subject: Your Endless Opportunities For Fitness Business Endorsements [print this page] I'm always confused and a bit irritated when I hear a fitness business owner tell me they have clients who are High Impact Professionals (HIP) who absolutely love them and have gotten tremendous results...but who have never been asked to do an endorsement of the business.
Consider, for example, a female housewife and mother who trains with you, loves your fitness business services and has gotten really good results. Who can she influence? How about other local mothers in her neighborhood? Do you think they might be a little more responsive to get endorsed letter from their neighbor, who they see out on the street, in the grocery store, at the playground, than they would from a 'cold' mailing you do to them?
Of course they would.
But it does take a little work.
1. First you have to segment your list - segment based on who has given you a strong testimonial, or who can give you a strong testimonial.
2. If there are not enough details in the testimonial for you to create a compelling "story" out of it, then you'll need to interview the client to get more information.
3. Draft the letter.
4. Sit down with the client, tell him or her what you'd like to do, and show him/her the letter you've drafted.
5. Secure their approval to use the letter, and to mail it under their return address and letterhead (if a professional).
6. Get your list. If you're mailing to a specific niche group, you'll have to do more work to get the list. But let's say you want to mail to other local housewives in the client's neighborhood. How would you get that list?
First thing, see if there is a homeowner's association serving your client's neighborhood. If so, contact them and ask if there is a directory of homeowners available (or ask your client for this). It can be tricky to get this valuable resource, but it's worth the effort to try. If you can't get it, move on to the next step.
Next, get in the car and go drive the neighborhood. Write down the names of all the streets intersecting with and adjacent to your client's street. You don't need a massive list. Your goal should be to get somewhere between 100 - 500 houses, just depending on what kind of neighborhood your client lives in. Even if you can only get 25-50 houses (if there's only one or two appropriate streets), it's still worth it to do this (consider the lifetime value of just one or two new clients).
Google "criss-cross directory" (without the quotes) and you'll see lots of ways to get the names and addresses of homeowners who live near your existing client (using the street names in order to properly target).
Pull together your list, and mail the letters. Keep in mind you want the envelope to look as personal as possible. So a handwritten address, live commemorative stamp, and one of those pre-printed return address labels (with a snowman, a flag or whatever) will work best.
A Highly Targeted, Affinity Farm
What you've created here is a highly targeted, affinity farm you can work periodically to pull out new fitness business clients at a comparatively low acquisition cost.
If, for example, you mail the "Icing" 3-letter sequence to 1000 'cold' homes at a cost of $3,000 and pull 5 new clients, your acquisition cost is $600 each.
With this endorsement sequence (and yes, it should be a 3-step sequence), you might mail to just 100 homes at a cost of $300, and pull the same number of new clients. Your acquisition cost is just $60 each. Which means your R.O.I. shoots through the roof.
Remember, what someone else says about your fitness business is infinitely more powerful than what you say about yourself. And when that someone else has affinity with the recipient, there is greater credibility and believability, therefore greater response.
Opportunity is everywhere. All you have to do is a little bit of work to capitalize on it.
by: Mike McCoy
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