Fitness Business School – 4 Lead Generation Buckets

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about the four lead generation buckets that you need to have in place to grow your business. Let’s get started.

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 to the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

Most of the time when somebody talks about lead generation, they they kind of default to running Facebook ads or something like that, right? They think
about one channel and really kind of lose track of the other opportunities that that, that are in basically, potentially in place to grow their business. And it’s a missed opportunity and then some, but I think for as long as I can remember, I’ve thought about lead generation a little bit.

Like I would running for office. You wouldn’t just say, Hey, I’m gonna run a postcard campaign if I was running for office, or I’m just gonna have yard signs. You would pick a, a host of different things and work them simultaneously. And by doing that, you would have the best possible chance of reaching and
potentially influencing the person that, that you want to connect with so that they not only know your business exists, but they’re aware of how your business can help and why it might be the best option for them. So the first one is pretty straightforward and obvious, and it’s paid marketing, right? It’s this paid
traffic approach. The, I think most successful businesses not only understand, but they embrace, I mean, I’ve run Facebook ads for pretty much every day that my current business has existed for over eight years. Prior to that, ran plenty of ads on Facebook and a few other channels for other businesses that I’ve owned.

And that’s just online paid traffic. That’s not to mention like paid postcard campaigns or paid radio spots or paid TV spots or paid billboard advertisements. But paying to reach a a target market is something that I think all of us have to do. It is very simple, it’s just there’s a financial cost associated with it. So, so I
think that if beyond kind of the beginner stage in business for a bootstrap, now if you are a beginner business that isn’t bootstrapping you, you’ve got some money to invest in this and you want to get off on the right foot and start as quickly as you can. Paid traffic should be part of your plan. I mean, if you think
about the businesses that have the strongest grand opening and get to profitability the fastest, they usually are integrating paid traffic in their marketing strategy. So that’s the first bucket.

The second bucket would be organic. Now organic for the purposes of what we’re talking about here can happen online or offline, but it’s basically kind of grassroots marketing where you’re not investing money, you’re investing time instead. So I think most of us understand social posting is an organic mechanism,
but in my mind we can do organic through having a great Google business listing or using other kind of local channels, whether it’s having business listings and other local directories or doing posts in on the platforms or in the communities that your people may find you a lot of times just doing posts in that show
up in a normal Facebook feed or one thing. But plenty of communities, whether it be HOAs or small towns or whatever else, have their own Facebook groups or their own neighborhood groups. And being able to be seen with some consistency organically that way.

Being able to have YouTube videos where you are answering the questions that your prospects are asking another channel that we need to have in place so we are regularly seen so people get comfortable understanding of who we are, how we can help. And then beyond that, it’s a great reinforcement tactic
because once somebody’s aware of you, I think all of us need to understand that people don’t typically make decisions immediately upon gaining awareness, right? They need to gain confidence, they need to see some sort of demonstration. They need to like that potential solution and and be comfortable with it.
So by having organic, now that somebody is seeing the stuff you’re putting out there, maybe they’re doing a little bit of research, I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely not somebody who sees a Facebook ad and instantly makes an impulse purchase. I see a Facebook ad and if it’s something that I’m curious about,
I’m gonna start doing a search, I’m gonna do a Google search, I’m gonna look around, I’m gonna find out, hey, does this person have a track record?

Has this person been in business longer than a week? Because so many of these really kind of over the top promises that we see in social media ads are from people who have zero track record, they’ve never really done anything and they’ve gone through a course, they’ve got a program and they just followed the
blueprint that they’re the person they’re studying put out there and they have this wonderful kind of front facing thing, but there’s no substance or track record behind it. Well, a lot of consumers are gonna approach this and they’re gonna do their due diligence. It’s no different than you looking at reviews if
you’re gonna choose a restaurant or if you’re gonna buy something on Amazon. People want to do some homework. So you having an organic presence allows somebody to do some homework and understand more about you. So we’ve got paid, we’ve got organic now we’ve got referral or partner stuff.

So if you’ve got existing clients, so if you’re not a brand new startup, if you’ve got existing clients, they should be a conduit to help you multiply your business. You should be able to go to an existing client and get introductions to other people. You should be able to generate referrals through, bring a friend stuff
through charity stuff. You should be able to get them to spread the word about you and distribute gift cards or lead magnets on social media. You should be able to get them to hand out golden tickets, guest passes, gift cards, you name it. And even potentially open the door for you with things like our business
of the month program or public speaking opportunities or networking groups or affinity groups or just their social circle. Like for example, I’ve talked to a few times about coaching Alex’s 12 U baseball team now, 13 U baseball team.

And my social circle would include those other parents. So introducing somebody to that crowd, introducing somebody to the PTA group at a school, that sort of thing. So partnering through referrals I think is another big channel that we have to have in place and we have to have a consistent
approach. Finally. The other one that I think that we probably need to do more of, and this is the one that I think is always available to us and it never dries up, but it’s also the one that’s probably out of a lot of people’s comfort zone, and that is outbound marketing and outbound marketing. I think that I’m not a big,
a big advocate of cold calling. I am a big fan of kind of warm, if you wanna call it warm calling, right? Like it is the this opportunity to do some outbound stuff.

But so we’ve created some simple outbound systems. I would tell you the most popular one, the most effective one we’ve had to date is what I just alluded to a few minutes ago. This business of the month program where really we find businesses or organizations or groups that we have some connection with,
and it may be somebody that we are a fellow member of Chamber of Commerce with, or it may be somewhere that our clients work or somewhere our somebody in our network works or owns or something like that. And we use that as a distribution outlet, and I’ll talk about that in a separate podcast.
But having a systematic way to reach out and expand your network in a, what I consider an accelerated fashion. One of the things about running ads is the most effective ads. Now, other people may tell you, tell you differently on this, but I would say the most effective ads are ones that build an audience and
have a long sales cycle, and they’re going to be the most stable, they’re gonna be very durable, they’re gonna have a lower cost per lead.

And so we tend to focus our ad budget on that type of ad instead of the, Hey, I’m just gonna go out here and try to catch somebody in a moment of desperation to join, which is a way a lot of people approach ads. Well, that’s a longer sales cycle. So if you’re building this audience that way, the outbound approach
is usually a shorter sales cycle for a B to C business. And having that in place is a great compliment and it allows you to grow your business quickly. The outbound and that referral partner approach, those are typically those quicker sales cycles. And so they’re going to give you more immediate gratification while
you’re building up awareness in the community through the paid and through the organic. And now you’re going to have a really strong, like I said, durable business that not only is healthy now, but every passing day gets healthier as you go because you’ve got a bigger footprint in the market.

You’ve got more depth people understand who you are, how you can help. So if you’re not taking this approach with all four of those things in place, I would encourage you to start, and obviously if you need any help with that, that is 100% congruent with what we teach and how we help people install their
marketing systems. Just shoot me an email and I am more than happy to help kinda sketch it out and work with you to put that in place for your business. So have those four buckets in place. Make sure they’re functioning, all of them functioning at least at some level. Optimize them over time. And you’re going to
see your business not only grow, but it’s going to be something where the pipeline is constantly full and you’re gonna have new business, almost like this weekly client machine.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School.

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

One of of the things that we’ve been doing with our current clients is taking them through this Ideal Business diagnostic and really what it is, this checklist that allows you to pinpoint exactly what your business needs next so you can keep improving, keep growing, and build a business that you love to own, one that pays you well, one that allows you to have the impact you wanna have and one that allows you to have a lifestyle that you truly enjoy.

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Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.