Alan Cohen on Direct Marketing in the Fitness Industry

Chris McCombs (CM): I am here with Alan Cohen; Alan who are you and what do you do?

Alan Cohen (AC): Chris, I am the owner and president of FitnessJobs.com and the career collection. We own a variety of job boards for the health, fitness, and recreation

industry.

CM: How would you go about advertising and marketing for a fitness professional?

AC: Chris, I’m going to draw on my thirty-year experience in the fitness industry, previous to my owning and starting FitnessJobs.com eight years ago. I’ve spent thirty

plus years in the industry and I’ve done a lot of fitness marketing, general management and clubs, and groups of clubs around the country, so that is where this experience is coming

from, not necessarily from FitnessJobs.com, but many of those same principles I used to launch that business eight years ago.

The first thing, Chris, that is important to any business; whether you’re a fitness professional or a club or whether you’re selling hand made cakes, you really have to create

an annual marketing budget. In any business, advertising, and marketing, public relations is a big part of a successful business in terms of whether it is a brand new business

or an ongoing business. A lot of people, when they are first getting into it, say, “Lets do some direct mail, let’s do Valuepak, let’s put in newspaper ads, but they haven’t

really thought about the big picture." The big picture is getting a sense of how you want to grow your business, what type of revenues you are doing, once again, is it a brand

new business or an ongoing business and what you can afford to spend on an ongoing basis. You have to create an annual marketing budget.

CM: What is direct marketing?

AC: Marketing is the way of getting the message out about your fitness business. It could be guerilla-marketing, people in the industry, on their downtime, if they are in a club or

studio setting, utilizing their free time to grow your business. In the studio, it could be as simple as walking around and introducing yourself to your neighboring business;

just to say, “Hello,” introducing yourself, talking about your business, passing out your business card, passing out promotional offers to give an extra value for the first time

you come in. If you are in a club setting, it could be using that downtime; maybe you’re working out with members, maybe you’re walking around giving people some quick points

of advice, and just spreading the message about your business.

CM: How can a trainer implement an effective direct mail campaign?

AC: Direct mail is one of the most effective personal training marketing vehicles there are. The challenging part of it, Chris, is that it takes a lot of time and know-how to

do it successfully. What I’d like to do is walk you through the major points, some of the affiliated points with each category, and give you some advice if you would like to

get involved in it.

First of all, direct mail should be looked at as part of your marketing budget. Many of the larger organizations and medium sized organizations do direct mail and it is very

cost effective and a great way to reach a targeted market. The three things that people typically talk about direct mail are you need to have a great list, who you send your

marketing pieces to.

The second part is, you need to have a great looking piece, and it has to have appeal. The appeal should be geared to the types of demographics you are mailing to. There is no

sense trying to reach the fifty-plus market and putting a nineteen-year-old gal, who is ready to enter a swimsuit competition. You really have to think about who you are

sending your pieces to and try to create a marketing campaign that is going to appeal to that demographic. Often, you’ll see different images on marketing pieces, which address

several different demographics. That is something to really concentrate on.

The third thing is you need to have an offer that is attractive and a call to action, which means, you have a certain offer, which expires in a certain amount of time. Also,

when you do direct mail, a lot of folks will approach you, Chris, and say, “Well, let’s just give it a try and see if it works, if it doesn’t work we’re not going to try it

again.” You really have to look into those long term — many people, before they become a customer of a business, you have to reach, or as some people call it, ‘touch them

three to five times. One time might not be a true judge of the effectiveness of Direct mail.

What I would like to do now, is really get a little deeper into the three points I’ve mentioned. Once again, we’ve talked about the list, the quality of the list; the second

point was the design and appeal of the list; and the third point was the offer and establishing an ongoing campaign.

Regarding the list, and that is probably one of the most difficult things, try to get a list that is a quality list. A quality list may not have more than 10% returns when you

send out your marketing pieces. The returns come into play because it’s expensive when you mail because of the postage and the printing, so you want to be sure that everyone

you are sending it to will receive the list. In terms of the list, we are looking at different demographic information. Who do you want your customers to be?

Now, if you are an ongoing business, what you should have already is a list of your existing clients; you want to kind of narrow that list. You want to track that information

to your target market. These are the areas that you want to track; you want to track peoples age, gender, if you have the ability to estimate their household income, the zip

codes they come from, their home values; sometimes it is deceiving because customers come from work. Now a couple of these points I just mentioned, may not be appropriate to

get from existing clients, such as existing incomes or home values, but if you’re starting from scratch, and buying lists, those are the things you want to purchase. Age,

gender, household income, zip codes, and home values.

Now, purchasing data is really the critical part. There are a lot of list companies out there, one of the top list companies is a company called ‘Experian’. When you go to

purchase a list from a list company, you will get the chance to purchase it on a one-time use, or you can purchase those names on unlimited use. I always recommend unlimited

use because really, once you get in it, you won’t want to do Direct mail just on a one-time basis.

There is another way in many local communities that you can get really good data; let me touch on that for a moment. Many newspapers, for instance, the Arizona / Phoenix market

as an example; The Arizona Public, which is a main newspaper, also has a direct marketing company. And because they are such a large organization, and because there are so many

customers, they buy a lot of data and what they do, is they will bundle all of their data with all the other components of direct mail. That is, number one, the Mail List,

number two is processing. What you do when you’re a major company or you do piece mail on your own, eventually, say if you’re mailing 5000 direct mail pieces, somebody has to

label these pieces and do it in the format that by using bulk rate, you’ll save the most amount of money. Which means that they have to bundle these mailings by zip codes and

it gets associated with bulk rates. So, number one that is the second cost you have to look at processing for your mailing and the third part is designing the piece and then

the fourth part is printing of the piece. Then of course, we’ve already mentioned the postage aspect. I think, in a local region, sending things out bulk rate is okay, it’s

called ‘scan and mail’. Also now, you have the ability to integrate your own logo as part of that bulk rate scan and mail stamp. You need to find out what the specs are from

the Post Office, but if you should chose to do a lot of direct mail, you’d be better off buying your own bulk rate stamp, which costs approximately $150.00 a year. And when you

do that, you get the information on how to integrate part of your logo into it so you get your custom look and feel.

CM: If at some point you want to get into different kinds of lists, I think there are compile and response, if you have any knowledge of that that would be great.

AC: What lists again?

CM: You know, there are different kinds of lists, like there’s a compiled list and there’s a response list.

AC: Well, to me a compiled list would be your own database. Is that what you are referring to?

CM: No, I think from list brokers, how they have a response list is somebody who has purchased a certain kind of product before that is similar to yours, like a list broker

of someone who has purchased Taebo maybe? If you have any knowledge of that, if you want to get into it — but it’s not something that you are 100% —

AC: I don’t think I’m an expert in that. I’ve typically always done my own targeted list based on, for instance, I come from the club business and we al know that if you

take the data, the things that I’ve suggested to you about age and all those things, plus, what you also do, and this might be added somewhere along the line of that, you can

fill this in, this is important, is the people who are compiling the components of the list I asked for above: age, gender, household income, zip code, home values, and the

other thing you want to do is suppress blue collar households. The reason they do that is overall, and it’s not always, but overall, blue-collar demographics typically do not

exercise. The other thing to add to that, is we always add some college so that — people at home have some college. You suppress blue-collar households. So that is not 100%

absolute, when I’m saying that blue collar people never workout, because we know they do, but overall, the reality is, the more intelligent people are, the smarter they are, the

more they realize the importance of taking care of their health and consequently they exercise.

CM: Perfect.

AC: So, I’m going to pass on those compiled lists or response list — I kind of stopped at, if you’re using a large company such as Arizona Public, they bundle their

services where all the fees are so — I’m going to kind of get back and summarize the components of Direct mail and then go from there, Okay?

CM: Perfect.

AC: In summary, whether you do something with a large company such as a newspaper, which the reason to do a large company like that is that they have great data. These are

the components that either yourself, a large company, or a direct mail company will — these are all the different processes of direct mail; you have to determine how the

postage is going to get handled, and once again, bulk rate is a good way to go when you can’t do a custom logo.

The second component is somebody has to process the mail, which is addressing the pieces. If you’re having a large company as a newspaper or having a small company such as a

direct mail company or even an adding machine doing this work, you always want to ask for the original Post Office Mail Verification, which tells you exactly how many pieces

were mailed, and that is actually called a 3602 Form. So, whoever does your mailing, you always want to get a 3602 Form. And the reason is, is that sometimes companies, and

it’s not obviously, reputable companies. Some companies that you pay to mail 5000 pieces and you agree to pay them in advance, say $.60 a piece, which is going to cost you

$3000.00 for printing, postage, design and fulfillment, they say they’re mailing out 5000 pieces, but they only mail out 4000 pieces and consequently they are pocketing the rest

of that money. It happens more often than you would think, so the 3602 Form is verification of it.

However, there is another way around that, and actually, with FitnessJobs.com we have our own bulk rate stamp. We do everything, we farm out all the different components, we

have a graphic artist that does our designing work, we have a printer, and we use one of the best printers I’ve run across in my career, it’s called AmericasPrinter.com, which

does incredible four color work at probably the lowest cost that anybody will ever find. Then the other thing we do is, we actually pick up our mail from the processing house

and bring it down to the bulk rate office of the Post Office on our own. So I know that when I send out 15,000 pieces, 15,000 pieces are going out. I actually recommend, if

you are doing this on your own, that you actually have your own bulk rate stamp, you have somebody, a fulfillment house, a processing company, do the processing. It might cost

$.03 or $.04 a piece, and then you actually deliver it yourself.

Then the other important ingredient is the design of the piece. Once again, if you are doing something with a large company, and they bundle all the services, they will have a

good graphic artist on hand and you should actually ask to see samples of the work in advance before you get started on it. If you should chose to do this on your own, you want

to find a graphic artist who has experience doing direct marketing. You do not want to just find the graphic artist who is a friend of the neighbor or somebody who just

finished graphic art school who you can get inexpensively because the reality is, the design and graphic art is just a really important part of what you are doing, and it’s

critical that you have a great looking piece. The only person that is going to go and do that is somebody who’s been doing if for probably a couple, several years, if you want

to see their portfolio of work in advance.

Typically a graphic artist may cost you anywhere from $60.00 to $75.00 to $90.00 per hour. You want to get a quote in advance of what it’s going to cost you to do your proposed

piece, whether it be a 4”x6” postcard or a 6”x9” postcard, you need to let them know if it’s going to be a four color work. Right now with all the different printing processes,

it pays to do four-color work because it’s not that much to do a two-color piece. But you want to see their work, you want to have an understanding that once you give them the

sense of what you want done, which you should sketch out in advance which will save you some time, you want to find out that based on their budget, that they will give you a few

different looks at it. There is going to be some back and forth. You are not going to create the perfect piece the first time out. The more you work with somebody, the

quicker the process will be and the less money you will be able to save.

Also, working with a graphic artist, you need to be able to look at the work that they created for you and you will very specifically tell them what you like and what you don’t

like about it. You can’t tell a graphic artist, “Well, I just don’t like that” because that’s what costs you time and money. You have to tell them that you like a different

image, you like a different color, you like different fonts; you have to be specific and help them along.

AC: Now we’ve actually just talked about the components of direct mail and talked about doing it with a large company such as a newspaper. There are many other companies,

direct mail houses that could do the same work; everybody has to take these same steps. The key thing to ask direct mail companies, is, “Where are you getting your lists,” “Can

you provide the different demographic information I’m asking for.” Then I would ask to see samples of their demographics and how they are acquiring that.

Many people buy lists and they resale them, they resale them, they purchased them and their old data and it’s just not what you’re looking for, It’s your money, you’re the

customer, you have an obligation to yourself to make sure that the data is exactly what you’re looking for. If they hit on that, let them know you are shopping around and data

is critical, because it is really important that you feel comfortable with the source of the data and the different components of the data to make this work. Any company can do

processing, any company can print things, and any company can design things, but the data is critical.

Once again, just like anything, when you get into purchasing and spending money, particularly your own money, without a doubt, you should get several quotes from several

companies and you’ll learn a lot along the way by doing that. Once again, as I mentioned in the beginning, direct mail is very time consuming, but it’s very effective. Many

companies, based on the time it takes to do direct mail and the expertise, do not do it. They just place ads in the newspaper, they place ads in magazines, because it’s easier,

you create one add, you pay $300.00 to $500.00 for an ad for design work and you can keep running it and running it and running it. That’s not the best approach, typically,

print advertising is for people with very large budgets, and it’s typically image advertising. When you see people doing magazines, when you see small companies doing

magazines, they’ll throw a magazine ad in one time because it’s extremely expensive and if they don’t get great results, they don’t do it again. The reason they don’t get great

results is because it should be viewed as long term and it shouldn’t be supporting your other marketing, and it is image advertising and it’s very expensive.

So, back to doing the direct mail, there is another source for direct mail and that is ‘Ride-Alongs’. A ride-along is something that people are very familiar with like Valpak’s

or companies similar to Valpak. The benefit of Valpak is it typically is a good value. Secondly, you can hit most of your market, it’s not going to be as exact, it’s more of a

‘spray and pray’, but it does give you a great penetration because you can reach a lot of households. It’s a pretty good program and maybe it should be part of your direct

marketing strategy. Maybe Valpak has done, whether it be seasonably, it might be done in conjecture with certain holidays, it might be done in conjecture you’re your business

anniversary, or it could be done to launch a business. The thing you have to be cautious about with a ride-along company is they always do the artwork for you if you don’t give

a design.

Most often, the look and feel of that market piece does not come out that great. They are not going to spend all kinds of time and get it perfect. So, if you are going to do a

ride-along, it might pay for you to have your own graphic artist create the look of the piece so you can be consistent with all the other things you are doing. That brings up a

good point; all the marketing should have the same look, same feel, same design concept so its brand to your business and you just put your best foot forward. Sometimes, people

use ride-along programs, the marketing piece that’s going out, their piece, does not really represent the quality of their business. That’s the one thing about; typically, you

can count on, from trainers in the personal training business, the quality of their work. Well, the marketing has to mirror that and if the marketing does not mirror that, if

you’re using clip-art and are inconsistent with the fonts and the look of your piece, you’re not really depicting the quality of your business. So, keep that in mind if you

decide to do a ride-along program.

There are a couple of points that are really important. Let me ask you something here. Is this worthy of mentioning? I mentioned at the beginning in terms of budget is that

you have to create an annual marketing plan. Is it a new business? Is it an ongoing business? What I’ve seen a lot of, whether it be clubs or studios, people make an

investment, and they make a large investment, in terms of leases or whatever they’re doing, but they never adequately factored in an advertising/marketing budget. I know a guy

who had a club in Georgia, it was a fabulous twenty-thousand square foot club in a historic building, and this guy lost everything because he just didn’t have the money to

launch his business. Is there any value in mentioning anything about that?

CM: If you want to get into having a marketing budget, yeah, if you want to get into allotting the funds for that and how important that is, sure. One thing I really want

to get into, if it’s okay with you, is what kind of pieces are most effective? You talked earlier about appeal and then offer a call to action, if we could really get into

those.

AC: Let’s do that next.

CM: I don’t know if you want to get into testing, is that something you’ve done a lot of, like A-B split testing and things like that?

AC: No, I’ll tell you why. Based on my experience — I’m writing down a couple of notes here so – that you just mentioned that — you talked about the offer, the type of

piece and testing. What I will say, in the club business — I mean, my last job I managed a $750.000 a year annual marketing budget for four clubs and a 25-room Day Spa in

Arizona. We served the upper end market, we knew who our customers were, the type of customer. The type of piece, and this kind of ties in, we did really, really great looking

work, great images and everything was perfect. It’s too expensive to test that because of the cost of printing, so we never really did it, but with FitnessJobs.com, I did do a

lot of testing of pieces, but it wasn’t so much an A-B list, it was — coming up with the copy, the offers and I never would send out two in A or B. I would send out 10,000

pieces and measure the results. I’d do a different letter at a different time and measure those results. I wasn’t doing it in small quantities necessarily, but I can comment

on that.

Here is the thing, the type of piece — what goes into the piece is really, the design, is copy, is the design, look, and feel, and there’s the offer. Let me talk a little

about that and the segway will be, regardless of who you use to do your work, this is something that is really a sub-category of the three broad subjects of the design and

appeal of the piece, so I’ll talk about that right now.

Regardless of how you decide, you will facilitate your Direct mail. Whether it be a ride-along such as the Valpak, whether you are going to coordinate all aspects of the

mailing, or whether you chose to use a direct marketing company, or even an ad agency. The reality is, is that you have to create the marketing piece that is going to get the

greatest response to the best return on your investment. Let's talk about that for a second. The appeal of your piece, the design — we’ve talked a little bit about a graphic

artist and the importance of choosing one with experience in Direct Marketing. The other part that goes into your design, we talked briefly about, is using the right kind of

images so the person that you are sending this piece to, it’s going to have some sort of appeal to them so they don’t just throw it away.

Images are a whole other category because you have to have the ability to protect your business and your customers and fortunately, over the last few years, with all the online

auctions we have, you can buy images online from a lot of different sources. There is one of two ways to do it, if you’re going to manage this process on your own, throughout

the year, you may want to start investing in purchasing some photos. You can go online and purchase photos anywhere from $75.00 to $200.00 or $300.00 a piece and throughout the

year, let’s says you do four campaigns during the year. Each campaign you might buy a couple photos and by the end of the year, you’ve accumulated six, seven, eight photos.

Over two years you can add to that, so if you’re a training athlete, you’d go to a power, speed, and agility facility. You can purchase a variety of different images, different

age groups, you might have some twelve to fourteen year olds, you might have seventeen year olds, you might have men, you might have women, and you might have people – a soccer

picture, a football, a basketball photos. That’s all based on what type of business model you have. You might want to invest in some online photography. If you’re not going

to do your own, one of the interviewing questions, “Tell me what my options are for images." That’s really important creative front, if you are doing to with a large company,

they probably have a great selection of images, but it might not be geared to, lets say; power, speed and agility facilities. That is definitely something you want to get into.

If you work with a graphic artist who’s an independent contractor, they may or may not have good photography, so definitely look into that.

The next issue regarding your piece is what type of piece you want to send out. Typically, that is, what is it going to look like, is it a 4”x6” postcard, is it a 6”x9”

postcard. Is it something that opens up, so it folds over? What type of information do you want to include. That is something that a lot of times is dictated by budget,

because the more paper, the more ink you use, the more expensive it is. A lot of times, a great letter, on your logo and letterhead, is very effective, especially if it is an

introduction. We’ve already seen pieces of the mail walking through the neighborhood that definitely should be part of your campaign. Your direct marketing campaign is buying

those lists of who moves. Once again, you want to use that same demographic information to make sure you are reaching the right people. Typically, the best thing to do is send

those out say, sixty to ninety days after people have already moved into their home. The people that are real workout fanatics are going to find you immediately if they want to

start working out the week after they’ve moved in. A lot of people, it takes awhile to get settled in and it will be more constructive if you wait maybe sixty days. Sometimes,

just a great letter of introduction about your facility, and then you can insert a brochure. At FitnessJobs.com, we use a four-color tri-fold and it’s a great looking piece,

it’s got images. We print 25,000 of these brochures and it costs us $299.00 for four color, tri-fold brochures and it fits nicely in an envelope. So that is a good way to tell

a story about your business and also have a personalized letter. The [inaudible] of that, is that you really need to create a great letter, so either yourself, or somebody in

your family who’s great with, has great writing abilities, it’s important to create a great message.

Now that brings up another ingredient. How to tell your story in a letter, or a brochure, or a Direct Marketing piece. Over the years, in the fitness industry, because I’ve

always enjoyed marketing, for the most part of my career, I’ve tried to create my own ads. I’ve tried to create my own copy, I looked at what other people did, I thought I was

very clever and very good until I found out that when you use somebody who is a professional, such as a copywriter, you’re going to get a much greater result. I was fortunate

to work at a company that had a great marketing budget and I was able to do everything the right way. I found out that there’s a huge difference in having a professional write

your copy for your marketing pieces, rather than doing it on your own. If you can find an independent copywriter that will work for anywhere from $75.00 to $125.00 per hour,

once again, you should balance your budget in advance, what you’ll be getting is consistency. They typically write great headlines and that person would also be a great assist

in helping you create the same copy so the synergy of your marketing message, on your website, on your letters and then direct mail.

Once again, take a look at their work, try to find somebody — and once again, you need to facture that into a budget. Typically, somebody may spend an hour and a half, two

hours, with your direct marketing piece creating some copies, so it's not going to be the most expensive, but, once again, it will be effective. You need to reuse that message.

We’ve used copywriters in the past to create headlines and for $400.00 or $500.00 you may get six or eight headlines, and then you get to use those differently over the course

of time in a multitude of different ways, it’s really a good investment.

The final piece is your message and your offer. The best way to do direct marketing is to — if you can have a campaign that kind of ties together, so there’s a similar message

throughout the year. It could be — and it depends on the market you are reaching. But if you’re reaching out to the fifty-plus market who has the need diet and the economics

to train on a one-on-one environment, sometimes that message is; getting more out of life, enjoying their retirement, having greater quality with their grandchildren because

they’re in better shape and they can do more. I saw a great marketing campaign that was done in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it was funded by a local organization to

try to make their city the healthiest city in America. Their whole campaign was geared to the fifty-plus audience and it was really all about quality of life and all those

things that they can do by having and maintaining great health. It was really effective. If you can have somebody, or think about a continuity of an annual campaign, so the

person that gets that message each time, it makes sense and it kind of ties you to it, that’s great.

Some other campaigns may be tied to the seasonality. We all know that in January, the New Years Resolution is — the Resolution everybody makes, so it’s a good message. A lot

of time in the spring, people want to get in shape for the summer and that would be to an audience of twenty to thirty year olds, or forty year olds.

Another targeted audience, another great message would be if you could buy a wedding list of people getting ready to get married, people typically like to get into their best

shape for that time of their life. The different reasons and ways to tie a campaign around a promotion, seasonality, a time in somebody’s life, you typically want to have some

sort of call to action, some sort of offer. Then, that offer has some sort of expiration date. I like to have an expiration date that expires in forty-five days, no more than

thirty to forty-five days after they receive the piece. Some people say, “Well, I’ve spent all this money on this piece, so it should expire in six months,” but typically

people will look at it and keep it in front of them if it has a quicker expiration date. So, that would be my recommendation there. An offer could be monetary, it could be

tied into some sort of gift, there is a lot of different offers you could make that has appeal and that has to do with the audience that you are sending this out to. It’s not

all just about money, maybe, younger demographics; the appeal of money may be stronger than the older demographics because the economic position is different.

So, once again, in creating a piece, there’s many factures. The look and feel of it, which is driven by your graphic artist. Images, the copy, it should be well thought out,

well written. A copywriter is a good solution there; the size and look and feel of the piece has a lot to do with your budget, but don’t just count letter; a brochure that

could be inserted in your offer and call to action, keep in mind that the audience you are sending it to, there are seasonality going on. Take a look at your calendar and that

should be, once again, part of your annual marketing plan.

Now, a way to tie this all together, lets face it, a majority of people in the fitness industry who are entrepreneurs building their own business, where their success has come

from is; number one, their knowledge and education about the business that they’re in, their passion for it, their concern for people. That’s why they do extremely well. The

entrepreneurial spirit has pushed them off to doing business on their own, but it might be just lack of time and experience, which has not allowed them to get involved in

advertising and marketing.

After hearing this message, if it just seems like it is way too much work, then an option can be trying to find a small — there’s two options really. You can find and build a

team of professionals and plan on working with them for the next few years, and that would be a graphic artist, a copywriter, finding a cost efficient printer, finding a

processing house. That’s what we do at FitnessJobs.com, we have a team of people that we’ve been working with for five or six years, so doing all these projects is really

effortlessly when you have that team of people you can count on. For those people that don’t have the time of haven’t built that team of people yet, your other option could be

to find a small boutique ad agency. A little bit about Ad agencies, they can certainly help you tie a list together. You need to interview numerous ad agencies and you need to

find people that are going to give you a great value, because a lot of agencies — if you use an agency and don’t have a large budget, they will chew up your budget based on all

their fees. But if they’re a younger company, and talented and they’re trying to build their business, they’re going to be your partner along the way. They will give you more

than you are going to spend and that’s what you’re looking for because if you have a $5,000.00 a month budget and you’re spending $3,500.00 a month in ad agencies, you’re only

getting $1,500.00 a month in marketing out there.

So, an agency could be a great solution, but they have to be willing to do it very cost efficiently for you and build a long-term relationship with you. As you get bigger, they

can make more money. There is plenty of people out there that has the ability to do that and they actually — you’ll find many offices of agencies where they have a lot of

independent contractors that share a space together. So they work together very nicely and you can get things done very cost efficiently.

How do you do your marketing?

CM: Me? I just do a lot of online stuff. I drive people to my website, I do a lot of referral marketing, I do some Valpak, different things like that, a lot of MySpace,

different kinds of sales copies. I actually studied sales copy a lot. I purchased all the big $1,500.00 Yanic Silver and Dan Kennedy at home copywriting courses. I learned

that stuff; it makes me way more money than the training. I actually hire a trainer and now I sit around and market and drive people to my trainer. I’m actually going to have

to hire a few more here because he’s overbooked now. We have around sixty-seven clients for one trainer and he does groups of six people at a time, but it’s going to far

outgrow my one trainer here. I realized just a little while back, probably a year or two ago that being a good trainer was important because it got people results and that made

them stick and that got me referrals, but actually, my marketing was my most important thing. And I tried a few different things online and I’ve had some great results and that

is where I focus a lot of my energy now. Last week was my last week training. I was down to two days a week, I used to do six days a week, and over the past year or so I’ve

cut down to two days a week and I’ve had a trainer working four days a week for me. Last week I handed him all the training and so now I basically work at home just driving the

marketing.

AC: Do you train out of a studio or…?

CM: Yes, I train out of a — it’s an independent gym. It's for independent trainers. It’s for independent trainers; there is probably forty trainers there. So, it’s a

studio, but it’s kind of a big studio.

AC: Okay, we’ve talked about what you like. Do you want to talk about the testing a little bit?

CM: No, this is pretty complete, but if you have any last things you want to say to trainers and then what I’ll do after you say that is, I’ll ask you for your — how people

can learn more about you. And you can just give me your URLs and stuff; you can just give me your FitnessJobs.com or whatever you want, okay?

AC: Okay, well, I’m going just — tell me what you want me to say and we’ll just get going here.

CM: Okay, so, is there anything we left out? What would you say to a trainer who wants to get involved in marketing? Is there any last thing that you would like to leave

them with?

AC: I would say, Chris that the most important thing is just that they have, as a student of exercise sciences that shows an occupation, they need to start investing their

time and effort learning about marketing. Once again, with the internet, there’s lots of information. Start picking up books. We’ve all read about you read twenty minutes a

day on any given subject you would be an expert by the end of the year. Spend some time and effort and start learning about marketing. Collect people's material that you see

along the way that you like and do your homework before you jump into it, because it’s very easy to waste money without the experience.

CM: Alan, where can people learn more about you, your products, and services?

AC: A couple of ways, Chris, FitnessJobs.com and the career collection of our website. So they can go to FitnessJobs.com, it’s a great resource for finding staff and

finding different opportunities. They can reach me, if they wanted assistance to any marketing; I do consulting work and help people along the way. They can reach me at 800-

259-4397 or they can send me an email at Alan (at) fitnessjobs (dot) com.

The has been a health and fitness marketing interview