List Building in Health & Fitness (4 Reasons your offers aren't converting)

Disclaimer: I created the software I'm going to mention here but I'm not linking it so this doesn't get flagged as an ad.

I'm a newbie digital marketer but a software developer/graphic designer but I wanted to talk about building your list in the health & fitness niche in 2017.

If you're struggling to build a list selling in the lucrative health & fitness niche, I have four reasons why you're probably not getting traction with your free pdfs & email courses:

1. The Process Sucks: Let's think about how free reports are distributed for a moment. They are sent to users as PDF downloads or zip files. If you're on a desktop, that's no big deal but if you're on a smartphone, the process is lengthy. Discovery (social media, blog, website, etc) > Opt-In > Opt-In Confirmation > Download Link

If you sent a PDF to your customers, they're not much fun to read on a smartphone. If your customer gets a zip file, guess what: they can't open it. So they then have to go to their main computer to open your file.

2. People are Impatient: No one wants to go through all that to get information. Especially in the "Age of Instant" where you can do everything from watch TV shows to order diapers in 1 click.

3. No one wants to print anything: If you sell things like diet programs or workout programs, people have to bring them around with them to be able to use them. So, they have to print them. Even if you have a great program or offer, by the time they get around to doing everything in step 1, a lot of people have lost motivation. If they don't use your product, they're most likely going to ignore what you're going to send them in the future now anyway because the moment of inspiration has passed.

4. Health & Fitness Products aren't interactive: Unlike Internet Marketing products, health and fitness products MUST be interactive for the buy or the opt-in to feel like they have some use. This goes a bit with #3. Last year over 58% of smartphone users downloaded a health and fitness app. Once again, the problem with your offer is **TIME**. If someone purchases a product from you and they have to do everything the old fashioned way (pen & paper printouts) or spend time inputting data into an app.

So what marketers in the health and fitness niche need to succeed in 2017 is to shorten the time between product discovery & lead acquisition.

I've been testing out a new method where users are given an offer that is delivered directly to their smartphone. I designed the software based on these four points and so far the results are very promising. I based it on a simple observation that I was downloading most of the apps on my phone through Facebook ads instead of the App Store.

I've never really attempted list building before, so I spent less than $15 on two Instagram promotion and got 16 leads. The IG user clicks on the signup button on the ad and is taken to the marketplace where they can choose a product or I link them directly to a certain product.

Screenshot from my software:


Imported leads into MailChimp: (I'm still working on E-Mail autoresponder integrations)



Before I ran the ads, I spent a lot of time on Friday updating the product images with super fancy stock images and better text. I believe this helped in getting the users to click on the ad. The ad didn't look "Sales-y". They also didn't have to jump through hoops to get the product.



The process is Click Ad Link > Signup > Login to App > Get Product

I've also run a few promotions on Facebook and my page views have gone up significantly in the last 3 days (1000+) with a majority of the users coming from the North America & Australia.



Right now, I'm trying a few free & low cost paid traffic techniques this week to see if I can get that lead number over 100 by Friday.

What I learned is that it's not enough to offer another "Free Report". Today's buyer value time more than the information itself! I just wanted you guys to know that it looks like marketers definitely need to redefine how they get leads through various channels on the web.

If you have any questions, please let me know. I plan on writing another post later this week to give you guys more insights into what I've learned using this method.