Video marketing is a natural tool for growing your fitness business. Most trainers enjoy showing exercise or talking about it much more than they do conducting a sales consultation. If you want to get more paying fitness clients, you want video. In any advertising or marketing efforts images stand out before copy. If your amazing headline captures someone’s attention first, your image is going to be a close second. Place a video beside a static photo and the video wins.
In a world of instant gratification if you can give a prospective customer a piece of what they’ll be getting when they become a client you’ll edge out your competition, providing you do it right. As a fitness marketing coach the mistakes I see in use of video are common. The focus of this article is taking doing video, to doing it right.
Mistake #1. Not doing it at all.
If you’re not doing video marketing. Start. You’re going to make mistakes but you can start developing the habit and systems for regularly shooting videos and posting them. From that point you can start focusing on getting better results. Any less than desirable attempts can still be salvaged.
Mistake #2. Starting without an objective.
When you contemplate writing a big fat check for a radio or print ad you think hard about what you want the ad to do and what action you want the prospective customer to do once they’ve been exposed. Your free video marketing strategy should be no difference. After viewing do you want the customer to register for a bootcamp, a complimentary session and how should they reach you? Should they call you, click on your active link, or what action do you want them to take?
Mistake #3. Turning on the camera without a script.
To make a video that’s conversational and friendly, casual and compelling, you have to know exactly what you are going to say. That starts at the drawing board. If you have resolved the second mistake and you have an objective, then your script should lead the customer to wanting to do just that. That is not going to happen by accident. Like making a sale, certain steps have to come in advance of asking a customer who doesn’t know you until watching you the first time to take action. What happens in a sale? You discover the problem, right? So in your video you are first going to talk about the problem, before you provide a solution. You need to give them something of value before you ask or in exchange of what you’ve asked. Give them the tip they can use right now. Offer the “free gift” for entering their email or calling.
Mistake #4. Thinking in one dimension.
If you’re only thinking about slapping a video up so you can pat yourself on the back for doing video without thinking what has to happen next, you’re wasting time. If you don’t have an annotation in your video which provides a live link so they get to your home page or registration page the video will not get conversion. If you don’t include a phone number with a live person answering and responding you will put another obstacle between I’m interested and I want to pay you.
Mistake #5. Using one video version for every display.
If you are talking to people not already involved in your club or programs you have to build a relationship with them. If you are talking to people already members but not personal training they need another message. If you’re talking to prior or current personal training clients about what’s next or upgrading that’s a different conversation. What you put on your Facebook page for personal training clients should have a different purpose than the video you put on YouTube to attract people who are doing a Google search for fitness options.
Mistake #6. Creating a lame title that will never be seen.
Your goal is to get shown as the number one video in the search for your topic. Consider how many times you click on a video, article or blog that is on the second page of search results. Even if you’re the seventh or eight listed, the chance of you ever being clicked on is so small it isn’t worth your time. Get help with copy writing so that you are findable. Study the top ranking videos and take notes. Seek a fitness marketing expert. Don’t miss this step or the ones that have come before it don’t matter.
You can make your marketing come alive with video done right.
