Are you having a hard time attracting clients or filling up your fitness classes?
Often, fitness professionals blame the economy for their struggle to attract and maintain clients, assuming that they’re not the only personal trainers without people to train. We hate to break it to you, but if you’re having a hard time getting people to sign up for your booty-burn boot camp classes, it might just be your own fault.
While you’re struggling to build a client base, there are many fitness professionals within your proximity thriving. So, what’s their secret? We’ll give you a hint: It’s got nothing to do with burning calories.
It has everything to do with their marketing campaign.
More specifically, it has to do with using push and pull marketing strategies. What is push and pull marketing, you ask? Put simply, it is an effective way to pique the interest of your target audience. It also extends itself to anyone looking to amplify their marketing campaigns, i.e., nutritionists, health coaches, and so on.
Keep reading to find out more about these marketing techniques and how they can help you reach more clients—and fill up your bank account.
Push and Pull Marketing: What It Is and How It Works
You may be a nutritionist or a personal trainer, but as a marketer, you’re technically not the one in charge. Your potential clients are—which is why you need a mixture of both push and pull techniques in your marketing campaign to promote yourself and get traction. There are many people who believe that it’s better to go with just push marketing, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Now that we got that small but mighty fact out of the way, let’s jump into the details.
Push Marketing
Push marketing is essentially where you “push” your advertising onto your target audience. The push model is the same thing as what is referred to as inbound marketing. As the one in charge of the marketing, you’re responsible for the content, the timing, and the frequency of your promotions.
The basic psychology behind this marketing model is that if you consistently put yourself or your business in front of people long enough, they’ll actively respond by purchasing your products or services. This includes:
- Advertisements on billboards
- Distributing business cards, flyers, etc.
- Product or service displays in shops—like a Vitamin Shoppe, a grocery store, a fitness clothing retailer, etc.
- Newspaper and/or magazine ads
- Radio or TV commercial advertising
- Trade shows or other events related to health and fitness
- Interactive (or non-interactive) video ads on social media
- Email campaigns
These types of push marketing techniques often include some type of promotion to create more intrigue. It could be a free class or personal training session, some sort of discount, a free water bottle with sign up, or anything to that effect.
Pull Marketing
Pull marketing is another form of inbound marketing—but for the “invisible” client. In other words, it’s about making your products or services visible to those who are looking for specific answers, and they’ve heard that you have those answers.
Push marketing employs newer forms of digital marketing, which include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Pay Per Click ads (PPC)
- Email nurturing
- Social media marketing and influencing
- Publishing a newsletter
- Starting up a referral program
All of these things allow the potential client to get there on their own. From a psychological standpoint, people are much more satisfied when they feel they’ve solved their own problems. So, rather than you leaving gym flyers on their windshields telling them they need to work out, they come to you already knowing this fact and confident that you’re the one that can whip them into shape.
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Push vs Pull: Which Is Better?
As mentioned before, there are many people out there who believe that push marketing is the way to go. There are also people who feel that push marketing is inferior to pull marketing. While one may have more strengths and success than the other, the truth is, they’re better when used together.
Think of your marketing campaign as a timeline. At zero hours, your first priority in marketing your product or services is to make yourself known to the world. If no one knows who you are, how will they form an interest in you—or more importantly, trust you?
Ipso Facto: Begin your campaign with push marketing techniques. Create your identity and inform the world about it. Put the idea in your target audience’s head that they have a need for fitness or nutrition. Once they know they need what you’re offering, you can move forward with your pull marketing techniques.
The key to your pull marketing strategy is to determine what triggers them to seek the information you have. Perhaps it’s a PPC ad or a social media advertisement or influencer that leads them to search you or something fitness related. You also want to make sure they find you during their quest for information.
Here’s the fundamental breakdown of what we like to call The Push-Pull Remix.
Step 1: Show Your Face
As we mentioned, you have to make people aware of your existence. This may take time and money, but you can pick and choose which push marketing route you want to go.
For example, create a social media account dedicated to what your products and/or services are, and be sure to gain A LOT of followers. Having a social media account works well in conjunction with both print and digital ads.
Step 2 Be Ready with Content
These days, every business needs a blog filled with informative and authoritative content. You can optimize your blog to rank in Google searches so when people type something like how many sit-ups do I have to do to see my abs in the search bar, one of your blog posts come up. This post will ultimately end with what is known as a CTA (call to action) that encourages the reader to visit your website to contact you, purchase something, or sign up for a class.
Step 3 Start an Email Campaign
This involves both marketing strategies because you can use your email campaign to get the attention of new customers and maintain current ones. You can read more about email campaigns here.
Step 4 Start a Referral Program
Word of mouth is a great way to attract new customers. If you can get your current customers to refer your products or services to their friends and family—with something in it for them, of course—you’re basically getting free publicity with sure-fire positive testimonials.
Be Patient, Be Curious
Your marketing campaign won’t be effective overnight, especially if you’re just starting out, so be patient and keep working on it.
It’s also important to pick and choose the mixture of push and pull marketing that works best for you and your business and to remain curious about your target audience. You’ll want to eventually branch out and become the solution to all of their problems.
And remember, even if you have a small number of clients, it’s crucial that you remain dedicated to their success as well. After all, their testimonials can make or break your business, especially in its early stages.
