19 Sep 5 Biggest Fitness Marketing Mistakes

Marketing can be polarising, you either love it or see it as a complete pain in the backside.

Don’t get me wrong; at Fitness Pro Digital we love it, but we can see why so many personal trainers struggle with it. It doesn’t come naturally to everybody, and it’s not something that when you qualified you were maybe super confident about.

It’s just like when you learned how to do a bicep curl properly or to not deadlift with a curved back, fitness marketing is simply a learned skill.

It’s something you will get better at over time.

Of course, we’re here to try and make the process much smoother for you, by offering guides and proven methods. However, if you are going to go it alone, then you need to understand a few things first. Here are some of the biggest mistakes we see people make time and time again.

1. Something Fails & Then Say Marketing Doesn’t Work for Me

Marketing is always about TESTING. Let’s say for example you put out 500 flyers in your local area, and you get no response. An intelligent marketer will analyse it, and know it could be one of many variables that made the flyer not succeed. It could have been the targeting, maybe in a different location, it could have pulled in some leads. Alternatively, it could have been that it didn’t generate enough of an emotional response or a compelling enough reason for them to reach out to you. The offer could have just been weak. It was potentially YOUR fault, not the Flyers fault. Learn how to put together compelling offers and good copy and your flyer marketing will flourish.

2. You Spend a Bunch of Time Trying to Figure out ‘SEO’

Your spending hours late at night trying to figure out how you ‘SEO’ your personal training website, and it feels like you are just running into a brick wall. Your time can definitely be better spent getting clients with another strategy that you understand and are comfortable with. SEO isn’t something you can learn overnight, instead focus on putting great content on your site that can get shared. Then if you need a push up the search engines, hire an SEO specialist. Also, there’s no point in getting your website ranking higher if your marketing and even website content suck. Focus on providing value to your clients, learn how to generate leads on your site and THEN focus on the traffic.

3. Ignoring the Power of Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are the fastest way to get clients when created properly with a marketing funnel in place. You can put a message or advert directly into the news feed of your target audience, and watch the leads come in. However, you need a strategy in place first. Once you dial in this strategy, it really can be like turning on and off a tap to pull in as many leads as you like. However, so many people try it and fail because there are numerous variables involved. You have factors like the ad copy, the image, the click through rate, the landing page and it always takes some testing and patience. Fortunately, we have proven strategies that clients can model, as we’ve run and tested Ads since Facebook Ads inception, with amazing results. Here are some quick starter tips:

Quick Facebook Ads Breakdown

1. Tap into the ’emotion’ of the reader
2. Put the ads directly into clients newsfeed
3. Then send to a squeeze page using something like ‘Lead pages.’
4. Offer something of great value that they can’t say NO to.
5. Test out 3-5 different variations of the ad image, copy and landing page.
6. Track everything using a ‘conversion pixel’ which goes on your website.
7. Test small and then scale up.

4. Failing to Stay Consistent

Marketing is also about being consistent. Every day you should be posting on your Facebook page, and sending out regular emails of value to your clients. Maybe making videos is your thing, or you’re good at creating short tips. You must remember that; Zero actions result in zero leads which result in zero sales. If you perform just 5 marketing actions per day, just think about the change in the outcome that can have on your sales. If you think ‘I don’t have enough time’ or ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ then find 10 minutes to sit down and map out how to change that. Ask for help or change up your schedule. Remember, there is always a solution; it’s whether you choose to stay stuck or make the decision to change.

5. Marketing Actions are Directly Linked to your State of Mind

Everyone is looking for the ‘silver bullet’ or latest ‘tactic or strategy’ but truth be told a lot of marketing results come from your mindset. If you’re in a state of fear all, then you’re not likely to go out there with confidence and land clients. Maybe you’re just staying in your comfort zone. Figure out what can you do to change the way you think about your business, do you even think about it as a business? Be honest with yourself and get real. It’s just like a working out, you need to work on these muscles to see growth, then you’ll find that your business radically changes.

Try and think of the times when you’ve felt confident, in the zone and how you’ve picked up clients in this state of mind. If you’re not managing your state, you’re not managing your marketing, and therefore you’re not managing your business as productively as you could be.

Your Next Steps

Hopefully, now you are more aware of your marketing mistakes and what’s holding you back. Now, are you ready to really master marketing and take your business to the next level? If you think it’s too big a step for you to do it alone, give us a call, and maybe we can alleviate some of the pressure for you.