A Guest Post by the owner of Australia’s Personal Training Business of the Year – Scott Williams
Hey all, welcome to PT Business in A Box and part two in my series of ways to increase cash flow into your Boot Camp business with little or no outlay from you. My name is Scott Williams and I own and run the current Australian Personal Training Business of the Year for the last two years running.
Over the course of the next few posts I am going to give you a series of very effective marketing ideas for your business that will increase your income with little or no cost. Here is the second of my biggest marketing ideas that have been the biggest money earners.
Total Outlay for this Marketing Idea: $0
Marketing Idea #2 – Client Referrals
OK, I know what you are thinking… I already know this, and yes I agree you probably do, but how many of you actually take any action when it comes to client referrals?? Seriously sit back and think about how often and how serious you are about doing this??
I do this pretty much on a weekly basis at all of my 22 Boot Camp locations, with over 400 people each week running around doing a Succeed Boot Camp here in Canberra, I can pretty much get all the people I need coming to me from client referrals (saves a hell of a lot of cash on advertising).
Hell I used to spend close to $10,000 every 12 weeks for letter box drops when we launched our new Boot Camp series. Yes that was very profitable for me, but I have got my business to the stage that if I look after my clients I already have in my bucket, they will go out and do the ground work for me… a very cool thing, I am now doing less marketing than ever before and making more money.
We used to run Newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads, + other print media, I now do NONE of those, and we have the highest number of clients in our six years in the business on Boot Camp memberships.
What are the best ways you can get client referrals?
Firstly let me explain what you need to get – hopefully by now you have a good relationship with your graphic designer (you should really be training them). Go and see your designer and get them to design a kickass VIP One month FREE Boot Camp voucher that you can get printed up. Make sure they are business card size (easy to carry around). Here is what mine looks like:
Well in my experience as Australia’s leading fitness expert, the best ways to get these to work for you are:
- Hand them out to your clients to give to any friends or family they may have that might be interested in joining into Boot Camp
- Take them to any store that can give them out as a free gift to their clients as thank you for their business. I currently have my hairdresser, my real estate agent, my finance guy, accountant , massage lady, several beauty salons just to name a few that hand them out to their clients as a FREE gift. I even have a Real Estate agent that gives them out as a gift for when people buy or sell a house with him
- Just walk through the shops and hand them out for fun to people, you never know you might take you up on the offer
Now one thing to note here, be sure to reward the person that hands them out and gives you a referral. It doesn’t need to be much for them either. I mix it up but at the moment I give them either two weeks FREE themselves for the referral or a FREE dinner for 2 at a local restaurant
The same as last months post, this will only work if you have established Boot Camps already going and you can drop these people into a location at no extra cost to you. It would be a bit harder if you are just starting out as you would be minimizing the potential income coming in.
To give you an idea of how a marketing idea like this can work, here is a rundown of an average month of using my VIP cards for client referrals as a way to attain new clients:
Total number of VIP cards that were handed out : 200
Total number that was returned to me: 13
Total number that completed the FREE month of sessions: 13
Total number that have signed up to our 6 or 12 month Membership: 13
Total new sign up to the Succeed Boot Camps 13
(around $5300 increase in revenue each, but x that by 12 months = $63,000 increased revenue)
I suppose you want to know what all of this cost for me to set up?
Actually it cost me NOTHING…. Yes that is correct NOTHING.
How did I get this happening for nothing? Easy…. I arranged contra deals for everything.
So I train the Graphic Designer, I train the printing company that printed up the business cards, + I either train all the businesses that hand out the VIP Cards, or I simply asked them if they wanted a FREE gift to give to their clients with no strings attached (not one said no)….
Not a bad profit for nothing….
So three things from this post:
- Go out and set up contra deals with a designer and local print company
- Get into a few shops and get them handing out your FREE month Boot Camp cards for you
- Get your cleints handing them out and don’t forget to reward them for their efforts
Until next post, keep on doing what you love doing every day.
Scott Williams
CEO, Succeed Personal Development
Trainer, writer, family man
P.S: If you are reading this and really want to find out how to start a boot camp business or you already have one and want to know how to build a boot camp business, check out Scott’s new product.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Scott , my question is that i am reading your fantastic material however if you are just starting out boot camp and not an existing one obviously as you say it’s a little bit more difficult to use all free passes etc when trying to make an income, what do you suggest for starting new Boot cap? Thanks
Hi Darren,
Thanks for your comment.
At the end of the day you need people in your Boot Camps to even start one up, so I would look at maybe a 2 for 1 deal. A great way for people to split the cost and also an easy way for you to get double the amount of people into the Boot Camp, and at least start generating an income. Yes you may not make a huge amount of money, but it then comes back to you as the trainer and the system you run as to whether it will grow into a bigger business from there…
One point I would make is to possibly make it a shorter (maybe four week) Boot Camp, so you don’t miss out on too much income like you would if you ran a 12 week Camp straight up. We started out with all four week programs. Once I got people into the programs, I just worked very hard on referral programs from the current list (which was only 12 people in my very 1st Boot Camp), and kept it growing from there.
Referrals in the fitness industry will either make you or break you in my belief, so it is vital you get into instant rapport with all your clients ASAP. Once they know you, like you and trust you, they will do all the leg work for you..
Scott
Great post, thanks for the ideas.