How I Turned Two Hours Work Into Ten New Clients

In my article 6 Reasons You're Not Making Six Figures; I briefly mentioned an advertisement that I'd placed in veterinary clinics and how it was the most profitable piece of A5 paper I'd every produced. After several emails asking me for more information about this promotion, I thought I'd give you more details about how and why it worked so well for my personal training business.

There's an obscure and rarely used saying that goes along the lines of location, location, location (you may have heard it). Most people immediately relate this to the physical location of their personal training business or fitness centre, while in reality, this mantra should be applied to all of your marketing and promotional activities as well.

Whenever it's time to design a new marketing or promotion strategy, I create an avatar of who my material will be targeted towards before I decide where I will be presenting it. I decide if they're male, female or if I'm targeting both, their approximate age, income, goals etc. etc.

Once you have this information you're in a much better position to find locations to present your marketing materials.

I decided to design a promotion targeted at wealthy pet owners. My avatar was female, aged between 30-45 years, that was doing some basic exercise a few days a week, but is not achieving their desired goals due to perceived time constraints. This may seem quite broad on the surface, but that's when advertisement positioning comes into play.

My strategy was simple; get my ad in front of wealthy women that love their pets more than themselves.

I called several veterinary clinics in my area and made appointments to speak with the owners or managers. I brought along my sales material (advertisement, testimonials, qualifications etc.) and pitched my idea. Most were open to the venture and in return I offered them free training sessions.

I made a simple flyer with the headline:

Your Pets Health Is Vitally Important To You...

When Was The Last Time You Invested In Your Own?

They loved the concept and the confrontational nature of my advertisement and in turn we created a similar, reverse targeted advertisement for them which I displayed in my training studio.

What else was on the poster?

• The flyer had a before and after image: I chose one of my clients who was quite overweight sitting on the couch as the before and the after shot was them much leaner, healthier and happily walking their dog in the park.
• I had two testimonials, both of which mentioned their busy lifestyles, families and pets and how they are now able to enjoy more social activities than BEFORE they began personal training with me.
• My contact details and a picture of me with my friends dog.

I also offered the potential of a service where we could train as a group in the park WITH their dogs on Saturdays and it was just about socializing the pets, throwing balls and things like that (very simple).

This was a very successful promotion for me and I ran it from time to time, generally in the beginning of Spring when my target market was most vulnerable to this kind of advertising.

Give it a try and let me know how you go!

Ben

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Six Reasons You're Not Making Six Figures