The Fitness Business School – How Fitness Marketing Has Changed For The Better

Full Transcript

Welcome to the podcast and then today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how fitness marketing has changed for the better over the years and how that still creates some very big opportunities for you today.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and I want to talk with you about how fitness marketing has changed for the better. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that if I were to go into a conference or a seminar or workshop and make that statement, the vast majority of the people in the audience probably wouldn’t agree with me. But I think there’s some real substance behind that statement and I want to tell you how it’s changed for the better and how you can use it to your advantage. So really it comes down to three things, and I may have to give you a little bit of context for each, but I think you’ll understand and I think it’ll work out well.

Number one – the stuff that’s easy is really starting to dry up in our industry, right? The easy button has for the most part gone away. And most recently it’s been, Hey, I’m going to run a Facebook ad to a six week challenge and people are just going to flood in my door. I can turn this Facebook ad on for 72 hours for, for a week, something like that. And I’m going to fill up my challenge. And this isn’t new. I mean, prior to that it was a Facebook ad to a wufoo form and that was an effective way to fill up programs. And then even before that Groupon offers were tremendously effective. I had clients doing 800, a thousand, even 1200 sales and that’d be running a group fond for three days. Right? So things work for a little while. But the reality is, as we’ve seen, if the competition can just look at your Facebook ad or if Groupon says, Hey, this is the offer that’s working, so do the same thing, even use the same stock photos, we’ll just change the name and the address and we’ll just run this again because it’s converting well.

If somebody can copy you or knock off what you’re doing without really much of any effort, then we have to understand that it’s going to be short lived, right? It’s not going to have any sort of longevity. And that’s good. Frankly, that’s part of where the market has become pretty competitive, pretty saturated with a lot of people who may not necessarily deserve to be a successful business owner. And yeah, some people are gonna watch this and hear that statement and be offended by it. But you know, I believe that running a successful business should have a barrier to entry. I can remember back in that 2006-2007 range when outdoor bootcamps became all the rage, or even when people would move inside, they’d be subleasing from gymnastics facilities, churches, things like that. And the barrier to entry to open a gym or to open a training business went from, Hey, I’m going to spend an excess of $100,000 to outfit a small gym or a small studio in a retail space to, Man, I’m just going to go post up in a park and poof, I’ve got a business, right?

And that creates a bunch of competition in the market and you see everybody’s affected by it. Yeah, they may not be a strong business that’s going to survive over the long haul, but they’re going to siphon off one, two, five, 10 people that are going to go test drive things and experience something new. And so we’ve seen this really as long as I’ve been doing this in the industry, and every time it drives up, that opportunity kind of moves on and the cream rises to the top right.

It’s a bit of Darwinism if you will. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it moves us to our second point – being better is being rewarded. The people who are doing more work consistently, they’re running ads 12 months a year. They’re running ads 52 weeks a year instead of just when they’re running a transformation challenge to build an email list. The people who are posting great content on social media, answering the questions that the prospects have, the people who are getting out in the community and networking week after week, the people who are differentiating themselves by doing something great and making sure the public knows about it, they’re the ones who are being rewarded. The people who were just kind of knocking off what somebody else was doing, it was easy, Hey, I’m just going to copy this person’s ad to run this promo to a challenge, it’s not working anymore. So those people who aren’t willing to be better, to be different, to be consistent, they’re struggling, their businesses are sinking and even closing in many cases. And frankly, I don’t feel bad about that. I feel like success is earned. And so if you’re willing to do some work, if you’re willing to do things, it’s not complicated, right? The easy button may be gone, but the simple button is here to stay. It’s not complicated at all. You just have to be consistent and say, okay, how can I go out and make the public aware that I can help them? How can I show them how we’re different, how we’re better, and how we’re the right solution to help them get from where they are to where they want to be? So better is being rewarded finally.

And people aren’t settling for looking the same in the market, which doesn’t do anybody a favor. Even the people who are getting a ton of leads because they copied the Groupon or the Facebook ad that flooded people in their gym that complain about, well, Hey, these aren’t good leads. These aren’t people who stay around there. They’re kind of watering down my client base. Well, yeah, because you’ve not told them how you’re different or better. You’ve not set yourself apart. So how, if they’re only choosing you because it’s the shiny object or because it’s inexpensive, then they’re not necessarily your ideal client. But if you’re better at how you approach marketing and you’re getting your message out there in a stronger, more consistent way, now people can make a more informed decision, which favors the people whose should succeed.

And then third, competition forces people to improve. I don’t care if we’re talking about sports or business, but competition forces people to change, to evolve. And if you don’t, if you’re not willing to get out of your comfort zone and get better into evolve and improve as a business owner, you become irrelevant. And competition is stronger than it’s ever been. I mean, we’ve had some people in our industry saying, well, Hey, group training’s dying or whatever else, there couldn’t be a bigger lie. This is the most popular period for fitness and group training that there’s ever been in our society. And yes, that means the people who are lazy and complacent and aren’t willing to get out of their comfort zone and improve, they’re going to struggle. But the people who accept that challenge and use it as motivation to go out and get better, to evolve, to make their message more clear, to get their marketing out in a more consistent way, they’re being rewarded.

And sometimes our hand is forced to get out of that comfort zone. And that’s not a bad thing. And competition has done that. So if you’re one of the people who sat back and said, you know, things are getting tougher, that’s not a bad thing. Right? In a lot of fields, the barrier to entry to the field is, is a lot steeper than it is in our industry. Our industry is kind of like the Wild West. It’s a little more unregulated. So when something comes along with it, when a period comes along where there’s a weeding out process, don’t see that as a bad thing. See it as an opportunity to rise above and to let those people who aren’t willing to pay the price and aren’t willing to do the things that you’re willing to do fall by the wayside. Who knows? You may be able to pick up some of their clients that they have to

find somewhere new when they aren’t sticking around. And frankly, it’s going to force you to be the best version of you and your business to be the best version of itself. So again, fitness marketing is changing for the better. You have to embrace it. If you don’t, you’re going to get left behind.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.