First, I don’t believe in corporate looking websites that only try to make a brand look good, but doesn’t give the gym prospect any actual info about your gym like prices, equipment, contact info, childcare, programs, actual video tour ( My biggest pet peeve is a gym website having a so called “virtual tour”, but is actually nothing but someone with a digital camera set to video while their turning in a circle making you sick to even watch and makes a treadmill look like a boxing bag). If your doing this, STOP IT!!! your killing your website business.

Next, If you have Flash buttons, a shoddy virtual tour, no email sign up form, content that doesn’t tell the prospect what they want to know, diet info, no pictures of the actual equipment, and one of the most important things is if you don’t have specific keywords on your website pages and web post for SEO keyword optimization, STOP IT TOO!!

Below is a snapshot of my Fitness Center Website, Some people act like my fitness center website is as ugly as a butt rash, but it works and I’ll compare the stats of visits, calls, and email sign ups just from my website to their very corporate looking website.

Notice how simple the gym website is to navigate. I have tweaked it for over 4 years now with all the marketing knowledge and website simplification things I’ve learned from thousands of hours of studying marketing and website design and SEO 

Now look at this snap fitness website. It has no email sign up form for them to keep prospects thinking about them, no video, no compelling content except one offer for a week free. I’m sure since they have a big brand name it does ok, but my gym is in a town where snap fitness is also, but i have double the membership they have, they also don’t do any marketing to speak of.

You think being a big name like snap fitness they would have a staff of Internet marketers, NOT JUST WEBSITE DESIGNERS, because most designers are just that, not marketers, I am a fitness marketer first, then web designer. Snap fitness is a great gym and the owners have done a great job, but it cost them about 1 to 1.5 million to open a snap fitness. I have less than $100,000 in mine from start to finish. Which would you rather do, own your own, or a franchise that tells you where to pee and how to do it. I’ve got an ex wife, it’s not for me but may be for you. HIRE SOMEONE TO WRITE YOUR FITNESS MARKETING MATERIALS, don’t follow what all the other gyms are doing.

Now, I haven’t wanted to learn how to build websites from scratch though, I have learned to read web code, but not enough to build a site from scratch because you don’t need to these days for most businesses. I use templates now to build my customers websites, that way i can concentrate on the content that gets customers to even find the website to start with. You do however need to know some coding to install stuff like email forms and install videos and put headline tags in the right places for SEO optimization.

Below is an example of some website statistics from a website I built to replace a website that got from 0 to 3 hits a day before i built this one with specific content. notice the increase from 1 the first few days to over 150 hits a day within a month after i got the content added in several post and pages and optimized for search engines

I build website just like mine for many industries and people. want to see some more websites like mine? here are a few. www.thebamabelle.com and www.herringfitness.com and www.templegym.tv 

Notice how Herring Fitness website is identical to mine at Temple Gym except colors. The owner of herring fitness is NFL New Orleans Saints Player Will Herring #54 from Auburn Alabama and formerly played for the Seattle Sea hawks for 4 years. Will hired me to be a consultant to open his gym and set it up as a 24 hour fitness center since he is away most of the year in New Orleans. I built his website and he gets between 40 and 120 hits a day on an average week, which is about what i get at my gym.

Other gyms may get a lot of visits but they probably only get a phone # or address without getting convincing evidence that sells them on that gym

If you try to get a website built from scratch you’ll spend from $2,500 to $5,000. But I can build a website like mine for under $1000 including editing a video tour that you shoot and send me, also all the specific copy writing SEO which is most important to drive prospects to your website when they search for a gym in your town. You’ll also get a video of me showing you how to go to your admin control panel and change or add stuff so you can do it yourself from then on.

By the way, my gym website video tour pre sells my gym memberships to roughly 90% of my new gym members. They come in to sign up instead of just look around now. I start to show everyone around and they say “I already know how everything works, i watched your video tour”. I basically took the idea of showing one person around and made that a video. so its like they are the camera following me around just like their there in person. except now, i don’t have to take 10 to 15 min showing them around the gym.

Need a website for your gym or fitness center? email Shannon Cook at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net  

www.fitnessmarketing.tv

Curtis was right, and I like to give credit where credit is due, that’s what I do here at this website, I don’t act like I came up with everything Ido that works for marketing my fitness center and others I do consulting for.

Curtis Mock also has a great web show called Fitness Business Television. I highly recommend you check it out at www.fitbiz.tv

So after I got my Fitness Gift Cards I started offering them at a discount like 1/2 off for special occasions but mostly selling them at face value of $165 which is good for a 3 month single membership or 2 months family membership to my 24 hour gym and tanning salon. You can do the face value of the cards in many ways but I like to use them at an exact price of 3 months membership because its easier for me to keep up with them in my Gym Software System by Firebug Software.

I am a consuatant to and Helped Will Herring #54 line backer for the New Orleans Saints NFL team , open his Gym in Auburn Alabama called Herring Fitness 24 hour Fully Automated Gym.

 I got him to get the gift cards also, and he just did the face value at $100 good towards a membership which is fine too, you can see some of the specials I have him run on his website at www.herringfitness.com . I also have Will do email subscribers only specials which I do also to my email list. You can see how I have my gift cards for sale on my website at www.templegym.tv , I have great success in getting subscribers with the email sign up form on my website that says in the form that if they subscribe they will get email only specials. 

The thing I found out about gift cards is the same thing most retailers know. That is there’s a lot of people that will buy but never cash the cards in, and you basically come out keeping the money for no service, which is good but I like to have them coming in so they will most likely continue using the gym and become regular members.

I also give a large amount of gift cards away to those Ican tell will actually use a membership and hopefully will bring in friends, which most will. I always keep them with me, I have a knack for reading people that will appreciate and use the gift cards, and will spread the word about my gym to all their friends and family.

Can you imagine someone giving you a $165 gift card for anything, and it being real and valuable. They cant believe it most of the time, I made sure to have my website address and info on the back of the gift card so they can go to my website and see for themselves.

Will Herring is experimenting now with giving away some cards, he is reluctant to begin with, but like the 30 day guarantee I got him to give at him gym, he will see it works just like the trust the 30 day guarantee builds by just offering it.

I also do one major thing that Will Herring is just starting to do now. When a new member signs up at my gym or his, I send out a thank you letter, along with how the gym operates in case there’s no one there when they come in, being that we are a 24 Hour Fully Automated Fitness Center. Along with that letter I send out a free gift card included in every envelope. But the catch is they cant use the cards for their current membership, they must give them away to anyone that isn’t a member.

I have more success with this one fitness marketing tactic, than almost any other I use.

The next tactic is to sell the gift cards at a great discount, say my $165 card for two for one or even three for one.

Believe me it they will pay for themselves and bring in more people than just about another way of using fitness gift cards to market with.

 I don’t make a dime from selling the gift cards, I like the cards because they work ,and Curtis is a stand up guy and great at what he does, so I recommend if you are in the market for fitness gift cards, visit his website at www.fitnessgiftcards.com and get your art work started today and pick your colors and raised letter option and the magnetic strip option on the back so they look authentic. they will ship them to you within about 2 weeks most of the time.

Look at mine on my website and copy some info if you wish, but the robot logo is mine and cant be copied without my consent, but I will license it out if your interested. the website to view my gift cards is www.templegym.tv. then search gift cards.

Also if you like the website I use Ican build you a fitness center website for your gym. A website for your gym that will in most cases will pull way more prospects than your competitors site.

Websites i like to use are a template videos, aweber email contact form,stats tracker,seo friendly, everything you need to crush your gym competition. Simply contact me with any questions and Ican get a estimate to you, i use a template for most of the gyms I open and they end up drawing more traffic than all the competition combined like I do and Will Herring does also in his town.

Don’t believe me? I have stats of exactly how many visitors come to all my gym websites including Will Herring’s

I charge a set rate , but add ons are extra like the video. If you shoot thevideo and post it to YouTube, I can simply install it into the site and maximize the keywords for that video so it will be found when searching for your gym because google loves videos now.

let me know if I can do anything for you, and god bless!  Shannon Cook  consultant to the fitness industry, email: fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

What I learned about customer service from my ex-wife, and How to keep your Gym and Tanning members from Bad Mouthing your gym if and when they cancel their Gym Membership

When it comes to Fitness Center Marketing, this is just as important as any Marketing you can do for your Fitness Center, Gym, or Tanning Salon

So what did my ex-wife teach me about customer service? That some people will never be satisfied, Period! Oh, and never to go into court unless you have a bag full of money and bus full of lawyers, and that means not trying to sue a gym member over a few hundred dollars because it will cost you time, money, and more members than that one.

I know you think your gym and members are different from the one’s you hear about from new members that come in saying “that other gym is pitiful, they suckered me into signing a contract and didn’t tell me so and so”

Then two months later when these same people try to cancel their 1 or 2 year contract at your gym, and you tell them the same thing the other gym told them, they go out and bad mouth your gym.

There are some people you cant satisfy. I know, because I’ve got an ex-wife that would make the devil give his contract up on her soul.

Here’s what I do with someone who breaks their contract or just wants to quit because their unhappy at my gym.

I try to talk to them first and find out why their unhappy. Than I tell them they have a contractual obligation just like with a cell phone company.

If that fails, and I can tell they’re the type that will just cancel a credit card or checking account anyway, then i will tell them to consider their contract cancelled and hope they will return when they decide to join a gym again.

This has never failed to get a positive response, and some have come and rejoined later. But the best part is that the bad mouthing almost stopped.

I do try to make aware to the member at sign up, about our policy about cancelling their membership.

I started putting a cancellation notice on the bottom of our contracts that they have to initial so they cant come in and say, like I’ve heard so many times, “i wasn’t told about the cancellation policy. even though its on the back in all the fine print too.

I don’t like fine print about an important issue, so i have it on there twice so they cant say they didn’t know. Your employees are not going to remember to tell everyone that sign’s up about the cancellation policy, and even if they did, they’ll tell you that they weren’t told.

I know you hard nosed business folks are saying ” the contract plainly states the policy, so i dont care”, and your right. But i’m just telling you what i have expierenced for 8 years now.

I have members come in or call in and all the time saying they haven’t been to the gym in 9 months, and they should not be required to finish their contract out because of that, or they say “I called 2 months ago and left a message on the answering machine saying i wanted to cancel, and your gym is still drafting my account and i want a refund for the past 2 months.”

With these people i have no fear. Tell them to get their contract out and read it again. Of course they say then that they lost their contract. then i tell them I’ll mail them a copy if they like. All the time being nice. Usually this disarms these excuse makers, but sometimes i cancel them if they are the type of people that i spoke of at the beginning of this post.

Nice will get you so much further in life. My ex-wife has much to learn in this area, thank god i cancelled her contract!!!

To learn how to open a 24 hour fitness center, build and start a gym from scratch, manage a gym, and fitness center marketing, check out my book at www.how2ownagym.com  

Questions or comments?

email:  fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

I didnt try to push my gym or sell memberships at all when i sent out this press release.

I knew they would see that i really and truly wanted to get this great life changing info out to their readers.

I read tim ferriss’s new book “The Four Hour Body” and thought this new way of dieting and exercising would be great for people who think they could never lose their weight and would not want to exercise because they think it takes being in a gym for hours at a time for many days a week.

Tim’s book dispells all that, and so did i.

You may not believe that a gym owner would ever tell anyone to stay out of a gym more if they want to lose weight and build more muscle, but in fact its psycoliogical, because they will still have to come to the gym for the tools they need to exercise, i just tell them how they can do it easier.

Here’s the press release that got picked up, and im sure it didnt hurt the sells of  Tim’s book either.

Press Release

“spend less time in the gym and lose more weight?” 

YES, a gym owner said this. “I see people come in all gung ho when they first join the gym only to see them fall off a month later from overdoing it and being so sore they cant move for days, after their first few workouts.

 they think that’s the way they’ll feel after every workout”,and they don’t have to do all that to lose weight and tone up, says shannon cook, owner of 24 hour temple gym and tanning salon in northport, alabama.

he goes on to tell why you don’t have to become a gym rat to get results

spending 30 minutes 3 to 4 times a week is adequate according to “The colorado expriment”. a study done in 1973 by creator of nautilus fitness equipment, arthur jones, and the same expriment done in 2007 by author of the book “four hour body”, Tim Ferriss.

the study states

“High-intensity training is not easy . . . the training sessions are brief, indeed must be brief, but there is an apparently natural inclination on the part of most subjects to hold back.” Most exercises are terminated at a point well below an actual point of muscular failure, then, in an effort to compensate for the reduction intensity, the usual practice is to add more exercise to the program.

However, no amount of additional exercise will compensate for a reduction in the intensity of exercise … and if carried to extremes, which such training frequently is, the subject may actually prevent growth by exceeding the recovery ability of the system”.

What is going to failure? (I.E., REACHING THE POINT WHERE YOU CAN NO LONGER MOVE THE WEIGHT). TIM FERRISS ALSO PERFORMED EVERY REPETITION WITH A 5/5 CADENCE (FIVE SECONDS UP, FIVE SECONDS DOWN) ACCORDING TO HIS BOOK.

arnold schwarzenegger made exercising to muscle failure popular, and won a record number of competitions by doing it.

however, arnold did more than 30 minutes of exercising, but he also wanted to have over 200 pounds of muscle on his frame, most of us just want to be TONED, feel good, and have more energy which can be achieved simply by devoting the 30 minutes you exercise to actual intense exercise.

“I know being a gym owner people will find it hard to believe that im telling them to spend less time in my gym, but i’d be doing them a disservice by telling them to spend 2 hours per session in here and get burnt out, people don’t have that amount of time these days shannon cook says”, but having a 24 hour fully automated Gym and Tanning Salon makes it eaiser for gym goers to have all access to the Tools they will need to acomplish any physical goal.

END.

Shannon Cook can be reached at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net  for questions or comments.

Website: www.templegym.tv

Email: templegym@comcast.net

That’s the exact layout for my press release. always give the reporter or editor good information that they and their readers need to know, and you’ll get free publicity for your fitness center or gym.  this is how i get a lot of my marketing done for free.

If you’d like Shannon to write your press release contact him at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net

To learn how to open a 24 hour fitness center, build and start a gym from scratch, manage a gym, and fitness center marketing, check out my book at www.how2ownagym.com

If you can answer all the questions below with a YES then you have a cannot fail sales letter, marketing plan, ad, article,newsletter, radio script, brochure, or flier and postcard or any other marketing thing you do.

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

I started this site to help you with all the tools and knowledge i have compiled from many thousands of dollars that i have spent coming into my marketing career. I love marketing and i want to help other business owners do correct marketing.

Marketing Checklist

•    Are you writing/marketing to people who you know want the product you are selling?

•    Is your main headline on your ad or sales letter an intriguing attention-getter that stresses the very best benefit to the reader?

•     Can your reader grasp what you are offering in three seconds or less?

•    Have you written your letter or ad from the prospect’s perspective, not from your perspective?

•     Are your claims backed up with facts, a track-record, testimonials?

•    Does your ad or sales letter answer the six key questions: WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN? WHY? and  HOW?

•         Are your claims 100% true?

 To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

•          What is your Unique Selling Proposition (U.S.P.)?  What makes you different?

•     Are you treating your readers and listeners as if they are idiots. (Big mistake if you are.)

•     Is your offer irresistible?

•    Is your guarantee bold, eye-popping, and attention-getting? (i.e. double-your-money-back)

•     Do you have a deadline for the offer to expire and a good reason for the deadline?

•     Is it easy to order?

•    Have you told your prospect exactly how to respond with step-by-step instructions?

•    Have you told your prospect who you are?

•    Is your letter, your ad easy to read, scannable, with lots of headlines, sub-heads, strategic underlines?

•         Is your letter written in a conversational, friendly style?

•    Have you anticipated and answered all your reader’s  possible  objections?

•   Does your order form or reply form (landing page) look like an  order form? (It should.)

•         Is everything you want your reader to do clearly stated on  the order form?

•         Does your order form or website have a headline restating the main benefit?

•         Are the graphics and packaging of your offer attention-getting?

•         Are your graphics enhancing your message or obscuring your message?

•        Are you giving away something to boost response?

•        Have you stripped out empty “hype” words like “best ever” and “amazing”?

•        Have you replaced empty hype words with facts and proof?

•        Have you put your guarantee on a separate document that looks  official, like a certificate or a savings bond?  Have you signed your guarantee?

•        Have you included a FAQ (Q&A) insert?

•       Have you written an entire package (with all necessary elements), not just a letter?

•       Are you tracking and measuring results meticulously?

•       Are you testing (one element a time)?

•    Are you zeroing in on your best 20% of customers, treating them with extra care and attention?

•        Does everyone in your company understand that they are marketers?

•        Is your company worthy of referral?

•       Are you posting important marketing numbers at your company so that everyone understands what the goals are?

•   Does everyone in your company understand that their paychecks come from customers/sales?

•    Does everyone in your company know that the mission of your company is to create a “Happy Customer Experience that exceeds the customer’s expectations and causes customers to say ‘WOW!’”?

•     Have you raised your prices 10%? (This will increase the profitability of most companies by 50%)

•     Do you have a computerized database that includes all relevant information on customers and prospects that will allow you to segment your customers and precisely target your communications?

•    Do you know how much it’s costing you to find a lead?

•     Do you know how many leads it takes to find a customer?

•     Do you know which sources, ads and letters are producing the most leads and the most productive leads?

•     Are you keeping your database clean and accurate, eliminating duplicates?  Are you a fanatic about list hygiene?

Please add your comments or questions on my blog and I’ll get back to you asap. Thanks, Shannon

To learn every deatil of ”how to open a 24 hour gym from scratch”, click here www.how2ownagym.com

shannon cook can be reached at fitnessmarketing@comcast.net