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Why Social Media Should Be Part of Your Health Club’s Marketing Plan
Social media has created a lot of talk, hype and buzz in every industry, but what does it mean for the fitness industry? ...
Past Articles from Step by Step: Marketing
marketing
Why Social Media Should Be Part of Your Health Club’s Marketing Plan
Social media has created a lot of talk, hype and buzz in every industry, but what does it mean for the fitness industry? ...
Four Ways to Manage Your Fitness Business’s Reputation on Facebook
Following are four ways to get “liked" on Facebook to help you manage your fitness facility's reputation and brand....
Small Gestures May Lead to Big Rewards at Your Health Club
Spending money on members who do not spend extra money at your club could pay off in the end....
Gift Cards and Word-of-Mouth Referrals Boost Health Club Revenue
You must have an aggressive, effective and systematic approach to encouraging referrals. ...
Social Media Strategy: A 10-Point Tune-up for Health Clubs
These days, the conversation is shifting from if clubs should integrate social media into their marketing strategies to how to use these tools most effectively to increase exposure, sales and customer engagement....
Drive Quality Traffic to Your Club by Adopting a Town
Getting out into the community should be an important part of the job for club owners and their staffs. ...
Networking Groups Can Help Market Your Health Club on a Budget
Done right, being part of a networking group will provide you with an abundance of leads and new resources to grow your health club business. ...
Elite Female Sports Programs Offer Revenue Potential
The elite female athlete is now a challenging but potentially lucrative market for health clubs to tap into. ...
Your Health Club Experience Is Your Marketing
In this environment, traditional sales and marketing tactics are becoming less important—and your club experience is emerging as your most powerful marketing tool. ...
Nine Health Club Marketing Tips for Today’s Economy
Today, the art of health club marketing is far more complex than it once was. However, many of the same basic principles still apply. ...
Developing a 12-Month Marketing Plan for Fitness Directors
A good marketing plan should include internal initiatives, external initiatives and team development....
Five Business Lessons for the Health Club Industry that I Learned from Buffett
Looking outside the fitness industry for business practices can lead club owners to some new truths....
Making Your Health Club Viral in Three Steps
Your club should be viral. But what is viral, you may be asking? Viral is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message. It generally refers to viral Internet marketing, but it can be used to spread the word about your club in other ways too....
To Survive, the Fitness Industry Must Rethink Fitness
Winning in our industry has essentially been about stealing market share—we’re all fighting to get our share of the membership pie. But what if we grew the size of the whole pie? If we could generate new demand for fitness, our growth potential wouldn’t be limited by the current zero-sum game...
Mastering the Game When Employees Use Social Media
The social Web has hit the mainstream, fundamentally changing the way companies communicate with customers and promote themselves. In addition to the formal marketing campaigns that incorporate Facebook, Twitter, YouTube...
Setting Up a Press Release Campaign
Now that you have established a special events calendar (see my December column), it is time to set up a press release campaign. The goal of a special events and press release program is to generate nonmember traffic to your events...
Drive Quality Traffic with Special Events and Public Relations
Special events are a cost-effective way of generating referrals and bringing new prospects to your club...
Five Tired Phrases Health Club Owners Should Avoid
If you’re using the following five phrases in your club marketing materials, it’s time to revitalize your copy with sparkling, specific language that zeroes in on why your members love your health club...
Differentiate Your Way to Success
“Differentiate or die” has been the mantra of business leaders ever since a book bearing those words as its title emerged nearly a decade ago. Now more than ever, differentiation is the key to success in today’s resource-constrained, highly competitive business environment...
Health Fair Marketing Can Pay Off for Your Fitness Facility
Six tips to help health club owners make health fair marketing pay off....
What Sets You Apart? It’s Your USP
Most independent club owners haven’t given any thought about who they are, what they are and why people should join their club...
How to Never Run Out of Leads
Most fitness business owners don’t really know how to market their business, and that’s because they’ve never been taught how...
Five Deadly Personal Trainer Marketing Mistakes
Personal trainers are typically caring, warm-hearted and passionate people. Unfortunately, they are also typically awful marketers...
How to Use Podcast Power in Your Marketing
Imagine being able to deliver audio advertising and informational content to thousands of potential customers and existing clients....
Five Strategies to Close a Membership Sale Prior to Presenting Prices
You know the routine. A guest visits your club, you go through the small talk, show them the facility, talk about the amenities and answer a few questions...
Internal Marketing: Six Ways to Uncover the Goldmine in Your Club
Having a marketing plan is often the difference between a successful club and an unsuccessful one...
How to Host a Get Fit Sampler Event: A Marketing Idea to Open Minds
Are your members creatures of habit? Do they do the same things day in and day out?...
Branding vs. Direct-Response Marketing
As an independently operated gym or health club, should your marketing efforts focus on building your brand, or should you focus on getting people through the door quickly through direct-response marketing...
Seven Tips to Bump Up Your Marketing Through E-mail and E-newsletters
Many clubs use formal e-mail newsletters as a marketing vehicle...
How To Market Using The Stages of Change Model
How much time and money has your health club spent selling to people who aren’t ready to change...
Why You Need to Add Blogging to Your Club’s Marketing Mix
For many of us over the age of 40, we only have a peripheral awareness of Internet communities such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace...
How to Use News to Generate Club Sales
Does this sound familiar? The targeted direct mail piece you recently did generated a paltry four new members from the community you have been serving for the last 15 years and cost you upwards of $3,000...
26 Creative Marketing Ideas for Health Clubs
Marketing your club for new members has become more of a challenge. You are required not only to work a little harder but a lot smarter. The traditional forms of advertising, such as print media and direct mail, seem to result in very little, if any, response in many markets....
Top Nine Tips for Marketing Your Personal Training Business
Are you struggling to find new clients or prospects to fill your pipeline? I’m sure many of you are. ...
Creative Wizards Need Not Apply: How To Develop Effective Marketing Materials
Good news: Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to be a creative wizard to develop effective marketing materials for your health club....
New Year, New Plan
As fitness professionals and club operators, we are constantly telling our members about the importance of tracking workouts so that they can determine what is working and how much progress they are making....
Eight Deadly Marketing Sins
Many managers often make mistakes that they don’t even know about. They are akin to novice exercisers who start a fitness program on their own, making unnecessary and costly mistakes. ...
Seven Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in Your Health Club
Health club owners are often so busy putting out operational fires that marketing and advertising programs tend to end up on the back burner. In turn, all health club owners tend to make the same mistakes over and over. Here are seven of those mistakes: ...
Grow Smart with Measurement
Personal trainers manage and track a client’s workout program so they can accurately measure weight loss and fitness goals. Measurement is a motivation tool. Measurement helps your members get fit by getting smart about their bodies because if you can measure it, you can ...
The Difference Between Knowing and Doing: 7 Tips to Improve the Success of Your New Member Campaigns
Everyone knows the best way to drop that spare tire is by exercising and eating right. If the idea is so simple and so obvious, then why doesn’t everyone have glorious buns of steel?...
The Invisible Secret: The Fastest Way to Turn Your Health Club into a Marketing Powerhouse
Sizzling sales copy. Dramatic headlines. Irresistible offers. Emotional stories. Unique selling propositions. A call-to-action that makes your reader dive for the phone. That’s what a lot of people think of when they think “marketing.” ...
Four Truths About Health Club Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk
Health club marketing is an area that has long been studied and perfected by fitness professionals and health club owners looking to be more successful. Over the years, a number of techniques have become truths that all club marketing pros adhere to...
How to Profit From Referrals
There's no such thing as a slam dunk when it comes to selling your fitness services. However, if there's any type of prospective client who is close to being a slam dunk, it is a referral....
Four Proven Steps To Networking
Networking is an often underestimated but powerful business tool. Motivational speaker Bob Burg summed it up best by saying, "It isn't just what you know, and it isn't just who you know...
Promoting Your Fitness Facility Through Free Public Speaking
Let’s face it: people are wary of health clubs. Many have joined at least one before and failed to get results. Chances are it was due to their lack of effort, but blaming them isn’t going to help your bottom line. ...
Maximizing Your Referral Promotions
For anyone in the health club business, referrals are a critically important component to sales success and can even account for as much as 60 percent of a club’s new membership sales, according to some industry reports....
Partnering For Profits
John Agoglia, a former personal trainer, reveals how clubs can boost their marketing efforts by partnering with local businesses....
Developing an E-Mail Marketing Campaign
E-mail is fast becoming the preferred communication vehicle, whether you are the sender or the receiver. For health clubs e-mail marketing can be more effective than standard marketing strategies, such as direct mail and traditional advertising, because it’s cost-effective, immediate, based on a fairly intimate ...
Doing Well by Doing Some Good For the Community
Sonia Ricotti, founder of Club Training Forum, reveals how clubs can increase their sales and their bottom line. ...
Tuning Up Your Sales Team for the New Year
Casey Conrad, a 20-year veteran of the fitness industry, tells you how to tune up your sales team for the new year. ...
Archived Marketing Articles Appearing in the Magazine
Maximizing Your Referral Promotions
For anyone in the health club business, referrals are a critically important component to sales success and can even account for as much as 60 percent of a club’s new membership sales, according to some industry reports....
Offbeat Marketing Ideas
This month, we're in the third of six Marketing Matters articles for the year that focus on offbeat marketing ideas. Now that we are into the summer months...
Off the Beaten Track
For those of you who might be tuning into this column for the first time in 2004, it's useful to know that each of the six marketing matters features...
Know What You Are and Who You're Marketing To
Would you go to a Chinese restaurant for a good steak? At the same time, the Chinese restaurant wouldn't feature steaks in any of its marketing efforts....
Flood Your Club With Referrals
Getting flooded with referrals wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be wonderful to have tons of referrals coming into your personal training department...
Do Them a Favor and Close
Two salesmen come back to the office after a day of selling and one salesman says to the other, Boy, did I have a lot of good interviews today, and the...
Casey Conrad's Marketing to Seniors
For many people, the word conjures up images of little blue-haired women and frail old men cluelessly driving 45 mph in the left lane. That may have been...
Casey Conrad's Marketing Matters
If you are childless, perhaps you've noticed them. If you are a parent particularly one who has children under the age of 15 you are living it day to...
Marketing Matters
The Men's Market Go to your local bookstore and peruse the marketing section. Look for books on gender marketing and what you will find is quite amazing....
Casey Conrad's Marketing Tutorial
The Unspoken Opportunity: Marketing to Women It's hard to believe but this month's Marketing Tutorial marks the beginning of this column's third year....
