Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about this week on the Online Trainer Show: In Episode 49, Why People Pay for Fitness When They Could Get It for Free, Jon shares a dispiriting truth: For most people, the free workouts available online are good enough. They can find everything they need to get started, build a base of strength and conditioning, and troubleshoot the challenges they’re most likely to have.
Moreover, that free content comes at them from a lot of different directions, thanks to the democratization of the fitness industry. We’re long past the days when Men’s Health or T Nation dominated the conversation. In fact, Jon says, it’s now impossible for any single player to have a voice in every channel of communication, much less to dominate the conversations in those places. So who wins in a decentralized marketplace? The person who skillfully plays at the fringes. That’s where the opportunities are, and that’s where the off-the-shelf fitness programs fall short. When your target audience sees your program and asks, “Is this made for me?”, you want the answer to be an emphatic “yes.” And when they ask the inevitable follow-up questions—“How is this different from what I’ve done before?” “Why will this work when other programs
didn’t?”—you want to have those answers ready for them as well. “That gives people the belief that they’re actually going to do the thing,” Jon says. In Episode 50, Three Marketing Principles for Great Success (the title is a tribute to the new Borat movie, in case you were wondering), Jon has some tough love for coaches who claim they don’t care about money because they just want to help people: “It’s an excuse you make when you’re not confident enough to charge what you’re worth,” he says. “And if
you’re offended by that statement, it’s probably because it’s true.” That leads to the three marketing principles: - Understand that you’re in the marketing business.
- Build relationships and partnerships based on mutual respect and cooperation.
- Attract customers to you, rather than chasing after them. Â
All these things take time and effort. There’s no fast way to learn marketing, form genuine connections with your peers, and create content and systems that bring your customers to you. Which is fine. If fitness is your career, you already believe in working hard to achieve
tangible results. It’s what you tell your clients. And if you’re at the front end of that career, you have plenty of time. You’ll find every episode here: --> The Online Trainer Show
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