It was a cold and snowy night but inside by the fire, our staff was snuggled up in our blankets, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows.
“Old Squats” was a personal trainer waaaay back in the early 2000s and he was sitting in his rocking chair slowly moving back and forth. He wasn’t part of our staff but he always hung around and regaled us with stories about the “good ole days”.
“I remember when all I had to do was put an ad on Craigslist…AND THE CLIENTS WOULD COME RUNNING!! I’d have to beat them off with a stick!”
“Old Squats” had a lot of stories like that.
He never realized he kept making one of the biggest mistakes any gym owner can make:
Following marketing gurus.
He kept buying into stuff that seemed great at the time, yet he always had trouble making ends meet.
In this post I’m going to tell you the two big problems with following marketing gurus.
1. Not understanding the difference between marketing and building a business.
It’s like someone losing a bunch of weight on the latest celebrity diet, and not understanding why the weight comes back on. They don’t understand the difference between a diet and proper, sustainable nutrition.
Marketing is certainly a crucial part of any business, but how you market depends on many factors.
Your:
- Ideal client
- Core offer
- Price point
- Location
- Market positioning
- Budget
- And a lot more
If you jump into marketing with no understanding of these things, you’re going to waste time, money, and opportunities…EVEN IF THE MARKETING STRATEGY BRINGS YOU CLIENTS!
As a business grows it becomes more and more important to attract the RIGHT clients, not just the MOST clients.
It’s also crucial to put systems in place to make sure what you’re doing is sustainable and profitable. Jumping from marketing scheme to marketing scheme doesn’t do that.
For example, let’s say you try something that gets you 150 leads over the next few weeks.
Sounds great, right?
Not so fast…
Do you have a follow up system in place? Each of those leads will need to be contacted an average of 5-7 times just to get them in your door for a consultation.
Do you have enough staff to do 150 sales consultations?
Are you confident your staff knows how to sell? Do you even have a sales process to train them in?
Do you have room in your facility for that many new clients?
Do you have a scheduling process to allow this many new clients to actually work out at your gym along with your current clients?
If these things aren’t in place, you’re going to have 150 problems running through your facility that are going to multiply, because you can bet word will get out to their friends and family that your gym, frankly, sucks.
What I’m trying to say is that there are things that need to be in place BEFORE you try some new marketing fad.
A real business coach understands this and will be able to set you up for success with your marketing and build it around YOUR business. Not some checklist someone else put together.
