A Fitness Marketing Guest Post by Leanne Ellington

Have you ever done something really dumb? If not, that kinda sucks.

We all know that we learn the most through experiences– whether good or bad– and that goes for all the mistakes we make too.

As personal trainers and boot camp owners we are all so focused on Craigslist, article-writing, honing in our skills, or anything else you can think of that takes up most of our time.

That stuff is all great… in fact it’s all crucial to keeping our businesses alive and making them thrive, but a lot of times we miss the blatantly obvious things that we should be doing to make our jobs of marketing our business that much more effective.

Just off the top of my head I can think of a few REALLY dumb things that I have done lately that when tweaked (or potentially tweaked) could turn into some major increased profits, increased retention, or major time and effort savers.

Don’t feel bad. At the end of the day, we are all do some pretty dumb things . I consider myself a very smart dumbass, but that doesn’t mean that I am immune to doing stupid sh*t just like the rest of the world.

I’ve outlined below a few of my major blunders and how hopefully you can learn from my dumbass-a-liciousness. (Yes I make up words sometimes)…

1. Up until a few weeks ago, I had no posters, signs, or any indicators whatsoever that there are Fitness Boot Camps going on inside the gymnastics studio where I hold boot camps.

Hello? Mcfly? Anybody home? Can you believe that?

There are hundreds of people flowing in and out of that building every single week, and I didn’t even have a friggin’ flyer up in the window?

Now in all fairness, my justification to myself was that I was changing my offer, tweaking my program, and changing the format of my boot camps from monthly to 6-week challenges…. but who cares?

A cheesy flyer with just my website and phone number would have sufficed until I had everything sorted. How much potential business was I losing every single day from this oversight?

Two weeks ago, I remedied this by making a few snazzy posters with some before and after pics, my website, and my phone number, and BAM…. 3 new sign-ups already. And that is only within the last two weeks.

Case in point. Dumbass thing number one.

2. For the last 15 months– as long as my boot camps have been in existence– I have had a referral rewards program. At one point I was giving away prizes. At one point (and currently) I am giving away free boot camp whenever my current campers refer someone that signs up for my camps. I have gotten a decent amount of referrals from this, but nothing that I would consider earth-shattering.

Unfortunately for me though, up until about a month ago, I wasn’t arming my campers with tools to actually bring in their friends, family, and co-workers. I mean zip, zilch, nada.

A few weeks ago I started supplying my campers with postcards (that had a $25 discount for my $250 dollar program), flyers for them to put up in their break room, and done-for-you emails for them to use to email out to their contacts. BAM! My referrals starting shooting through the roof.

In the past 32 days, I have had 26 new signups (some were returning campers) and about 60% of them were referrals!

Holy Guacamole! Do you see how my dumbass rookie mistake probably left a ton of money on the table.

Okay, I’m gonna cry over spilled milk here, but please, learn from my mistake.

3. I just realized in the past couple of weeks that I have the area marketing director for Panera AND a nurse practitioner for a local medical weight loss facility in my boot camps.

More importantly, both of these ladies are my raving fans that have seen major changes in their bodies since they started with me.

Notice how I said that “just realized” this? They have both been in my camps for a while now, and because I didn’t do any digging– because I failed to find out what these ladies did for a living– I missed out on tons of opportunities to joint venture with these ladies.

Now I have teamed up with Panera to do healthy workshops for their customers (and have prizes donated from them for giveaways and other random things) and have that medical weight loss center as a referral source.

Do you see how by simply failing to dig deeper and find out on-the-surface information about my raving fans I once again missed out on some great opportunities? Never again I tell ya.

4. The other day I was browsing through the racks at T.J. Maxx to look for some deals on workout pants. I was right near a middle-aged women in the workout gear section and we just happened to be in the medium sized clothes. All of a sudden she busted out with, “I don’t know why I am even looking here. My fat butt needs to go to the plus sized section.”

Now this woman was by no means fat. I probably wouldn’t even call her chubby.

So I responded to her by saying, ” You are definitely not fat by the way”. And then we got into a little chat (actually she was doing all the talking) about how hard it is to find flattering workout pants and yada yada yada.

Looking back, this would have been the perfect time to simply grow a pair and just inform her that I work with people like her all the time and show them incredible results… instead I just kept nodding and smiling and perusing the racks.

Have you ever gotten into a conversation with a stranger at the grocery store or anywhere for that matter and left without simply telling them what you do for a living?

This is the kind of should-be-blatantly-obvious stuff that we probably miss out on every single day.

So think for a second…

What are YOU missing out on?

What are some “dumb” things you can think of that you do (or don’t do) that could really have made a difference in your business?

Hopefully you learned a thing or two from me being a dumbass, and I look forward to learning from you too!

I’d love to hear your comments in the comment section below.

Leanne Ellington is an Orlando boot camp instructor and personal trainer, she runs Fitness Boot Camps in Orlando Florida

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