PRontheGO: PR and marketing experts in the health and fitness industry reveal their best tips
--
Health and fitness trends are booming. With it, there’s lots of new ventures out there. We asked PR and marketing experts in the health and fitness industry to provide their best tips. Who are the main influencers in this industry? How to work with those influencers? What other (new) platforms are out there to promote your health /fitness venture? How to make use of trends in this field? Here are their answers:
“While there’s no denying that we’re in the age of digital influencers and working with them is absolutely necessary, nothing beats traditional media coverage — regardless of the industry. While the exposure digital influencers give creates amazing awareness, all of the sponsored posts and #ads make it hard to tell when a company or product are actually credible.
With an PR efforts the key is to differentiate. What sets your fitness/health/wellness venture apart? Highlight what makes you different, why people should care about it, and then clearly define it through attention grabbing messaging.
The best way to work with influencers is to create organic relationships. Invite them into your studio, offer them free services and sessions, get them to love what your selling so much that it becomes a more believable relationships rather than just dishing out money for a one-off post.”
— Lindsay Siwiec, Jet Black Public Relations
“In a digital world filled with fads and gimmicks, people are starting to look more towards educating themselves on how to diet and exercise properly. Thanks to mobile devices, this has never been easier.
To accommodate customers, brands are investing more in educational content marketing to earn consumers’ trust and establish brand loyalty. When it comes down to it, a lot of these companies offer similar products/services so brands are looking to stand out with their identities.”
— Michael Lewis, Creative Strategist, Active Web Group
“Instagram is an ideal social media platform for fitness brands which commonly use influencers as the vital part of their Instagram marketing strategy, but a different approach must be applied to marketing your local startup as opposed to national businesses. You should find social media influencers with good engagement levels in your local area. Don’t expect that you can get recommendations from them for free, but you can build relationships with them by following, liking, and leaving meaningful comments and someday they may even follow you back or even recommend you to their followers. Don’t neglect micro-influencers with a highly engaged audience to establish a higher level of credibility. Engage with as many local people who are interested in fitness and healthy lifestyle as possible.”
— Illia Termeno, Extrabrains marketing agency
“I helped cofound Kettlebell Kings, a fitness equipment business and we have been very fortunate to grow quite a bit since we started. Content promotion has been a huge part of our business growth for the past three years. We sell kettlebells online and the single biggest way we have built our presence is through paid ads to content pages about different kettlebell movements, expert advice and signing up for weekly workouts to receive in your email inbox. Here is an example of one of our landing pages.
By being able to target people who are interested in ‘kettlebells’ on social media we are able to get new leads into our workflows at about $1 per lead. This method has had about a 10X return on spend over the last year with these people turning into real customers who are buying our actual kettlebell equipment.
We were recently featured by Hubspot for what we have accomplished through paid content using their landing pages and workflows. This has been a super effective way for a business that has bootstrapped from the beginning to build our email list and community with the $1 per lead cost, because we were early adopters in the content strategy game in our niche we were able to spend less to get leads and turn them into customers as opposed to Google Ads. It also solidifies us as thought leaders in our space by putting out expert driven content that has sharable qualities with friends of those receiving the content. We are also able to try different targeting methods by targeting those interested in kettlebells and then narrowing it further by targeting another interest that person might be interested like a particular fitness personality or brand. This helps our brand enter the conscious of those who are not familiar with ours as the relative newcomers in our industry.”
— Jay Perkins, Co-Founder Kettlebell Kings
Choose your wording wisely
“For commercial fitness brands, the goal is typically to increase product sales and membership subscriptions
‘Beginners’, or those new to fitness, do not want to be scared away by the unobtainable or elite, while existing enthusiasts might not want to get involved in activities they see as ‘amateur’. It’s a fine balancing act that must be carefully trodden to avoid falling into the pit of drabness.
Obviously, for certain brands such as Tough Mudder, which prides itself on providing the ultimate “hardcore” challenge to participants, this terminology could be an immediate red flag for the majority of people, and given the level of fitness required to complete their races, this is fine. However, for health clubs, gyms or fitness equipment manufacturers that rely on high levels of interest and sales for success, it’s important that careful consideration is imbedded into any comms strategy to ensure potential customers are not wary of a brand, based purely just on the wording of a sentence.”
— James Watkins, Digital PR Specialist at Impression
Thank you!
…………..
PRontheGO.com — The Creative Entrepreneur’s source for PR hacks.
…………..
