#308 Fitness marketing basics aren’t the sexy, social media influencer, ego-centric increase in fans and followers, and more likes on your recent post.
Fitness marketing basics are simultaneously the easiest and easiest to resist steps to successful revenue building.
This episode reviews the fastest way to grow your business.
Then what I’m going to dive deeper into is why you might be resisting the things that are right here that have proven to work over and over.
If you’re not growing, or not growing fast enough, and you’re doing all the things (but the fitness marketing basics) and still resist doing what works… stay tuned.
04:28
Fitness Marketing Basics for Fast Business-growth
If every human on the planet needs to exercise…
If most struggle with exercise…
Why is it still so hard to attract clients?
The simplest things, the smallest steps, work for health and fitness.
The simplest things work for growing your health and fitness business.
- Pick up the phone.
- Write an email.
- Go back to fitness marketing basics.
(and even saying that I realize, you don’t know good fitness marketing basics potentially unless you’ve followed an online guru because it isn’t taught thoroughly enough to help you when you’re beginning).
Talk to people.
One of the obstacles for trainers and health coaches who want to build an online business is what to say:
- What to say in emails
- Or What to say in videos
- What to say on a phone call
Call one person and you’ll know what to say.
Try writing an email to one person. When it’s just one you know what to say.
Keep in mind, email is not as good as a phone call alone. It is a good partner. If you have a cell phone number, a text is better than an email.
The most successful people in the world make phone calls every day.
They make the easy ones and the hard ones.
- When someone’s credit card doesn’t go through after three email attempts and messages to them don’t result in any response, someone calls.
- If customer service drops the ball and things go wrong for a customer, someone calls.
- When a customer complaint isn’t valid or attacks the company or any staff, someone calls.
Usually, that’s the person still in business when 9/10 have failed.
10:48
Even if you want to build a business online…
Even if, ideally, you don’t want to work one on one with clients in the business you’re building…
While you’re building it, the fastest way to grow your business revenue is to pick up the phone. You invite one person at a time to start working with you.
When you call at least one person every day, you build confidence, you build rapport, you build habits, and you relax.
When you’re stuck in those feelings of fear and your expenses outweigh your revenue, it is extremely hard to create a business with abundance and flow. And if you don’t go woo-woo… hang with me for a minute.
If you begin building your business based on fear and not enough and always working constantly, without a reasonable plan for, when I’m at XX, I will hire help for the things I don’t need to do… you will in 5 years still have that kind of business. It’s based on fear and not growth. It’s based on you working constantly and not on you recharging your batteries.
12:32
Side Note:
What’s Your Burn Rate?
That said, sit down and determine your “burn rate” that includes your own personal expenses. That is, the amount of money you have to make monthly to cover your business and other expenses if this were your sole income including paying yourself a reasonable rate commensurate with what you’d pay anyone else to do the job.
13:50
Calm the F*** Down!
When you have revenue coming in, you can play the long game. Online marketing is a long game. Social media is a long game unless you’re doing paid advertising.
I’ve got 130,000 followers in a YouTube channel, many of whom are on my email list. That was built over 6 years, (I’m not including pandemic because everything changed and I’ve had little growth) not overnight. I still nurture it every week with videos and posts.
You can’t build your business this year doing things that are long game-oriented. Growing an email list by 10,000 a weekend is possible, but only if you already have 100,000 and you’re invited to stages and speaking in front of hundreds of thousands regularly. Starting out my list grew only by 1000 a month.. so it took me years to reach 10,000.
But then there were months where that doubled… and the rest is history when you’re playing both long and short.
16:42
My Fitness Marketing Basics action advice:
Start with Phone calls, one a day. I go into detail on another podcast about what to say and in what order.
Then work on your email game. The juiciest words you may ever use in an email someone are “Are you still interested?
Inside you’ll ask them to respond to a very special “retreat, package, workshop” you’re putting together if they want details about it.
17:43
My advice if you’re resistant to marketing is take time and do a few of these:
Imagine your business in 3 years. What is your typical day like? What are you doing? How does it feel? What kind of success is your business experiencing?
What is your role in the daily activities of the business?
Go deeply into the emotions that you feel about the success you’re having.
18:22
Now think about these questions:
How much money do you have in the bank? Or in investments? What’s your net worth?
Where do you live? What is your environment like? What have you created for yourself around your daily habits that is possible because of your business?
Do you travel or donate to charities? Are you “recognized” when you go out or travel?
You really can’t hide behind the computer if you’re building a business. You have gifts to share and people who do care and want what you have to offer, you’ve got to connect with them in the fastest way possible.
19:13
Establish follow-through goals.
When someone is non-responsive on my list, I don’t slow down on outreach, I double down. I want a yes or a no and take no answer as not an option. If an email doesn’t reap a response, a second one goes out, then a third in close proximity.
If that doesn’t do it, I reach out via text (and voice text when that’s possible).
We resist marketing ourselves because it’s so much easier to promote a business. You may find yourself suddenly promoting you since the pandemic.
But the truth is, this works so much better. People want to do business with people, not with a business.
We are very comfortable thinking about ourselves in the way we’ve always thought of ourselves. So, change, including being someone who markets, sells, and promotes may never have been away you’ve thought of yourself. You’re resisting it.
You may resist having money because you heard things like, “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “we can’t afford that” or felt that the good life was for other people and you’ve always saved for a rainy day but never spent for today…
You want to establish the source of your reluctance for reaching out to people, too.
Do you have a negative connotation with sales people from the used car salesman or the vacuum cleaner salesman, or maybe a realtor? Did a parent or spouse tell you not to share your real feelings if you loved something?
This is the real homework in this episode.
Getting fitness marketing basics to work is easy, once you’ll apply them. If you’re resistance is due to these feelings or some false belief that anyone who is successful didn’t do these things? You really want to take a look at that.
Break down your barriers and you’ll soar.
21:52
Other Episodes You May Love:
4 Big Mistakes in your Email Marketing for Fitness
3 Ways to Avoid Burnout for Fitness Professionals Post Pandemic
Resources:
Marketing to Women Copywriting Course
Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist
