Transcript
00:01
Welcome to the 2023 Fitness Marketing Plan. This is a fitness marketing master class where what we want to do is really help you get set up for 2023 and beyond in your business with your marketing and just overall growing the revenue of the business. So, I have one favor to ask. We have a good number of participants on this webinar. You carved out the time, you’re here, so you’re participating live. So, I would make a recommendation that you silence your phone, close out the other tabs, go to one screen instead of
00:36
three screens in front of you, and really focus on this because I have a lot of really good information to share with you today. And I’m very confident that even just you take away just one good thing, it can have a major impact on your business moving forward. So, without further ado, thank you for joining. Let’s go ahead and get started. The plan for the session today is I want to make sure that we’re setting clear goals and targets for the year that’s coming up and beyond. I want to help you map out
01:05
your fitness marketing plan and then also make sure that you are set up for success in the coming year of 2023 and beyond and leave here with clarity. The biggest obstacle a lot of times to business owners or leaders across all industries, not just in the fitness industry, is a lot of times we don’t have clear clarity on what do we do next? Where do we go from here? What’s the next best step in my marketing to drive more revenue? And I’m hoping that when we leave here today, you have clarity on what your next step is.
01:41
All right, so real quick, for those of you, there’s a bunch of people on here that already know who I am, but for many of you that do not, let me do a quick 10-second introduction. I’ve been into fit. I’m Nick Parker. I’m the founder of Lead Line Marketing. I’ve been in the fitness industry for over 23 years in a lot of different capacities. At one point, I was over 50 health clubs, thousands of employees, and was responsible for the marketing and business development, training for sales, and then eventually left and
02:09
did my own thing. So, I had a couple of gyms for about seven years and had a successful exit after that. Then our agency was trusted by one of the sharks from Shark Tank for all you Shark Tank fans out there, the original three seasons, Kevin Harrington. We cut his online acquisition cost by 73% in the first 30 days. I’m also a fitness industry speaker and host and then founder of Lead Lion Marketing, a fitness marketing agency. For those of you that don’t know, if you have a chance to listen, you may recognize
02:38
some of the people that have been on the podcast, Fitness Industry Success Show. It’s a good list, and it’s on our website. You can check that out. And then this is some of the brands we serve, lots and lots of really great brands, and some awards that we’ve helped our clients get for becoming one of the top dogs in the industry. We’re very proud of that. So, let’s get started. You’re here to map out 2023.
03:02
You’re here to get clarity and set some goals and do things maybe a little bit different than you did last year or in 2022 or before. So, one of the things we want to do is we want to make sure that we’re setting clear goals. As Zig Ziglar, I love, said if you aim in nothing, you’re going to hit it every single time. If you aim at nothing, you’re going to hit it every single time. And a lot of times, we’re running aimlessly. I’ve been in the fitness industry for a long time and have had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of in-depth conversations with owners and operators of fitness businesses.
03:31
It’s “fly by the seat of your pants” marketing, fly by the seat of your pants planning. And we don’t want to do that. We want to set some clear targets and some clear goals, so that way by the end of the year, or the middle part of the year, you know how am I doing? Am I getting where I need to be getting? Is the business training the right way? So let’s do this. If you would, grab a piece of pen and paper, the old-fashioned way, or if you may, you can use your computer or whatnot. Grab a note, but you should know.
04:00
Obviously, most of you do your multi-recurring revenue. Now let’s get a snapshot of where you’re at today. You don’t have to share this with anybody. This is just for you and your team. But get a monthly recurring revenue snapshot and the number of active members that you have today and your average monthly revenue per a member. That’s a really important number to know. So for a health club, you’re going to be in that $20 to $30 range, average, maybe a little higher $40, $50, $60, $70 for a
04:29
In a studio, your average number of members may be 120, 140, or 150. So, you want to get that average number. But the most important number that I find most people don’t know – I’m going to make this a little bigger, see if that’ll help, no, it’s not gonna work – okay, now, most people don’t know, is the lifetime value of a member. And if you know this number, you can become increasingly more powerful in making really good decisions for the growth of the business long-term. So, lifetime value of a member is basically your average monthly
04:59
revenue per member and how long that member stays with you. Crazy thing, I had a call two days ago with someone, and their average member was staying with them for 4.6 years. That’s crazy, that’s a long time, that’s really, really good. And I’ve heard of longer, but a lot of times, it’s much shorter than that. So, anyway, very interesting, you should know that number. Alright, so let’s do this. Now that you have your current snapshot or you’re working on that, you’re getting your
05:30
current snapshot down, think about the vision for 2023. But don’t stop there. Think about where you want your MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) to be in ’25, where you want your number of active members to be in ’25, the number of locations that you maybe want to own by that time. And really take some time out – you don’t have to do it right now – but write this down, success 10-15 minutes tonight when you have some quiet time, and do that. And think about why you want to accomplish that and set those targets.
06:00
And I’m telling you, that math is the path. And we’re going to get into some math today, just a little bit, to make sure that you understand how important these things are. So, let’s talk about marketing. Okay, that’s what you’re here for. So, coming out of the fitness industry, myself, I’ll tell you a little bit of my story. I got into it, you know, was around for, you know, do I started as, you know, training, and then I was a GM, and then I moved up to the corporate level of a large company that had over 54 clubs. Then I owned my own.
06:32
The speaker talks about how they thought they knew everything about gyms, but realized they didn’t, and then figured out a business growth model that helped them double their revenue year after year. They then sold the business and started working with health club and studio owners, finding that the best of the best are really good at operating on this growth model. They will discuss the three parts of the model, which are driving leads, converting leads into paying members, and boosting the lifetime value of a member and revenue. They will talk about what the best things to take away from this discussion are to implement in businesses for 2023.
07:24
The first part is driving leads, which is discussed in detail. Before the pandemic, many fitness businesses were growing by accident because of the marketplace being the strongest and hottest market in fitness industry history, but the pandemic changed everything. The speaker discusses lead gen advertising, getting the right reputation online and reviews, and driving leads through content marketing. The best of the best do these things consistently to make sure they’re winning market share.
09:22
Deloitte did a survey of hundreds of CMOS, and they plan to spend 13.6 percent in 2023 on advertising and marketing. The small business administration recommends seven to eight percent, but the fitness industry is typically around nine percent for Fitness franchises. The top three percent goes to the national corporate office, three percent to the national marketing campaign, and three percent to the local marketing campaign. The speaker has found that many business owners and leaders are spending only one or two percent on marketing and wondering why they’re not growing. The speaker encourages business owners to reinvest in their businesses as they grow and have more margin and budget.
11:18
If companies cut off their ad spend, they will eventually see their growth taper off. The speaker talks about the importance of investing in the growth of the company by spending a percentage on advertising over and over again. The speaker revisits the discussion on marketing channels and emphasizes the importance of getting some advertising going.
11:43
Advertising is the topic at hand and I want to revisit it real quick. Let’s talk about these channels. So, you have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to which marketing channels you’re going to deploy. It used to be that Direct Mail was really big, and I’m hearing a lot of people and a lot of chatter that people are really coming off of direct mail because it’s not as responsive as it used to be. Some people are still having some success with it, but not as much. And then there are Billboards, there’s television,
12:10
and radio. But I’ll tell you this, the cheapest, best reach with the most control – you can retarget, you have analytics, you can capture leads – you can’t capture a lead on a billboard, right? – is through your social media marketing channels and running advertising on those channels because there’s full control. It’s dynamic in nature, you can retarget, there’s a lot of opportunity there. So, the hottest platforms right now are Facebook, which is still King of the Block, it’s number one, it’s at the top as far as lead gen goes for
12:39
ads. But TikTok, the younger brother, has come up and is really killing it. And then there’s also Instagram, which is doing well. And then SMS marketing. And then of course, there’s Google ads, and then there’s Google, like YouTube, right? So, we talked about that. Here are some examples. You want some good news? I’ll give you guys some good news. So, I’m in an agency group with hundreds of the top agencies in the country, and we compare notes when it comes to things like cost per lead. So, if you look
13:11
at a lot of the other industries like Home Services, Mortgages, you look at retail and all these different industries, the cost per lead is significantly higher. Not all, but in most industries, and I’m talking about like fifty dollars to a hundred dollars, sometimes a hundred and fifty dollars per lead. What you’re looking at right now is a screenshot of leads on TikTok at three dollars and 45 cents per lead for the fitness industry. There’s another one at 372, there’s another one at 374, and 4.
13:41
Dollars, you can’t get any better than that. I mean, if I were to go into business again and not own an agency, I would definitely be in the fitness industry because it’s the easiest thing to grow. Because you can get so much reach. It’s casting a wide net. Everyone needs to get in shape, right? And so there’s a lot of opportunity in your local markets and a lot of opportunity here. So what I want you to think about before we move on is that make lead generation a priority. Figure out what channels you’re going to be on
14:08
and allocate a certain percentage of revenue budgeting-wise to that. The second thing that you want to make an initiative for 2023 is, what does your online reputation look like when it comes to reviews? I’m talking about your Google reviews, your Facebook reviews, your Yelp reviews. So after the webinar, write this down. After the webinar, what I recommend you do is do a quick audit. Google your brand or if you’re working with several, whatever. Google your brands, your locations. What do the reviews look like?
14:38
Are you getting lots of good, positive reviews? Do you have a good reputation on those reviews? What are people saying? Because people when they are doing any type of research on your business to see if they’re going to join or not, what are they going to do? They’re going to look at two things, your website being one of the last, one of the things they’re going to look at, your social media, and they’re going to look at your reviews. Then they may hop onto your website. So what you want to think about is, what does my online presence
15:07
look like? You need to do an audit and make an initiative to really ramp up your positive Google reviews. Some of the benefits are, if you’re on your mobile device and you’re Googling ‘gyms near me,’ then if you’ve got some of the highest review count and the most ratings, you’re going to pop up higher, you’re going to look better, and you’re going to have more social proof. And people are going to come in with a predisposition to buy.
15:35
Right, so you want to make sure that you’re managing that. So that’s number two. Lead gen to drive leads, reputation online to drive leads, and then number three, this is something newer in the last five to ten years for the fitness industry, it’s content marketing. So a lot of people think, “Oh, it’s making a post here and there, it’s just keeping your Facebook page active.” That has nothing to do with it. Let me address some thoughts around this so that way you can really wrap your head around it and your mindset on where the world is going.
16:07
You know, 20 years ago before social media even existed, businesses were basically known by their brand like Coke and Chevrolet, right? They were just known by their brand. There wasn’t a person that was behind that brand and there was no real connection, it was just the brand. Nowadays, it’s the people and there’s social connection and community, and it’s very different. And it’s like I said earlier, that when people go online to look for some information before they’re going to come in for a trial or buy a membership, well, the first thing they’re going to do is they’re going to check out those two places: reviews and your social media. They’re going to look at your YouTube channel, they’re going to look at your Instagram and your Facebook, and they’re going to see who are the people behind the brand, what’s happening there. They’re looking for images and pictures and videos. Are they helpful? Do they seem friendly? Finally, does it seem clean? That kind of thing.
17:05
So here’s a simple hack. Shoot one long-form video per week, maybe just one, and have one of your trainers or coaches or whatever within your organization or a front desk person or whatever shoot the video and do a tutorial on how-to, testimonial, something that’s maybe seven to ten minutes long. Take that, post it on YouTube, send it to your email list, and have that video there. Then take segments of that video and throughout the week put it on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all your social channels, so you’re repurposing that content over and over.
17:34
Again, super easy to do and it keeps your presence up. Okay, so those are the three things. So if you’re writing anything down, driving leads is invest in lead generation, at least 6% of your budget or more if you can, or work up towards that. And then also make sure that your reputation online looks good, do an audit, and then your content marketing because that will drive things. It helps with SEO, it helps drive people in the doors from social channels into your website. What good is it if you
18:06
get lots of leads and you can’t convert them into paying members? Right. So let’s take a look at what it means to actually convert members into leads and how that process actually works and why that’s so important. So we’re going to talk about something called the follow-up formula and some new research that has recently come out. We’re going to look at what’s called combination follow-up and then also we’re going to talk about the sales side of things which is the bottom of the funnel which is actually get
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the credit card out and sign up for that monthly membership so I can change your life, right? So those are going to be the things that we’re going to look at here. First thing, let’s talk about why conversion is so important. Okay, stop what you’re doing and follow me on this for a second. Look at this funnel. At the top, you’ve got 30,000 people that maybe see your ads. Let’s say 200 of those people actually opt in and become a lead. Let’s say out of the 200, let’s say that
19:03
70 or 140 people actually book an appointment and then 80 of those people come in. And let’s say that you have a 63 percent closing percentage which would equate to 50 members. And then 20 percent of them you upsell into maybe training clients or nutrition or upgraded coaching or something else, right? So there you have it. What happens if this number here is only 20 percent? It’s 16 members and three clients. Let’s do the math and actually see what that looks like. So on this side you have 50 members. Okay, let’s
19:36
Let’s use the Big Box Health Club example. So, if you have the lifetime value of an actual member’s $25 a month, they stick around for 28 months on average. That’s $700 in receivable future revenue for that member. 50 new members would be $35,000 in receivable revenue that you earned that month from those leads, from those sales. Now, let’s say you’re $50 a session, 24 sessions is your average length of your first package, it’s $1200 bucks. 10 new training clients, that’s $12,000. So, you have $47,000
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in receivable revenue from that one month of your efforts. Now, if you take that to a 20% closing percentage because you’re not focused on that in 2023, you landed with only $11,200 on that and then $1200 on back end sales, which is $14,800 receivable. You missed $32,000 in opportunity that month, but here’s what’s worse: $386,000 in missed opportunity that year because of a lower closing percentage, because of a low conversion rate. Okay, and conversion is all about sales, so
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we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. We’re going to talk about the digital side, the follow-up side, and the back-end side, so that way you guys can grab that opportunity. So, number one, you want to use what’s called the follow-up formula, and there’s a new study that recently came out that showed because of the attention span with social media is so much shorter than it used to be, it used to be 5 to 7 to 10 touches. Now it’s 21
21:14
touches on average before a lead converts into an actual member. 21 touches. It needs to be multiple channels and it should include a creativity connection. This is something I’m giving you guys for what we’ve been coaching on in-house recently that’s going to drive your conversion rate up. So let’s go through what that actually would look like. 21 touches is like, how in the world can we actually touch somebody 21 times? Well, it would look like this: day one, they get an email, they get a couple of text messages spread
21:47
throughout the day, and then maybe a phone call and a voicemail throughout the day, right? So, they would get up to like five touches. Day two, they may get up to three touches and maybe one voicemail or one phone call. If you don’t get them, it’s a voicemail and then a text message in an email. And then day three goes down, day five goes down, and then you steady trickle it two touches a day up for 21 days. And by that time, you’ve had 21 touches. This is an example, you could set up your Cadence and your sequence however you want.
22:13
My recommendation is that on the first day, you have the heaviest amount and on day two, the second heaviest amount. You want to be really heavy on those first two days because that’s when the lead is the hottest, right? So we went backwards. You also want to make sure that you’re using multiple channels, so you’re using text message, phone calls, voicemail, and also email. You’re dropping them three different things and then over the course of 20, in fact, I had a –
22:44
We have a client that shared with us that they were converting leads on average on 21 days. At 21 days, they have a lot of touches. They didn’t quite have 21 touches, but it was taking an average of 21 days to convert leads, but they were doing it consistently, which is very powerful. So you’ve got to understand that the follow-up formula is incredibly important to your success and getting that better and better over time, so it affects your bottom line. And then I alluded to something in the follow-up formula called a creativity connection.
23:11
Check this out. So we’re living in a day where everything’s automated, right? Everything’s automated, and you feel like you’re, it’s like robots are always talking to you, and it’s very impersonal. So what we’ve been having clients do is take their phones. Now they’re not sharing their personal phone number, they’re doing it through a system, but taking their phone, and when a lead comes in, they’ll shoot a five to ten-second video, whether it’s a front desk person or a salesperson or general
23:41
manager or somebody. And let’s just say Lindsay opted in, right? Say, “Hey Lindsay, how are you? This is Nick at Lead Lion Gym. So glad to see that you signed up for the trial. Can’t wait to help you out. Let me know if you have any questions. See you soon.” Boom. And they send a video through text message, and they get that. Let me ask you a question. How much do you think you would stand out if you did something like that? None of your competitors are doing it, and then all of a sudden, that automation and
24:09
that brand that’s off in the distance, you know, feels very personable, and it makes them feel important. Your response rate’s going to go up significantly, right? So that’s one thing that we call a creativity connection. Another idea is to write their name on a whiteboard and then like, “Can’t wait to see you soon,” put their name on a whiteboard and have a picture of you pointing to it and then send that through text message, and they’ll be blown away. They’ll be like if you can’t do video because then they’ll –
24:34:
Be like, “Wow, they know who I am! They’re actually anticipating me coming in from my appointment for my tour or my free class, or whatever it is!” And it’s going to increase your conversion rate. The little things add up, guys, the little things add up. So that’s part of the follow-up formula. Now, combination follow-up, which is the next part, is to make sure that you’re using a combination. I talked about automations of automations and manual follow-up. Here’s why: So, automations are going to be speed-deleted so much faster, so it’s important.
25:08:
MIT did a study that showed a 400% drop-off after the first 10 minutes if you don’t get to a lead. So, when a lead opts in, if they don’t hear from you within 10 minutes, it’s going to grow cold. That’s where automations are really important. But the secret is, you want to hide the fact that it’s automated. You want it to look like it’s personalized, with the first name coming from a local area code phone number, and it’s coming from a specific person at the club. So, you’re getting that conversation started and keeping that conversation hot. Now, you’re going to have automations dripping through that whole time, so they’re getting texted, they’re getting emails, and their relationship is staying warm if you’re not getting that appointment booked right away. But you’re also going to have that manual follow-up, and that manual follow-up is where you put the personal touches on it even more, like the creativity connection. Okay, so you’re going to want to use a combination of that. The most successful teams in the fitness industry are using both, and you’re going to want to make sure that you’re using both and have a good cadence for that. So, in 2023, make sure you’re using the follow-up formula, make sure that you have a combination of automation and manual follow-ups.
26:00:
Now, let’s talk about sales. I got something funny to show you. This is hilarious. Read this with me: “One in four people would rather text an ex or quit Netflix for life than to exercise ever again. Are you serious?” Oh man, this is terrible. So, 50% actually don’t enjoy it at all. And, then I know this is grim, I’m going somewhere with this, relax. And then, less than 17% of a local market will exercise in any given market. That’s one out of five people in a three to five-mile radius of your facility. Um, so why did I say all that? Here’s why: attention on sales and getting those conversions up. I – this is coming from a lot of conversations in the industry and coming from sales training in the industry – is that there is ever since, um, I don’t know, something’s happened in
27:15
The last 10 years have been like sales have taken a major back seat in the industry, and we’re just hoping people will sign up online, right? Click the link and sign up online, which some do, but they’ve had some prior relationship to the brand most of the time, or they’re just going to walk in, take a tour, and just give us their credit card, right? And the art of sales has been lost. Well, let’s review that again. One in four people would rather quit Netflix or text than exercise. Right? 50% don’t enjoy it, and less than one
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out of five people will actually be part of an exercise program. There’s a lot of opportunity in the world today throughout the United States and beyond if we would level up our sales and our ability to convert people through some training. So you’ve got to understand that it’s for them. They want the outcome. They want the outcome. Everybody wants to get in shape, everyone who wants to feel healthy. Everybody wants to feel whole and alleviate pain and inflammation and stress and anxiety and all the benefits that we know come
28:15
from being a part of a fitness program, but only a small percentage actually want to do the work. They want the outcome. They want the magic pill. So the salespeople are what bridges the gap from what they know they need to what to get them to do it, right? You’re not twisting somebody’s arm, but it’s funny. I have Superman and Superwoman here saving lives one membership at a time. It’s okay. I’m selling them a membership, right? So I want you to reframe your thinking to put an emphasis on sales in ’23. Get better at
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selling, get better at sales training, and let’s talk about the four things that you need to work on for this year. Number one, sales KPIs. If you’re not tracking anything, you’re just like, “Hey, we had so many people walk the door, and you know, a bunch signed up.” We don’t know how many people walked the door. We don’t know how many signed up. We don’t know what our conversion rate is. We don’t know what our closing rate is with our salespeople or our front desk or whatever. That’s not how you grow a business.
29:12
Your business will not grow that way. It’s going to be the same thing it was last year. Now’s the time to start thinking about 2023 and say, “Hey, listen, let’s start tracking this.” Even if you start with a spreadsheet, just something simple, and say, “Hey, what are our sales KPIs? What is our conversion percentage? So, every time someone comes in the door, what are the odds that we’re going to turn them into a membership?” Right? How do you increase that number? It’s through three main things: scripts, training, and role-playing. Let me give
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you a story. The other day, we were coaching a client who had sent out a text message to a hot lead who was inquiring about membership prices. The response from the GM at one of the locations was a paragraph long, detailing all the membership prices, annual fees, enhancement fees, and card fees. This lead will never come back again.
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The right response would have been, “Hey, Mrs. Prospect, I’m so excited that you’re interested. We have a lot of programs to choose from. Why don’t I schedule you for your free session? I’ll give you a tour around, go over all the options with you and see which one works best for you. Does Thursday or Friday work best for you after work?” That’s a script. If they had that script, and they had the training to
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work off of that script and role-play it within the team on a regular basis, that would not have been a lost opportunity. It would have translated into a paid membership for the next 36 months, which could have been anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 in revenue. Now, multiply that across your organization over and over again. What are you missing? So, I said all that to say this: reframe the way you think about sales and the importance of converting leads into members. It’s not going to happen by accident.
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Some people will join, but don’t mistake that for the right process. The right process is to take what you have now and make it better, and then make it better, and then make it better, and to continue leveling that up through this sales process, through scripts, training on the scripts, and then role-playing those so that they become proficient with it. Fair enough. All right, cool. So, the last part of this, and we’ll be wrapping this up soon, I promise, is boosting revenue on the back end.
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You’ve got the top of the funnel, where you’re driving leads. You’ve got leads coming in from all these different places, and they’re coming in. Then you’re converting those leads at the point of sale because your sales training is dialed in, and everybody’s on board, following scripts, and they’ve done some training and some role-playing. So now, your conversion percentage is going up, and they’re signing up and becoming paid members. But what you really want to do is have the
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The ability to increase the value, the lifetime value of each and every member, and you’re going to do that through member multiplier, back-end sales, and pricing. So here are three different things that you may want to think about for 2023. Number one is you want to obviously keep members longer. If you’re keeping members for six to 12 months versus three to four years, that is a huge impact on your bottom line. You need to figure out how to plug the bucket and plug the holes in the bucket to be able to grow the business faster, okay? And we’re going to talk about how to do that.
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The second thing is driving referrals. You want to multiply members. You want to be intentional about referrals. You want to be really good. You want to deliver results. You want to have people have a great experience, clean equipment, great atmosphere, good music, friendly staff. You want all that, but that’s not enough to really drive referrals. Referrals should be intentional. So you want to have some sort of incentive and a plan and scripts and role-playing back to sales at the point of sale to make sure you’re getting those referrals in.
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So let’s talk about how to increase the lifetime value of a member by getting them to stay longer and refer more people. New member experience is everything in the beginning. If you start right in the first 30 days, you’ve won that member for a much longer period of time and you’re going to get referrals, and they’re going to help be a brand ambassador. If the first 30 days, if they sign up and they walk away with nothing but a key tag or something on their phone to get connected and that’s it, and they never hear from you again, no swag, no nothing, they’re not going to stay as long.
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So the first 30 days, new member experience, what do we do? Number one is you want to connect with that member. When I owned my gyms, I hired a position. It was a person, and their title, get this, their title was Happiness Ambassador. Okay? And so their job was to make sure that they connected with every new member and the members on a regular basis after that once in a while through different touchpoints at scale. But when they first signed up, they would give them a call and just welcome them, “Hey, how you doing? You know, Sally, great to have you. We’re so thankful that you joined the gym. And I just want to see if you have any questions, have you been in any classes, what have you done so far, how do you like the equipment?” All that kind of stuff and just really connect with that person. That is going to go a really long way when that happens outside the four walls.
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of the studio or the gym. The second thing you want to do is you want to give them something, whether it’s a bag, a t-shirt, or something useful, something that they’ll wear, something that they would appreciate, and use with pride. That way it’s tangible because there’s nothing worse than walking away and getting a gym membership. You walk away with nothing except the fact that I might be sore tomorrow for the first time, and I don’t know if I really want to do this. It’s
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nice to walk away with something in your hand, so a welcome kit, welcome basket, or something like that. And then the third thing is you want to make sure you’re asking for referrals at the point of sale and have a system in place to make sure that you’re getting those on a consistent basis from all of your team, over and over again. Think of how many referrals you could get from people that are excited that just signed up if you’ve simply just asked for it, and then if you incentivize them for it, they give
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you referrals, they get something in return. Okay, so that’s the first 30 days member experience. It’s a great starting point. What do you do next? What’s your next step? Audit your new member experience. Pretend you’re a prospect and you’re going to shop your own facility and see what is it like becoming a member here and where can you improve that experience to increase the lifetime value remember? Okay, so for 2023, the second thing you want to focus on doing is to increase the lifetime
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value member is upselling them into something additional. If you’re a big box health club, that could look like personal training. If you’re a studio or a health club, you could have an upgraded membership that includes a wellness upgrade to where you have like a Zen Den or a recovery zone to where you have compression therapy or you have an ice bath or something like a massage bed or something or tanning. You want to work on upgrading them, and one of the things that we like to coach on is, hey, listen, give them a free week of
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the upgrade and let them try it and get a taste of it, and then follow up on a phone call and see if they want to upgrade if they don’t take it right away because they may be surprised they may actually use it. You may upgrade 2 out of 10 people instead of 0 out of 10 people. Okay, and then you can also upgrade or upsell nutritional services, supplemental services, and things like that, but you want to make sure you’re getting more back-end revenue to increase the lifetime value of a member. And lastly, let’s think about raising your prices.
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We all know inflation has been crazy lately. We’re, I think, seven, eight percent right now. If you’re a studio and you have 300 members and you raise your prices by ten dollars a month, that’s three thousand dollars a month, for thirty-six thousand that year. If you have three thousand members at a big box health club and you raise your prices by a buck, that’s three thousand a month, thirty-six thousand a year. So, think about what you could do with that income. It’s a real minimal raise, so it’s not going to
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hurt anybody. You’re going to lose very few people if any, and then you’re going to have a lot more budget to be able to invest in the growth of your business. Once you’ve done this once, you start driving leads, once you start converting leads at a high level, once you start boosting the lifetime value member, and you’ve made it better and better and better, then it’s time to duplicate that out into multiple locations. And many of you on the call may have lots of locations, and so you’re starting from that point, but stop. Start making things better before you start duplicating more problems in the long run, right? And then you end up overwhelmed.
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So, let’s talk about some key takeaways. Number one, here’s some notes I want you to write down. We’re going to close up plan to drive leads and keep the funnel full through making sure that you have an advertising budget set aside for 2023 and you get some channels that you’re going to run. You’re going to work on your reviews, the content marketing. Put a
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front desk person in front of that or somebody on your team and in charge of that. Let them own that and control that’s it’s not hard to do. Plan to convert more leads using the follow-up formula, using a combination of automated and manual follow-ups and commit to that sales training. I can’t emphasize that enough. Really start thinking about committing to sales, and then plan on the member multiplier, the new member experience. Do an audit. Watch, what does my new member experience look like, and let’s enhance that and then boost the
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length of the member time that they’re with you even if it’s by three or four additional months per a member. That is a big, over the course of many years, add back-end sales through up sales and opportunity, and then raise your prices by a small amount because that will have a huge impact on your business. Now, quick plug for those of you that may want to hop on a call with me to talk about having some of this done for you at a high level. You can just go to leadlionmarketing.com and click request strategy.
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Call, and you can book a call with me, and we’ll talk about how we may be able to help you in your business, and we’ll help that audit process for you. So I would like to maybe open it up for some Q&A. Let me see if I can… Um, let’s see. I’m going to open up the… I want to have you guys… Let’s see. Questions, questions. Um, you can unmute if you have a question, and I’ll be glad to answer it for you, or you can drop it in the chat. Um, I did have somebody that said they couldn’t make the webinar, and they asked
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me a question, so I might review that one. (Music) Okay, so the question that they said was, “I have a budget set for 2023, and I want to invest more into lead generation and advertising, but I can’t do every channel at this point. What channels do you recommend starting with?” That’s a pretty good question. Um, I would say that you’re going to want to start out with the channels that are going to be able to generate demand. So, Google, you’re going to be waiting on demand versus generating demand because
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you’re waiting on people to search for you, whereas the social channels, you’re going to be able to generate demand. Um, so Facebook would probably be, depending on what demographic, if you have a younger demographic, TikTok may be where you want to start. But Facebook is really good for that 25 to 45, 25 to 55 year old member. Um, it’s going to be real key, and then if you have a younger crowd, maybe TikTok as well. Uh, but TikTok, you’d be surprised, there’s a lot of people on TikTok that are, um, you know, in their over 35, 45, 55 years old. So, I would say start on the social channels for lead gen advertising. It’s not expensive, comparison like we talked about to other industries, so that would be a great place to start. Okay, all right, great. Um, let me see, I can… Oh, you know what, it looks like I don’t have you guys lower all. Okay, you can raise your hand, uh, through… We just switched webinar software to Zoom. I’m not used to it. You can raise your hand, and then you can ask a question. (Music) Uh, Lindsay, I’m going to ask you a question real quick because I want to see. Hey, Lindsay, are you there?
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Yeah, I’m here. Hey, how do you raise your hand in the chat, or how are you on the bottom? There’s the option for chat, raise hand, and Q&A. And I know that you saw it when I raised my hand at the beginning of the call. I did, I did. So if you guys, if there’s anybody on here that wants to raise their hand, at the bottom, how did you get to that again? Oh, it’s just an option right underneath where you’re sharing your screen. Okay, right underneath, just an option. You –
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can you raise your hand? Okay, thank you so much. So, if you guys have a question, go ahead and raise your hand, and I will gladly do that for you. I’ll give you guys about a minute, yeah, if you have any more questions, and then we’ll go ahead and wrap it up. So hey, while we’re waiting, thank you guys for joining me so much. We have a question from Joel, so let me grab that. Joel, go ahead and we’ll talk. Okay, Joel, you can unmute and talk. Will this webinar be able to review this again with our staff?
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Yeah, absolutely, great question. We have it recorded and we’re going to upload it to our YouTube channel and then send out an email with the replay link, which will be hosted on a page, so you should get that next week for sure. Excellent, okay, good. Any other questions? All right, I’ll wait just a second, guys. Thank you so much. All right, I wanted to do this because this is so important for me personally, coming out of the fitness industry. I wish that I had somebody do this for me a long time ago.
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The first couple of years of the business would have been much greater than they were. The last few years were great, but the first few years would have been greater than they were if I had a guide and had clarity. And the reason I know that this is so important is because I talk to owners and operators all the time that just don’t have clarity on what do I do next? What should I be focusing my efforts on? Where should my strategy lie? What should I spend? Where should I spend? And so this is really important.
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So I’m glad to help. Any questions, follow up, feel free to reach out. I’ll be glad to help, and you guys can also book a call with me. So, I guess we’ll go ahead and end it there. Thank you guys for joining me. I hope you have a great weekend, and I hope you have the best of success in 2023, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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