3 Easy Guerrilla Fitness Marketing Tactics

A Fitness Marketing Guest Post from Christian Aguirre

If you want to market your fitness business, but only have pennies in your marketing budget, I have good news for you.

I've found three easy and highly-effective marketing strategies I am going to share with you to help get your business rolling.

The best part of these strategies? They are absolutely free and extremely easy to utilize. In addition to being free and user-friendly, they are also non-invasive, so you can market to people without them getting that "pushy salesman" vibe.

In this post, I'll cover the following…

• How to make social media work for you
• How to use blogs for marketing purposes
• How to use review sites such as Yelp to boost your keyword search rating

1. How Social Media Can Work For You

Chances are, you or those in your circle of friends have a Facebook and/or Twitter account that is checked at least once a day. Since social media is THE way to stay connected these days, why not use it to your advantage to connect with more clients?

Imagine being able to reach out to people other than those on your friends list, without having to "sell" anything or purchase leads!

The first step is to select a "Client of the Week" or "Client of the Month" and make a video of them going through a dynamic functional training segment.

At the end of this video, have your client give a testimonial, asking them questions like, , "When you started out, what were your goals?" and "Do you feel you've achieved those goals in working out with (insert company name here)?"

These types of videos are quite effective, because they show that you train real people with common goals.

At the end of the video, have your clients do a plug for your business, which is basically a "Call to Action".

For example, "If you want to lose weight like I have, call (insert company name here) and get started today!"

Next, post your video to your blog and then promote the video to your email list by saying how awesome Mrs. Jones is doing with her weight loss goals so that your list can see how over the last couple of weeks her training has been going and what results she has seen.

Next, have all your paying clients and the client in the video post the blog link on their Facebook, MySpace and/or Twitter pages.

Also, have them add a catchy headline such as "I Got Beat Up Last Night…" to the video to pique people's curiosity and make them want to click on the link.

The idea is to have all your clients re-post your blog at least 3 different times throughout the day for a week, because that way, you remain on top of your client's status wall for all their friends, family, and co-workers to see.

Your name is out there in a non-invasive way because their friends are endorsing you.

This technique helps with retention, constant referrals, and lead generation all at the same time.

It makes the client in the video feel like a super star on the internet (cause everyone thinks that being in a video on the internet is cool), you also get ridiculous traffic back to your website so that after their friends and family read the blog your "Call to Action" should have them land on your one page sales copy that will sell for you, or have all this new traffic opt-in to be on your newsletter list.

*This technique alone brought me 9 new leads in a week for free

2. How Blogging Can Generate Leads Away from Large Health Clubs

Many of the larger corporate gyms spend millions of dollars each year in television advertising and in print ads in the hope that it will get you to go to their website and download a 3 or 7 day pass.

You can use your blog to do the same thing for your own website by creating a "review" of the local gyms and posting it to your blog. This strategy worked really well for me during the months leading up to January, because most people have New Year's resolutions to get in shape and lose weight.

The first step is to create a blog "review" of the biggest gyms in your area. Tell your email list that you've gone to these gyms to research their processes and are now offering a review as to why going to a corporate gym is NOT what they want to do.

The key here is to make people see that you have their best interest at heart. This will help build trust with your list and it's entertaining to hear what the "local fitness expert" has to say.

Make sure you are positive in your review and don't just slam the other gym. For example, you may say something like, "XYG gym has a really great facility but their trainers have a lot less experience with one-on-one training" and use this as an opportunity to plug yourself by stating your experience and why a client wants someone with your expertise.

Secondly, use key terms such that these gyms' rank on the internet for along with your city or area to optimize your blog for SEO purposes. What this means is that you've peppered key terms such as "24-Hour Fitness" or "fitness trainer" or "Club Sport, Los Angeles" throughout your review enough times that you will rank high when someone looks up these terms.

This will help you capture a lot of web traffic that would normally go to the larger gyms' websites.

Finally, incorporate a "Call to Action" at the end of your review by having them click on a link that will take them to your money site. This can be done very non-invasively by saying something generic like, "For more information, click here" and then they are instantly directed to your website.

This is a sneaky little way to disguise your gym review by optimizing for these gyms key terms and the easiest way to direct more traffic on to your site, because chances are if you have killer copy, people will opt-in once they've reached your page.

3. How Business Reviews Can Make You Stand Out

Normally, when people are looking for a service, they tend to gravitate towards sites like Yelp, Google and Yahoo to see reviews. The more favorable reviews a company has, the more a potential client will be inclined to choose that business to call for more information.

The best way to utilize this tactic is to ethically "bribe" your clients with something like a free T-shirt or free training session for writing a killer review on one of these review sites.

Make sure they use your company name as a key term in the review.

Have your clients write 3 different reviews for these different sites using your keywords such as your business name, city, and service you provide.

By peppering you keywords and company name, your reviews will rank on the first page if people are searching for more information on your business.

This technique is not widely used enough, but it is a very powerful one. Think about it: If you wanted to visit a new restaurant and decided to check out a Yelp review and saw a restaurant with some positive reviews versus a restaurant with no reviews, which one would you be more likely to choose?

After a few months of employing these tactics, you will not only increase the traffic to your website, but expand your email list as well. These strategies will help your business will grow substantially.

The best part is, you don't even have to sell anything or spend money for this to start working for you today.

I'd love to hear your comments below.

Christian Aguirre is an East Bay Personal Trainer and runs a Hercules personal training business

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