The Fitness Business School – My 5 Favorite Local Marketing Tactics

Full Transcript

Hey Pat here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about my five favorite local marketing tactics. So let’s get to it.

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All right, in this episode we’re going to talk about local marketing tactics. You know, over the past, I guess 15 years I’ve used probably just a little bit more than 140 different tactics or variations of tactics when it comes to just marketing to grow local businesses or my online businesses. I’ve tried everything from billboards and radio spots and TV, TV spots to actually doing radio shows, car wraps, you name it, done all sorts of things. But if I were going to market a local business right now, there are five that I would start with, or I would focus on that would kind of take, take precedence over everything else. Now I’m going to go ahead and count these down from the one that I would choose is number five down to my favorite and give you a little bit of the rationale behind why, but before I do, I want to basically kind of talk with you about a couple that I’m not going to have in the top five and why.

So one that I really liked that I’m not including in the top five is direct mail. I love direct mail and frankly, with an established business with, with stable revenue, with a little bit of cashflow that I can reinvest in the marketing direct mail would definitely be a part of what I do, but it is, it is something you have to invest money in and you need to have enough cashflow. You’re not always going to get an immediate return from it. So, you know, I would probably push that back and not do that to my business was a little bit stronger, a little bit more stable. The next one would be strategic alliances. I’m a huge advocate of strategic alliances and use them in my business now, but it is reliant on somebody else working with you. It’s relying on somebody else being cooperative that usually you don’t have a preexisting relationship with.

So with that being said, the five that I would focus on, number five, it would be networking, whether that be organic networking or structured networking, it’s going to be something that I have control over. I don’t really need any gatekeeper to let me in to do public speaking. I don’t need a business to be willing, to dedicate a lot of time and energy to me really. It’s just me going out, having conversations. And then for the people who are interested in what I might be able to do or help them with problems that I can help them solve, we’re going to follow up. I’m going to continue that conversation and invite them to experience what I do now. Sure, we can accelerate the effectiveness of organic networking by attending structured networking events. And sometimes there’s a small cost associated with those like going to chamber of commerce or BNI or any other affinity group, but it’s not a prerequisite. I mean, if you want to go out and network right now, you can, there are people that you can go out and have conversations with. And conversions always begin with conversation.

So networking would be the first of my five, the second of my five would be organic online marketing. Now I think of this as kind of networking online because really all we’re trying to do is go out and connect with people on, on online and add value to their life. So really it’s probably going to be just doing videos, picking a specific platform, whether it be doing Facebook videos or YouTube videos, but I’m going to answer the questions that my clients are asking, because I know that if I want to attract more people like my clients, they probably have similar questions. So I’m going to treat the audience that is viewing these videos is clients that I’m going to coach for free until they’re willing to pay me to coach them. Now, the key to this, because it is free, is being consistent, being willing to show up day after day. So if I’m going to employ organic online marketing, I’m going to commit to saying, Hey, I’m going to do this for six months, day after day. So I can earn the right to be good at this so I can develop proficiency at it and really start to reap the rewards because if you’re willing to do something for six months consecutively and really dive in and get to be proficient at it, it’s not too hard to jump to that top five, three, maybe even 2% of the people who use that medium, just because of the work that you’ve put in.

So that would be number, number two on my list. Number three would be what I call introduction based referral marketing. Now there are two different types of referral marketing. The, the latter I’ll talk to talk to you about in a couple minutes, but introduction based referral marketing, I think is the one that we overlooked the most introduction based referral marketing is pretty simple. I mean, really what we’re asking somebody to do is just introduce us to the other people in their lives. Now, simple ways that we could employ this, we can give clients a gift card to share with other people. We could make a post on social media that, that video that I just talked about when it comes to online organic marketing, we can simply say, Hey, would you be willing to share this? I mean, how, how simple is that asking a client to share something. If you have a book or a special report or a checklist that would be valuable to people asking your clients to share that, see the key here is basically saying, okay, here’s something that you can give to other people to add value to their life. Now, if we want to take this to the next level, we can ask for specific introductions. If we want to do something along the lines of a strategic Alliance, but we want to make this more comfortable, get our foot in the dorm or easily. We can ask our clients to basically be strategic Alliance partners and introduce us to their customer base client base patient base employees. We could ask them to make introductions to other people who could do those things, but we’re never cold calling. So it’s going to be more efficient. And with this approach as with the organic online approach, you don’t have to leave your facility to do it. So this is stuff that you can do in between training sessions. It’s stuff that you can do throughout the day, and just kind of fit in instead of having to block off dedicated amounts of time to be somewhere, instead of having to maybe rearrange your schedule to attend specific things, it’s definitely a lot more convenient. And it’s something that you probably can be more consistent with because of that.

All right, so that’s number three, number four, it would be paid advertising to lead magnets, paid advertising, to get somebody to opt in so you can follow up with them. Now, the beauty of paid advertising is if you can crack the code and do this profitably where you know that you can pay to get somebody to opt in and your followup mechanism converts them into clients in a profitable fashion. This is something that literally can set you apart from everybody else. This is this kind of lever that you always have where you’re not dependent on an algorithm on social media. You’re not dependent on a gatekeeper to let you do public speaking or something else. Being able to profitably use paid advertising is something that very few do, but the people who, who do it essentially become recession resistant. So if you can do this understand I’m not talking about driving a lead directly to an offer, I’m asking them to opt in. So I have the ability to follow up with them without additional expense.

And then the last of the five would be traditional invitation based referral marketing. And this is the stuff that most of us do invite people to bring a friend day, ask our clients to invite people, to be parts of programs, whether it be short term things like charity events, bring a friend events, you know, seven day challenges, 14 day challenges, even up to six week challenges getting people to come in because it really kind of accelerates the relationship. This person coming in already is kind of pre-sold they’re coming in the door instead of be meeting outside the facility. They’re, they’re past this kind of anxiety and stress that comes with joining somewhere new and not knowing people because they’re coming with a friend who’s already going to be able to make them comfortable and confident in this environment. So that’s great. The drawback to it is you can only do it so often before you’ve, you know, before it kind of becomes a burden on the clients, they can only go and ask so many people. So often before, you know, they’re, they’re starting to feel like a, a sales rep on behalf of your business instead of just a loyal advocate for what you do. So it’s the most powerful one, but we have to blend in at least a couple of the other four, if we’re going to get the best possible results.

So there are the five local marketing tactics I would employ for a local business, no matter what the marketing landscape is, no matter what the economy is, all five of those, or go to strategies or tactics that you can use now.

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.