Is it just me or has the whole fitness marketing ?thing? gotten so far out of hand that it?s become a farce, a joke and an embarassment to those of us in the profession who love both the work we do and those who we do it with?
I don?t know about you, but fully 95% of all the fitness marketing I come across just seems to make me cringe at the cheesiness, the hype, the amateurishness and the outright bullshit and lies associated with it and, as a result, I believe that the public must perceive us as a bunch of cowboys who?ll do anything and say anything to make a sale.
I wish it?wasjust me, but I get this as feedback from the public a LOT.
And, you know, the real shame of this is that the ACTUAL experiences and results delivered by the greater majority of fitness professionals is actually BETTER than the crappy marketing they?re using to sell their services!
Weird but true.
The average trainer nowadays is vastly better informed, has better support networks and better access to courses, seminars, workshops and books than at any other time in our short history as an industry, yet despite this we throw all of these advantages into the garbage and instead put our emphasis into doing the one thing that?s GUARANTEED to turn people off faster than halitosis on a first kiss.
We SCREAM at people.
We almost literally spend most of our time shouting and screaming at people the message that our marketing heros have told us to shout out again and again and again and louder and louder and louder until we?re hoarse with the effort. ?If you?re not yelling and telling then you?re not selling? they shout at us? all the while selling us their latest package on how to shout louder.
Hmmm?
And what is it that they invariably want us to shout?
It all comes down to 3 words.
Buy.
My.
Shit.
Sure, they dress it up and tell us a thousand different ways to combine them so it?s less and less obvious what we?re doing but essentially it?s the same 3 words we?re yelling.
?Look at my testimonials!?
?Check out my groupon deal!?
?Free trial!?
?Get these bonus oNLY if you sign up today!?
?Two for one offer!?
Blah, blah, blah?
It all sounds the same to me?
? Buy my shit!
Now, don?t get me wrong. Marketing and sales are definitely important to your fitness business. It?s naive to think otherwise. You?ll never get your business to the level of success you desire without them, that?s for sure, but we?ve swallowed hook, line and sinker the biggest bullshit ever when it comes to fitness business success and I for one think it?s time to spit it back out again.
What is this bullshit?
That??You are not in the business of fitness, you?re in the business of?marketing?fitness?
I call bullshit on that. And so should you.
See, I never got into fitness because I thought to myself??Wow, I cant wait to start learning how to write sales copy, ads and flyers!?did you? I wanted to help people and I?m sure you did too, right?
If you?d wanted to be a marketer then surely you?d have studied marketing at college, got a degree and pursued a career in THAT field rather than choosing health and fitness, no?
Like I said, marketing IS an important part of any successful business (or should be) but it?s NOT your business if you?re a trainer or coach. YOUR business is helping people to get fit and healthy by helping them to solve the problems that are keeping them from achieving this.
So why is it that so many trainers spend so much of their time SCREAMING their ?buy my shit? marketing messages and whispering their ?I?m an amazing coach, here?s how I can help you solve your problems? messages?
A bit backward, no?
And VERY harmful to their business success too!
You see, we now live in an age of ?attention deficit. Society is being literally BOMBARDED with so many people screaming their ?buy my shit? messages from every possible quarter that the only way to get through the day is to?
?turn down the volume!
By turning down the volume they get to protect themselves (if only a little) from the veritable tsunami of marketing messages they?re drowning under? and that means YOURS too.
So now they don?t open the emails you send, no matter how ?magnetic? the subject lines.
Now they see yet don?t believe in the awesome before and after pictures and powerful testimonials on your website.
And now they?re completely unmoved by the ?cheap as chips? promotions and sales you run? even the free ones.
They?re sick of being screamed at and just want some peace. And who can blame them? Don?t you feel the same way?
Yet, you know, they?re still open to the one thing that as a fitness professional you are MASTER at.
Communication.
You see, as much as they?re sick of all the ?white noise? caused by all the shouting and screaming in the marketplace, people are STILL more than happy to receive instructions that will help them solve their biggest problems and challenges and actually WANT to hear from coaches and trainers who have great solutions.
But not just?anysolutions.
They prick their ears up and pay attention to anyone who?s offering:
A UNIQUE solution- something that no-one else seems to be offering, or offering in a way that no-one else is offering it
A COMPLETE solution- one that feels like it?s well thought through and leaves no stone unturned
An HONEST solution- one that?s not setting off their bullshit alarms and treating them as idiots, but rather that credits them with some intelligence and discernment
A SYSTEMATIC solution- One that is part of a ?big picture? approach where each element dovetails neatly into the next
A GUARANTEED solution- One that will absolutely, definitely work if they do what they?re told to do
A FAST solution- One that delivers results quickly (just be sure to be honest about the work involved in fast)
A LASTING solution- One that won?t disappear after the first flush of results
An ENJOYABLE solution- One where the experience is as important as the results
There?s more but you get the message. People are ready, willing, able and even desirous of listening to those who can offer any of the above and they?ll absolutely fall at the feet of anyone who can offer it all? but not when it piggybacks on a ?buy my shit? scream.
Trouble is, most of these solutions, if they exist at all, are hardly ever spoken about by coaches in any meaningful way and when they are, they?re whispered so quietly on their sites and their marketing materials that you?d be hard pushed to notice.
Most services are far from?unique. In fact, they?re copycatting at its worst with everyone looking to the market leaders (or those who claim to be) and simply ripping off their messages lock, stock and barrel. Trouble is, as soon as they do that they are in the ?me too!? zone and are now no different.
And if they ARE unique in some way, you?d barely know it as nothing of the uniqueness comes across in how they talk about their business. (Be honest now, could I tell how you?re different from 99% of other trainers by reading your FB wall or your website?)
And most fitness businesses hardly offer?completeservices either. It?s almost as though personal trainers have limited themselves to merely offering services that are based around the calories in vs calories out model and forgotten that there?s so much more involved in achieving and maintaining lifelong health and fitness. Those who succeed in the next evolution of fitness businesses will be those who bring more complete services to their clients and make doing business with them a no-brainer.
What about?honest? Does that come across in most trainers? marketing? I think not!
We?ve gotten into the habit of doing all the hypey crap that sets alarm bells off and forgotten that we HATE being on the receiving end of it ourselves and so our sites represent us in ways that we?d never ever represent ourselves in person.
How about this; just share your story about who you are, what you do and why you do it.
That?s enough.
And what about being?systematic? One of the biggest barriers to truly standing out as a professional is a lack of systematic approach to what you do, especially when you?re trying to sell what you do to others.
Can you imagine a brain surgeon saying that she ?likes to change things up? from one surgery to the next? How about your accountant saying that he likes to ?keep the Inland Revenue guessing? when he does your taxes? Or what about your lawyer saying that he works out how to win a case based upon rolling a dice and figuring out what action to take next?
Unprofessional right?
Why?
Because it?s the SYSTEMS of surgery and accountancy and law that make them professions. Without the systems they?d never have gotten to the status they have in society nor gained the prestige or the pay. Why should the fitness profession be any different?
If you want to sell without having to scream then a system is a must? and not just a slick name. My POWER Principles TM aren?t really a system if there aren?t a series of ?if-then-goto? steps in place for each element of the health and fitness continuum (which there are) and neither is yours.
Systematise your enterprise or all the screaming in the world will do you no good.
It the systems that allow you to?Guarantee?what you do every time without fear of it going wrong or having to wheedle your way out of refund. Sure, some people?saythey have guarantees but they don?t give them pride of place in the messages about their businesses and they pray to God that no-one remembers or takes them up on it.
Yet a truly successful business isn?t just putting out a guarantee because it sounds good for marketing purposes. They put it out because they have such a great business model, such an airtight system and they feel so proud of what they do that they feel COMPELLED to make it clear that their systems are something truly special.
In fact, creating a guarantee for any other reason than that is just plain ridiculous. You?ll either get called on the guarantee or you?ll look like a charlatan when you go through the small print to stop yourself from having to honour it. In either case, you lose.
The other thing about systems is that they?re great for delivering?fastresults and, as you know, people LOVE fast! Yet in fitness world fast tends to come from moving EVEN more and eating EVEN less rather than from the synergistic effect of taking care of your clients? lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, activity, hormone balance, toxicity levels, immune system regulation, lymphatic function, neural efficiency, psychological limitation and more.
Just a small improvement across each ONE of these areas leads to results that are freakily fast and much more enjoyable than most trainers can deliver by just working on the energy balance equation? yet few are doing this. Are you?
If you?re not, you?re very unlikely to create a system that produces results that?last in the long termmeaning that your work with your client has not been effective and that their investment of effort, emotion, time and money has been a waste. People want to know how they can continue to experience ongoing results without having to resort to draconian measures for life. Are you telling them how?
Finally, are you helping them to enjoy the?experienceof becoming who they want to become? The experiential side of coaching is rarely discussed yet it?s probably THE most important element when it comes to the longevity of the training and nutritional cycles that will be responsible for the greater results over time. The experience is a very personal ?recipe? that must be ?cooked? to very exacting standards if the client is to continue to improve over time but other than ?you?ll have fun? it?s nowhere to be found in most of the material surrounding trainers? businesses. Do YOU address this?
Chances are, if you?re honest, you?ll see just how much of this you?re NOT covering in the marketing of your business and that, even if you are, these factors are whispers in comparison to the screams of the other ?marketing stuff? you do.
And by ?marketing stuff? I don?t just mean your website, your flyers, your ads but the material that surrounds every single element of your visibility strategy.
On your blog are your posts about these factors and how they relate to the specific solutions you provide or are you simply SCREAMING and trying to incessantly sell?
On FB are you getting caught up in the inane and insane and trying to impress other trainers with how smart you are as a coach yet rarely producing any content for the very public you claim to be passionate about serving? (Arguing over the merits of a squat with a trainer you?ve never met, never will meet and don?t want to meet whilst failing yet again to produce problem-solving material for your prospective clients will never fill your diary will it?)
See, here?s the thing.
In this attention deficit age, all the shouting and screaming stuff that we?ve been doing for so long is going to stop working. In fact, it?s already massively on the decline in terms of effectiveness and so continuing to do what?s not working just doesn?t make any sense.
Yet those things that you?ve put merely been whispering about (and infrequently at that), those articles, those blog posts, those videos that are intended NOT to ?sell your shit? but simply to solve the problems of those people you claim to care so much about, are the very things that you SHOULD be screaming about, and when you do, you won?t have to beg people to buy your shit anymore because they?ll be coming to you cash in hand ASKING if they can please, please, please have some of your expertise and solutions instead.
This isn?t rocket science, but it IS rare to see anyone using this approach in building and growing their fitness businesses. ?Buy my shit? has become so commonplace that we?ve come to think that this is the only way fitness marketing can be done, but it?s not.
As you?ll see when you stop whispering about the stuff that?s so important both to those you serve and to your business 
To your success!
Truth, joy and love
Dax Moy
P.S ? There?s a place for ?in your face? selling for sure. I like money very much and am happy to run sales and offers from time to time but I believe it should never be the mainstay of your fitness business if you?re serious about long-term success. Let others scream about the stuff that doesn?t matter, you just focus on what does.
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