Fitness Business School – Market. Every. Day.

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about why marketing your business needs to be an everyday thing, not just a sometimes thing. So let’s get to it.

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.

When I talk to a struggling business owner, more often than not, their approach to marketing’s really erratic. In fact, they’re not marketing unless they have a flood of cancellations, or sales are down, or maybe people are out on vacation, and things get desperate. Money gets tight, and so that motivates them to market. Well, odds are, you’ve heard the phrase dig your well before you’re thirsty, right? This Chinese proverb is something that holds true in our business as well. You want to be filling your pipeline with leads very regularly because if you don’t, that time’s gonna come that you need new business, and you don’t have the lead flow, you haven’t set the stage to get the clients in to replace the clients you lost, or to elevate or escalate your business to hit these new growth goals. So another thing that most business owners don’t really recognize is that the journey of a lead or kind of the way this pipeline works is not maybe as linear as we want.

See, consumers do not act the exact way that we want them to act. In fact, there’s some research that I was introduced to by a mentor, Dean Jackson, a while back that suggests that consumers don’t behave at all like you want to. So he learned through some research done by an organization that really tracks all sorts of industries that when somebody indicates an interest in making a purchase. So basically somebody raises their hand, and they say okay, I’m interested in buying this car, or joining this gymn, or purchasing a house. Over time, 50% of those people are going to make that purchase. Now, 50% of them were just looking but they never really moved forward in a reasonable timeframe. But of the 50% that do buy, only 15% of these people buy within the first 90 days. Now, I know I’m throwing some stats out here at you but think about this in a practical sense. So let’s say that you get 100 leads this month. 100 people say you know what? I’m interested. I wanna learn more, I’m starting to think about joining a gym or hiring a trainer or starting a fitness program. Well, that means of those 100, 50 of them are going to do something in the next two years. 50 of them are going to move forward, not necessarily with your business or whatever business they indicated that initial interest in but with somebody. They’re going to take an action. Now, of those 50, just seven or eight, seven and a half statistically, just seven or eight are going to join in the next 90 days. And that means over 40 of them, 42, 43 of them, they’re gonna be waiting. They’re gonna be doing some research. They’re gonna do their homework and they’re gonna put things off. They’re gonna say you know what? The timing isn’t right just yet. The kids are gonna start back to school soon or maybe summer vacation’s in full swing, and we’ve got some things happening or maybe hey, it’s the holiday season and I’m gonna wait ’til January. So they’ll start to investigate, they’ll do some research, they’ll look at Google Reviews, they’ll check out people’s websites, they’ll ask their friends. They might even go in and take a tour of a health club or go in and do a free session at a training facility. But they’re not ready right now. And that’s the thing. If you’re not continually filling this pipeline, you start marketing today, you start generating those leads today, it’s gonna be a while before a lot of them really come to fruition. This is very much kind of a farming mindset where you’re gonna have to plant these seeds and give it some time for them to really grow before you can harvest. But most business owners don’t think of it this way.

Most business owners think of this as like I’m a hunter. I’m just gonna go out there, and I had three people cancel this week, so I have to go out and find some new clients. But that’s not how it works. I mean, you can’t just turn on a Facebook ad and get new clients because let’s face it, you know how most people are when they get on Facebook. They’re not going there to shop. They’re going there to check out what’s happening with their friends, to kill time, to just basically do mindless things. They’re not saying hey, I’m gonna log on to Facebook so I can find a training facility to join. So when you’re marketing, when you’re thinking about growing your business, you have to embrace the fact that really marketing is a 12-month, 365-day-a-year thing. You’re continually filling that pipeline and then moving people through the pipeline over time. You’re gonna have to nurture that relationship. In fact, with our clients, we basically have them take new leads through this choreographed onboarding sequence that’s gonna last 10 to 14 days, that kinda lets people get to know who they are, what they’re about and how they can solve this prospective client’s problems.

So it’s gonna address all the things that their ideal prospect is really concerned with. What we call hot buttons. And then it’s gonna make a few offers. That onboarding sequence, everybody goes through. Then after that, we coach and provide them with three-time-a-week emails to stay in front of people. Really in perpetuity, right? They’re going to stay in front of people until that person basically joins or takes an off-ramp and says, “You know what? I’m not really interested in this anymore. But that’s how you maximize lead generation. And in fact, all those people who are basically writing people off as tire kickers and saying, “Well, hey, I’m not gonna follow up with this person after 72 hours or after a week or maybe even two weeks, they’re missing out on what amounts to really 85% or more of the potential value in every lead that they get. I mean, think about that. That is potentially doubling, tripling, quadrupling somebody’s business by just improving the way that they follow up with leads, and being more consistent with their lead generation. I know, that’s a lot that I’ve thrown at you in this.

But if you haven’t embraced this approach to continuous marketing, year-round marketing where you’re continually adding new leads into this pipeline, hopefully this is a trigger for you to do that. Hopefully this is motivating for you to say, “You know what? If I just keep in front of people, if I’m doing a little bit every month, I’m never gonna hit this point of desperation. And in fact, I’m gonna watch my business consistently grow over time without ever having the stress of hey, I’ve gotta go out and find three new clients today. Or thinking hey, what am I gonna do to generate leads now?” Because you’ve been generating leads, day after day, week after week. So if you’re not marketing continually, start now.

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