Next Level Marketing and Ethics from a Fitness Coaching Company

I recently ran into a fully integrated marketing campaign from Precision Nutrition, promoting their second release of a coaching software for fitness coaches.

It started out as an ad on YouTube, that I watched the first 15 seconds of it - just enough past the "Skip Ad" button pops up that they know that I was at least a little interested.

Then, I saw it again on Facebook.

Scrolling through Instagram, I saw a different ad from Precision Nutrition for the same software. It was obviously tailored to Instagram's native.

They have multiple ads across multiple platforms, each one a little different, each one fitting to different platforms' formats.

Let's compare this with another coaching software, FitBot. Across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, I've seen the same video ad literally at least 75 times.

If I had to choose one, I would choose Precision Nutrition's, although the ads themselves only play a small role in it.

However, Precision Nutrition being an industry leading company and FitBot being a starter business, it's an example of a few things:

1) The difference between well-done campaign integration and one video is huge.
2) Even if your brand doesn't suck, if your campaigns/marketing do, people will think that it does.
3) In the COACHING umbrella of the fitness industry, the underlying narrative is the coach who starts a business with low-level marketing skills. It seems much more effective to be invest in both coaching and business marketing as early as you can.

LOSE BELLY FAT IN JUST 7 MINUTES A DAY: Fake News and Spin in Fitness

Like all people, I stumbled across a study the other day...

It was on the homepage of a major news/email site.

"Lose 1 Inch of Belly Fat in Just 7 Minutes!"

 

So naturally, I clicked on it, and I was greeted by the above headline with an image sort of like this:

I continued reading the article, which was based off of a recent study. Here are the cliffnotes:

- Recruited 29 normal-weight adults who did not engage in regular physical activity

- Had some of them perform a 7 minute exercise regimen daily

- Had some of them perform no exercise daily (control group)

- All participants did not make any changes to their diet.

- After 6 weeks, the group who performed exercise actually ended up losing weight, while the other group lost nothing.

Oh wow! Just seven minutes! They lost weight exercising, compared to people who didn't exercise??

.... and that was the end of the article.

As a trainer, nutrition coach, blah blah blah (read: someone invested in the industry and who cares and obsesses), this is a classic example of 2 things:

1) Something is better than nothing

2) Using a study (whether it came from a good source or not) to bolster surface engagement.

The study's results come from very obvious parameters (some exercise vs. none). And SO often, news sites publishers use these studies to garner attention. And this lead me to a big realization...

Often with mainstream fitness content, the emotion of knowing more than your friends do is what's sold - not health advice.

"Give, Give, Give, Ask": Making Conversions in Online Fitness

Instagram is a phenomenal platform. Saturated, yes, but that's both a strength and a weakness. 

Let's take the fitness space, for example.

If you were to take your phone out right now and scroll through your Instagram feed, you would probably (read: definitely) be following someone or some company that you could categorize under health and fitness. 

That's because right now, fitness businesses (both individuals and large-scale companies) are at an arms race to reach you via Instagram. 

As I've learned more and more about social media marketing, however, one thing has become abundantly clear: Most fitness businesses on social media are shotgunning they're content and their offers - at the most. 

There's no plan, no scheduling, no sales funnel present in most profiles we see on Instagram. And that's okay! It's actually expected - in most fitness business subcategories, business owners are more focused on getting their clients results than putting together a perfect marketing strategy.

But here's an example of a company with a well-structured, well-executed marketing plan.

Precision Nutrition recently relaunched their Instagram, doing a complete overhaul of their content production. Scrolling through their profile, one thing is very apparent: they constantly churn out high quality content with high quality information. 

And every once in a while, they ask.

On a recent Instagram Stories post, they lead the customer through a small journey:

Precision Nutrition continues their story by giving a few more useful tips for fitness professionals:

Notice how they haven't mentioned anything about a service they're offering or anything on sale. 

Finally, however, after giving a solid amount of value, they STILL don't ask. They actually frame their social-->site conversion as another give.

Finally, after going to their article, they link to a presale list, where eventually, they will finally ask for something. 

This is a great example of a fitness company attacking their marketing with an integrated plan instead of just making a video and hoping for their best.

#Fitspiration: A Double Edged Sword, and How It Affects Your Health

As a personal trainer, I get to see just about ALL the barriers that keep people from achieving their goals. These barriers aren't just things that I see -- I study them, because it's my job.

I don't have the time to work out.

I don't have the money to eat healthy.

I'm really focusing on my work right now.

I have a FAMILY to take care of.

And these are all valid! Time is a resource you cannot get back. "Healthy foods"  often time take some financial finesse. Work gets crazy - life gets crazy. Having kids is a... good Lord that's a huge job.

But a lot of the time, these barriers are sort of more like beliefs.

And so as a coach, it's my job to help them re-frame those beliefs, and give them simple strategies to make taking care of their health doable.

As a marketer, I've noticed a lot of these beliefs come from the portrayal of fitness as something HARDCORE. As or do or die. "Be perfect, or else you're not good enough".

Y'all know what I mean. 

    

                   

Some say that the fitness industry runs off of ego, and there's definitely some truth in that.

For a long time, flash and entertainment and great pictures and glistening skin are what have won the war of attention for profit.

Luckily, a few companies have learned to change the conversation.

It's not about the outcome, of course. It's about becoming, and working hard, and making mistakes, and forgiving yourself so you can get right back into your flow. 

To me, fitness is about loving yourself and your life, and making the best of it - maximizing it. 

There's a ridiculous amount of noise going on in the fitness industry - but as someone who's obsessed with removing those barriers and changing those beliefs, here's two people on Instagram that are doing it right. 

Follow these accounts, and you'll actually learn a few things you can apply immediately - without all the fitness business hardcore weirdness.

Heidi Powell specializes in one year "fitness transformations", and has a TV show for it on ABC or something idk. She focuses on the entire lifestyle of being healthy and enjoying it, where you'll see a lot of other female fitness accounts only posting pictures of them in the gym or in a bikini on a beach somewhere. Follow this rad woman.

Achieve Fitness is Boston based gym that uses kettlebells as their primary tool for health promotion. I like their strategy a lot because again, their focus is on adding real value. Many "kettlebell experts" post videos of their own advanced circuits with advanced movements, because it looks cool and gets likes. Achieve Fitness posts simple, easy to understand videos/pictures that teach the correct form - ironically, they have a lot more user engagement than other so called kettlebell experts. 

The Fruity Truth: An Apology, On Behalf of Fitness (sorta)

The fitness industry is silly as fuck.

Actually, let me rephrase that.

The fitness industry, as a whole, is silly as fuck.

I realize how douchey/pretentious/degenerative this sounds, but STAY WITH ME – I promise I’ll loop this back to something awesome, something you can seamlessly apply today. In the meantime, listen to this song for some good vibes and take a deep breath with me, way into your belly. Feels dope right? Let’s do one more.

You legit can’t read past this line until you take a deep breath. 

---

Nice dude what’s up! I’m Alex, and welcome to my blog. This is NOT a personal blog, where I write poems and post pictures of my vacations and dogs and shit. Nay, this is an asylum custom built n’ fortified for our health, consciousness, and freedom.

So I digress or whatever :D

I love the field of fitness and I love the mission that I’m on: to become a world-class fitness coach. But in my deepest intuition, this industry – in many ways but not all – often does more harm than good. To be fair though, let’s give a little preface: the intent is always pure. The INTENT behind most fitness endeavors is usually the same.

“Take care of myself and my health. Become more confident. Challenge myself. Grow.”

As a coach, it’s about the same: Help people take care of their health. Give them confidence.  Guide their challenge. Watchthem grow. Freak out about how awesome they’re doing :).

But intent often differs from execution, and the path to the promised-land gets fruitless and… weird. 

Why?

Well, it’s simply the other edge of the sword. Unfortunately, the sword is sharp as fuck. This is why we’re silly:

We pitch a Utopia of hotness

As an industry, we sell and we promise a place where everyone has a six pack and a nice ass and tight bodies and golden skin, where nothing hurts, where we’re all ruthlessly happy and everything’s made out of music. We worship the ephemeral moment of a stage, and we punish each other for our own human inevitabilities. We vilify imperfection. Even worse, we don’t acknowledge it. We tell the world that they’re not enough, until they are where we are – in magazine hotland.

I want to reiterate here that again, this isn’t everyone. There are some badass coaches out there and some badass people. But let’s have a little storytime sesh real quick.  

Long long ago, last week, I saw a transformation story on the internet. It was this post of a girl who got into shape, made this incredible, amazing, inspiring transformation from where she was one year ago. She made MASSIVE amounts of progress and in her “after” pic she looked beautiful. The post was all about how far she’s come and how much she loves losing weight, and then she ends the post with “#ThoseGrannyArmsTho”.

I read that and my heart made a little sad face and I kid you not I realized right then and there one of my biggest missions in life: to heal the intermittent self-loathing that comes with getting in better shape.

Because in many ways, we do this way too often.

We approach growth and life and doing good things for ourselves from a place of inadequacy, insecurity, hurt.

We approach it from a place in our heads that compares us with the past and the future, and with every person we know.

We approach it with reckless admonition for the present: with a voice that tells us we need this to be happy, and until we get that or we are that, we can’t be happy. We don’t deserve to be.

And that is silly as fuck.

Because life isn’t easy but it’s not meant to be shitty. So much of the time we get caught in the web of our goals and our body – the aesthetic, the result. We thrive on the two days of seven that we do everything, exactly right. But on the other days, often, we turn into our worst enemy.

When we fall short of a goal or eat a bad meal or whatever, we revert to comparison. We revert to a skewed and flawed paradigm that advertising teaches us to look through. Instead of recognizing a mistake and moving on, we berate, and we start being mean – to ourselves.

Do you talk to your mother the same way you talk to yourself sometimes? What would you think if you heard a person talking to someone the same way we talk to ourselves when we’re down?

The path to growth is paved with mistakes, obviously. But you can’t psyche yourself out for taking risks so you can grow. So talk yourself up and show yourself some love. Be kind to yourself. When you make mistakes, forgive yourself. Hahaha. Like, it’s OKAY. It’s okay to fail, it’s cool, you’re fine. Laugh about it and learn, and then in the immortal words of Taylor Swift: 

What I’m about to say next is something I never thought I’d be saying, let alone in a friggin’ blog. 

It’s also one of the first things I spend a lot of time instilling in my clients subconsciously, through different lessons and habits and really special moments in the coaching process. I’m about to give it all to you upfront. You wanna know the Fruity Truth?

I dunno...

For me personally, it changed the game. It changed the way I approach every challenge, and made things actually fun. It’s top secret af.

But I’ll let you in on it since you’re here ;)

The Fruity Truth is that fitness, at the core of it all, isn’t even about fitness. It’s not about a six pack or a PR or a goal weight or fucking how many dumbbells you can hold.

Focusing only on that is the Rat’s Race of better health.

The Fruity Truth is that fitness is about learning to love the shit out of who we are and where we’re at on our quest to be dope(r).

A badass physique is just a gem in your journey – a direction.

Learning to balance your raw ambition with humility and self-love – those are the true champions of good health.

So that’s it, blog time is OVER I’m goin to class then training my client Jake, he is deep in week five and killin ittttt. Just remember!

It’s not JUST about the six pack.

It’s about actually having fun no matter how close or far you are from your goals.

It’s about learning to enjoy the process of growing and changing.

It’s about not talking down to yourself; finally giving yourself permission to be cool with you, no matter the shit or the shweg that you’re in.

After all, isn’t the point of all this to enjoy your life a little more?

Fitness Ads on Instagram: A Dissection

If you're scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or any platform and see a sponsored video or picture, does it blend in as content you would consume... or does look an ad?

Gary Vaynerchuck, an expert of social media marketing, coined a term to describe a post's ability to blend and be consumable on specific platforms. It's called:

NATIVE.

And in short, it's a marketer's ability to make an ad not seem like an ad - or even better, to seemlessly start a conversation. To bring REAL VALUE to it's consumers. 

Today we're going to quickly break down a fitness ad I came across on Instagram. 

Click HERE to view the ad. You don't have to, obviously. 

When I started watching this ad I thought: "oookay, here's another 'tough dude' Instagram trying to pedal themselves along, talking about how hardcore they are". 

Like, the guy's name is SwoleNormous. 

SwoleNormous.

BUT, I watched it and started to smile. Pretty decent ad. 

Not only did the post blend well with a lot of other posts on Instagram (a video with a title and moving captions), but the message does a good job of documenting a shift that's happening in the online fitness space:

Focusing on things that actually matter. 

Like, the process of getting in shape. And focusing on how fitness is really about improving your life and not just looking good. 

It marks a small shift that I think is starting to place, where we are looking beyond the surface of magazine ads and instagram posts and flashing abs and butts and photoshopping ourselves - and we're looking at becoming healthier human beings, both physically and mentally. 

Have you noticed this shift? It's been very acute, but it's starting to gain momentum.

From a marketing perspective, here's what I liked about the post:

      - The caption wasn't selling anything.

      - It had the right amount of "flash" to grab my attention.

      - He subtly indicates his presence on Instagram and Snapchat in the bottom left corner.

      - It was entertainng.

      - Above everything else, it actually brought value and gave the consumers something.

The Ketogenic Diet: A Nutrition Coach's Perspective

It all started with a little harmless coconut oil....

Or was it... putting butter in your coffee?

Or was it... the correlation of sugar intake and obesity rates?

The Ketogenic Diet

For about the past six months, the Ketogenic diet, or the keto diet, has been the most talked about diet in the fitness industry. 

If I got an almond for every time I heard "He/she's on the ketogenic diet" or "sugar is terrible for you", I'd have a fuck ton of almonds but not as many as someone who's on keto eats in a friggin' day, am-I-rite?

If you just got out of prison or are like, Amish, or something of the sort, the ketogenic diet is simply a style of eating that trains your body to burn fat for energy, instead of sugar. 

But to get into this fat burning zone (ketosis) you can't eat more than around 50 grams of carbohydrates per day, which includes the fibrous carbohydrates found in vegetables.

The Ketogenic Diet is nothing short of a full-fledged dietary/lifestyle change.

(Here's a quick page I found that details the keto diet a little bit more)

As a trainer, certified nutrition coach, UGA Football nutrition intern, etc. etc., as someone pursuing a coaching career in the fitness industry, I've noticed and found a few things to be true. 

These are my quick thoughts on the ketogenic diet, for anyone who's thinking about trying it:

1) It can work to help you lose fat.

The keto diet can produce results, when done properly. 

2) A lot of other "diets" can help you lose fat as well.

Many times, it can be at a faster and/or more sustainable rate, depending on who you are, what your goals are, what kind of lifestyle you have, etc. 

IT ALL WORKS. People lose weight and get in better shape via an infinite amount of strategies/tools.

3) No dietitian or dietetics major I've asked has recommended keto.

The only case in which it has been recommended is under the case of certain cognitive diseases. 

If your goal is to lose some fat or just get healthier and feel better...

4) Consider other diets that suite your lifestyle better.

If you really really want to try keto, go for it! It works for some people. For most of my clients, and for 100% of the people I know who have tried keto, it's a lot of work and actual stress to change your diet so drastically and quickly, with so many limitations on what you can/can't eat. 

In other words, if you don't have any pre-existing health conditions and your goal is simply and specifically weight loss...

Maybe try something a little less extreme first. 

The work:results ratio for keto requires you put in a lot of work, for the same results you could get with a diet that works more easily with your lifestyle and goals. 

Word. Honestly, I know how confusing and baffling and dogmatic it can be to get to truth of things in the fitness... If you want to know more about it or have any questions, or want to tell me how wrong I am and that sugar is terrible for you, you can always hit me up! 

P.S. If you'd like a thorough science-based, non-biased report on the ketogenic diet, I'd recommend this resource: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/low-carb-report

Precision Nutrition is the largest private nutrition coaching and research company in the world, not paid for or sponsored by any companies tho