Sometimes I wonder if the modern fitness industry has the right of things.
It seems like we’ve reached a point at this moment in time when it has become more important to be a great marketer of bootcamps and personal training than it is to actually BE a great bootcamp instructor or personal trainer.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that marketing is an important skillset, a vital one even, for both the fitness professional and the public at large, and the better we are at marketing what we do, the more people we are able to help with our skills.
After all, if we can’t effectively tell people what we do then neither we nor they benefit from our knowledge, skills and abilities but I wonder if the whole fitness marketing ‘thing’ is actually weakening the industry and keeping us from ‘professional’ status rather than helping us to help those we’re supposed to be serving.
See, to me at least, it seems that much of what fitness professionals are focusing on today is website design, search engine optimization, copywriting, ‘closing techniques’, EFT and all manner of other marketing-related ‘stuff’ yet spending very little time at all in actually doing the most important thing of all;
Learning and practicing the skills that allow them to better serve their clients and their communities, which is, after all, what they got into fitness for in the first place.
I don’t know a single fitness professional who thought to themselves “I can’t wait to learn about Search Engine Optimisation and copywriting” yet this seems to be becoming the primary focus of a growing number of the industry with many now knowing more about marketing than they do about the skills required of their profession.
Think about it; ‘marketing’ actually means ‘taking your goods to market’ yet it seems that more and more often fitness professionals are going to market with half-empty wheelbarrows full of mediocre produce, yet taking more pride in having the best posters and banners promoting it rather than addressing why the crop is so poor.
I realize that may sound harsh, hypocritical even, given that I’m firmly rooted amongst those who make a considerable living from teaching the industry how to make money from their skills, yet nonetheless , I believe it to be true.
Whatever happened to learning anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, biochemistry, endocrinology, nutrition and dietetics, psychology and the other important knowledge and skills that are so vital to our role as health professionals?
Whatever happened to breadth and depth of knowledge in creating programs based upon scientifically grounded principles?
In the martial arts (actually, it’s martial sciences but I’ll talk about that in another article) a master is one who can predict with a high degree of certainty the outcome of a movement in advance and reproduce it at will.
Read that again; predictable and reproducible.
The superstars of the fitness profession can rightly claim their place as masters if we use this definition. They know with a high degree of certainty what their programs will produce within given time frames and can get results again and again and again.
But what about the rest of the industry?
Have they given up the quest for mastery in exchange for greater search engine rankings?
I sincerely hope not!
The job we do is far too important to those we serve for us to relegate our primary skills to a position beneath those of marketing.
I’m not suggesting we go back to the bad old days of collecting fitness industry ‘boy scout badges’ and marketing be damned. That serves neither the industry nor our clients.
We owe it to ourselves, our families and our communities to do all we can to let people know that our services are able to help them to achieve their goals and yes, we should earn everything we possibly can from our businesses through our marketing skills but we also owe these same people the very highest level of service we’re capable of providing too.
I guess you could say it’s a simple case of walking the talk.
Despite what the marketing gurus like to tell us, real experts in the fitness profession aren’t struggling due to a lack of marketing knowledge. The service they deliver and the results they help their clients achieve is pretty powerful marketing in its own right.
More powerful than slick ad copy or a number one place on Google, that’s for sure!
So, what am I saying here?
Well, I think it’s pretty obvious but I’ll spell it out in plain English just in case.
Get good at marketing. Get really good at marketing and capitalize on it by employing it to work for you and your fitness business as well as it can, but don’t forget what you entered the fitness industry for.
You chose this career because you wanted to help and serve people not because you wanted to sell them stuff.
Put your focus back into providing that service and make yourself bloody good at providing it til you become a genuine expert, a master who can predictably reproduce amazing results for those you serve. Accomplish that and you’ll never have to worry about making money, it’ll find you.
Not many people are aware of this but the word ‘deserve’ comes from the latin word roots meaning ‘from service’. You really DO get what you deserve when your focus is on serving. By extension, if you’re currently struggling then it may well be that you’re not providing enough service.
So provide more!
Martin Luther King once said “If a person sweeps the streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed, as Shakespeare wrote”
Being the best at what you do, mastering the fundamentals and creating something innovative and new from your knowledge, skills and abilities is the very best marketing there is.
Centuries after their deaths Michelangelo, Beethoven and Shakespeare are still revered as masters who made a great contribution through their work. I doubt that any marketer will ever achieve that same legacy.
But fitness professionals, now that’s a different matter altogether…
Dax Moy
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GREAT post my friend and i agree! we can have the best site in the world but if we can give the clients what they want- RESULTS.
then we quite simply arent doing what we should be.
oh and RESULTS=REFERALLS.
marketing is my biggest weakness. I love reading about strength training, conditioning, fat loss training etc. but marketing is just a means to an end.
Incidently those who pedal crap but market it well just put themselves out of business faster. Like all those ab gizmos
i Agree, but in my case, i love study and doing great curses, but if i dont have money , i dony pay curse.
my monthly/money is too low , i need UP dramastic ! i learning about fitness mkt , six month before i hate marketing , today i need!
True, which is why I said that all coaches should learn marketing skills, but any coach who’s truly great at what they do and who gets amazing results for their clients will always be busier and more in demand than someone who has a bunch of marketing skills yet knows nothing : )
Hey Eric, you’re so right!
Marketing is the means to sell the produce. Without produce there’s nothing to market in the first place, right? : )
Great post Dax! Yes as fitness professionals we should practice what we preach and become master of all and not just master of one!
If you are busy enough, then do all your marketing by outsourcing then you can spend time doing what you are meant to be passionate and excellent at such as getting results for those that pay you money for the results that you promise! If you are not busy enough then
maybe you should take a few steps back and think about what you are doing wrong.
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
Of course you can : )
Dax, wow, what really hit me was your speaking / mentioning martial arts / sciences…
Bruce Lee did not begin teaching until he was at such a HIGH level of skill, and it hit me hard this past weekend….
because, I had people at my mentorship / cert who told me they were here mainly for the business aspect, which I need to REALLY hit home with, because you gotta be f**ing AWESOME at what U do.
But, on the flip side, I DO see their point, because the battle to become known, even locally, is the fact that everyone is marketing like crazy and you must find a way to stand out, sometimes being good, or even great at what U do, just isn’t enough!
Dax, you’re the man, U and Cosgrove ALWAYS said, be GREAT at what U do, that is step # 1
You MUST have the passion for greatness in general, which will lead you to kicking ass from all angles!
Thank U my Bruddah, Dax!
–Z–
Dax-
Amen brother.
Best,
Coop
I’m seeing more and more of this anti-marketing sentiment in the fitness blogosphere. I agree with providing quality training for clients and my guess is that people who care enough to be reading trainer blogs also care enough to provide quality service.
But the fact of the matter is that you can’t be a fantastic trainer without clients. You could have the best service in the world, but if no one knows about you, then it won’t matter. So marketing is essential.
Second, a lot of the comments like this are coming from the strength training community that have had fixed programs in place for a long, long time. Training athletic teams requires a hell of a lot less marketing than personal training. Working for high school, university or pro teams isn’t the same. Most personal trainers are on their own.
Third, personal trainers must compete with all the other distractions that could attract client’s discretionary income. That means we have to compete with the marketing those other distractions use and they have much larger budgets.
These limitations can hinder promising trainers from setting up quality programs because they can’t attract enough clients, let alone quality clients.
So perhaps it’s not so cut and dry as depicted.
I don’t think ANYTHING is cut and dry : )
You’re right, you can’t become a fantastic trainer without clients and, as such, marketing is a necessity. I don’t argue with that at all. In fact, I teach marketing to fitness professionals BECAUSE I recognise that we’re only as useful as our ability to share our skills with others and that truly is the realm of marketing.
Still, the lop-sided focus on marketing that we’re currently experiencing is, in my opinion, a problem.
Trainers with little knowledge, little experience and little true skill are using marketing to create a perception of expertise that they simply do not possess. This brings the public perception of those who have a lot more to offer down to the level of the lowest common denominator.
It’s not an anti-marketing sentiment. It’s an anti-hype sentiment.
The great trainers and coaches don’t need to hype. They market based on results that they really are able to create. This is not the case with those who have more marketing education than fitness education. They tend to hype to the extreme.
This helps no-one. Not even them when their clients realise that they don’t walk their own talk.
With regards to the strength community argument, I agree. They’re a different animal but I’m a practicing trainer like you, I’m a small business entrepreneur like you and whilst I’m very successful at what I do, I still need to budget my marketing dollars for maximum effect. I have to compete with those same distractions yet am able to command the highest fees in the UK. A great service and great results will ALWAYS offer both the public and the trainer the greatest chance of success.
Definitely market and get damned good at it but remember what the marketing is supposed to be about is all I’m saying.
Thanks for your comments!
Dax
Hey Zach,
Y’know, I agree that the market is getting tougher to market to due to the now greater number of trainers who know how to SEO and copyright and such, but still, if you’re good at what you do you’ll always stand out.
You’re great at what you do buddy.
Yes, you’ve learned to market that effectively but if your services and results were crap, all the marketing in the world wouldn’t help you, right?
But I’m preaching to the converted ; )
Dax