Fitness Business School – The Ignored Part of Marketing

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about a part of marketing that most
people ignore. 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 end 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.

Whenever I get the opportunity to sit down with a business owner for likely the
first time, or at least the first time with any sort of depth, we start to talk about like who their ideal
client is. And literally at least half the time, the, the response goes something along the lines of,
well, I can help about anybody or, I help a lot of different types of people and,
the, the, the kind of smile creeps across my face because I, I didn’t ask who all can you help?
Or how many types of different people can you help? I said, who is your ideal client, right? Because
broad, like a broad approach to, to marketing and to market selection, maybe like more convenient for
us psychologically in the beginning, because it, it, it kind of appease that fear of missing out, which is
really where a lot of this starts, right? Like people think, Hey, what, if I don’t take this type of
client, I’m gonna be missing out. And, because of that, it gives us that temporary
piece of mind, but that broad approach, it, it’s just not valuable for the person that we aspire to serve.
And it ultimately, isn’t very valuable for us because we don’t get to narrow our focusing and create
clarity by learning a lot about who we serve. And so, if I think back to my own professional
journey here, right?
Like I’ve like my second training business or second fitness business that I owned was a health club. And, it was a nice kind of small mid-size health club, about 7,000 square feet and a brand new
shopping Plaza in a kind of busy part of a town of like 55,000 people. And, the, the logical
part of me was like, okay, well, we are going to just dominate this three mile radius. We are going to, go to these neighborhoods and we’re gonna form strategic alliances with these
complimentary businesses. And we are going to do a variety of things, from a corporate standpoint,
because there’s a lot of commerce here. And the emotional side of me would think, well, wait a minute,
you know what? We’ve got two clients who live like in this small little town of 1500 people, that’s, you
know, 18 minutes down the road, we should be marketing there because obviously we’ve already got
two clients from there and we don’t wanna miss out on those other people.
And, fortunately the logical side of me, one out, which I don’t know, I, if that’s normal in
marketing, a lot of times emotion wins out. Right. But, but that was the internal tug of war I was having.

I was looking at the exceptions rather than the rule. I was looking at this, these outliers
and saying, well, if we can get these people, I don’t wanna miss out on this opportunity instead of
saying, Hey, you know what, we, we only have so much when it, when it comes to resources, we only
have so much, marketing budget. We only have so much available time. We only have so much
manpower. Are we going to be better off spending five hours and $500 in this area? That’s,
within a mile of our gym or are we better off spending maybe two of those hours and 200 of those
dollars over, in this little kind of, community, that’s probably not gonna
produce maybe more than a couple more clients if we do everything right.
And, and I see that a lot. I see people that say, I don’t wanna market to just the people in
my kind of three mile radius, because we’ve got a couple members who come a long way and we lose
sight of the fact that maybe they come a long way because they work in that three mile radius, or maybe
they come a long way because they train with a friend who happens to live in that three mile radius. And
so they’re willing to get outside of that kind of convenience factor. And they’re, they’re not our norm,
but, we have to focus on the people that we really wanna serve. And that doesn’t mean we
can’t help more people, kind of an interesting side note, or maybe not interesting to you,
but kind of a factual side note is I’ve done business coaching for attorneys and accountants
and auto repair businesses and any number of other small service based businesses.
And frankly, the methodology that I teach applies to virtually any small service based business. And, you
know, and because I can quote unquote help a lot of different types of people, it doesn’t mean that I
should market to all of them and water down my message and become really broad because if I do, then
you’re probably not listening to this podcast because it’s not specific to you and your business anymore.
Like, and I, and I wanna say this in like the most, non-judgmental way people are self-absorbed right? Like people are focused on their own self-interest people don’t open up the paper or go
online or whatever they do. I don’t really read a horoscope, but like people aren’t there reading
everybody else’s horoscope, they open up to read their own. And, we have to understand
that we’ve gotta speak to a narrower audience and connect with them in a deeper level.
They need to know that we can really help them a lot. They need to know that we understand the
challenges they’re experiencing the problems they’re trying to solve the goals they want to achieve the
things that they’ve experienced before, why they believe things don’t work, how they’re gonna have to
juggle things, all these variables that if we, go broad, we don’t understand with any real depth,
right? So if I look back, I mean, that was how my wife Holly got off the ground so quickly with a, you
know, an initial ebook and over time, a collection of products and programs, because she spoke very
directly to busy moms who had full plates, getting kids off to school and making sure homework was
done and lunches were packed and breakfast was ready and people were carted off to soccer practice
and all that other stuff.
So when you are trying to narrow things down, you’ve gotta know your person. And so here’s, here’s the
way that, that that I think about this is, if you could only get paid for delivering a result, if
you could only help one of those many kind of categories of people that you help, who do you know that
you would be able to win with most often be able to succeed with most often, who do you enjoy
actually working with? And maybe you enjoy the variety. Maybe you enjoy all that other stuff. But I
mean, at some point business owners have to be decisive. So who do you think you could help the
most? And then if that person can conveniently work with you, because that’s a big factor when it
comes to, to our industry, right? Even if you were the right person, if they’re driving past 15 other gyms
to get to you, odds are, you’re probably not keeping people very long.
So, if can identify that person and then dig deep and understand as much as you can about
them, you’re going to appeal to their self-interest because they’re, they’re gonna stop scrolling. When
they hear a video that is about them, they’re going to read an email and say, Hey, is he or she talking
directly to me, was that written for me? Ads should feel that way. Podcasts should feel like,
okay, Hey, you know what? Pat hit the nail on the head. This is something I needed to dial in. This should
feel more like a coaching session than just this broad radio show. And if you figure that out, and if you
understand that our goal here is to appeal to people’s self-interest, you may not collect a bigger number
of names on your email list, but what you will get is a higher percentage of conversions.
You’ll get people who stay longer because they’re in the right place, not just the place that was running
a sale or holding a challenge or offering a discount, but this is the right place for them. You’ll get people
to open emails at a higher rate, connect with you on social media, at a higher rate, be willing to come in
and then refer to you at a more regular rate. So if you wanna build a better business, don’t overlook the
fact that it’s most easily done. If you’re creating true fans.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Fitness Business School. Before you go, I have a quick announcement. When I first connect with a fitness business owner they almost always ask me, “How can I get more leads or how can I get more leads and client?”

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