The Trackster

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

It seems no matter where you live in the world, that governments are throwing around money left, right and centre.  Here in Australia the government is actually handing out $900 cheques to over half the population!

Now is a great opportunity to do some quick marketing for your PT business around these stimulus packages.  I saw an article on the weekend with a number of examples of companies pricing their products in line with the government handout eg $899 Plasma TV’s and $850 Cruise holidays, and even an example of a business blatantly asking people to spend their government cheques with them.

A recent report from the Australian Centre for Retail Studies suggests that the public will use their handouts on paying off debt, saving and then some spending.  That suggests to me that maybe businesses might be better off not targeting the whole $900, but maybe a portion of that amount.

Most PT’s offer training packages, like 10 sessions for $600 etc.  Why not use those packages in some quick local marketing now and target some of that spending?  An ad in your local paper, or even a mail box drop in your immediate area might work.

I also found a great way that a big gym franchise – Gold’s Gym, is using the stimulus packages in the USA with their own marketing.  Really interesting.

Ok, let me say right from the start, I’m just a normal guy that has gone and tried many different personal trainers.  Off the top of my head I can think of 12 and there are probably a couple more.  My lack of success with so many PT’s is one of the reasons why I built The Trackster – but that’s another blog post altogether.

Not in any order I thought of 4 things that I look for when trying out a PT – location, credentials, price and personality.

Location – Personal training really is reliant on seeing the trainer in a one on one or group situation as many times as you can.  If I want to have some success, I want to see my PT as often as I can, so they have to be close by.  A PT really has to concentrate on getting clients in their local area.

Credentials – Obviously people are going to look for a PT who is qualified and  a member of their national or state body.  But more than that, people are going to look for success stories and testimonials of happy clients.  I am 20kgs overweight so the best incentive for me would be to see that the PT has worked with a client and helped them lose 20+ kilograms!  Before and after photos would just about clinch it for me.

Price – There is a lot of argument in every industry about whether you give out your prices on your websites and marketing material.  For the life of me, I can’t work out why you wouldn’t! You are just being honest and up front with your potential client, and if you are too expensive (and that’s the only reason why you would think not to put your rates on show), then you were never going to get that client that deals on price alone – a potential meeting would have just wasted your time.

Personality – This is a tough one.  Maybe a video on your website of you taking a client through their paces.  Writing a blog on your website.  Help me to understand your thinking and what I can expect in a training session.  I am a mid 30′s male and I would be looking for someone who is going to make me hurt and do the whole marine routine, but an early 20′s female might be looking for someone a lot different.  If you can why don’t you ensure that you can cater for both or maybe just target one type of client.

In conclusion, these are just 4 things that I personally look for in a personal trainer.  If you have several clients now, the best thing you could do is ask them what they looked for, and why they chose you!

Just a quick post to let you know about a very cool tool that I found called wordle.   It basically takes a bunch of text and turns it into a “word cloud”.  There are plenty of examples on their site and you can make a lot of changes to your own word cloud.

I did one with The Trackster’s concept plan.

I thought this was pretty cool, so I’m actually using it on my business cards.  Something a bit different anyway.

Check it out and have fun with some of your own text.