The life blood to any business is lead generation. But how you generate those leads is the question each business owner should be asking themselves before spending a dime. Let’s assume you have just opened a new fitness studio and you specialize in sports fitness; that is the product you are offering. What approach should you take in lead generation for your offering? To answer that question you need to determine who your market is.
Important Questions – you must ask about your market
• Where do they live?
• What are their ages?
• What is their gender?
• What is their income?
• Where will you find them?
• Why would they want what you offer?
Fitness Marketing -Example
• Studies show that your clients will travel approximately within 3-5 miles of your locations.
• Sport clients will generally be between 16-25 yrs old
• They will be 60% male
• They (or their parents, actually) will be in the upper income bracket ($100K)
• You will definitely find them in schools, colleges, on social sites, craigslist, and through their parents who will be funding their activities.
• Only you can answer this. But in a nutshell determine what makes your different from your competition or commonly called USP (unique sell point).
Marketing Solutions – Automatic Marketing Systems
Leverage your knowledge and time, using effective marketing automated services. For much less money than you can do for yourself too. They will promote your product or services while you are working and when you sleep, the job gets done. Focus on your business and profits. More leads equal more sales equals more profits and time for you. Find a provider that can address the niche market you are working in. Make sure they have a successful track record, check references.
Common pitfalls
Many fitness owners waste a fortune on ineffective and costly advertising with direct mail marketing. Advertising can be a component of your attraction strategy. It can also be fatal if you waste valuable monies (and potential profit) on the typical, expensive, ineffective, stone aged advertising myths that worked 25 years ago.
Direct mail marketing is one avenue that a lot of new businesses utilize because they see others using it. Direct mail marketing is generally made up of a post card and a letter campaign mailed via snail mail, and is now commonly known as “junk mail”. To implement a direct mail campaign you will purchase a list of leads within the demographics that you have determined from your questions and answers. You will then schedule your campaign out over the course of months, because it generally will take upward of seven times of someone seeing your marketing piece before they will respond.
Direct mail marketing can be effective; however it can also be very expensive. So you ask yourself, ‘is there a less expensive more affordable alternative to the expensive direct mail marketing. One of the best alternative marketing sources that would be more effective with this youth market and much more affordable is the use of the social media sites like; My Space, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There are also some new text marketing services available for just pennies.
Unfortunately, many owners set up one site and post to it weekly and wonder why it is not working. To really make a splash in the social sites it takes consistently posting exciting relevant content to multiple sites. There are numerous social sites available so use as many as you can and post as often as you can; businesses using Twitter will tweet numerous time per day. The key with socials sites is, it is free marketing so you are spending time instead of money.
To really have your Fitness Marketing take off, be sure to visit AutoPilotFitnessMarketingSolutions.com, to find the best methods available to help your Lead Generation efforts today! Babe Mooney, Founder/CEO
For more information on Social Media Marketing check out,
http://autopilotfitnessmarketingsolutions.com/marketing-blog/smi/
This report courtesy of Dan Sherman, Author and Success Coach
Visit his site at www.peakperformancemedia.com
1. Write and submit articles. It is a classic, but it works. When your articles are indexed in the search engines, you will have traffic forever. Write quality, unique articles.
2.Write and submit press releases; use prlog.org.
3. Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have those all link back to one main site.
4. Submit free classified ads to sites like Usfreeads.com.
5. Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.
6. If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website URL in there.
7. View and comment on related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors by providing your own URL if the product is similar.
8. Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.
9. Review some related products on epinion.
10. If you purchase a product that you like, feel free to leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a URL.
11. Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website URL as a signature.
12. Keep updating content on your websites/blogs. Try at least once per week.
13. Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at del.icio.us/.
14. Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.
15. Tag blog photos at Flickr.
16. Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds. 
17. Try coining your own term. Trademark it if you think it will become popular.
18. Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.
19. Include translation for your websites/blogs.
20. Do not be boring; write about something that a wide group of people would want to know about.
21. Make sure to edit your writing.
22. Comment on other related blogs.
23. Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.
24. Sponsor a charity; most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed.
25. Sell an item on eBay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.
26. Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.
27. Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase.
28. Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.
29. Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.
30. Contact small newsletters offline and submit articles to them.
31. Become friends with editors of an offline publication and try joint ventures.
32. Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.
33. Have a GREAT product. All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is sub par.
34. Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore or even eBay?
35. Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?
36. Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?
37. Write good content; if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your site.
38. Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it and visit your site.
39. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.
40. Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like gold if utilized correctly.
41. Write tip articles, such as ‘Ten easy tips to blank.’
42. Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing a PPC campaigns.
43. Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them.
44. Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.
45. Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.
46. Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.
47. Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.
48. Use keywords in your image alt tags.
49. Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag.
50. Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.
51. If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.
52. Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). The more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have higher search results in Google. If you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have all the traffic that you can handle.
53. Outsource clerical work and concentrate on getting traffic. Time is money. You can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, post ads, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.
54. Offer something for FREE. Free is the magic word. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…it’s the bait! Offer a free mini course or free ebook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize this opportunity, such as an affiliate product.
55. After someone orders from you, sell a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, offer a web traffic ebook, and then after the individual purchases it offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.
56. Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. You must give people a reason to talk about you; being like everyone else is not a reason.
57. Write articles on authority sites like Squidoo and Hub pages with a link to your site.
58. Become an active respected member of niche related forums. You can do this by offering quality posts. It is not the number of posts you make, it is the quality.
59. Test, test, test. You are flushing money down the drain if you are not testing to see what campaigns are bringing you in the most money compared to which ones are just costing you money.
60. Stay up to date on what is going on in the world; you can monetize hot topic trends.
61. Network, when you know more people, you can find people who can help you get what you need.
62. Offer an affiliate program for your product or service. Make sure to let your satisfied customers know that you have one, if they like your product then they will be even more delighted to know that they will get money for referring you.
63. Write and give away a free ebook or report. It does not have to be lengthy as long as it has quality information neatly formatted. You can also make a brandable ebook or report and allow affiliates the opportunity to put their affiliate links in there to pass on to the next reader. You can then send this ebook to your subscribers or submit it to ebook directories.
64. Add viral components to your blog such as social bookmarking options, and a ‘refer a friend’ option.
65. Be funny; people like something that will make them laugh and they will spread it for you if it’s genuine.
66. Syndicate your content by using RSS feeds on your website.
67. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! answers with a link to your website in the resource area.
68. Put a link in the ‘about me’ section of your eBay profile.
69. Make and upload a viral video to Youtube. Use appropriate keywords in the video description for your target audience.
70. Record an informative podcast and submit it to poplar podcast directories.
71. Provide helpful answers for Google adsense on their help forum with a link back to your website. Go here to check it out: groups.google.com/group/adsense-help
72. Get people to comment and add content to your site. When they do this, they will provide you unique content…no need to pay for ghostwritten articles.
73. If you cannot get JVs, or joint ventures, then pay webmasters for sponsored advertising space on their newsletters.
74. Include a media section on your website so that you will give the media an easy way to stay up to date on what you are doing.
75. Teach a class at your local community college or university. The more exposure you get, the more credibility you and your site will have.
76. Create a screensaver and make it easy for individuals in your niche to download it. Have eye candy graphics combined with your company logo to brand yourself.
77. Write something controversial and spread it freely to your target market. As long as people talk about it, it’s a successful campaign (something controversial is something that goes against established beliefs in your market.)
78. Write and publish a book. Having your own book is a quick way to gain credibility.
79. Take a guru in your niche out to lunch, and pay for it. Ask them how they get traffic. Ask for a JV.
80. Start an organization or club about something. This can be done online through Yahoo or Google groups or Facebook.
81. Volunteer. Donate your time to a good cause. You can network with people and form connections at the same time while you tell people about your site.
82. Don’t just use the 3 big pay per click search engines. Try some of the smaller ones you can find on payperclickuniverse.com.
83. Offer good customer service, you may be surprised on how many referrals you get just by being reliable.
84. Consider adding a direct mail marketing campaign to your marketing arsenal.
85. Write pay per click ads that catch the reader’s attention with something wild or shocking.
86. Use twitter to send out your URL when you have some new web content.
87. Host your own commercial so you can put ‘as seen on TV’ on your products.
88. Conduct surveys and publish them. These make you an expert in your field.
89. Break a record or shoot to be in the Guinness world records for something.
90. Make a sitemap for your website.
91. Use a favicon (favorites icon) for your site.
92. Make your visitors more involved in your website. You can accomplish this by adding CGI scripts to your site.
93. Make sure you have no broken links on your site, and make sure that your website shows clearly in all browsers, like IE and Firefox.
94. Find domain names that get traffic, purchase them, and have them redirect to your website.
95. Spell correctly whenever using keywords in writing.
96. Look at sites related to your niche to try to figure out how they get their traffic.
97. Properly optimize your website for the right keywords.
98. Avoid java scripts on your website as much as possible.
99. Do not use frames on your website.
100. If your website becomes popular and starts getting lots of traffic, try switching to a dedicated server.
101. Be unique, be helpful, and solve problems with the information on your site. Every problem is a product: Sell the solution!
The life blood to any business is lead generation. But how you generate those leads is the question each business owner should be asking themselves before spending a dime. Let’s assume you have just opened a new fitness studio and you specialize in sports fitness; that is the product you are offering. What approach should you take in lead generation for your offering? To answer that question you need to determine who your market is.
