Transcript

00:00

Okay, awesome. Hey, welcome everybody! This is going to be an exciting one. Today, we’re going to be talking about TikTok, the new kid on the Block. So, it’s funny because at first, I really didn’t know what to make of this platform. You know, I don’t know if you guys are on TikTok or not, but it’s it’s so different. It’s very, very addicting, but it’s very different than any other platform. We’re not going to be talking about TikTok from a social media standpoint.

00:30

Today, we’re going to be talking about actual lead generation and growing membership sales through seven TikTok ad strategies that boost membership sales. So, this is going to be a very powerful and tactical session. It won’t be long; we’ll probably be within 30 minute time frame, but I definitely want to make sure that everything that gets across, you can take and use right away in your business to help you grow your membership sales. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump in.

01:00

So, what are we going to learn today? We’re going to learn how to actually get membership sales leads from TikTok, so we’ll be tactical on how to get quality leads from TikTok. There is a difference between just getting leads and getting quality leads, and then how to get leads and joins from TikTok ads, believe it or not, for just three to five dollars per lead. Yes, it’s unbelievable how well TikTok is performing right now. So, we’re going to cover seven specific ad strategies that actually boost membership sales, but

01:35

here’s a couple of examples. So, you can see here, these are a couple of different health clubs that we have. Three dollars. What you’re looking at there, the CPA is three dollars and 45 cents per lead. The other one is $3.72 cents per lead. This is after running for just maybe a week or two, maybe a couple weeks you know. One got 47, one got 44.

01:56

Here’s another couple, 3.74 cents a lead or four dollars and seventy cents a lead. So, those are phenomenal and those are good quality leads turning into joins. Another thing that’s interesting too is we’re very proud that we just were featured in the most popular trending TikTok ads section of TikTok. Our ads were showing up, our clients ads. So, that was actually pretty cool.

02:17

If you don’t know who I am, quick 30 second introduction. I’ve been in the fitness industry myself for over 23 years. Was in sales training in the fitness space prior to owning a marketing agency. I owned, after that company got acquired by a big brand, LA Fitness, I actually opened up my own location and then ended up with a second location and sold after seven years. Had a successful exit there. We’ve been trusted by one of the sharks from Shark Tank, Kevin Harrington. Cut his acquisition cost by 73 percent, and I’m a fitness industry speaker and host and obviously the founder of LEADLION Marketing agency for the fitness industry. Great podcast if you have a chance to

02:57

listen with some amazing guests. It’s great because of the guests that are on it. If you get the chance, listen to the Fitness Industry Success Show. You can find it at leadlionmarketing.com on our website. So, just so you get an idea, we do serve the the fitness industry in several different capacities. We work with athletic clubs, we work with health clubs, you know what would be considered the larger gyms big box gyms. We also work with boutique gyms and we also work with studios. Here’s an example of somebody that is killing it with marketing. Top 10 Retro Fitness franchise. Sold lots of memberships first couple months with us and been with us for many many years and just given us some love there.

3:34

So, let’s talk about who this is for to make sure that you’re in the right place. So, fitness business owners and operators that want to be an influencer it’s not for you right. This is not to grow your TikTok following. This is not to build your personal brand. This is actual tactical strategies to get new members, not for growing your followers and also those looking for magic beans. It’s not going to fix all your problems. In fact, the opposite can happen. You start getting inundated with leads and you have other operational or sales problems. It’s only going to make those worse and then Fitness businesses that can’t handle lots of members. Who is this for? It’s for Fitness businesses such as gyms, health clubs, athletic clubs, studios that are looking for more members that sell monthly memberships.

4:17

We find that it works with our strategies with what we’re doing. You have to sell monthly memberships for it to work best. For fitness leaders that have a growth mindset, I will say this. There is, in any industry, you have early adopters then you have the Mass Middle Ground, which is every one that adopts it kind of in the middle. Then you have what is called late adopters. This is not for the late adopters, but we’ve always done it this way. Folks, this is for people who are looking for the next Cutting Edge way of member acquisition. You have to have room for at least 25 growth or more.

4:52

So, let’s talk a little bit about TikTok. I want to take some of the mystery out of it because when you hear the term and you think about it, you know there’s a lot of information out there as far as like what it used to be because TikTok used to be owned by musically. Or it was musically and then became TikTok, and so it was like this music dancing app and it was very entertainment driven for like a bunch of 14 to 15 year old kids, and that’s changed a lot. So, it’s the fastest-growing social platform in history. It does cost less from a reach standpoint than other platforms. There’s 1.2 billion users today. That’s a lot of users! 46 percent of them are between the age of 20 and 39 in the U.S, so that’s a really good audience that you want to be targeting and getting in front of. Very sticky; it’s the most sticky platform right now out of all of them. When you consider, especially the feed platforms

05:49

like Facebook or Instagram, TikTok people are spending between 33 to 95 minutes per day on the platform. That is a lot of time, so that’s a lot of attention. That’s like Prime Time television hours. It’s a whole entire episode of American Idol that people are on the platform just watching it. People are also buying memberships from TikTok. Couple more things — 14% of users are between 50 and 64.

06:19

So, everyone thinks nobody that’s in the older demographic is on TikTok. They actually are, and that demographic is actually growing. So, right now it’s about 14% in the US. There’s 136 million users and 23 million buyers. This is what’s important; on TikTok have bought something after watching something on TikTok and then consumer spending passed 2.5 billion dollars with 61 percent of TikTokers actually mentioning that they bought something from brands that they saw advertised on the platform. So, if the big dogs are doing it, we need to pay attention, right? So, Amazon and HBO spent the most money in the first two quarters of last year, 2022, on the platform. So Amazon and HBO are just flooding the platform because they know that’s where the attention is and it’s really important right now that if you are not on the platform, running advertising and getting

07:09

Attention, if you don’t know how to capture it through TikTok advertising, then you’re missing out on huge opportunities and costs. A Cantar survey found that 67 percent of respondents agreed that TikTok ads captured their attention, which is 10 percent higher than other social media platforms.

07:37

This is due to the platform’s nature, where the ads are different as they are videos and vertical. Let’s discuss what TikTok advertising is not. It’s not dancing, comedy, skits, or singing. As a fitness business owner, you might think that you need to incorporate these elements, but I will show you what should be in your ads. Let’s explore seven TikTok ad strategies that can help boost your membership sales.

08:09

Firstly, you should not look like an ad on any social media channel. Instead, you will need to run an invisible ad strategy. This means that your ad should not stand out as an ad, but rather disguise itself as organic and native to the platform. You still need to have the offer and a call to action in your ad, but it shouldn’t look like an ad.

09:06

Also, you cannot use the same strategies for Facebook or Instagram advertising on TikTok, as the platform’s nature is different in terms of look, feel, user experience, and sound.

09:36

everything’s very, very different, so you’re going to have to create for this platform instead of trying to cross-pollinate and use. these Facebook ads are working really well for us, let’s try that on TikTok, that’s not going to translate well. it needs to be completely redone, so one of the things you want to do number one is have an invisible ad strategy where you make ad looks like TikTok and not an ad, do have an offer and do have a call to action just like you would in traditional advertising all right, so

10:02

next, number two is you want to use your own vertical videos. everything, if you’ve been on the platform, you know when you’re scrolling through it’s video after video after video You’re scrolling through and everything is vertical in format, so it’s really important that when you shoot content for your facility, you’re shooting that in vertical format. Otherwise, you’re going to be cropping things out and having to stretch, and it’s a lot of times that doesn’t work out well. here’s some ideas. so we talked

10:30

about you’re not going to be dancing, you’re not going to be entertaining, you’re not going to be you know singing, doing that kind of stuff. but what does work on TikTok? so people working out works really well as far as the video background for catching people’s attention, having fun classes can work really well because you got a lot of activity. maybe there’s interesting Lighting in your classes, so classes worked really well. clients that are training in small group training or one-on-one training that can work very

10:56

well. if they’re having like a really interesting moment, or they’re doing some interesting exercises, or somebody’s trying for a personal best, or there’s high fives going on. so something with training clients can work really well, and then also maybe like your staff. your front desk staff, your sales team, your GM waving, saying hello, just showing a friendly face. okay that’s really, really important and that works really, really well. so number three, let’s talk about lengths, so what you did

11:26

is you’re going to disguise the ad first. you’re going to use the invisible ad formula then after that you’re going to get some great vertical video, but how long should the video be? we’ve tested a lot of TikTok ads, and we have found that the sweet spot is between 30 to 45 seconds long. but not only that, the clips shouldn’t be longer than three to ten seconds, so you can’t just have one long video clip that lasts for 45 seconds because people will scroll right past it. it has to move somewhat quickly, so three

11:57

to ten seconds is kind of the sweet spot, and you want to have different clips throughout that time period, so that way it keeps the background moving to keep the user’s attention. Another thing that you want to do is make sure that your first two clips are really good, catchy clips that are going to make people stop and pay attention. You have about 1.5 to 2 seconds

12:20

to get them to stop and pay attention, so make sure that the first one or two seconds are really interesting and are going to make them want to pay attention and continue watching the video. Alright, so let’s go to number four. Remember I said that TikTok used to be owned by Musically, or it used to be called Musically, and so the platform’s whole entire thing was based on music and dancing, but now it’s evolved to much more than that. There’s education,

12:51

there’s all kinds of other stuff on it, lots of entertainment, but nevertheless, music is a huge part of the platform, and so most TikToks will have music on them, and they’ll have some sort of music, and you can actually see what music is trending, and that will help because if music is trending, it fits more natively and organically into the platform. Therefore, your ad will have higher engagement rates, so what you want to do is remember to use trending music that is on the platform. You can easily search “Trending Music” in TikTok when you do searches.

13:23

You can find out what’s trending and what’s working really well, but 88% of users reported that sound is an absolutely essential part of this channel, of this platform. So make sure that you are using music in your ads that fit the ad itself. Now, this is an interesting one. So there’s something on the platform called “text-to-speech,” and what this is is basically let’s say that you have some graphic text that says a message right over the video, so it’s overlaid over the video, and there’s music playing

13:58

in the background. Instead of just having the text there, what you can do is there’s a feature that TikTok has called “text-to-speech,” and it’s actually really popular, and there are different voices that you can choose from, and it increases focus on ad messaging. So we have tested both with text-to-speech and without, and text-to-speech performs better most all of the time because most people, believe it or not, on this platform are listening with sound up. So if you go to Facebook, you go to Instagram, they’re

14:28

like everyone is saying, make sure you have captions on your videos because a lot of people are listening with the sound off. Whereas TikTok people are listening with sound on, a majority of users are. So, it’s very interesting. When you add that text-to-speech element, in other words, you can have a female voiceover over a male voiceover reading what’s being said on the screen with the videos playing in the background, it’s highly engaging. It engages not just the visual aspects, you know, the eye gate, but also

14:54

your audio senses. So, it’s really important to do that. Use the text-to-speech function. You can play with the different voices that are available, or you can do private voiceovers that may work for you as well. Number six, this one’s important for lead quality. Okay, so lead quality on the platform is going to be important. So, who are the leads that are opting in? We just had a really great conversation with a client the other day, and we were going through all the numbers. They’re converting TikTok

15:27

leads at a really strong level, just as strong as Facebook leads and Instagram leads. So, we were reverse-engineering and diagnosing that, and we’re finding out that it’s mid-to-late 20s, early 30s, mid-30s, and even some 40s that are highly converting on this platform. So, what you want to do, though, is you don’t want to just cast such a wide net that you get a lot of opt-ins, and then everyone’s really unresponsive. So, how do you do that? You add what’s called friction

15:57

to the opt-in process to get people to qualify themselves. Okay, so what we typically would do is we would have some sort of qualifying question at the top or the beginning of the form that they have to answer. So, it’s not going to just auto-populate, or they’re just going to mindlessly put their information in, hit go, and then be done. They have to actually think about something and raise their hand and say, “Yes, I am that person,” or, “I do this,” or, “I care about this,” or something. Some sort of qualifying

16:28

question that you can put in front of that. We have some really strong qualifying questions. One of them that we have is blurred out right here because it’s one of our secret sauces, but you can use a lot of different qualifying questions to add friction to the opt-in form, therefore, getting higher quality leads. Moving on to number seven, okay, so you’re going to test and scale. What’s interesting about anything in marketing is the answer is always to test. Now, we’ve tested tons of these, and we generally

16:58

Have an idea of what works best, but TikTok’s going to require that you start at twenty dollars per day, okay? So that’s where you’re going to start budget-wise because you can’t do less than twenty dollars a day. You’re gonna start at 20, and then once you find the formula that’s working best for you, you’re going to scale that. So you’re going to split test one variable at a time, and you’re going to A/B test. For example, if you’re running two different videos and you put one

17:23

video that has a certain starting clip and the other video has a different starting clip, that’s the only variable that you can test in that test because you can’t test multiple variables at one time. So what you want to do is just test that variable. Then once you find out which one of those has a high response rate, you can test voices, you can test offers, you can test messaging. There are a lot of tests you could do. Just keep in mind that you can only test one variable at a time, where otherwise you’re not

17:49

going to know what it was that caused the performance increase if you’re testing multiple variables at one time. So once you do this over and over again, you will have a very, very high-performing TikTok ad that will absolutely crush it for you and drive lots of leads and new membership sales. Okay, here’s a bonus one. This is what’s going to make all the difference in the world. I’ve talked about how important your offer is in past webinars and past conversations. If you have a chance, look at those.

18:21

But you have to craft a shareable offer, otherwise, you’re going to land really flat. Now, what does a shareable offer mean? You see the beam, here, I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. A shareable offer is something that’s so good, people feel compelled to share it because there are a couple of things that are tied to it. They feel like they might miss out, they feel like their friends would be thankful to have it, and it’s so compelling and strong that they want to share it with other people. So make sure that when you’re

18:46

crafting an offer, it’s not a simple one-day pass or your traditional zero enrollment, right? You want to make sure that it stands out, and it’s different and it’s compelling and it’s magnetic, and it’s going to pull people in and make them want to share it over and over again. So if you have not watched my past webinar where I talk about the offer pendulum, I think it was a couple of webinars ago, go find that on YouTube and watch that because that’s going to help you in this situation. Now, full disclosure, TikTok ads are still the

19:21

Platform is very different in the sense that you can target a one-two-three mile radius with Facebook and Instagram ads, but you cannot do that yet with TikTok ads. So, there is a little bit of nuance and trouble here with TikTok ads because you can only target designated market areas. What is a designated market area? It’s basically the Nielsen DMAs that television and radio broadcast networks use to broadcast radio and local news television markets. They use those for commercial runs and

19:57

things like that. So, you would have, like, I’m in Orlando and central Florida all the way down to the coast. Over to the coast would be a DMA. That’s one of the issues with TikTok ads. We do have a trick up our sleeve on the back end where we can get people to identify where they’re living. So, there are going to be some things that you can do to make sure that you’re getting only qualified leads that are within a one-two-three-five mile radius of your facility. It’s

20:25

definitely worth doing because the opportunity cost of not doing it is greater than missing not doing it at all. And there are things that you can do for that. The other thing too is that TikTok ads are really not that easy to run because they are time-consuming. You do have to do post-production video editing. You’ve got to have a video editor that knows how to edit and put the ads together. But if you do have an editor and you do have experience with post-production and you do have a sense

20:55

of what should be on the platform, by all means, you can do very, very well with TikTok ads. So, by the way, if you want all this done for you, we can do this for you. And we’re going to give away a free month of TikTok ads management to anyone that books a discovery call within the next week. So, all you have to do is book a discovery call and show up. And then one of you will be getting a free month of TikTok ads management where we will not only consult on what to do and what’s best, but also run your ads for you, okay?

21:26

So what I want to do now is open it up for some Q&A questions. And I’m going to go ahead and stop my screen share so that way I can have you guys ask questions. Let me see here. All right, if you have a question, what you can do is in the chat, just throw it to me by sending me a DM. So just drop it in the chat, and then I’ll see it. I do have some questions here if I can find them that people emailed and said we’re not going to be able to be on. So let me see if I can find those. Okay, you guys can go ahead and throw

22:04

Those questions in the chat while I’m looking for this. There we go. I’m going to scoot out of there. Here we go. Okay, great. So, all right, here we go. Question: you mentioned that you can’t target a three-mile radius right around the gym because of DMA. How are you getting local leads to qualify? That is a great question. I’m happy to share that with you on a discovery call. The only reason is because I’m sure that there are lots of people going to be watching this webinar, not only today but in the future, and we’re not ready to release

22:34

that secret sauce yet. So, I apologize for that one, but if you do book a call, I’m happy to show that. What age group do you see joining the most on TikTok ads? Typically, it’s between 18 to 35. So, it is a younger demographic, but think about this, if you’re starting now and you’re getting that and five years from now, that’s going to be 18 to 40.

23:00

Another five years from now, it’s going to be 18 to 45 because the platform is so sticky. This generation is growing up with it and is going to age up. So, keep that in mind, don’t be a late adopter. You’re going to want to join in on that. Okay, so how would I know if TikTok’s not doing local radius and they’re doing DMAs, how do I know if I have a DMA and if I qualify? So, I will say this, not every single location in the U.S.

23:34

will qualify to successfully run TikTok ads. There needs to be a little bit of demographic research and due diligence to make sure. We’ve had probably a 90% success rate. There are 10% of areas where it depends on where you’re located and what your DMA looks like. We’re going to tell you it’s probably not worth it based on where you’re located. So, we would do a little bit of a dive and just kind of pull the DMA that you’re in and look at how much DMA coverage you have. Are you centrally located in that DMA? And are

24:02

you too close to the water lines or rivers and some other things? And we can make some educated decisions about whether that would be a good fit for you or not. Okay, all right. So, I’m going to give you guys one more minute. If you have any other questions, drop them in the chat. I’ll be happy to answer those questions for you. Just hit the chat and then drop them in. I’ll answer those, but if we don’t have any other questions, again, go to LEADLIONMarketing.com

24:29

if you want to chat. We’re also giving away a free month of TikTok ads management. I love talking to people in the industry and sharing what’s working best, what’s going on in the industry, and what we’re seeing. I know we’re heading into a recession, and now is the time to put your foot on the gas. Don’t slow down, don’t take your foot off the gas. Now is the time to double down and push

24:55

to accelerate your growth. When everybody else is pulling back, you go forward. You want to be thinking about that as we head into the summer months and everything starts to slow down a little bit. If there are no more questions, I’ll send out the replay, and you can share that with your teams or anyone else who needs to see it. Thank you so much for joining us today for seven TikTok ad strategies. Use those strategies in your facility, and I promise you’re going to start winning new members immediately. Within the first two days, you’re going to have new people signing up. Thank you so much for joining, and we’ll talk to you soon.