Fitness sales leader Amanda Bracks advises on customer acquisition, sales and retention

Leading fitness industry consultant Amanda Bracks is embarking on two new initiatives to educate and inform on customer acquisition, membership sales and retention.

In her last 'face to face' fitness industry sales training event of the year, Bracks will be presenting 'Sales Mastery: Learn how to generate leads and increase sales to ensure' in a seminar Melbourne's Riverside Golf Course on Friday 21st September 2012.

The event, being held from 9.45am to 4.30pm will see Bracks, the author of Customer Acquisition: 20 Ways to Gain and Retain Customers' share her experience of how to increase fitness and aquatic centre memberships.

The event will also be addressed by Petar Lackovic, Director of Impact Training and The National Sales Academy who will speak on 'Sales Conversion Strategies That Will Immediately Increase Your Profit' and online marketing strategist Michael McEwan who will explain 'How to Double your Business Enquiries by Effectively Using the Internet'.

Bracks is also advising businesses on their Facebook strategies.

As she explains "many businesses have set up a Facebook account but does your business actually have a strategy around how to maximize it?

"If you spend some time planning your Facebook strategy and what you want out of it, you will get better results that are also measurable."

Here Bracks offers eight tips to obtain and retain customers using Facebook:

1. Ensure your business has a fan page not a personal page. A personal page can only take up to 5,000 friends and a fan page can have hundreds of thousands of fans. If you think 5,000 fans is a long way off, just remember after a few years it will be so much harder to change over and start again.

2. Encourage Check Ins.If you have a business with a fixed address as all health clubs and leisure centres do, then choose a 'Local Business or Place' page so you can allow customers to check in which shows their friends where they are and where they go. This is the best referral your business can have. People don't need to talk verbally about your business when people can see that their friends attend there, and will assume it must be a good place. You can have check in competitions to encourage more people to check in. An example promotion is simply that parents of swim school children are given a free coffee if they check into the swim school on their phone for a designated week.

3. Have a status update timeline. Plan when you are going to make status updates, how often and what time of the day. If you update twice a day at different times, not all people will see your status update and you'll increase your chance of being seen. Constant status updates that give value to your fans remind your fans that you exist.

4. Have a status content plan. Decide what type of content you are going to use in your status updates.The best content to get the most engagement from your fans is through:

• Video push videos from your you tube channel to increase views;
• Photos - post photos of what your business is up to, events or share achievements;
• Questions engage fans and ask their opinion;
• Tips give people tips that are relevant to your business and your customers;
• Emotion sharing something that is heart-felt and somewhat emotionally engaging.

You want to engage your fans to help expose your page to their friends to continually add more fans to your page. You will find that the more people engage with a question, like your photos or share your videos your fan numbers will increase at the same time. This is because more people are seeing your page as fans that are engaging and commenting on your page are being fed as a news item onto all of their friends' pages. If you have 100 fans that each have 100 friends then your exposure is potentially 10,000+

5. Use status updates to generate testimonials.Remember that people like Facebook because it helps them see pictures of their family and friends so remember to use emotion in your status updates and topical posts also stimulate quick responses. Keep them informative, professional, light-hearted and with a touch of a human element at times.

For example; "Now that 2012 is coming to an end, tell us the achievements you have made this year." 

The responses from your customers will act as testimonials for the fans that are not current customers, remind people of what you do for the customers that aren't using you regularly helping retention and allow people that don't know who you are to come and like your page as it will appear of the commenting person's friends news feed. 

6. Avoid sharing other businesses tips and information. So many times I see businesses sharing tips from another business in a similar field. For example a personal trainer might share a blog or article from an online nutrition business. Your fans come to you to be the expert and if you start sharing other people's information it will do three things. The first is it will decrease your profile as an expert. The second thing it will do is drive your fans to their web pages and increase their 'search engine optimisation'. The third thing it will do is tempt your fans to look around their web site and if they have something to buy on there, they may just do so and reduce or stop services with you. Create your own content and position your brand as the expert in your field.

7. If you need more fans try Facebook ads. You have a variety of options to use advertising on Facebook and it is very cheap. If you want to exposure your business to more people or grow more fans, place an advertisement and measure the results and reach you have. If you are selecting a more targeted audience, evaluate who it is that you want to appeal to and what other things they would be liking on Facebook. For example a person who needs to lose 50 kilos probably doesn't like fitness, health and exercise so interests that may be more suitable might me gourmet foods, beer, wine and restaurants. Someone that is a potential swim school client may not like water activities, swimming and exercise instead target people who like parent, baby and children associated pages. 

8. Test and measure. There are a number of things you can measure to see how your activity is going at attracting fans and potential clients:

• Clicks, reach and likes if you are paying for advertising;
• Likes to your fan page and the growth of this number;
• Engagement through analytics on your fan page outlining the engagement and reach for every single post you make;
• Number of enquiries if you have a squeeze page on your fan page;
• Number of web site hits (keep a track of this to see if your Facebook activity has effected this)

Facebook is a platform that is free, or relatively cheap to marketing through so use it to its fullest capabilities to generate new customers and open up communication with your existing customers .

To attend 'Sales Mastery: Learn how to generate leads and increase sales to ensure' or to share Amanda Bracks' Facebook experience call 0419 435 908 or go to www.bracksconsulting.com/conferences/sales-mastery

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18th May 2009 - GYM MEMBERSHIP IS A CASUAL AFFAIR