Fitness Business School – 3 Common Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here today. And in this episode, I’ve got three marketing mistakes that I see commonly plague fitness business owners. We’ll get into them right now.

Welcome to The Fitness Business School podcast – the show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen til the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

One of the coolest things about the business that I own is I get to interact with so many different fitness business owners in all corners of the globe in, you know, serving every different type of target market operating every different type of fitness business, you name it. And we’ve probably got something close to it in one of our coaching programs. I mean, we, we interact with lots and lots and lots of business owners on a very regular basis. And, you know, as opposed to a lot of businesses out there, we actually interact with our clients in the coaching program. Like it’s a very interactive kind of either one-on-one or group environment. So I get to know a lot of the people that, that we work with pretty well. And I get to understand what they’re trying to accomplish and who they want to serve. And it becomes pretty obvious as to why there’s so much struggle when it comes to marketing.

And so, you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about the three most common mistakes I see business owners make when it comes to marketing. Now make no mistake. There’s there are plenty of other things that pull people off track or whatever else, but there are three things that I think pop their head up time and time again, that if you get these fixed at worst, you’re going to be in pretty good shape. Now, does this assure you of having an optimal marketing system in place? No, but it, it probably puts you ahead of 80 to maybe even 90% of the businesses out there. The first one, the first big mistake that I see is just not putting anything valuable out to the world, right? Not making yourself valuable to the, the target market that you want to serve. Right? So the stuff that goes out there is usually very bland, very general, very basic. It doesn’t really tell the person you’re trying to reach anything important. It doesn’t help them understand how you’re going to solve their problems, how you’re going to help them achieve their goals, how you’re different than the competition.

You know, a lot of times the marketing can be very business focused in that, you know, the, the, the person creating it, the owner will talk about their certifications. They’ll talk about their credentials as if the, the, the consumer really understands anything about that. Or, you know, or as if the consumer is going to connect the dots as to how that’s valuable for them, because let’s face it. You can list out every acronym that you want. But if the prospect doesn’t have any context, they don’t know what other acronyms are behind your competition’s name. They don’t know how that’s going to make, make you better equipped to be able to help them. None of that really matters to them.

So, you know, so much of what people put out there just doesn’t move the needle. It, even if you’re putting out videos with regularity, even if you’re putting out advertisements with some regularity, if you’re not doing anything that, that gets somebody to take notice and get somebody to, to, to really engage with you and say, you know what? This person may be able to help me. This person may be what I’ve been looking for to move from where I am, to where I want to be. If you’re not putting any, anything at all out there like that, then it’s just noise because let’s face it. There is no shortage of information available to people. There’s no shortage of stuff in their social media feeds. There are no shortage of videos on YouTube. There is more information essentially bombarding people than ever before. So you need to be able to do something that stands out to get the attention of the person that you want to serve. So not being valuable, not being attention worthy is number one.

Number two is not being consistent. Now, one of the interesting things, if you look at the franchises that have grown so much in our industry over the past handful of years most of them are in class, a real estate. Most of them are in highly visible locations. So they get what we call intrusive visibility. Basically, you see them when you’re not looking for them. And so that’s marketing, right? That’s awareness. That’s staying in front of a prospect to the, when that prospect is ready, they become an obvious kind of default choice, right? They, they understand where it is. And convenience is obviously a big factor with a lot of people’s decisions when it comes to fitness. They they’ve had that same kind of repetition in place where they’ve seen it so many times, they’re aware. They’ve able to think about it. They, they, they may have even started to investigate it because of that awareness. Well, if you’re like a lot of the people that I work with, in fact, most of the people that I work with you, you are an independent business owner. You don’t belong to a franchise and make no mistake. I’m not completely anti franchise. I founded two franchises. I’ve consulted with a number of franchises, but I know that the market that I’m most excited about serving are these independent business owners who have their own vision, their own dream, and are kind of building their own path to success.

Well, if you want to compete with these people that are paying for consistent visibility, you have to be consistent, too. You have to be seen with regularity. And most people aren’t. Most people do not show up every day, offline, online. They don’t get their message in front of their target market was enough consistency too, to make sure that they’re seen as a viable choice to make sure that they’re not overlooked or forgotten. I mean, I’ve talked about it in previous episodes. I mean, there are businesses that are literally in my neighborhood that I went a decade, not knowing they existed, and I probably fit into their target market pretty well, but they’ve never done anything to stay in front of me. They’ve never done a good job of what, in the real estate world, they would call target farming, right? Like they would, you know, you’ll see real estate agents really say, Hey, I’m going to own this neighborhood or this subdivision. I’m going to send direct mail postcards every month or two months or three months, I’m going to have signs up. I’m going to advertise in their newsletter. I’m going to do things at their clubhouse. I’m going to be as visible as I can be. We can do the same thing with our, with our business, whether we’re talking about online or offline, we can get that kind of consistent repetition in place so that our target market thinks of us first, whenever they’re ready to buy. And that leads me to mistake. Number three, mistake.

Number three is not following up. When you do get somebody’s contact information. When that person downloads a lead magnet or expresses an interest, somehow you come in contact with a person who has some general passing interest. Somebody that I would call lead, I think of a lead is somebody who’s said, Hey, I’m interested in fitness. I’m going to download your lead magnet. I’m going to do something like that, but they’re not at all ready versus a prospect. Somebody who is indicated like they’re kind of in decision-making mode, they’re expressing some level of readiness to make a decision. Well, we get leads all the time. When I talked to business owners, invariably got lists of leads. People who’ve called people. Who’ve shown an interest who didn’t join. People, who’ve opted in for something, people who they got from a health fair or anything like that. And they don’t follow up. They don’t follow up with any sort of regularity here. We already have permission to follow up with this person. We already have their contact information and they’ve qualified themselves to an extent to in saying that they are interested in fitness or weight loss or health or something that we might be able to help them move forward on and make progress towards. And if you’re not following up, you’re essentially walking away from a golden opportunity.

And you know, it, I mean, it’s baffling to me. I’ll talk to people and they’ll say, well, yeah, I’ve got an email list of 500 people, but I haven’t sent them a message in months and it’s just stepping. But that same person will say, well, how do I make an Instagram post? And it’s stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. You know what I mean? You’ve got somebody’s attention, their permission to follow up. You have to stay with them. You have to build value in that relationship. You have to help them know you like you trust you. All the things that we talk about when it comes to marketing. Well, you have a golden opportunity to, to take advantage of that. If you do have somebody as a lead and you choose to follow up with them. So not being valuable, not being consistent and not following up the three biggest mistakes that I see that if you fix them, it’s going to springboard you ahead that sure. There are other things that you can do. Other things that you can improve on, but start here, fix these what I would call like the big rocks, get that done. And you’re going to see progress. You’re going to see your business grow. You’re going to see a more consistent lead flow, which leads to a more consistent client flow and a better business.

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