The Trackster

The Trackster is online software that helps Personal Trainers communicate with and motivate their clients.

The Trackster has a Twitter account which you can follow @thetrackster. Every day we post out some links or something we think you might find interesting. Mostly around IT issues and online marketing for Personal Trainers.

Every Monday we post out the most popular links that we tweeted.  Here are last week’s most popular -

Five Things to Consider Before Launching Your Own Company bit.ly/wYuwKP via @smallbizbee Lots of new PT’s that should have a read.

— The Trackster (@TheTrackster) January 27, 2012

Your Social Media and SEO Game Plan for 2012 : @ProBlogger bit.ly/AykLCA — The Trackster (@TheTrackster) January 26, 2012

Before-You-Market Marketing | Magazine Archives | Magazine Archives | Fit Pro bit.ly/Ad5pA3Getting your systems right first #pt

— The Trackster (@TheTrackster) January 26, 2012

7 ways to go from zero clients to thriving boot camp franchise using online marketing tactics bit.ly/xbhXVF#ITforPT Good basics. — The Trackster (@TheTrackster) January 24, 2012

How To Close A Personal Training Client When You are Scared Of Sales bit.ly/wW4h4n from ptbusinessinabox.com.au

— The Trackster (@TheTrackster) January 23, 2012

If you have any IT questions or problems, get in contact with us on Twitter or comment below and we’ll try and get your PT business on track.

I just read this article on GigaOm.com that discusses a new study that reveals that a flexible workforce is more healthy and therefore more productive.

This isn’t the only place that I come across these studies or articles.  It is beyond doubt that a healthier workforce is a more productive workforce.

It got me thinking about how Personal Trainers can use this info to help their business.  Maybe a PT can do a little research in this area and put together a package that they could sell to a local company.  Put together some sort of lunchtime bootcamp.  How about a group session before or after work.  Make it fun and challenging and show the boss that it could also be a team building program.

Show the companies why it’s a good idea for their business, through your research.  Show them a plan to make their workers healthier.  And get out there and sell your services.

Love to hear if anyone has put together a program for their local business and what type of success they have had.

December is my favourite month of the year. Everyone is winding down and getting ready for the Christmas and New Year break.

It’s also a great time to start thinking about next year and your fitness business. I just came across a great article by Kellie Sanders from PT Business Success with some great tips on the 5 must haves for your 2012 plan.

Kellie is someone who I’ve linked to before on this blog and that’s because she gives out great content and is really helpful. If you are a new Personal Trainer, or even “a” Personal Trainer, go to her website and read some of the great info she has on there and maybe get in touch with Kellie and see how she can help you.

A lot of people aren’t that comfortable with writing regularly on the internet, especially some PTs who prefer the personal contact of one on one and helping their clients.

Why not try something different? Everyone is fairly familiar with YouTube. Most people’s phone has video recording of some sort now. Or what about trying audio. You can record quick audio files using something like AudioBoo, which is free to use.

Every PTs website has to be constantly updated and most will have a blog or facebook page that needs regular content. You can record audio at anytime and upload it very easily.

Here’s a quick example of an AudioBoo that can go on your website.

People often feel a lot of pressure updating their blogs, facebook and twitter. Thinking a little differently and using different tools, you can make it easy on yourself to update your website.

A topic all Personal Trainers should be interested in is Local Area Marketing Online. The guys at Smart Company have a free webinar next week on the 4th of August.

For more information about the webinar, visit their website.

It’s important for every small business to stay up to date on the latest trends and news, and by taking an hour of your day you can learn how to improve your marketing.

The elevator pitch for The Trackster blog -

The Trackster blog is written to help Personal Trainers become better business people.

We do this by -

• Writing articles that help PTs improve their business skills;
• Point PTs to great resources around the web;
• Interview specialists in different areas of business;
• Interview successful Personal Trainers that can pass on helpful information.

By clarifying what we do here, hopefully that will help all our editorial decisions in the future.  When we decide what type of post to write next, the first thing we ask is whether that post will help achieve our aims for this blog?

Have you got an elevator pitch for your business or blog?  Love to hear about it in our comments below.

A few months ago I went down to Sydney for a big Fitness expo. I’ve been to this expo a few times, and I’m always talking with PTs and meeting them to talk about The Trackster. This time however, I couldn’t help but notice how I looked compared to everyone else around. That’s right, I’m overweight!

So I’ve been on the lookout for a PT for a while, and then I received a flyer in the mail.

I thought this might be a good chance to talk about what made me pick Brooke to be my PT.

Results

The first thing I noticed on this flyer was the results that were achieved by this guy -

He lost over 17 kg and 10% body fat.  Knowing that I needed to lose just a little bit more than that, his results really stood out for me.  If he could do that, then maybe I could.

Price

I’m not going to lie to you, the price of the package seemed to good to be true.  Obviously being around the industry I know what is a normal charge for a PT session or a Bootcamp session.  In this package I get to attend 7 training sessions a week for 12 weeks, for only $399!  That works out to be about $5 a session if I go to every single one.

I figured that I didn’t have a lot to lose.  Now I’m not sure that’s a fantastic marketing strategy, but it seems to be working for Bootcamps Australia because they are a growing franchise.  It would actually be very interesting to find out if this pricing strategy is going to work over the long term.

The Challenge

This appealed to me greatly.  12 Week Challenge!  I’ve done a few bootcamps before and they were all 4 weeks.  It seemed like if I could do this for 12 weeks, I could really see some results and changes in my body.  Plus I’m a male, and just the word challenge got me going!

Incorporating Nutrition

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I’ve been to many PTs, but I’ve never been to one that also worried about what I ate.  Some have mentioned it in passing, but this PT seems to make it a part of the training.  And after 3 weeks I can vouch that the nutrition is a really strong focus.

Again, I thought this was going to be another way of being able to achieve the results I wanted to by the end of 12 weeks.

All four of these things all stood out from that one flyer.  Obviously I called Brooke up and we talked about the program, but I was essentially sold just from her marketing.

Maybe I’m not like every other PT client out there, but I think there is some things you might be able to learn and incorporate into your marketing and how you attract clients to your Personal Training business.  The biggest one for me is past results.  Show, either by photos or videos, what sort of results that you’ve helped others to achieve.  It’s very powerful marketing.

It would be great to hear what you think. And if you have any marketing that has worked really well for you, I’d love to read about it in the comments.

Do you want to improve your email marketing? Do you know how to even get started email marketing? Today we talk with Natalie Giddings from Pollen Marketing. Natalie just wrote an ebook on email marketing called Effective Email Marketing Guide.

Natalie talks about why PTs should get into email marketing, how to build up our database to send emails to and goes over some of the software out there to help Personal Trainers get their email campaigns started.

Here are some fun facts about Natalie -
Favourite Book – Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Favourite Movie – Mission Impossible (the first one!)
Favourite Band – The Killers
Favourite Website – Marketing Profs
Hero/Role Model – Hillary Clinton

Some links mentioned in the interview -

www.mailchimp.com

www.constantcontact.com

You can follow Natalie on Twitter @nataliegiddings and Natalie’s website is www.pollenmarketing.com.au.

Updated: Below is the full transcript of the interview with Natalie.

Craig Millman: Hi Natalie! Thanks for joining me today. You’ve just released an ebook about email marketing specifically for small businesses. In terms of email marketing, what’s the biggest benefit and why should Personal Trainers get into email marketing?

Natalie Giddings: [beeping noise] Okay, well my phone’s just gone off – sorry! – but I turned it off.

All right, so with email marketing essentially the reason why I think it’s an important one, more than anything else, I guess, is the dollar per spend. So, if you do take the time to build up your own list not only do you get the benefit of the return investment – so, the numbers are all there and I’ve seen the statistics over and over again – but if you do take the time to build that marketing list you can then even onsell additional services, you can perhaps even begin to do successful events, all the type of marketing that builds your core base and has a greater impact on your bottom line.

And if you get into a relatively good habit of creating news stories, even press releases and all those types of things that engage people, it just builds your brand overall. You can repurpose that content, all that type of thing that make that bottom line process, because we want to get people in with the intention that they’re going to buy your services.

We can automate that buying process, even quicken it so that people make decisions about whether they want to use your services, your Personal Training services, or not, in a really short period of time. Even just following up and making phone calls to one client, as you know, takes a lot of time. If you can start to get that in an automated, online process that is one publication but delivered to many, you can start to see a terrific turnaround in the way that people reflect upon you and even just log-in or purchase your services.

Craig: So, for a lot of Personal Trainers they might not have a massive database of people to contact so what’s the best way to start an email marketing campaign. I mean, what’s the best way to get our list going?

Natalie: Okay, the best way to start a list is to ask permission of current or past clients. Don’t automatically assume that because they’ve used you once that they want to start receiving email newsletters from you, but it can be just a really informal, introductory email saying: By the way, we’re going to start publishing news. So, get that email out to your current database list, no matter how big or small, and just get their permission. Just say: We’re going to add you to this marketing list. Please let us know if that’s not okay. So then you can start with people that you’ve previously serviced and had a relationship with, and then you’re not starting from zero, which will probably boost your confidence.

And then the next thing you should definitely do is think about having a resource of some description that’s useful. So, if we’re talking about Personal Trainers there’s a whole myriad of tips and cheat-sheets or, I don’t know, warm-up activities that people could do, homework that they could do when they’re not being personal trained. Basically offer that up as a report or a PDF or a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation. Offer that up on your blog or website as an incentive for people to include their email address.

Personal Trainers, we know that they’re obviously geo-specific, so you want to make sure that not just email address but a post code would be relevant because we know that you need to be present to train them. So at that point have that on the top, right-hand side of your website, which is the most visually present place, so to speak, on your website.

And then people, basically you’re exchanging a valuable piece of information for the responsibility, because it’s a responsibility, also the permission to contact, to have your news go out to them. So it’s something that, look, it doesn’t have to be….

Don’t overthink it; just something really quick and something really simple that you know people continually ask you about. Answer that question in one PDF. Or, I know that it’s really hard to remember all the steps that my Personal Trainer has told me about warming up. I forget them every single time and I have to go and find out where I wrote it down. Maybe having that as a useful tip to start with would be a great incentive, and no doubt you’ve got a useful and unique way of warming up if you’ve done your job well. So, just something like that. Think of it as an exchange for value.

Craig: So in terms of getting started, again, do you have any recommendations for email marketing providers? I mean some software that you recommend specifically?

Natalie: Look, really we’re spoiled right now. We’re in a place where there’s a whole heap of different solutions out there. My personal favorite is mailchimp.com. I don’t actually use that for all of my clients. It depends on what their needs are. It does seem to have all of the generic uses whilst keeping the cost right down, things like sign-up forms so you can create a sign-up form to your mailing list or automatically plug that into your website. And it’s just very intuitive and easy to use. I mean, there’s nothing better than something that’s easy to use. There’s lots of great videos. But any of them – Constant Contact – oh, any of them at that top tier, they all copycat each other anyway to get your services.

Craig: Yeah, and they’re all easy to use. Like, for someone who might not be that confident on a computer they’re pretty easy to use still.

Natalie: Yeah. The other thing: you mentioned that some of your interviews and part of the reason you do the series is to be useful and helpful, so what you could possibly do, and like you do, you put it on YouTube. Go to YouTube. The technical stuff, if you get stuck, I always go to YouTube and say “how to do,” and there’s just about how to do just about anything.

So, MailChimp does tend to be just that much simpler, if you ask my opinion, so that’s why it’s usually a good starting point. If your database starts to really grow and you need some really serious features then you might want to explore some of the other ones.

Craig: Yeah. I think it’s one of the cheapest, too. Off the top of my head I think you can send out to 1,000 people before they start charging. Is that right?

Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. It depends on how many times per month, or it’s limited times per month, but even just the way that you manage, because part of a great email campaign is getting profile information about your target audience and perhaps sending out some snippet questions, and all of that is relatively easy to do straight out of MailChimp.

Craig: Right. Okay, so just to finish up today, what’s one tip that you can give a Personal Trainer today that wants to get into it? What’s the one tip that you can give us today just to get started?

Natalie: Look, it’s not necessarily directly related to email marketing as such but it is definitely one of those traits that will work well with any email marketing, and in fact any marketing, and I think that’s the keyword of Personal Training – it’s personal, it’s people. So, personality: I would set up a campaign to be directly from the person who runs and owns or trains the clients so that they’re already introduced to that Personal Trainer, if they sign up for the mailing list, well before they sign up for the services. They can get to know the personality and what’s expected and some of the benefits before they’ve even signed up for a session. They can come to love that person well before they sign up.

And it’s really all about trust in people and connecting, so have photos of your trainers on the messages. This includes all of your marketing channels. And really think about personal branding all of your marketing channels in that way.

Craig: Excellent. Thanks a lot for your time today, Natalie. I really appreciate it.

Natalie: No problem! No problem at all, a pleasure. Thank you, Craig.

Craig: Thanks a lot.

Have you got all your information backed up?

This past week a Melbourne based hosting company was subjected to cyber-attack and lost all its data, which included over 4000 websites! Those websites included many many small to medium size businesses that lost all their data, without any backup.

It’s probably a good time as any to investigate your own back up systems in place for your business. Why don’t you check with your web developer or IT guy and check that there is back ups of your website. What would happen if your business happened to be hacked? How quickly could you be back up and running as per normal?

What about on your own computers? What systems do you have in place to make sure all your data is backed up and secure? A good back up system should have all your data in three separate places. A good suggestion would be to have an online back up system like Mozy or Dropbox. Add to that some sort of hard disk that is backed up onsite, and then another hard disk which is kept offsite (or at least away from your first hard disk).

This might seem a little extreme but it certainly is better than losing all your information and having to start from scratch. A little bit of peace of mind is certainly worth paying for.

This week we are talking to Mike LeBoss. Mike has been in the fitness industry for 35 years and is the Founder and Owner of MeFit Fitness Centres, which have three studios in Portland, Newport and Sheridan in Oregan, USA. He is also the Executive Director for NAFC which is a fitness certification company.

Mike gives us some great insights into his career and some tips to becoming a successful Personal Trainer.

You can find out more about Mike here -

www.mefit2.com
www.nafctrainer.com

We’d love to hear what you think about the interview in the comments below.