Joshua Carter on Fitness Marketing with Direct Mail

Chris McCombs (CM):  Josh, who are you and what do you do?

Joshua Carter (JC):  I own a personal training business in the Los Angeles area.  I also own two gyms; I own a North Hollywood gym in North Hollywood and Carter Fitness that I recently

opened up in West Hills.  I do some personal training, but my focus has currently building my personal training clients with my staff trainers.

CM:    Where do most trainers go wrong when it comes to advertising?

JC:    My experience has been that they just advertise poorly.  They just say, “I am Joe Trainer, I’ve got big muscles” and then they’ve got some picture of them with their

shirt off flexing or something like that.  If you look at trainers’ business cards, you’ll see that a lot of them are literally them flexing or in some body builder show or

something like that and that just doesn’t work.  That’s not what people want to see.  For one it’s very intimidating and for two, it doesn’t give them any information other

than, I guess this guy works out.  It might appeal to a small percentage, but the vast majority of people, that’s just going to turn off, they don’t want to look like a body

builder or — it’s just a poor way of doing it.

CM:    So what kinds of personal training marketing techniques do work?

JC:    I’ve had my best experience has been, well, two things; one is having an excellent location where just by the fact that you have your doors open and people see where

you’re business is.  You’ve got a great location and people see your shingles and they walk in, that’s one, location, location, location.  Two is definitely direct marketing has

been by far the best with the second being things like advertising in newspapers, but direct marketing has garnered the best response for me.

CM:    What kinds of direct marketing do you do?

JC:    I’ve done all types, I’ve owned a gym for the past five years and in those years I have done direct response gym marketing every year and the first few times I really screwed it up. 

I’ve learned as I went and what does and doesn’t work is, you can’t just say, here’s my gym, it’s got cool equipment, come on it.  Well, so does Ballys and 24 Fitness and every

other gym around the corner has got more or less the same stuff you do, so you’ve got to give them a different reason to come in. 

What works is you’ve got to give them some sort of amazing offer.  Some sort of something to draw them in right off the bat.  An incredible offer is always a great thing or some

sort of headline, something to grab their attention other than, here I am, and I’m great.

CM:    What kind of ads do you use?

JC:    I use primarily the two-step which is something that was shown to me by my mentor who really described the process for me and since implementing that, I’d say my

leads have increased greatly.  It’s amazing the type of response you get from that.  The two-step is; step one would be the offer, make an irresistible offer, have some low

barrier of entry with a high-perceived value.  From that, the step two would be; somehow to capture their information with the low barrier of entry.  If I said, you have to come

into my gym and I’ll give you something for free.  Well, that’s kind of a high barrier of entry because coming in, gyms can be intimidating or even meeting your personal trainer

can be intimidating.  But if I said, just shoot me an email here and I’ll give you something for free, like a free e-fat loss tip book or something like that, but when they

email me I’ve got their name, their email address, maybe I get their phone number or something.  That works great, so even if they don’t buy the first time out, I’ve got their

information and they’re going to end up on my targeted list where I’m going to email them once or twice a month and say, here’s what’s going on with us.  Here’s the results we’

re getting at my facilities.  Here’s – we’ll maybe send them some testimonials, more free tips every month and eventually they’ll come to know me and value my opinion and

eventually buy something.  Maybe buy one of my e-book products, maybe come in and sign up for my personal training or sign up at one of my gyms just as a member.  But they get

on my list and they stay on my list.

CM:    How do you get your unique offer out there?  Do you use direct mail?  If so, what kinds of direct mail do you use?

JC:    I use direct mail and what I’ve found is what I go to is just a couple of different companies that offer some different services.  They’re pretty similar and the prices

have come down so much in the past years because of things like competition and stuff.  I want to say that the per piece price has dropped so drastically that it makes it much

easier.  You never know exactly what’s going to work so you need to tinker with it.  I’ve done ads where I’ve sent out different ads at the same period to see which one had a

better response.  So I’ve taken it to these places and spent, I think the last thing I sent out was just 5,000 pieces, which cost me $1,500.00.  

If I buy eight mailers, — postcards, and I use a targeted list.  I said, I want these households to have x amount of income.  I want them to be within a two-mile radius of my

facility.  I want them to have purchased a high-end leisure — something within the past two years like a boat or a high-end car or something like that, so I know that these

people have disposable incomes.  Let’s face it, the training is not necessarily a cheap thing, it’s not going to get your nails done once a week, it’s a high-end purchase that

you need to make sure that the people you are targeting can afford.  So, by purchasing a targeted list from one of these places and these places are great, it’s like a one stop

shop.  Where you get the list, they’ll help you design it if you don’t know how to design it.  they’ll — if you tell them this is the offer I want to do, they’ll come up with a

design for it for free and then they’ll charge you — I don’t remember what the price is per piece, but they handle all the bulk mailing, the send it out, the whole thing. 

They’ll send you the extra post cards so you can actually have extra postcards to hand out to people by hand and it works great.

CM:    How do you find these places?  Where do you look, in the Yellow Pages or –?

JC:    I have been referred to places.  You could do just a search on the internet for direct mail.  I can recommend a couple of places that I have used; Future Fitness has

worked very well for me in the past, and — I’m drawing a blank on that name — but Future Fitness was the company with whom I did my last one and it was 5,000 pieces and I want

to say it was somewhere in the $1,500.00 range.  If you break that down, if I sent out 5,000 pieces and all I need to pay for it with the prices I charge, is two clients.  If I

get two clients to sign up with me then I’m breaking even, anything above that is gravy.  Your response is bound to be higher than that with the type of two-step marketing that

I’ve come to use.  The irresistible offer, the low barrier of entry — I say, you can call me, I’ll give you this thing,  email is even better because then you can just shoot

them back an email and say, Alright, let’s get you in here and I’ll get you a free work out and stuff and it’s worked out great.

CM:    What kind of response do you get back?

JC:    Well, the first response I get is — I make sure that a lot of the offers that I have out there are for free reports.  I tend to target those, like one of them I’ve got,

‘Weight loss secrets, here’s how to get the body you want in less time’ and ‘here’s some weight loss myths’ and stuff like that.  So, these people go and download the free e-

book and here’s another method; once they download the e-book, I capture their name, obviously, and their email address so I email them back and I say, hey, if you downloaded

that report, I can answer any questions, let me know.  Here’s my phone number and at the end of the report I tack on there, here’s a gift certificate for a free training session

or whatever it is.  A free fitness evaluation where we’ll measure your body fat, test this and that, take you through a free workout, so that’s at the end of the report.  It

just says to print it out and bring it in anytime you want and we’ll give you a free workout.

So, the response has been really good, but percentage wise, it’s hard for me to say, I haven’t run my recent numbers, but I will say it’s probably about ten times as good as

when I just ran your standard, come visit us at the gym and we have a 10% off this month.  You’ve got to give them a reason.  A call to action, so that they act on it straight

away, like, offer expires soon or we’re only accepting five more clients this month or something that makes it seem like it’s a limited time offer or something to create a sense

of urgency that will make them respond as soon as possible.

CM:    Is there some kind of system you use when you format your ad?

JC:    Yes, certainly.  You want to — obviously, there are different formulas and you’ve got to test and see what works in your area because what works in one area might not

work in another.  So, you suggest a problem — well, here’s what I did this time; we created an ad that says, “Who else wants to lose 15 pounds in 28 days?”  I had a client that

actually lost 15 pounds in 28 days.  I did a before and after picture.  And I made sure that she stuck to the diet and did the workout routine I said and all this other stuff,

and then what I did was I put that on a post card that said, who else wants to lose 15 pounds in 28 days and had the before and after right there.  I said, if you come into my

facility, follow our guidelines for 28 days, four weeks at three sessions a week, if you don’t lose the 15 pounds in 28 days, we will give you 100% of your money back.  Limited

time offer, we’re only accepting five more clients is what we put on there.  We sent that out and my response was huge.  Not only did we do that — well, I’ll get back to that

later, but when we sent that out, we got so many calls saying, “How’s that work?"  I would say here’s how it works.  We are so confident in our programs that we know that when

we get you in here and we get you working out three times a week on our programs that you’re going to lose your unwanted body fat.  That’s how confident we are that we will

offer you 100% money back guarantee.  So there is no risk to you.  We are so confident in our results that if you come in right now — so let’s get you in here today if you want

to work.  I have an 8:00am and an 8:00pm, what works best for you?  Then nail them down to a time, get them their free workout and then after that, sign them up.  When they see

that there is no risk involved, it just becomes like a no-brainer.  It’s like, oh well, you know, if this doesn’t work out I don’t have to pay, this works out great.  And then

obviously you need to deliver on your promises, you can’t just give them a crap workout; you need to be able to back up what you say. 

The last marketing I did the split were I sent out — one was a lead generator offer for a free report and that worked pretty well, decent, but it didn’t work as well as this

weight thing with the before and after picture on it.  I think that type of testimonial with the before and after was huge.  I have another one where I have a guy who lost over

100 pounds with me who went from being 290 pounds down to being 190 pounds with that ripped six-pack and he’s fifty-nine years old.  Those types of visuals, when they see it

they’re like, “Oh my gosh, a fifty-nine year old guy, to do that and there’s no risk, what have I got to lose”?  The answer is nothing; they’ve got nothing to lose.

CM:    Do you have any idea of how many calls you’ve got or how many people came in off of those ads and how many did you send out?

JC:    I sent out 5,000 each on my last mailing, one for North Hollywood and one for West Hills and there are markets that don’t compete there.  I will say that I got probably,

on the low end, at least twenty inquiries per week in the first month alone.  Not all of those are going to convert, not all of them are willing to sign up, but base on some of

the sales strategies that I put together with one of my mentors and just bringing these people in, I was able to close about 90% of the people that came in on something.  Not

everybody can afford the three times a week so we’ll create custom programs and mix and match.  Twenty inquiries a week is probably a decent estimate of the type of response

that we got.  That, by the way this is for a brand new facility, we were not open previously – we started training, I want to say on December 15th to where we had just a couple

of neighborhood people that had seen us and said, call me when you’re open and I’ll start and I said, great, we’ll do that.  Then January 1st is when we officially started

training people and we sent out that flyer the first week of January hoping to catch a bunch of New Year’s Resolution folks and it worked out great.  The response was huge, our

conversion rate was huge, and to date, out of all of the people that we signed up, I’ve only had one that actually asked for their money back and that was that they trained

twice and they said, no, there was other issues involved.  If fifty years of doing this I’ve only had one and that was just recently.

CM:     Can you explain a little bit more about what a split test is?

JC:    A split test is when you take two separate advertising campaigns and you send them out to the same area.  So if you mail them both to different addresses within a two

mile radius and just see which one responds better because this is — marketing is so much trial and error because, again, what works in Kentucky might not play out so great in

Beverly Hills.  You’ve got to mix and match and try it out and say, alright, this campaign didn’t do so good and wow, this one really performed, so that’s the one I’m going to

send out again because it will continue to perform.  You can always test again.  And that’s where you shouldn’t necessarily do a huge bunch in an area, but if you do a 30,000-

piece mailing, you put a ton of money into it and it turns out that you could have done a 5,000-piece mailing and you could have had triple the response, then you’re going about

it the wrong way.  So you need to tweak things a little bit and see what works and what doesn’t in your area.

CM:    Are your fitness marketing campaigns systemized or sporadic? 

JC:    It’s been both and obviously the systematic works much better when you’re on a system of every, whatever, two months, three months; you send out a piece — you

definitely want to mail out the first week of January.  Always because that is just prime, the amount of members I get at my normal Hollywood gym in January is about four times

what I get in any other standard normal month.  So you want to make sure you definitely target that first week.  Make sure your mailing hits that week when people are into the

new resolutions and get them in the door, get them fired up, get them signed up and then hopefully they’ll continue and make progress. 

Then, three months down the road, you do some sort of spring thing where, hey, summers around the corner, we can get you in bathing suit shape.  The end of summer you come up

with something else, get ready for ski season or something like that.  The tough months are October, November, December, around there because holidays and stuff really tends to

be fairly slow.  So I tend to not market during those months because the response rate is pretty low.  I’d rather save the money and put it in more towards January.  This thing

goes across the board, it’s not really a great idea to advertise in the month of December because nobody’s buying training or gym memberships, they’re all eating turkey and pie.

 So, whatever, you’ll get them all in January.

CM:    Do you ever use the Yellow Pages or coupon packs and if so what kind of results have you gotten?

JC:    Yellow pages I’ve used and didn’t get anything.  I’ve tried a lot of different things and failed miserably at many of them, but I’ve finally come across some systems

that work.  There’s a ton of systems out there, but you need to find the one that works for you.  The Yellow Pages didn’t do squat for me.  If you’re looking for a personal

trainer, your not gong to look in the Yellow Pages.  You’ll probably look online, so you need to obviously have a web presence, you might ask around, who are you using?  You

look great, who are you using?  So you need to make sure that the clients that you have are getting the results that they prefer.  I’m sorry, what was the other thing?  Yellow

pages or –?

CM:    Coupon packs, like Valpak and stuff?

JC:    Coupon packs, I’ve used that in the past and didn’t have a great response, and I think that it was probably due to the area that I used it in.  They tend to just go out

to everybody instead of targeted homes and I think that for the area I was looking in, which was a higher income level, I think they tend to open the coupon packs a little bit

less than lower income levels.  I might be wrong on that, but that was just my experience.  I didn’t get a good value for my advertising as much as if I had taken that same

amount of money or even just slightly more and was able to target, like I said, I only want people that make over $100,000.00 or whatever it is per year.  Then I make sure that

those people are the ones who get my post card, and it’s bigger than your standard piece of mail, so it’s going to stick out a little bit.  Then you have a headline that they’ve

just got to read.  Something that says, for immediate public release or consumer alert or something that makes them go, oh, what is this?  Something that grabs their attention

and then suck them in with a free offer or something.  So I found that the coupon thing did not work as well for me.

CM:    How important is it to display the benefits of your service in your actual mailing list?

JC:    As I may have pointed out, you need to not necessarily list the features, but list the benefits, what are these people going to get out of this?  That’s why that, who

wants to lose 20 pounds thing worked so great.  We told these people that with our nutrition plans, you will feel fitter, leaner, sexier, and you’ll be minus those fifteen

pounds of ugly body fat.  We didn’t say you’re going to be walking on the highest technology treadmill with a built in LCD monitor and you’re going to have a Flex deck

technology and our free weights are all rubberized so they don’t make that clanging sound.  Nobody gives a crap about that, they want to know what are they going to get for

their money, so – you’ve only got limited space, so nail it down.  What is the end result?  These people who are going to be healthier, they’re going to be happier, they’re

going to feel better, the health benefits are going to be there, their clothes are going to fit better, women always want to hear that their jeans are going to fit better, so

you can throw that in. 

I have another free report that we called, “Seven ways to fit into your skinny jeans”.  So things like that that make them go, oh yeah, I love my skinny jeans.  A lot of women

have those and — that’s about it.

CM:    For trainers and fitness business owners who want to do some direct marketing but don’t know where to start or know very little about it, what would you say to them?

JC:    I would say find a place like Future Fitness that really offers an all in one inclusive package.  They will do it all for you and their per piece price is really low and

you don’t have to break the bank.  You do need to spend money to make money, there are methods of free advertising, but nothing beats a targeted audience, and audience that you

know will deliver and they could even give you advice.  A lot of these places work with trainers and clubs and stuff.  And we’ll say what we found that works great for a lot of

our trainers is targeting groups that make this much and this neighborhood and whatever, so these places like Future Fitness.  And by the way, just FYI, I don’t make a dime for

mentioning their name.  They charge me the same as they charge everybody else, but I just will say they had great service.  They delivered on time.  They helped me target

exactly what I was looking for.  They sent me printouts.  And said here’s the zip codes.  Here’s the income levels.  Here’s the distance to your club, the whole thing and it

just makes it so simple when they’ll design it all for you.  You might not be computer savvy, you might not know how to create a flat PF file at 300 EPI, that might be

completely foreign to you, so if you don’t, fabulous.  They’ll ask you — they have pictures, stock photos that you can use and they can even come up with campaigns and they

don’t charge any more for that.

CM:    Awesome.  Joshua, where can people learn more about you?

JC:    You go to my website: www.carterfitness.com and from there it gives a jump off point to some of my various other ventures like my boot camps and a couple of my clubs and

a couple of my fitness downloads. 

 

This has been a personal training marketing interview from gym marketing specialist