Personal Fitness Professional - August 2008 - (Page 26)

ACT MARKETING like you know about e Beef up your know-how with a sureﬁre process to stay ahead of the pack By Rich Butkevic When I was ﬁrst asked to write a piece about online marketing for ﬁtness professionals, it seemed easy enough. I mean, that’s what I do for a living, right? I consult with personal trainers and others in the industry to bring their marketing eﬀorts out of the dark ages (2004) and into the rapidly changing, technologically driven marketplace of today. But when I sat down with my cup of green tea to actually start writing, the laptop and I just sort of stared at one another for a good long while. You see, it’s almost like asking a history professor to explain European history in a few pages or a botanist to toss together 2,000 words on plants. There’s just so much that goes into the subject, it’s extremely hard to summarize or do justice to the topic in such a short amount of space. Marketing in 2008 is no diﬀerent, so we’re going to walk through what your starting point should be with your marketing eﬀorts. To keep it really simple, I like to tell people they should always start with ACT-ing. No, not acting like on a soap opera. ACT is the process I came up with to remember where your focus should always be with your marketing, and it stands for Audience, Conversion and Traﬃc. Audience The ﬁrst thing you always need to tackle, before you begin anything else, is to understand who your audience is. That is, who is your market? Who are you going to talk to? A mistake many, many, people make is attempting to market to everyone. You can’t be all things to all people, at least not at the same time. Your marketing material has to speak to the right audience to be eﬀective, and it has to push the right buttons. If you’re marketing yourself as an expert in powerlifting technique and training, you’re probably not going to capture too many moms who want to lose their last 10 pounds. If you market yourself as a trainer for endurance athletes, you’re not likely to corner the bodybuilding market with the same message. If you think you can capture bits of all the markets, you’ll usually end up alienating them all. 26 AUGUST2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - August 2008

Personal Fitness Professional - August 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor It's a Weighty Issue Current Controversies Streamline with Digital Neuro-Linguistic Programming Continuing Education Mark Your Calendar Act Like You Know About Marketing Blog For Fun and Profit Exercise Spotlight Product Profile New on the Market Spotlight: Krystal Davis

Personal Fitness Professional - August 2008

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