Personal Trainer Marketing Debate:

Free Versus Paid Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies

This article may well be the most important and eye-opening information you ever read on personal trainer marketing. It’s not a short article. It will take a few minutes to read, and then possibly hours or even days to digest. It’s meaty. But once you really understand what’s covered here, your personal training business will never be the same again.

Since collaborating with Phil Kaplan on some projects, I’m routinely asked where I stand on this debate: free versus paid personal trainer marketing strategies. You know, does it make sense to offer free personal training sessions to prospective personal training clients, or should you charge for everything.

Most of you are probably aware of Phil Kaplan’s position on this personal trainer marketing strategy – he’s a strong proponent of charging for any service you render. Those of you who have the Ultimate Personal Trainer Marketing Program or have been subscribers to my Personal Trainer Profits Newsletter for any length of time know I teach some personal trainer marketing strategies involving “sampling” – offering a free personal training session or two in order to build rapport, strengthen the relationship and allow prospects to experience your personal training service without payment.

Personal trainers are pretty well polarized on this subject, they are strong advocates of one personal training marketing strategy over the other. And on both sides of this debate, there are numerous examples of personal trainers who use their preferred strategy effectively.

So which personal trainer marketing strategy is better, free or paid? That’s the question I get so often.

Here’s my answer…

Do You Buy Your Personal Training Clients?

Okay, I’m answering your question with a question – that’s irritating, I know, but there’s a method to my madness. See, the answer is not as simple as you’d hoped – nothing is. Let me lay out my thinking on this important subject for you, then you can decide for yourself which personal trainer marketing strategy is better.

In order to come to terms with the free vs. paid debate and determine which personal trainer marketing strategy you will employ, you need to think accurately about the personal training business.

That means not thinking about what “should” be, but rather what “is.”

In a perfect world, your personal training service should speak for itself. You get results for your personal training clients, they’re pleased, they talk about you, acting as your unpaid sales force, and you never need search for another personal training client again. Each existing personal training client generates one or two more – you never run out of clients willing and eager to pay your fees because you’ve been so powerfully endorsed by your existing clients.

That’s nirvana – it’s what “should” be – not what “is.”

In the real world, there’s so much competition, so many options (including doing nothing at all), every personal trainer must take proactive steps to market and sell his or her personal training services.

And remember, marketing is everything you do to get and keep personal training clients for the lifetime of your personal training business. It’s all-inclusive. Even if it’s “just” your time invested in your personal trainer marketing, your time is worth something, right?

Therefore we can make the argument that everyone “buys” their personal training clients in some way or another.

If your only mechanism for generating new personal training clients is referral programming to your existing clients and sphere of influence (SOI), you are certainly utilizing tactical marketing to achieve that, right? You’re utilizing thank you cards, new client welcome kits, referral stimulation certificates, signage, even verbal instructions. All these things have a cost associated with them, whether it’s printed collateral or newsletters or direct mail referral programming campaigns or “just” your time. Regardless, there’s a cost associated.
If your only personal trainer marketing activity is public speaking, you’re investing your time, you’re utilizing marketing tools to capture leads, you’re calling on corporations, clubs, associations or groups to set up your personal training presentations. All of these actions have an associated cost – even if it’s “just” your time.
If you rely primarily on publicity to build your personal training business, again, there’s always associated costs: time, public relations assistance, news release creation, some element of lead generation, answering phones, setting appointments, etc. There’s always a cost involved.
If the majority of your new business comes from the internet, there’s web site and all the associated technology expenses, there’s time invested, follow-up required, etc. It sure ain’t free!

Bottom line, there is no way to market a personal training business (or any business) that does not have associated costs. We all buy our clients!

With that in mind, the next question to consider is, “How much will you pay for each personal training client?” What is your maximum allowable personal training client acquisition cost?

Well, let’s consider that for a moment, because it is very, very important.

You see, the whole game in the personal training business is to buy the highest quality clients for less than they spend with you. The greater the difference between what you invest to acquire a client and what you earn from the client, the more profit you make.

Does that make sense to you?

It’s a simple formula:

Client Revenue – (Client Acquisition Cost + Overhead) = Profit Per Client

Since your overhead is generally fixed, the only variables are client acquisition cost and revenue. So the better you get at either minimizing client acquisition cost or maximizing revenue, the more profit you make. If you can minimize CAC while simultaneously maximizing revenue, your personal training business is approaching optimal profitability.

That’s the goal in business: optimization.

Okay, now let’s crunch a few numbers to illustrate the premise of this article and answer your question regarding the free versus paid debate.

Let’s assume you’ve got an opportunity to be interviewed on your local radio station on the topic of how women can look great for their wedding day.

At the end of the interview, you tell the listeners you’ve prepared a special report called How To Look Gorgeous In Your Wedding Dress In Six Simple Steps and it can be downloaded free of charge at www.ABCPersonalTraining.com

Let’s assume 30 people go to your website and download the report. At the end of your educational report you make the following offer:

Attend my Buff Bride orientation for just $20, if you’re not blown away by all that you learn, I’ll refund your $20 on the spot.

Let’s assume 10 ladies pay for and attend your orientation and five of them convert to paying clients by enrolling in your 12-week Buff Bride program at $1,000 each.

What are your total client acquisition costs?

Since this is a hypothetical example, we have to make some assumptions. The first is that your time is billable at $50 per hour.

Let’s assume $200 for your time associated with booking the radio interview, preparing for it and delivering it.

Let’s assume $100 for your time to write the report and post it to your site with autoresponders.

Let’s assume a pro-rated expense of $20 for the web site hosting and other technology.

Let’s assume $100 for your time answering phone calls, responding to emails and other administrative stuff associated with this campaign.

Let’s assume $100 for your time delivering the one hour orientation.

Total client acquisition cost: $520

You got five new clients, so your per client acquisition cost is $520 divided by 5 = $104

What’s your total revenue?

Orientation: 10 attendees X $20 each = $200 Buff Bride: 5 clients X $1000 each = $5000

Total revenue: $5200

You got five new clients, so revenue per client is $5200 divided by 5 = $1040

Let’s assume your fixed overhead for the entire period of time for this personal trainer marketing campaign is $2000 (from beginning – the day you did the interview – until the end of the 12-week Buff Bride program).

Again, because you got five clients, your overhead per client is $2000 divided by 5 = $400

Now let’s plug these numbers into our formula.

Revenue Per Client ($1040) – (CAC $104 + Overhead $400) = Profit Per Client $536

Paid Personal Trainer Marketing Model:
Client Acquisition Cost = $104
Profit Per Client = $536

Now let’s evaluate the Free Sampling model.

Everything is the same up to the point where you make your offer in the special report. In this case, your offer might be:

Come in for a free Buff Bride Body Jump Start Session.

Let’s assume the number of people requesting your report (30), the number of prospects attending your Jump Start session (10) and the number converting to paid personal training clients (5) all remain the same in this model as they were in the paid orientation model.

In this free model, all of your personal trainer marketing costs (getting the interview, prep time, delivery, report prep, web site, phone and other administrative) remain the same. The only difference is the free sessions.

Assuming the $50 per hour billable rate and one full hour per prospect, with ten prospects, that’s $500 (rather than just $100 with the paid orientation model).

So your numbers look like this…

Total client acquisition cost: $920

You got five new personal training clients, so your client acquisition cost is $920 divided by 5 = $184

What’s your total revenue?

Buff Bride: 5 clients X $1000 each = $5000

Total revenue: $5000

You got five new clients, so revenue per client is $5000 divided by 5 = $1000

Fixed overhead: $2000

Again, because you got five clients, your overhead per client is $2000 divided by 5 = $400

Now let’s plug these numbers into our formula.

Revenue Per Client ($1000) – (CAC $184 + Overhead $400) = Profit Per Client $416

Free Personal Trainer Marketing Model:
Client Acquisition Cost = $184
Profit Per Client = $416

So, everything else being equal, the paid orientation model has a CAC of $80 less and a profit per client of $120 more.

That’s pretty compelling evidence the paid orientation model is superior…

Or Is It?

Here’s where everything breaks down and you can either get very frustrated, or very excited.

Most folks (including me) like simple answers to stuff. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” In the marketing game, there is a simple answer…TEST… unfortunately it’s not the answer most folks want to hear.

Testing is the answer to just about every personal trainer marketing question there is.

If you understand the power behind that answer, then you get excited. If not, you get frustrated.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

A sharp personal training marketer would run a “split test” for this campaign. On her web site, she’d load not one special report, but two. One of the reports (Report A) would make the paid orientation offer. The other report (Report B) would make the free sample offer.

These reports would be served to people requesting them on an alternating basis. Person #1 gets Report A, person #2 gets Report B, person #3 gets Report A, person #4 gets Report B, and so on.

Using this split testing, 15 people would get Report A and 15 would get Report B.

What you would inevitably discover from this type of testing is that one offer would “out-pull” the other. You might find that 8 of the 15 receiving Report A will pay to attend your orientation and only 5 of the 15 receiving Report B will take advantage of your free session offer. Or the results may be just the opposite. You don’t know until you test. Without testing, you’re making assumptions (and you know what they say about that).

Consider this.

What if just 2 of the 15 from Report A pay to attend the orientation and just one becomes a personal training client. And what if 10 of the 15 from Report B take advantage of the free session offer and 8 become your personal training clients.

What would your personal training client acquisition cost and profit per client look like then?

The point of this article is not to confuse you or frustrate you, it’s to empower you.

Once you understand that you can NOT make assumptions about the efficacy of one model over the other based on what you think “should” occur, but rather only on what does occur, you are empowered by the most fundamentally important principle of fitness marketing: accurate thinking.

The only way you can make smart decisions is by testing to determine what will occur – what “is.” That’s the essence of Accurate Thinking.

Will giving away free personal training sessions undermine your positioning in the marketplace and diminish your profitability? I could tell you about dozens and dozens of personal trainers, some of them legitimate superstars, who have built their personal training businesses on the back of this free personal trainer marketing strategy. Their positioning is certainly not undermined, but they would still be better served testing the paid personal trainer marketing strategy against their existing free model to accurately determine which is better.

Will charging for everything you do enhance your positioning in the marketplace and increase your profitability? I could tell you about dozens and dozens of personal trainers, some of them legitimate superstars, who have built their personal training businesses on the back of this paid personal trainer marketing strategy. Their positioning may be excellent and profitability exceptional, but they would still be better served testing the free model against their existing paid model to accurately determine which is better.

Until and unless you have empirical data to prove one personal training marketing model is superior to the other for YOUR business, making assumptions based on what you think “should” be the case is not accurate thinking. It’s not real-world, tested and proven. It’s just theory, just assumptions.

Ultimately, the best model can only be proven by empirical data. Ultimately, the answer is very scientific.

The reason I’ve written this personal trainer marketing article is to help you understand the importance of testing your personal trainer marketing and testing your personal training business model.

Certainly, there are pros and cons to both personal training business models, but the only person who can say emphatically which is better is the person who tests them head to head.

Conclusion: My recommendation is to do whatever works for you. If you charge for everything and it’s working, then you should probably continue with that personal training business model. If you offer free sampling to your personal training prospects and it’s working, then you should probably continue with that personal training business model.

But the truly savvy personal training marketing person will TEST the other model against the “control” (the model that’s working right now), to see if the control can be beat. Because the ultimate goal in your personal training business, or any business for that matter, is optimization.

P.S. Phil Kaplan has truly optimized the most effective personal training system on the planet and is now willing to show you how you can use it to get stunning results for each and every one of your clients (and show you his $1000 per hour Money Machine). All the details are at www.PersonalTrainingResults.com

Eric Ruth is the President of Fitness Marketing Systems and the creator of the Ultimate Personal Trainer Marketing Program – the most comprehensive step-by-step marketing system for personal trainers available anywhere, at any price, including over 50 ready-to-use personal trainer marketing tools (letters, ads, newsletters, flyers, business cards, joint venture systems, etc.)