Recently I wrote about New Year promotions and also about working with and connecting to your local business community. Anything that gives you increased standing and respect in the community is a good thing, in my opinion. The importance of marketing and promotion can’t be overstated. Unless you’ve hit on something that takes all the capacity you can produce without you lifting a finger (let me know about that please), marketing and promotions must be ongoing activities.
My point here is that you have to be in the habit of actively pursuing promotion opportunities. They won’t all work out but those that do will justify your investment of time and resources in all of them. With time you’ll get a sense of what works and what does not. So, you will be able to more effectively find new promotion opportunities. So far, there’s nothing new here from The Gym Insight Blog. What is new, if you read on, is there’s a promotion at the end of the article. Let me lay out an explanation to build some background.
Team Up For Promotions
Once you’ve developed a set of promotions that works repeatedly, it doesn’t mean you can stop looking for new ones. You always need to be seeking new ways to promote your gym. The promotions that you used last year might not work so well next year. You’ll need new tools if the market changes. Also, it’s just not easy to determine ahead of time what is going to work well. There might be a promotion out there that no one’s ever thought of and you just stumble onto it. To do so would be like hitting the lottery jackpot.
Another thing that every small business owner needs to be doing is networking within your local business community. I’ve written about this before. You can team up with fitness studios that offer facilities and services that compliment yours. You may be able to develop an offer with local retailers that offer their customers some sort of gym membership, like off-peak memberships, when there’s a high value purchase. Work with local retailers to offer gift cards for your fitness center.
The list is limited only by imagination. And not just yours, if your networking properly you can offer benefits on the promotion of your peers in the local business community. If you’re doing it right you’ll get the attention of like minded people and that is what I have to offer here: A promotion from the really awesome folks at Spartan Races.
Giving Away a Promotion As a Promotion
The organizers of the upcoming Spartan Race have recently contacted me and informed me of their upcoming events in Arizona and Las Vegas. These types of events gets me excited because it gets my gym members excited about a goal to train for. If you haven’t heard of them, Spartan organizes outdoor fitness obstacle races. Outside Magazine voted them the number one obstacle race and they have been the global leader in this type of event since 2005.
Spartan has given Gym Insight a free ticket code to any open heat for a 2014 Spartan Race in
the continental US. I’m thrilled to have this, but I want to practice what I preach. So I am offering this free race code to the first gym owner, operator, or manager who contacts me via Gym Insight’s Facebook page and leaves a message requesting the code.
I want to make a point here, which is that you can use this to create a promotion to support your gym. In turn, you can run a personal training promotion to give away this free race entry code. The promotion can be something like entering the name of everyone that signs up for personal training for the next week in a lottery for a free Spartan Race entry. The members who participate have a goal that gives purpose and motivation to their workouts. It becomes an incentive to use the resources you provide such as personal training and nutritional counseling.
In return, the gym can also have the winner wear their branded clothing during the race. Having your branded gear on a Spartan Race competitor would be priceless. Don’t forget to take lots of pictures when it happens! This is the sort of event that makes a great promotion. It attracts media attention, appeals to everyone’s sense of adventure and challenge and also helps out for a good cause. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Reference Link
Over to you…
If you are are interested in getting your gym members excited about the Spartan Race, please share this link with them for 15% off any Spartan Race.
Also, I would love to hear in the comments below how this type of promotion works out for your fitness business or if you become Spartan Strong through a race of your own.