Internet Marketing For Strength Coaches

July 27, 2009 by Elliott
Filed under Fitness Business, Internet Marketing, Recent Posts, Strong Living

When I started Strength Camp 3 years ago my mission was to “Support Hard Working Men and Athletes Worldwide in Achieving Their Sports and Fitness Goals”.

In order to do this knew that I’d have to learn how to use the internet to quickly move my message around the world. So, I went to work studying Internet Marketing and stuff like… e mail list building, blogging, video creation, product development, search engine optimization, etc.

Today, I have learned juuuust enough about business building and marketing that I have decided to add “and to Support other Strength Coaches in Building the Business of Their Dreams.” — That’s why I created my Warehouse Gym Business Course ==> http://www.WarehouseGymBusiness.com

Below you will find a recent interview that I did with one of my Internet Marketing mentors all about Creating A Website, Using A Blog, Using YouTube, Creating Products, etc. as it relates to Strength Coaches.

** Leave your questions and comments below the interview **

Elliott: All right. Hey guys, like I promised you, I have a special guest and a special gift for you this month. On the phone I have a gentleman who has been an integral part in my ability to create profit with my gym as well as online. I mean, he’s definitely one of the top marketers in our industry and any information that he has to provide you with, you’ve got to hold onto and utilize like your life depends on it – super important!

So if you haven’t heard of Craig Ballantyne, you’ll get an opportunity to meet him in a couple of minutes and what we’re going to do is, we’re just going to have a casual conversation and I’m going to ask him a few questions that pertain to some of the things that may be interesting to you guys and that have helped me get to where I am currently with our warehouse gym and online fitness business.

Now, real quick – if you want to learn more about Craig Ballantyne, obviously you can Google him or you can check out his program at www.onlinefitnessprofits.com.

Craig, I want to welcome you to the call and thank you so much for doing this.

Craig: Thanks, Elliott.

Elliott: Absolutely. Craig, now a lot of us know that you’ve done an incredible job as an online fitness professional promoting your Turbulence Training System, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that you started out as a personal trainer grinding away to earn a living like a lot of us. Can you tell us a little bit more about your experiences as a personal trainer and why you decided to take your business online?

Craig: Yeah, I mean, there was really nothing remarkable about what I was doing offline. Like you said, like most other trainers trying to do the independent contractor sort of thing – so some people at home, some people in small groups outside of a facility, and then people inside a small boutique facility. So that’s what I was doing there.
Then I was actually… I’ve been a trainer since 1994-ish, starting in university and working my way up and really, online, I’ve been doing that since ’99. So I mean, I’ve always been thinking about online. I’m a nerd so, you know, I like to read and write, and talk about things – but creative, too, so that’s kind of the thing that sets me apart from a lot of people is always coming up with new creative stuff. You know, nothing earth-shattering, but just a new way of presenting stuff that keeps people entertained. So I’ve been doing the online thing, you know – not financially online since ’99, but I didn’t really start selling anything till mid-2002 and then it was just through PayPal but I was doing an online email newsletter before I had even a website back in 1999.

So as soon as I saw that T-Nation site in ’98 or something, I was just like, “I can do this sort of thing.” I started writing my own stuff, and it was just trainers from my gym, people at school and clients that I had then, and just built that up. That was the CB Athletics website that is still up and still gets people to it, but I don’t put any new stuff on there. It was more of me kind of fun, figuring out what I wanted to do. Do I want to try and do athlete stuff? You know, I was training fewer and fewer athletes every year so I stopped writing about that stuff and really as I started to work with men’s health, then I really just kind of got into the busy person sort of thing.

Elliott: You know, a lot of the guys that are listening to this call – the women and the guys – are currently personal trainers and they’ve got a passion for it. They really enjoy doing what they’re doing and they really may have not even considered using the internet to – number one, obviously market their services because you know that they are currently personal trainers. We do, as myself included, still train athletes and stuff, but why do you think it may be important for personal trainers and coaches to use the internet to market their services or even create products?

Craig: Well, I think the marketing of the service is really important simply because everybody is going to the internet now to find out stuff and to find the people to be their service providers. I mean, I’m talking about even people like my Mom who’s over 60 years old and not necessarily technologically inclined, but I mean, she goes to the internet to find out stuff now and I think that with the exception of word-of-mouth referrals, you know, one person talking to another, there’s nothing more powerful than the internet right now.

And there’s a million different ways of marketing online from the digital version of word-of-mouth which is stuff like Facebook, to actually having a website and even buying advertising which is definitely beyond the scope of this call. But you definitely need to have some type of presence on the internet and it’s quite simple to get started with the Wordpress blogs. You can find someone to set one of those up and make it all fancy looking for about $200-$250.

So it’s quite cheap to get online and those people can make those sites look really nice and then you can just add content. I mean, no matter how technologically behind you are, in ten minutes someone can show you how to post your content on your blog – and it’s very simple – and then you just take your passion and put it on your blog, and you’re just going to start to attract a lot of people. It’s going to lead to a significant boost in your income. I mean, you’re not going to go from $50,000 to $150,000 overnight, but I bet within a couple of months you can definitely fill up any holes in your schedule plus – plus – the most important thing that I think a lot of trainers really want is you can start getting more of the clients that you really want to train. I know that a lot of people train, by necessity they train a lot of people who don’t fit their dream clients. And they turn out to be very nice people, but they’re not what you get up and get excited about. But with internet stuff, you’ll be able to attract more of those people that you just love to train.

Elliott: That’s great. That’s actually one of the modules in our program – and the guys that are listening to this are familiar with that – is first of all, deciding who your market is – and it’s got to be people that you enjoy – and then positioning your message to reach them and the internet’s absolutely the greatest way to do that.
Craig, do you think it’s important for, again, just personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches, guys who are training day in and day out but love it, to create an information product, you know, like an eBook or a DVD or anything like that?

Craig: That’s a good question and I would say that it really depends on what you want to do. I would also say it depends on what you already know. It depends on how much time you have to commit to various things and whether or not it really is your passion to go that route. I mean, some people kind of try and force something in there because they are just told over and over again that you have to do this.

But you don’t have to do it if it’s not something that you want to do. If you would rather create, say for example, create a certification based on your training, then that’s kind of an information product but it’s not like you have to have an eBook or something. But if you have some specific knowledge that you could easily put down into DVD – like say, for example, I’m thinking of Joe DeFranco’s stuff, you know, of how to master the 40 or how to stay better at combine testing, that type of stuff – then you know, maybe you do have something that should be in an information product. But it’s not mandatory.

Again, people can make big money; you know six figures net income, with one, two, three locations of their training facility. There’s a whole bunch of ways that you can prosper, and so I would definitely think about what you like to do and also whether or not you have the time to do some of this stuff. If you’re really focused on building out your locations, then maybe it’s not a good idea to try and jam in an information product into that as well.

Elliott: Could possibly, like a book or an eBook or something like a DVD help add to, you know, our credibility or actually bring people into our facilities because they see that we have something out there that adds credibility? Like, an information product?

Craig: I would say that yes, it could but again, it depends on the resources that you have to allocate to everything and, you know, you just have to sit down and do the pros and cons. Do I have somebody – like, if I had high school students to edit things and I’m more than happy to maybe barter some time, like barter some training sessions or something to assist me on it, that might be a good thing – then yeah, I’m going to get this product on and get it out there. But getting it out there and getting people to know about it is a whole other thing, too.

On the other hand, if you’re just a one-man show and maybe you train college players who are way too busy to be trying to do this stuff while they’re trying to keep their scholarships and stuff, then forcing an information product would be tough. I mean, really, it would have to be an individual call by you and the guys that you’re helping to figure out whether or not the information product is the way to go.

I totally see what you mean in terms of building credibility and stuff, but there’s also the opportunity just to give away a whole bunch of free information and so you might just be posting videos online. I think that video is a much more powerful credibility tool than an information product in many aspects, not in every situation, but the feedback that we get from our customer service is that a lot of people are very skeptical until they see the video, so it could be something as simple as dedicating an hour or two to filming YouTube videos per week.

If you want to be known as Central Florida’s #1 strength and conditioning coach for high school football, then maybe you go on YouTube with your videos of you training some of these players and that might be more important than you ever coming up with your own manual to sell at this very instance in time. You know, that might be something you move to in the future. So it’s not a necessary condition, nor is it a sufficient condition, to develop the credibility you need in the eyes of people.

I think if I was… You know, one good game to play is “What would I do if I was in this situation?” I would certainly focus on YouTube videos and other video aspects just because people want to see that stuff. The ability to create and to play videos has never been easier on the internet and so people are just becoming more and more tuned to learning and researching through video. So the video is probably one of the biggest things that I would focus on right now.

Elliott: Man, as you’re saying that, I’m thinking about my business and you’re 100% right and I’ve mentioned it, but just to hear it coming out of someone else’s mouth, it’s almost like just giving credence to what I’ve been doing, but the blog number one – like you said, putting together a Wordpress blog – and then how simple it is to just grab a flip cam for about $150 or less, film the workouts and people really enjoy them and then giving tips and whatnot through those channels is just… you’re right… that’s probably the… Since I started doing that, my business has grown so much. I mean, I enjoy writing and I have a certain way of writing that brings my personality across, but it’s not until – like you said, people trust when they see your face and I definitely have to admit…

Craig: Yeah, and getting those videos on the blog, too. I mean, just copy and paste the video onto your blog so you’re double-dosing there. So that’s very important.

Elliott: Now, some of the coaches listening to this recording are members of my Warehouse Gym Business course, and they’ve heard me talk about building your tribe. This is very similar to your Entourage Marketing System and speaking of videos, I think you cover a lot of that in that system that helped you build close to $1 million in information marketing in your business in 2008, like you say on your website. Can you tell us a little bit about that Entourage Marketing System?

Craig: Yeah, I mean, really, it’s building that community around you. It’s building up superstars in your community so again, if you go and take a look at Joe D’s stuff, he built up Miles Austin in the Miles Austin project. I mean, he’s a real great example. He’s probably not even thinking of doing this stuff.

There’s a lot of people that naturally this comes to as something they do… would be doing anyways, and my friend Dave Ferusha is another good example of just a great charismatic personality and he just wants to share stuff and he has great stories to share. So, you know, go back to Joe D’s stuff. He’s building up these superstars in Miles Austin.
That’s what you’re doing in your entourage. You want to build up superstars in terms of you know, if you’re training high school athletes or even if you’re training women for fat loss. In my niche market, we’re training everyday average people for fat loss and we’re making superstars out of the winners of our transformation contest.

So you want to have some way to recognize and reward everyone and have everybody else who’s new coming into your system want to aspire to achieving this recognition and rewards and these levels that other people are achieving so that they too can attain the pleasure of being recognized and rewarded in front of their peers.
So the whole entourage thing kind of came out of the TV show and if you think about it, it’s like there’s always kind of one person leading the entourage which would be you, and then within the entourage you have everybody else. I mean, if you take a look at the covers of the Entourage DVD, it’s kind of like that V formation of guys.

You have the main guy, and then you have your next superstar clients, and then your next superstar clients and your next superstar clients and you want to have them enjoying the fruits of their efforts and everything that’s possible to them and making them feel special. You think about those guys going to Vegas and being in a VIP area. They’re all VIPS but there’s still always one person in charge of the VIP area and again, that’s you.

So again, you’re building up this powerful community within your entourage is what I call it, and basically through recognition and reward, getting people to buy into the program and you being everywhere through YouTube and all these online medias and also some of the offline stuff, too. But really, it’s just about building, building, building. Always doing stuff every day to make sure people want to join in.

Elliott: It sounds like you’re just serving as many people as you can in a…

Craig: You’re serving them and you’re helping them as much as possible get towards their goal and the more you can help somebody, the more they’re going to have that word-of-mouth in telling other people about it.

Elliott: All right. It almost sounds like social proof as well.

Craig: Definitely. I mean, absolutely. The more other people can see people as succeeding, the more that they’re going to be believing that you can help them as well and you want success stories from every different demographic. So again, going back to the Central Florida strength and conditioning coach who wants to be known as the best high school football strength coach, I mean, he would want to have guys who are linebackers. He would want to have quarterbacks. He would want to have wide receivers and running backs. He would want to have a success story for every single group so he doesn’t get labeled as “Oh, that guy just works with offensive linemen. He just gets the biggest guys in there and that’s why they’re strong.”

You want to be able to show that you can help the finesse players as well. So you want to have at least one success story for every single demographic – you know, white kids, black kids, Hispanic kids, every position, every demographic as much as possible. The more you have that social proof, the more somebody can go to that site and say, “All right. I’m a 17-year old white kid who’s tall and skinny,” and you know what? They have a 17-year old white kid who’s tall and skinny and he helped them gain 20 pounds and become an All-State player or something. And the more you have those, the easier it’s going to be. That way, you don’t have some kid who shows up on the site and goes, “Oh, there’s nothing but rich white kids going to this thing. I don’t fit in here. He won’t be able to help me.” That’s exactly it.

Elliott: Or he doesn’t understand me.

Craig: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got it right.

Elliott: What happens when we’re just starting out and we really don’t have too many testimonials and we really don’t have an entourage? How do we get started with that?

Craig: Well, there’s actually just a simple little system I posted in my newsletter the other week. You just go to these people and you ask them, “Hey, will you do me a favor and just fill out these questions?” And so all the people that you do have, just give them like:

- How did you find us?

- Were you skeptical?

- What were your results?

- Were you surprised by that?

- Who would you recommend us to?

And so just give that to as many people as possible and you’ll build up some testimonials. Now beyond that, you just have to continue… Obviously, putting the work in to get the success stories is another thing.

Online for me personally, the transformation contest was the biggest boost. You know, that might be a little bit more difficult for people who are training high school athletes, but if you’re doing boot camp stuff, you can definitely have some type of contest in your boot camps – you know, an eight-week contest, before and afters, that type of thing – again, the recognition and rewards. People love that type of stuff. They want to be known as the person who lost 15-20 pounds in your boot camp, that sort of thing. And you just make photos a requirement. That way, they’re going to win something, but they’ve got to give you the photos before and after, and let you use those. So that stuff is important.

Obviously creating and building personal relationships, I mean, you could have a contest but if you’re a very cold person or whatever – 99% of trainers aren’t so it’s not really a big deal, but – it’s all about how you approach it. Just make sure that you’re approaching it with a win-win situation for the person. That should be quite easy to do over time with those strategies and again, it does take a little time but it shouldn’t be too hard.

Elliott: Wow. That’s incredible. Everything that you’re saying sounds great. What if I’m brand new to… in other words, I’ve got a great business or I’m building my business. I’ve got a few testimonials. I don’t know anything about the internet but how to check my email. What is the first thing that I’ve got to do to either get these videos or show people my testimonials besides just the pamphlets that I’ve got in my hand or my business cards? How do I just get online?

Craig: Well, you go and find some high school kid to show you everything, really.

Elliott: [Laughs.]

Craig: No, I mean seriously. You go and if you’re a football coach, you should be able to… they should be out there, like a thousand of them you can get help from. I mean, the stuff they learn in high school now is outrageous, how well they’re attuned to computer stuff. Again, you go and barter. You say I’ll train you one free session a week if you do X, Y, and Z for me on the computer. And that’s what you do. Literally. And if you want to learn how to do it, you have the kid teach you. If you don’t want to ever learn how to do it, then you just keep on having the kid do it themselves and you say, “Okay, show me what the results are.”

But the simplest thing… You know, we go back to the video stuff, you don’t need anything but a YouTube - it’s not even a subscription, but you just need to have a sign-in at YouTube. So you go to YouTube and you sign up for an account there and it’s free and everything and that’s all you need to post videos on YouTube. You don’t need a website; you don’t need any new email addresses. You don’t need to pay for anything. You just need the flip cam that plugs into the computer and, I mean, I’m very hesitant to try and learn anything new online but it took me two minutes to figure that out and I’m pretty stupid, so anybody can figure that stuff out to get videos on YouTube.

Once you get them up, there’s a few tricks to getting them seen by more people and we go over that in the entourage stuff but again, any high school kid – any 12-year old kid, Grade 6 kid – could probably do the YouTube stuff for you. So, get your kids doing it or whatever and that will be the first thing to do and then the blog stuff, have somebody sit down with you for half an hour and take you through the very simple thing that is called Wordpress and again, if you can figure out email, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to figure out the Wordpress stuff and really get up to speed on it and be able to post stuff.

Again, if you don’t want to do that yourself, you can write the information in an email, send it to somebody and they can post it on Wordpress and put some pictures in and make it all pretty, and very, very simple. And again, you can barter that or you can find someone on Craigslist to do it for $8 or $10 an hour. Craigslist is just the online thing – you get a high school kid to find the person on Craigslist.

There’s a ton of ways to do things, and especially now with the economy, there’s lots of people looking for some odd jobs and will be happy to help. So there’s a million ways to get stuff on the internet without being on the internet itself.

Elliott: Craig, I have to compliment you on your newsletter. I’ve been getting your offline newsletter for I want to say close to a year now and it is one of my favorites. I love newsletters, by the way, but there are some that I just get super-excited when I know they’re coming in the mail. Like I even told you the other day that the interview you did with Joel Marion this month, I would have paid ten times the amount of the membership in order to get that. I mean, it’s just loaded with content.

So I always like to have mentors in different areas with regard to my business. This question’s a little different. Who were some of your mentors? Where did you learn about the things that you teach people and who do you go to for your information?

Craig: I guess the three biggest mentors that I have… The first one is this guy, Dan Kennedy, who’s not necessarily an internet guy but more of a what’s called direct marketing – so you know, you send out postcards or newsletters in the mail and try and get people to purchase. Obviously that translates into online stuff as well, but he’s a real anti-online type of guy, but his stuff is the foundation of marketing and direct response and creating personality and copy and just making sure that doing business with you is exciting, not this big lesson.

So Dan Kennedy’s a big one. He has a newsletter that I’m like you. I look forward to his – man, probably as much as any TV show I could possibly ever look forward to. I would put it this way. I look forward to his newsletter like I look forward to – and every guy on this call probably looks forward to – watching Sunday afternoon football. It’s just enjoyable because, like I said, he teaches you how to put personality into your business and that’s what makes me look forward to it because he’s this grumpy old guy and he’s got personality that way, and he talks about what he’s doing and he gives you lessons and stories and it’s perfect and it’s really, really good. So that’s the one I look forward to the most.

Tom Venuto is a guy who had an eBook, or still has an eBook, called “Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle,” and he was a business coach of mine for awhile and he really set me up and I owe him a deep debt of gratitude.

And then another guy, I guess, Yanik Silver is another guy who I learn a lot from and I get some personal coaching from him. He’s also really into the putting personality and fun into your business and just making sure that people want to come back and hang out with you.

You know, Jason Ferrugia does this very well. I went down and trained at his place in New Jersey and people go there early and stay late so if their workout’s at 6:00, they show up at 5:00 – 5:30 to hang out with other people that are finishing their programs, and they stay till – you know, they work out from 6:00 to 7:00 and they stay there till 8:00 or 8:30 just hanging out with everybody. So it’s building that personality and community and everything that way, so that’s a good example of what those three guys have helped teach me.

Elliott: Yeah, absolutely. We talk a lot about that. That’s funny that you mention… and I’m assuming it’s a large part of building your entourage and what your entourage marketing system is about.

Craig: Very much so. I mean, really, really using a million different ways to build a strong following makes people want to do business with you over and over and over again.

Elliott: Absolutely. Well, we spoke about mentors and I’m going to encourage everyone listening to this call – obviously you see the value in educating yourself with regard to business as you are a part of this course. To learn more about the online end of things – because you know I’m talking mostly about your offline marketing: how to build your warehouse gym, get it started and to get people in your city flying towards it – but Craig Ballantyne is definitely at the top of the list when it comes to online marketing and some of the information that he shared with you this evening is just the tip of the iceberg. Like I say. I drool when his newsletter comes because I know I’m going to learn something brand new that I can implement immediately.

And Craig, correct me if I’m wrong. Your onlinefitnessprofits.com, the Entourage Marketing System there, now do we purchase that and then become a member? And we can get your newsletter that way? Or how can people get on your newsletter now?

Craig: Yeah, definitely. You can get on the newsletter by that. You’ll get two free issues with the OnlineSuperProfits – through the OSP Entourage Marketing System. So it’s pretty cool. And then, like you say, you just keep on looking forward to it every month. It’s pretty cool because I basically just show everything that’s working in my business.

Elliott: Yeah, that’s the coolest thing. I think this is part of the Entourage Marketing System also, but it’s like transparency. I was touched when you did that part about your Dad when he passed away. I mean, I felt like I knew him. It was incredible. And you’re always talking about your dog, so it’s funny that the information is in there, but I think Matt Furey has called it – I think I’ve heard him call it, like an infotainment?

Craig: Infotainment, yeah. Yeah.

Elliott: And it’s definitely entertaining as well. Well, we want to thank you again. We really appreciate your time. I know you’re a busy dude. And I want to let everyone know they can get in touch with Craig from onlinefitnessprofits.com. Hit him up on Twitter. What is it, like Craig Ballantyne Twitter?

Craig: Yeah. Go to TurbulenceTwitter.com or on Facebook at FacebookCraig.com. I bought those two websites that just go directly to the pages where you can find me.

Elliott: Awesome. Friend him up – I’m sure he won’t mind and he’ll definitely hit you up with great information via those resources. All right, everyone, have a great evening and we’ll see you guys in a couple of days for the next course.

Craig, thank you.

Craig: Thank you.

Check out Craig’s Enterouge Marketing System for Strength Coaches below.

==> www.onlinefitnessprofits.com

Tags: craig ballantyne, internet marketing, internet marketing for personal trainers, strength coach