There are many reasons why having your own website is a great marketing strategy, but maybe the most important reason to have your own personal trainer website is the enormous amount of new highly qualified leads you can generate.
By now I’m sure you’ve heard all the fitness marketing experts from Ryan Lee, to Jim Labadie, to Eric Ruth all talk about the importance of having your own website to promote your personal training business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Even the “regular” personal trainers on the many fitness professional forums tout the success they’ve achieved by adding a personal trainer website to their list of marketing weapons.
There are many reasons why having your own website is a great marketing strategy, but maybe the most important reason to have your own personal trainer website is the enormous amount of new highly qualified leads you can generate.
As I’m sure you already know, without a way to attract qualified prospects, you have no way to get new clients. And without generating new clients…
…you simply don’t have a business.
My personal training website generated more leads (and new clients) than I could handle on my own. I actually had to hire other trainers to take on the new clients. Since then, I’ve even transitioned the clients I trained myself to my other trainers so I could focus more of my time on building my other business, www.fitnesswebsitedesign.com.
The biggest lead generator that I’ve used for my own personal training company, Guaranteed Fitness Solutions, is offering free reports on various health and fitness related topics that my visitors can download.
I have a page on my site strictly for this purpose at…
http://www.guaranteed-fitness.com/downloads.htm
Feel free to check it out for ideas you can use on your fitness website.
I offer several reports that cover the most pressing concerns my potential clients have, and the reports give them tons of valuable information they can apply to their specific needs/wants.
While I could sell these reports as mini e-books, instead I give them away freely to anyone who wants them. Why?…
Giving away free information establishes me as an expert in the eyes of my site’s visitors. It helps build rapport with them, even thought they’ve never met me.
But here’s the real power of this strategy…
Anytime someone downloads one of these free reports, they are required to provide me with their name and e-mail address. The report is then e-mailed directly to them and their contact info is added to my database automatically.
After a few days pass (I give them time to read and apply the information in the reports), I send them an e-mail asking if they have any questions about the report or if there’s any way I can help them with their goals.
I do NOT try to sell them on my services. Instead, I let them know that I’m genuinely concerned about their problems and I offer to answer any questions they may have or offer any additional help they need. I give them my e-mail address and phone number, and tell them to contact me if they need anything. No question is too small.
This goes a long way to further my rapport with them. It lets them see that I’m a professional that wants to help them with their goals and problems, not a pushy salesman who only wants their money.
By handling my lead generation this way, I’ve always got a constant supply of fresh, pre-qualified leads (after all, they did request information from me) that I can covert into paying clients.
Most of the time, they do contact me for more information. The ones that don’t get another follow up e-mail a week later just to check on how they’re doing. This does so much to develop rapport with them that they view me as an expert and I become their source for all the fitness related questions they have.
Using my own personal trainer website to apply this single strategy alone has done more to build my fitness business than any other marketing “secret” I’ve ever applied. I highly recommend giving it a try for yourself.
