Regardless of how nice or beautiful your website may be, without “attracting” prospects to your site, your fancy site really isn’t worth a penny. As I wrote about last month, the first step is to “attract” people to your website if you want your site to be more than a lost brochure sitting in the middle of a parking lot somewhere.
One of the easiest, most inexpensive ways to “attract” people to your site is with “search engine marketing.” Search engine marketing, in its simplest form, is getting people from your area (i.e. your town, city, etc.) to find you when they “search” for your club name on the search engines. There are thousands of search engines but 95% of all searches are performed on yahoo.com or google.com. So how do you get people from your area to find your club website on yahoo.com and google.com?
There are two ways to ensure your club’s site shows up on search engines:
1. Configure your website and Web pages to rank high on the search index (which happens to be complicated and often a waste of time). You can even pay someone to do this, which is easier (but happens to be expensive).
2. Use “pay-per-click” advertising! Payper- click advertising is the best way to get targeted leads from your area to go to your website via the search engines. And, it’s very inexpensive and very easy to do – all by yourself. (There are companies out there that will create and manage “pay-per-click” advertising for you but why hire them when it’s so quick and easy to do it yourself?)
What exactly is “pay-per-click” search engine advertising? If you take a second and go to yahoo.com or google.com and type in the phrase “fitness equipment” in the search bar and then click “submit,” you’ll see a gazillion results displayed. Well, if you look at the very top of the displayed results, or on the right side of the page, you’ll see tiny little ad blurbs that contain (or relate) to your search phrase. These tiny little ad blurbs are “pay-per-click” advertisements for which those companies pay each time someone “clicks” on their ad.
The cost-per-click depends on the popularity of the search term, word or phrase. For instance, the search term “fitness equipment” probably has a high cost-per-click because of the huge range of big companies competing for those prospects (i.e. internet surfers searching for that term). Keep in mind, these big companies are looking for new customers from all over the globe and they get prospects from everywhere.
How do you get new customers (i.e. members) exclusively from your area using pay-per-click advertising in the search engines?
The good news is it’s very easy and inexpensive! Actually, you can pay pennies for your search terms and get yourself a handful of new members each month from doing pay-per-click advertising (using yahoo and google). Here’s how:
First, make a list of every possible search term for which people from your area might search.(A good start would be your actual club name.) This way, if anyone ever types in your club’s name into the search bar, your ad will appear. Second, you want to tie-in your town or city name with the word “heath club” or “gym” or “fitness center.” For instance, if your club is in New York City, you would list terms such as “New York gym,” or “health club(s) in New York,” etc. Think of every possible search term, word or phrase for which people from your area would search. Don’t use terms such as “health club” or “join a gym” because then you’re going to pay for visitors from outside of your area, which is useless. Once you’ve made your list of 20 to 50 terms, go to a site like google.com (They have a pay-per-click program that is very simple to use.) and click on “advertising programs.” Your pay-per-click ads will be up and running within minutes after setting them up!
As you’ll find out, your pay-per-click search terms will cost very little. Reason being, you’re targeting search terms exclusively for your area for which very few (if any) other companies are bidding. This gives you an edge; plus an inexpensive way to get a nice handful of new members each month from the search engines alone.
Pat Necerato is a Sales & Marketing Expert with over 15 years of experience in the Fitness Industry. He can be contacted at 866.468.2832, or go to www.GetMoreMembers.com and get his FREE Marketing Video & Report.
