IDEA World Fitness and am going to Nor Cal Fitness Summit later this
year.
12. Host Local Seminars
A great way to build authority and expertise in your field is to host local seminars.
By giving away free seminars to corporate companies and to your community you get to
interact and build relationships with them.

13. It's also a great way to generate local leads. By including a call to action at the end of the
talk with your contact information you can see who's interested in what you what to
offer.
How to find the perfect place for a local seminar:
It can be tricky trying to find events to talk about however, make sure that you keep your
eyes peeled for local speaking events.
If there is one thing that highly motivated and successful people will tell you, its that if
at first you fail, keep trying. You will be rejected from a lot of talks, you won't get replies
to a lot of them however its important to stay focused and keep trying.
You can also even try setting up your own seminar. Hire out a local community hall for
an hour or two, offer some incentives to join and host a talk that lots of people can learn
from... for example, losing fat could be one of them.
13. Write a book
The ultimate way to build authority and expertise is to write a book.
For a long time, publishing a book was an arduous process that involved going through
publishers and gatekeepers.
Now, with the help of Amazon self-publishing the gates have been opened.
When you're a published author, even a self-published one, people listen to more
of what you've got to say.
You can use the book to market your services anywhere you go. James Altucher wrote a
great guide on self-publishing here.

14. Dan Kennedy, one of the world's most sought after marketing experts, recommends
writing a book to make people aware of what you're offering. You can give free copies of
your book in local seminars or when you're speaking in conferences.
A book provides tones of credibility, professionalism and is a great way to attract leads
itself... who wouldn't want to train with somebody that has published a book?!
14. Use Compelling Lead-magnets
After you've identified your ideal client and became aware of the importance of building
an email list, what gift can you offer these people to "bribe" them for their email
information?
Eric Cressey's Leadmagnet
Offer them a lead-magnet.
A leadmagnet is a gift used to "bribe" website visitors of their contact information. It's
one of the best ways to add people to your email list.

15. Here are a three simple steps to create compelling leadmagnets:
1 - Use customer surveys to identify your ideal clients desires and problems
2 - Once you've identified your client's desires or problems create a leadmagnet that
solves a problem. Some examples include: workout video, grocery store shopping list,
cookbook recipe, nutrition ebook, workout checklist, etc.
3 - Have a compelling title that makes people click on your offer. Examples include: 5
Secretes Your PT Don't Want you to Know, 42 Fat Loss Recipes, etc..
15. Include Testimonials on your Website Homepage
One of the quickest ways to get prospects to trust you is to include a testimonial page on
your homepage of your site.

16. A great example is on Josh Carter's homepage:
By including a testimonial page on the homepage, a prospect can quickly identify your
results.
This provides a powerful marketing outlet of your services. Also, make sure to include
before/after pictures on your testimonial homepage.
In turn, providing a visual argument of your results.
A great example of before/after pictures is from Andy Morgan's results page:

17. When you scroll through each before/after picture a pop-up appears showing each
person's story. This makes the before/after much more powerful by providing a
background into each person's problem and how the trainer solved their problem with
their guidance.
16. Use the Star, Story, Solution Format for Video Testimonials
The Star, Story, Solution, is a proven format that legendary marketers have been using
for a long time.
It provides a persuasive story of your results. By using video, this gives you an even
more powerful medium to communicate your results. Here are 3 steps to create a star,
story, solution testimonial.
Star - Have one of your clients identify themselves on video. Make sure they give their
name, age, and occupation.
Story - Make sure they give a brief story on their background and the fitness problems
they had before seeking your guidance. Also, if you can make sure they talk about other
trainers they had before you and how they couldn't solve their problems.

18. Solution - Now, make sure they talk about how your guidance provided the answers
they were looking for.
A great example is from Iron Tribe's Fitness Testimonial below:
17. Write Ultimate Guides on Blogs
A great long term marketing strategy is to write ultimate guides and publish them on
your blog.
Sometimes, you won't see the results in the short term, however, long-term thinking,
this a proven way to build authority and that generates results for your business.

19. Neil Patel from Quicksprout, publishes massive guides on his blog that have generated
millions of dollars. It's an awesome way to provide value.
Two examples in the fitness industry are Martin Berkhan from leangains.com and Eric
Cressey. Martin's epic post on Fuckarounditis is a powerful example of all the excuses
people use to not train well.
Eric Cressey's guide to strength specialization is another great example of huge guides
that deliver massive value.
18. Use Mobile Marketing

20. Did you know that over 98% of text messages get read on a daily basis while only 20% of
emails?
Mobile Marketing is the next big wave in lead generation. Americans are spending up
to 2 hours and 46 minutes on their phones and/or tablets according to Flurry.
There are two companies that I know of that serve the fitness industry. Offday
trainer and BoostFitness. Here are some ways to get your email list using mobile
marketing:
 On your business card: "Text (your name) to 55590 to get a free 30-minute
private consultation with me."
 Youtube videos: "Like this video? Text Series to 55590 to get the other series of
videos."
 At the front of your gym/studio: "Text (your name) to 55590 to get a 15%
discount on our services."
 During your Bootcamp: "First 5 people to text bootcamp gets 10% off our
next class.
19. Membership Giveaways
A great way to build your email list and improve your marketing is to give away
memberships quarterly.

21. I recently ran a Facebook campaign for a Beachbody giveway package that resulted in
82 leads in 30 days:
We ran Facebook Ads to this landing page:
20. Create Partnerships with Local Businesses

22. If you just opened a new gym in your own neighborhood what's one quick way to
generate local leads?
By partnering with local businesses.
For example, if there's a hair salon next to your gym you can introduce yourself and
offer their customers a 10% discount on all memberships.
If they have an email list ask them to email their customers your offer. You'll find
frequently that a lot of local businesses serve the same clients.
This creates a win-win situation for both of you. If your service is great then this won't
be a problem.
21. Use Local Keyword Research on Youtube
Youtube is an awesome medium for Fit Pros to provide value and get recognized.
It's a lot harder to stand out with a Youtube Fitness Channel today than 5 years ago, but
you can still generate local leads by using Keyword Research.
Here are some tips on getting started:
 Make a list of the 20 most common exercises you teach. For example,
it can be deadlift, squat, power clean, etc.
 Search for the exercise with your city name using the Google's
Keyword Planner
 Here's a screenshot of the keywords: squats new york, deadlift new
york, and bench press new york. You see each keyword gets various

23. results:
 Make a short video on each exercise showing how to perform each
exercise correctly
 Optimize the keywords in your video with the proper title and tags
 Over time, google will find make your videos and people that are
searching will find you
22. Mobile Apps
Mobile Applications, although not a direct marketing technique is a great tool to have to
show off at conferences or seminars and is a great way to organize and add
professionalism to your business.
Here are 3 of the best:
1 - TrainerFu - TrainerFu is a great app that allows personal trainers to manage,
motivate and engage clients between sessions and can automate this process, too. With

24. the cross-platform service and a free trial with no credit card required, what have you
got to lose?
2 - TrainerIze - TrainerIze is a great app that helps the personal trainer manage
clients' meal plans, training plan and provides great systems to allow both trainer and
client to communicate within the app. It also offers workout tracking capabilities. With
another no credit card free trial, why not gives this a go?
3 - TruTrainerApp - The TruTrainerApp provides some great work solutions if you
are looking to expand to training online and... through your phone! This app allows
clients to choose a "real personal trainer" and ask questions, ask for things and you can
manage all of your clients via this app.
23. Run Transformation Contests
Everybody loves Transformations.
Transformations help to inspire and motivate people.
By frequently running transformation contests, you'll start creating a community of
raving fans.
Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training is a great example of this. By giving away cash to
the winners, he puts his money where is mouth is.
Yes, he loses money on this contests initially but he inspires people to take their fitness
and lives to a whole new level.
You don't need to offer cash prizes in order for this to be successful, either. You can
often free training, free programs and things of this nature.

25. 24. Promote your business at The Local Chamber of Commerce
A lot of corporations are recognizing the importance of their employee's fitness and are
now frequently offering gym and fitness packages as part of their compensations.
By attending your Local Chamber of Commerce meetings, you get to introduce yourself
to local businesses and offer your help.
The U.S Chamber of Commerce represents more than 3 million businesses across the
nation.
25. Write Attention Grabbing Headlines
What's the most important part of any ad?
The Headline.
"On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the
body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty
cents out of your dollar."
-David Ogilvy
By immediately grabbing the attention of the reader, you'll be far ahead of the
competition.
Here are 5 steps to better headlines:
 Practice writing each headline 25 times before deciding on the
winner

26.  Use numbers in your headlines. They have the highest click through
rates
 Negative language is more effective than positive language
 Use clear and concise language
 Use intrigue to provoke curiosity
26. Add a link of your landing in your Instagram bio
Instagram is the fastest growing social network in the world.
It's another fantastic way for Fit Pros to build a brand and generate leads.
Instagram doesn't allow you to link on your posts, but they do allow one link in your bio
profile. Use this opportunity to link to
your landing page.
Fit Pros have an awesome advantage with Instagram since it's a visual platform, you can
communicate your expertise and add value in short fitness videos and great photos.
27. Create an engaging kick ass "about me" section that drives leads
Your about me/us section of your website is often the most visited page on your site.

27. Make sure you start out by talking about how best you can serve your
clients. Talk about how you helped a client overcome a problem.
Tell stories and show your personality. It's also a good place to have lead capture and
testimonials showing your results.
Neil Patel wrote a great guide here
28. Use Pinterest to build your email list
Before you start using Pinterest as a marketing platform, you should first be aware of
who uses Pinterest.
Over 85% of Pinterest users are female. If your ideal client is a female between the ages
of 30-45 then you can use Pinterest to build your email list.
Here are a few steps you can start to build your email list on Pinterest:
 Offer a compelling Leadmagnet which can be a discount coupon to
your fitness, contest, ebook, etc.
 Once a user lands on your pin make sure they go to a clean Landing
Page. I recommend Lead-pages

28.  Give a deadline for the offer and compel the user to take action
 Pin it and make sure that you upload your own content and have a
great caption on each pin.
29. Be Consistent and Automate
It's obvious that you can't focus all your marketing efforts in every platform.
Unless, of course, you outsource somebody.
However, whatever the marketing channel you choose, it's best to be consistent and
create a system that automates this for you.
There are several softwares that can do this for you. I've used Hootsuite before and it
works well.
Hootsuite allows you to schedule (and even bulk schedule) updates to post across nearly
every social platform imaginable... including just recently, Instagram.