One of the most widely used marketing strategies in the business of fitness is also one of the least effective. The use of Promotions and Tactics.

Broadly speaking, these are short term strategies designed to inject a boost of leads (and hopefully clients) in to a business.

Their popularity stems from the desire to get something from nothing – to get a lot of return from little effort. It results also from the tendency for waves of effort to be put in to marketing (based on corresponding waves of motivation) – rather than a consistent and measured long term approach.

So what are we talking about when we talk about promotions and tactics? These include things like short time price discounts, 12 week challenges, ‘intro days’ or one-off special events.

Promotions and tactics are not a strategy, but they can (and should) comprise a small part of a strategy. As part of a bigger picture involving multiple and consistent marketing avenues including an effective website, content marketing, social media documentation, leveraging your clients’ social media, a referral process, email marketing, and, above all else – a great client experience.

The issue arises when short term tactics become the only strategy. This is a fault we see initially with Range of Motion Business Mentoring clients.

One of the reasons the Fitness Industry has such high drop off rates is that once the short term strategies have failed, Fitness Professionals lack the patience to implement (and wait out) long term strategies. So they leave the industry.

So sure, run short term promotions and tactics, but only if they’re part of a bigger, and well thought-out plan. Being reactive in business (client numbers are down so we need to run a promotion) is a guaranteed way at (at best) stand still in business or (at worst) go backwards.