A personal trainer with design training walks through logo essentials: must work in black and white, skip gradients, be readable from far away. Use 99designs or Canva to build one, then focus on Google My Business for local clients instead of bulk t-shirts.
Alrighty, so marketing, uh, part 1. I'm going to be talking about in this video logo design and just some simple design tips. So what a lot of people don't know about me is when I finish school, I actually finished with a subject award in art. So I'm very arty. And when I finished school, I actually did my Certificate IV in Applied Design. So my careers counselor told me that I should, you know, I'm good at art, art and good at design and should pursue a career in advertising and design, actually not personal training. And after going on that track, uh, you know, I realized that, you know, my heart was not in it and I just love personal training too much. And funnily enough, my— I ended up training my career counselor's daughter, uh, in a competition and she'd very well— so it's kind of like, you know, full circle journey on those kind of things and a little bit, you know, of twisted fate. But I digress. A lot of trainers get bent out of shape when it comes to logo design. I just want to give some tips and overview right? So when it comes to a logo, here are some tips that you can't break. Number 1, a logo has to work in black and white. So what that means is that it— if you get someone to design your logo, print it in black and white. If you can't see the letters, if you can't see the image, just understand that's not a good logo because logos need to be flexible enough to be used on pretty much every medium, from your printing of t-shirts to your clipboards to your website. A logo, a good logo, is going to work in black and white. So what that also means is that if a logo has any gradients, you know, from going light to dark or red to blue, they're, they're bad logos, right? Because again, when you look at, say, printing, uh, you know, actually getting hard copy prints, a lot of time printers aren't going to get those details. It might look great digitally, but they're not going to get those details in print and it's not going to work black and white. It's going to lose a lot of the messaging. Stand away. When you get a logo or design work, one of the big things you can do is stand away from the design, right? So like literally take a step back. So put the logo out on a piece of paper and put it far away from you. If you can't see it, if you can't understand it, that's not a great design either. A good logo should look good and be visually recognizable from a distance. So again, I mean, I think a lot of trainers get kind of bent out of shape on their logo. A place that you could— I would recommend to get a good logo done is 99designs. And I'm not affiliated with 99designs, but they do great work and I've used them heaps of times for logo design. The reason why I like 99designs is because basically you're putting up your design brief and take time to write your brief, like write it in detail and give good direction. You put up your brief and then designers from all over the world, they basically put designs on what you think, what they think you want, and then you can rank those designs and say no, yes, and give direction on the designs that come up with and see what all these different people are thinking when it comes to your brand identity. So I think 99designs is a good place to go for initial design concepts. And yeah, really good stuff. So Other things in terms of design tips. With your design tips, again, people can get quite lost and spend a lot of money on a designer. A simple way of starting out that's quite cost-effective is using an app called Canva, which is C-A-N-V-A, or Canva, however you want to pronounce that. And it's just a simple app, I think costs you like $10 a month, and you can do whole different types of designs. And what you could do is you could employ a designer to do a bunch of templates using that app, and then you can simply take over. So then you've got kind of your Instagram and Facebook stuff. If you want to post, it's already done for you, and you've kind of done it at the start. Another thing with marketing that I'd really discourage trainers from doing is getting a whole bunch of t-shirts printed out. I know it's one of the most popular things that new trainers with businesses do, but ultimately it's a waste of money. I think you really want to direct your advertising and marketing spend on income-producing or things that are going to return income. So a better use of resources, I would think, is to get up and build some little vouchers. So the vouchers, get them nicely designed, get them nicely printed, you know, cost you a couple of bucks to do both of those and then give them to your clients and say, you know, you've been a great client. This is valued at $150. It's a 2-hour session with me. Do you want to give this to your friend or family member as a gift for Christmas or their birthday or whatever it is, or give them as a gift? You can tell them that you paid me. I don't really mind. But I'd love to offer this to you to give to your client, to give to one of your friends or family members because you've been such a great client to me. And what it is essentially is it's a gift voucher that you're giving your client, but it's also referral marketing, right? It's disguised as referral marketing, which works. The client's always really happy to receive these things, but then also for you, you're getting new clients who possibly interested in what you're doing to come and see you. So that's a better way in terms of your local marketing. So really, again, Focus on what's relevant, what's going to get you results fast. Social media and online is great, but another really good tip is Google My Business. If you get a Google My Business account, set up one of those. Again, it's more geographically based than just kind of being out there to everyone on the social platforms, which again, I'm not discouraging by any sense, but it's just make sure that you understand that the game is local marketing for personal trainers.
