A few weeks ago, Lyndsey and I made a 6 hour drive to Knoxville, TN to pick up my new puppy.  She’s a lazy 11 week old Blue Great Dane (yes I know she’s gonna be huge) who literally sleeps 3/4 of the day.

If she’s not sleepin she’s usually wrestling with my roomate’s Bulldog. There’s a bunch more pics of her on my Facebook page, if you want to see those, add me as a friend

BTW Dempsey will be making a guest visit on my upcoming webinar on Ustream.  I’ll be covering Facebook Ads for personal trainers and bootcamp instructors in depth…

Some of the topics I’ll cover are…

• Breaking down actual successful Facebook ads I’ve made
• I’ll show you what Facebook ads work and what ads don’t work
• What offers are working for getting clients in the door
• How to get a better click through rate (which means cheaper clicks)
• Facebook ads vs. Google PPC (how they are different, and which is better)
• Q&A -I’ll answer any of the questions I can when it comes to Facebook ads, blogging and online marketing in general…

Webinar will be on Wednesday, March 25th at 8 PM ET.

Here is the link to my Ustream page where the webinar will be… http://www.ustream.tv/channel/goffapalooza.  Just show up and you’ll see my pretty face.  You can type in the chat box and ask me questions…

See ya Wednesday…

- Justin

]]> http://www.justingoff.com/meet-my-new-puppy-plus-a-big-announcement/feed/ 4 http://www.justingoff.com/facebook-ads-gold-mine-for-trainers/ http://www.justingoff.com/facebook-ads-gold-mine-for-trainers/#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:53:27 +0000 justin http://www.justingoff.com/?p=312

(Pic from Facebook in California at the Elite Retreat conference)

So last month I went to the Elite Retreat conference in San Francisco.  It’s an internet marketing conference that costs $5k per person and is only limited to 30 people.  You have to apply and be accepted just to go.  It’s really an awesome time and Ive learned so much the past two years from going there…

On the 3rd day of the conference this year we took a trip to Facebook and their ad team gave us a presentation and some inside info on what’s working with Facebook ads right now.  I got a ton of good info from them, and immediately got to work on setting up a campaign.

My first campaign is sending leads to Vic’s personal training business in Columbus… and my first impression so far of the Facebook ads is WOW!

If you haven’t tried this yet, you need to get on it and start cashing in.  You literally can generate QUALITY leads over night.

For his personal training business, I sent Vic 8-9 leads in the first day, and he has already converted one of them to a $600 per month client.  He still has a few more taking their free trial workout that we’re offering, so he may convert another one too.

We also did one for his bootcamp and I sent him 14 leads in just three hours…He has 6 of them coming in for their trial class this week.  For $40 bucks I was able to get him 6 people (maybe more) to try out his bootcamp.  Now if they like it, and say he converts 3 of them, its an extra $300 per month for Vic which equates to $3600 on the year.  And this was all off a $40 investment…

Compared to PPC, the facebook ads are super cheap as well.  I’m hitting anywhere from .30-.45 cents per click for him and this is within a pretty targeted demographic.

Facebook also allows you to target certain demographics and profile characterisitics which really helps narrow things down and improve your cost per click.  So if you are looking for women in New York City who are between the ages of 30-40, you can narrow your ads to just that segment of people.  It’s really like the new form of direct mail, except much cheaper and a little hipper.

I’m going to keep running these ads for him, and honestly I think I’ll increase his business by $3-5k per month just from Facebook.  Over a full year that adds up to $36,000- $60,000 more dollars for him…

If you’re a trainer and not using this right now for personal training clients and bootcamps, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Some helpful tips for Facebook ads…

• TEST, TEST, TEST.  Ive had a few campaigns that were duds and all of a sudden they turned into lead machines with just 2 or 3 little tweaks.
• Your picture in the ad seems to matter more than the ad text, but both are obviously very important.
• Call to action – make sure you have “Click here” on your ad text, it really helps the click through rate.
• Your landing page is THE most important part of the equation.  Capture their information and make sure you follow up with them ASAP.  Test your landing pages as much as you can…

Take action and get this cranking right away if you can.  There is SERIOUS money to be made for trainers with Facebook ads…

- Justin

P.S. – If you’re interested in getting new clients and don’t want to take the time and money to experiment with Facebook, I might open this up as a service to a select few trainers.  I would handle all of the marketing, you just close the leads and make $$$.  Email me (justingoff@gmail.com) if you are interested…

This is Gary Vaynerchuk.  One of the most exciting and engaging personalities in the social media space.  He’s gonna be a star, no doubt in my mind.

And he knows a ton about business too, check out his video – You’ll like it. You can follow him on twitter too…

Let me know what you think….

-Justin

Here it is.  The broken down, easy to understand explanation of social media and how you can use it to drive traffic to your website.  I wrote this specifically for fitness websites and trainers who have no clue how to use social media.  Enjoy!

What is social media?

• At it’s most basic form, Social media is a way to interact and share content with people interested in your topic.  Sites like Youtube, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon allow users to upload their own content, recommend content and also connect with other people.

What websites work the best in social media?

• There are tons and tons of social media sites out there.  Instead of trying to use them all, you’re better off focusing on trying to dominate a few of them.  If you spread yourself too thin, you’ll end up not having a presence on any of these sites.  So what sites should we focus on?

• YouTube – I personally think Youtube fits the fitness industry very well.  Workouts and exercises translate much better when they’re on video.  It would take you 10 pages of text to explain a front squat (and they prolly still wouldnt understand it) or you could just make a video explaining a front squat and get everything explained in 2 minutes.  Video also adds a great deal of rapport and comfort between your readers and yourself.  Get on Youtube now if yo’re not!

• Twitter – I have to admit when I first heard of Twitter, I thought it was the stupidest thing ever.  But after watching it for a while and learning how it worked, I can really see the MASSIVE potential.  Twitter allows you to connect and interact with your readers, other bloggers and potential partners.  You can also pick up a lot of new readers from Twitter.  The best thing about Twitter is it helps develop TRUST.  And if you know anything about sales you know the biggest reason people don’t buy is that they don’t trust you.  People get to see the real you on Twitter.

• Digg -Digg is a pretty cool social news site.  What’s that mean?  Basically instead of a site publishing whatever news THEY want, on Digg the readers choose what news they want to see.   Digg is a combination of links and stories from all over the web voted on by the readers at Digg.  Anyone can vote, all you need is a Digg account.  Getting on the homepage of Digg usually nets about 15,000-20,000 visitiors to your site in one day…  There’s not a specific fitness category on Digg, but there is a health category, so submit your posts to that category.

• Facebook – Facebook is a social networking site which allows people and companies to make a page so they can connect with others.  For fitness sites, you can make a page for your site and try to get people within your site/profile/blog whatever to join the group.  You can also use your site’s facebook page to promote special offers exclusive for being a member of your page.

• Stumble Upon – This is one of my personal favorite social media sites.  StumbleUpon is a way to discover new sites in any industry.  You tell them the industry you’re interested in and they recommend websites to you based on what users form all over the world have voted as good sites.  There’s a stumbleupon tool bar that makes it much easier to use.  You can vote for sites on the spot, and also “stumble” through an industry and check out a bunch of good sites.

3 tips to using social media

• 1.  Social media is like networking, it’s not all about you – When submitting sites for social media don’t just submit your own sites.  For one its not what social media is about.  And secondly most of these sites will catch on and you’re votes wont be worth as much.  By submitting tons of relevant content you are adding to the value of the site, thus your vote will be worth more on some of these sites.

• 2.  Add friends on social media sites – Connecting is the fastest way to getting your content seen.  Each of these sites has a way for you to add friends, make sure you’re connecting and sharing valuable info. All of the 5 sites above allow you to add friends.

• 3. Connect outside of the fitness industry – Fitness people aren’t the only ones interested in your content.  Lots of people like to workout.  Make sure you’re connecting with people outside of the niche as well.  Twitter is especially good for this.

I’d like to know your thoughts…Feel free to share some things you’ve learned from using social media…

-Justin