“Playbook made everything easy, even creating the programs. I can do everything from my phone if I need to, which is incredible. I didn’t have to do any of the backend work, and it was just easy. I don’t have to pay $100,000 to develop the app, they do it for me, and they take 20% of a client that I would have never reached on my own.”
- Danny Saltos
L.A.-based personal trainer Danny Saltos has been training his clients one-on-one for the last 15 years, helping thousands of women in West Hollywood achieve their fitness goals with workouts and educational lifestyle tips that help them look and feel stronger through exercise and nutrition.
Prior to joining Playbook, Saltos had already built an established and highly reputable personal brand, Train With Danny. He was dedicated to helping his local clients meet their health and wellness goals through in-person personal training and live classes — but he knew in order to grow his business even further, he needed to reach a larger audience.
Playbook presented a unique opportunity to Saltos in that he could continue doing what he does best — helping women gain confidence through exercise and nutrition— while expanding his business to reach more clients outside of the West Hollywood area.
“When the pandemic hit, I had to pivot and I started doing a lot more online work. I started doing Zoom classes and those were doing great. I started to build this online community and I started to reach more people using my social media, and that’s kind of the organic way that led me to this point, like ‘I really need an app now,’” Saltos says.
The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) certified personal trainer joined Playbook so he could share his strength-building, fat-burning workouts with a larger audience and empower women to look and feel their best, one workout at a time. With Playbook, Saltos was able to create affordable personal training for potential clients worldwide, helping women thrive regardless of their location.
“[My app] allows me to reach more people because I can offer something for everyone. Before, if you wanted to work with me, you had to live in L.A., or you had to be available via Zoom… Playbook has really allowed me to focus on other aspects of my business and grow that, and it’s been incredible,” Saltos says.
When it came to his content strategy plan, Saltos determined that a program was the best way to hook his target audience, so he created a program — TWD 6-Week Beach Ready — to launch his app. He also followed Playbook’s marketing best practices to promote his app pre-launch and on launch day. Here’s what that looked like:
In these pre-launch promos, Saltos did an incredible job of promoting the app as a whole and sellings its value. He also positioned himself for success by highlighting a specific program he was launching his app with — TWD 6-Week Beach Ready — and telling his followers exactly what they’d get with the program by subscribing to his app for $1, including 30 workouts, nutritional guidance, and more.
By launch day, Saltos had already built up plenty of hype with his followers — but he created even more excitement by continuing to push app signups. Saltos took a creative approach with his launch day content and partnered with a brand, Hyperice, to create a giveaway to encourage app subscriptions.
Due to the hard work he put in up front to create excitement with his followers before his app was live, Saltos launched his app on June 14, 2021 with 875 subscribers.
Today, Saltos continues market his app regularly on Instagram by:
Sharing the value subscribers get by subscribing to his app
Providing answers to app-related questions
Promoting new app-exclusive programs and challenges
Creating and promoting lifestyle content in his app outside of just workouts, like his TWD In the Kitchen recipes
Promoting experiential events like app-exclusive livestreams
Sharing customer reviews and testimonials as social proof on a regular basis
Collecting all app-related content in an Instagram Story highlight called “TWD App,” as well as a challenge-specific highlight
“[My app is] an actual part of my business now that I can grow without having to dedicate more hours to the day. It’s amazing because it’s allowed me to pull back on my one-on-one [in person] training, which has been my bread and butter for so long, to actually focus on working on this app and growing that,” Saltos says. “I see now the lifetime value of someone who signs up and how long they stay on the app and [I’m] learning so much more about that side of my business. I think it’s really important for me as a personal trainer [to] develop multiple revenue streams and really just capitalize on the audience that I have and also adding value.”