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As much as I’d love to tell you there is a magic bullet, or one special marketing strategy you can do to generate a ton of memberships, I just can’t.  There is no such thing as a marketing home run.  However, there is one strategy that I’ve found that works every time, 100% of the time.

Can you guess what that strategy is?  I’ll have you know that it’s not direct mail.  It’s not referral marketing.  It’s not internet marketing, it’s not signage or gift cards, or text messages, or Facebook, or corporate membership arrangements.

It’s none of those things because it is ALL of those things.

In order to guarantee a steady stream of prospects coming through your door, you need to do lots of things, all at once.  While that sounds simple, most gym owners, and small business owners in general, just don’t do it.  Some have never heard of this theory, others don’t know where to start, and plenty of others who refuse to believe me and continue beating their heads against the wall trying to find that magic bullet.

From my experience, the gym operators that ignore this theory or choose not to put it to use rarely grow and often fail.  It’s very sad.  By the way, I say that it is theory, but I’ve put it to use in many many fitness businesses and 100% of the time it builds their business.

Using one marketing method after another is better than not marketing at all, but in order to get the absolute most out of your marketing efforts, you need to layer strategy upon strategy at the same time.  Utilizing all of the various free and paid marketing methods may not always provide us the immediate ‘direct response’ that we are always looking for, but the cumulative effort over time will.  This I promise you.

You don’t have to be perfect at implementing these strategies; you just need to do it.  Many small business owners (even I have been guilty of it before) find themselves unmotivated from time to time.  Marketing is often the first place we begin slacking, many times because we aren’t always sure if we’ll generate a response from our efforts.  But I promise you that you will see an exponentially greater response from your marketing if you just do a little here, a little there, and eventually you’ll have so many marketing strategies out there that people will begin responding.

Growing your fitness business is purely a numbers game.  The more marketing methods you have working for you, the more leads come in.  The more leads come in, the more sales you make.  The more sales you make, the more money in your pocket.  The more money in your pocket, the better life you can afford for yourself and your family.

Bottom line:  I don’t know of 1 strategy that will bring in 100 new members, but I do know 100 strategies that will each bring in 1 new member. If you do not have multiple marketing methods in place that run consecutively and simultaneously then you are not maximizing the return on your marketing dollar.

Here are 15 ideas that you can implement very quickly at your fitness business:

• Send a Direct mail postcard
• Send a mailer to new movers
• Run a referral contest
• Target prospects through Facebook advertising
• Call cancelled members and invite them back
• Distribute gift cards from
• Manage a lead box campaign
• Attend Chamber of Commerce event
• Distribute flyers at local University
• Run a canned food drive
• Member appreciation party
• Signage inside and outside your club
• Send a monthly newsletter
• Promote a “Bring a Friend” day
• Give trial passes to local employees

On their own, each of those marketing strategies will be good for at least one new member. But when you combine several of them at once and continue to promote to your market in a variety of ways, the response will be exponential and you’ll get a much greater return on your time and your marketing dollar.

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