The Personal Trainer in a Duffel Bag Lead Generation

If ever there was a magic bullet for lead generation that I’ve found in my six years of owning personal training studios, it’s a tool that we invented called, the “Personal Trainer in a Duffle Bag.” When we opened our first location in 2007, I recall local community members, calling or walking in, and asking for donations. They needed silent auction items for Race for the Cure, CASA or local events benefitting the high school, etc.

We wanted to support our community and all of these great causes, so we started donating gift certificates good for personal training sessions at our studios. We donated a lot of gift certificates that first year and I don’t remember even a single one being redeemed.

And then it happened. I attended one of the events where we had donated gift certificates. I browsed the items at the silent auction, and I had to look very hard to find our donation. It was unceremoniously placed on the silent auction table and couldn’t begin to compete with the gift baskets, artwork and other big-ticket items that drew everyone’s attention. Nobody at the event stopped to look at the gift certificate that I had donated, and nobody placed a bid.

The next day, I put what I had learned at the event to good use. At a silent auction, nobody wants to bid on a boring gift certificate for personal training! They want the items that have personality. I worked with our equipment vendor to develop a prize package including fitness equipment that could fit inside a duffle bag embroidered with our logo. The prize included a Fitness Together gift certificate, good for an initial fitness assessment, and three sessions of personal training. It had a total retail value of $349!

Since we’ve started donating these Personal Trainers in a Duffle Bag, we’ve had much better results as far as generating leads. More importantly, we were able to convert 50 percent of auction winners into ongoing clients because we targeted events that were rich in our desired demographic. When the auction winner called us to schedule their personal training sessions, we encouraged them to bring the bag with them for at least one of their sessions, so we could teach them how to use all the equipment.

I believe the Personal Trainer in a Duffle Bag could generate leads for any fitness business owner because of its versatility. All you have to do is bundle a trial membership, fitness bucks or free personal training, with a prize bag that will help draw attention to your gift certificate. Plus, you’ll help the charity event to raise more money by getting higher bids. Everybody wins!

The trick is to keep the process simple. I love that our vendor worked with us to bundle together the duffel bag and the equipment into one kit. That way, when we want to donate to an auction, they ship everything we need using one item number. We kept our cost around $125 for all items, including the plastic sign and brochures that we include with each bag. It’s the highest ROI that we have found with any of our guerilla marketing ideas.

Jonathan Slain owns and operates franchises of Fitness Together in Cleveland, Ohio. He can be reached at JonathanSlain@FitnessTogether.com, @ftohio, 877.FIT.OHIO, or www.FitnessTogether.com/ohio.