The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
Break Through What's Holding You Back
Unlock the secret to overcoming marketing fatigue in your studio or athletic-driven brand with our latest Gym Break cast episode. Join me, Zach Coleman, as I reveal personal insights from my journey as a business owner and marketing agency leader. Discover how recognizing the phase your business is in—whether growth or profit mode—can help maintain brand consistency and avoid the pitfalls of trying to do it all yourself, especially in the ever-evolving landscape of AI and social media.
Small gyms and studios often fall into the trap of emulating large brands, but this episode sheds light on why that might not be the best approach. I explore the trend of rapid marketing expansion without considering unique business needs and the fatigue that comes with juggling multiple agencies and strategies. Let's dive into the power of simplicity and human connection, and how local markets can benefit immensely from word-of-mouth referrals. By balancing ambitious goals with practical methods, we can find a sustainable path to growth.
Finally, I lay out effective strategies for streamlining your marketing efforts and managing resources with precision. From optimizing Google Maps to building a strong online presence, learn how to attract new members and retain them with superior customer service and brand connection. As we explore mindset shifts needed to combat marketing fatigue, I emphasize the importance of starting small, persevering, and reallocating resources efficiently. Tune in for actionable insights that will help propel your business toward the next stage of success.
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But because we have a marketing agency, a lot of my internal employees also do our own marketing. Because I can do it all doesn't mean I should do it all. Let's just say that Welcome to episode two of the Gym Break cast, where we talk to leadership within the studio space and we kind of just go through those visionary ideas and those operational ideas as we continue to evolve and grow our athletic-driven brands. My host is myself, zach Coleman, and like I said in our last cast, we kind of wanted to start these off a little bit different. You know, we do our normal give and take with a guest on and we're starting to do some more of these micro type podcasts, individual type podcasts, to really help give you motivation. I you know I have a purpose. I want to help guide you towards those dreams that you have. And how do I do that? Marketing, branding and just business ownership and ownership in general as we continue to persevere to make it to that next stage of growth for what we want out of success in our lives and our business. So today I want to kind of go off of what we talked about yesterday. Yesterday we talked a little bit about the big no-no in the industry, which is the term marketing and being a marketing professional. Now I want to kind of go off of that a little bit more in detail and kind of go off of a trend that I have seen in the industry for quite some time and how to really avoid that mistake as you continue to grow and you evolve your business, your brand, your studio, whatever you may have. This can kind of help everyone. It's going to be a little bit different depending on what range of ownership you are at, where you're at mindset-wise, where you're at delegation-wise. But I'm going to kind of talk a little bit about go from the plethora of the brick and mortar, the normal brick and mortar status, and kind of where you're at on that journey. So I want to start off by talking about marketing fatigue. I talk about it a lot, common term that I've kind of started to utilize a lot lately, and let me tell you a little bit about how this came up. I own a marketing agency, more so a branding agency, but we do marketing, we do a lot of warm marketing. But because we have a marketing agency, a lot of my internal employees also do our own marketing. Because I can do it all doesn't mean I should do it all. Let's just say that and as I continue to see the trends in the industry working with multiple sizes of studios, even up above as enterprise brands, and they do their marketing and they do their branding Wow, I've seen a lot of different figures in the space, but I've seen a common trend, especially now that we have such a rise of AI and social media content out there of heavy marketing fatigue.
Speaker 0:Part of the benefit of being a business owner is having the ability to understand where you are at, not just financially and well, financially has a lot to do with it but if you're in growth mode or in profit mode, here's a common practice for any type of business Starting off validation phase, then you have your first growth phase. This is going to be the growth phase where you're really learning about employees yeah, we're not going to talk about startups here. Completely different environment. This is just for business owners that may have had a small investment, or they're buying their first brick and mortar, or they're a franchisee and they're starting off small with zero members or zero clients in retail. You know you're going to go through the stage of. Then you go through hiring. You're going to then go through the stage of hiring the right people and then you're going to start realizing, as you're hiring those right people, you need to bring consistency in. That's where the branding comes in, that's where the better solutions come in, the better type stuff, and that's what I would consider a stage six. But I don't wanna get into stages today. I wanna get into marketing fatigue.
Speaker 0:Marketing fatigue, something commonly seen in businesses of I would say I'll just give a rough number here businesses of. I would say I'll just give a rough number here and I'll say 100 to 300 K is a good number. I've seen it upwards of 500 K as well, because they desperately want business, desperately want business, they desperately want and I mean I could say I've been there too. But I also own a marketing agency, like I said earlier. But back to my original point. I'm going to, I'm going to kind of tell you a story, to kind of get this, get this ramped up and kind of give you an understanding of what marketing fatigue is. Right, you know, because I own a marketing agency, I have employees that can do internal stuff and external stuff and, unlike what you might hear from most digital marketing agencies, I've kind of done the opposite I kind of had. I wanted to be validated. I had an internal perspective of validation that I thought that I needed, which is pretty much gone now. For the most part, I've learned to be more authentic, learned to be myself, learned to become more of a leader, and that has continued to evolve and grow, which can be a whole different episode, but which forced me to do a lot of different marketing test, lots of different things, until I finally found what worked, finally found what different within my business.
Speaker 0:First and foremost, I would say, not every marketing or branding solution is going to work for every type of business, and I've seen a common trend, especially in the studio space, where and you see these with large brands and I mean it may have worked 10 years ago, it may have worked six years ago let's come in and let's hire a whole bunch of sales reps, let's take those sales reps and let's call everyone in our local area. That's, you know, a sales and marketing tactic. And then they're like I want to do social media management, I want to do all this organic content, I want to do all this social media, I want to be known all over the web. Right, they want to be like the Nike of their local area. Or they say they have a big vision, they want to open hundreds of locations. They have a big vision and they take that vision and they don't take steps towards that vision. They just go right out and try to hit that goal in like a year. Stuff doesn't work, man, and that's what causes marketing fatigue.
Speaker 0:You hire six different agencies, you try eight different things. Those marketing agencies accept you because, like I talked about yesterday, the taboo of marketing. Go back and watch it if you want, but you're going to have agencies. Most agencies are commodity. You know they have a commodity and so you have a pick of a litter of who you want to work with, especially in the studio space where a lot of people are starting off and think they can do marketing. But that's besides the point. You're going to come through a perspective of you think the best solution for your business is social media management.
Speaker 0:Nothing wrong with social media management, nothing wrong with trying things, finding what works. But let's be real when you're a studio, that's between $100,000 and $300,000 a year, and remember, this is just for one location. Once you start getting in the three to seven location range and you're a boutique completely different strategy. Or you're a corporate gym and you have hundreds of locations, right, it's a completely different strategy. But when you're a small brick and mortar, one person gym, social media is all you need. But there is going to come a time, as you grow, that that social media is going to. The cost per click is going to be too high. It's not going to work anymore. You're going to plateau for one For two.
Speaker 0:Remember that social media management and why I say it's fatigue is meant for larger e-comp brands. They're meant for brands that have an income to spend five, 10, $15,000 a month to just test, you know. And if you're not there yet which most aren't, even at the three to seven which they, they should be having that budget. But if they're not, then something's wrong. You're burnt out. You have to have creative, you have to have copywriting, you have to have a good ads manager, you have to have a good funnel. Don't you feel like that's a little bit overcomplicated?
Speaker 0:You do these challenges over and over and you're probably at 250, still being the owner going in there and doing all the organic posts. Hadn't even learned to trainers to do the social media posts and they should be the sales reps which reminds me we'll talk about that tomorrow. I have a good partner that could come in and help you with that. But you kind of come in and you say stuff like oh, we need to do all this miraculous stuff, we need to be known. Let's take your vision, let's break it down. Probably aren't even at a point where you've really realized your vision yet or understood the importance of your vision yet, and you shouldn't be Right now. You're in validation phase. That's why social media is good Validate your services, your memberships, your basic offers. What's working? You want to validate and bring members in? Yes, it's what you want to do, but then you're going to get to a point where simple is just better. And I always like to say, like I was bringing up earlier, being a digital marketer, I hear lots of other digital marketers say you need to be online In 2024,.
Speaker 0:People want human connection. People don't want AI emails going back and forth. People want to work on their mental health. They want a place away from home, unless they have kids, and they have to be at home more often. But even me, I have three young boys. I want to be at home and be present around them, but I need my time out.
Speaker 0:So marketing fatigue how do you deal with marketing fatigue? Well, first and foremost, look at the basics. What's working for you right now? Social media ads working great. Stick with social media ads, improve those social media ads. Word of mouth tends to be a great factor for gyms and still is. Back to my digital marketer. You're not going to hear a digital marketer say, go with referrals. I think referrals are still king, especially in the local market and a membership base. That advocacy is amazing and can grow steadily and surely.
Speaker 0:Let's think simple here. Where do people find you? I think most of your audience is going through social media. This is where the visionary stuff starts to come in right. This is where you start to think strategically instead of irrationally or towards just making the next dollar. This is where strategy starts coming in right. Strategy becomes very important during, you know, the next stage of business growth. You start becoming more of a leader. You start hiring management. You start hiring trainers that you think are going to stay on longer. Comes around values. We'll talk about that in a later episode. Find out what's working. You know just from every single phone call I've had with every prospect, every client within the studio space. Close rate is like a 50% compared to a 10% for a challenge. So I'm not saying challenges don't work, but there comes a time when you need to get that cost per click lower. You need to start focusing on more organic methods, and doing organic social media takes forever, not going to be worth your while. You're going to have to again marketing fatigue, hire creatives, content writers, years for brand awareness to really start to rise. It's good when you own the three to seven because you can have a post, work for multiple locations. Again, besides the point PLD people find you Tell you right away.
Speaker 0:Here are the two things that I do when I look for a gym. Number one search on Google. Search on the maps. Maybe not Google any map online. How close is it to my house? Because this is a membership and this is something that I know that I'm going to go to every day. It's not like I'm going to do a service one time or two times. I want it as close to my house as possible. I want something that I can go to that's close enough for convenience. So I'm gonna search on Google, which means where's the first place you wanna be seen on Google? Just be seen. Google Maps. Okay, google Maps, it is.
Speaker 0:Now, what's the second most thing that they're gonna keep people in your gym longer? Customer service. I'm gonna look at the gym, I'm gonna call them. Or I'm going to look at the gym, I'm going to call them, or I'm going to walk in to do an appointment. Check it out. Atmosphere reminds me of me, the people, the people. I connect with them. I have similar values to them. Just connect with them. I connect with the brand right.
Speaker 0:So we'll get into branding a little bit of a different episode. Maybe tomorrow we'll talk about branding versus marketing, but for now, for this, the marketing fatigue is. You wanna start just thinking simple, simple and small. That's a good place to start. What's a good place to? That's working. Social media is working. Stick with social media. If it's not, or you're past validation stage and you're like how do we start building much more better cashflow by predictability? Then you're gonna be wanting to think about warm leads. I mean, local markets are all different, but the consumer is very predictable, probably going to want to sign on.
Speaker 0:In January, you're going to have six months of probably solid metrics, another six months of slower metrics. Use that to your advantage. So how do you do that? How do you go from a 20 uh we'll just say 20 conversion rate to it, with a two month retention, to a two to three year minimum retention and a 50 conversion rate? You let them find you. Old days, you had billboards, can do that. You could do direct mail pieces targeted towards the city. That's a good start. That's the kind of a strategy if you do that right.
Speaker 0:But that's also marketing fatigue, because then you're like, all over the place You're like, oh, do this. No, like, just think about your Google business profile. Don't even think about your website, yet you need to have a website for your Google business profile. But like, that's going to be where they find you, that's going to be where they look at you. They decide, oh, this is where I want to be, this is what I want to do, this is, oh, I like this equipment here. Oh, I see the reviews. They're reviewing on the different trainers, they're reviewing on the environment, the experience. Oh, this matches my value.
Speaker 0:This person talked about how they like Bikram yoga. Or this person talked about how they like the weight training classes, or the instructors being very helpful on regiment for food regiment, for instance, they have cycling bikes. I'm a cycler. I mean it's an endurance. You're like a soul cycle, for instance. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you're utilizing that profile to be your first stop of positioning yourself. Now there's much more strategy that goes into it and not to get marketing fatigue, it's very basic. It's you attract people through the things that they type. It's like the yellow pages for all your different services, all your different experiences. So, in short, I mean marketing fatigue comes around.
Speaker 0:What causes marketing fatigue? Like I said, it's thinking you're bigger than you are, and this could come to a mindset issue. Maybe you it's thinking you're bigger than you are, and this could come to a mindset issue. Maybe you have trouble thinking you're bigger than you are. Maybe you have an ego. Nothing wrong with that if you're willing to change. Maybe you need to build more confidence. Maybe you need to look back at your vision and why you're growing this place. To begin with, think about your local market. I bet you anything there depends on if you're in a rural area, city area or what, but you're probably looking at a very bare minimum of a million people around you. You know you could be smaller than that. You could have 100,000, but that comes back to your original decision to open a location. How many people are around your area? Do you make a right decision on your first location? Maybe you need to move before you start building out an experience.
Speaker 0:But I really like to bring this up because I've had marketing fatigue. You know I'm a marketing agent. I've tried millions of different things. I have a different audience that you do. You have a consumer, I have a business owner, a marketing director. We have longer sales cycles. We have larger packages because we have like eight people working on one project, one team. So I have to have a large amount of expenses to give you the results that you want.
Speaker 0:But that's besides the point. The point is I have to take a step back and learn with where I'm at in business. I have to be strategic about the types of marketing I do. I have to step away from the passion of the internal of the business and allow my knowledge of the industry and basic business practices to allow me to make conscious decisions and not let myself do too much higher to inflated for where I'm at. I had to go through that to where, when I had my burnout funny enough, a couple years ago I had that burnout because I was marketing, marketing too much, I was getting no results and it was just turn and burn because I thought that's what I needed to do. But I learned Cut back. I now do marketing practices that fit more of my audience, help my audience.
Speaker 0:And so, as I continue to evolve these one-off podcasts, I want to kind of try to do my best to give insight into something that you can do practically right now to possibly get out of that the scenario or the situation. And most of these aren't going to be technical, most of these are going to be personal or small strategy type situations that you can do. That take like five to 10 minutes just to get an idea. So for today, let's look at your overall membership count. How did you get most of those members? How did you get most of those clients? What works and what doesn't work?
Speaker 0:As well, cut out everything that's not working, everything that's not working, and just focus on the one thing that is. That's a good first start. Is there a time and a place to use multiple avenues? Yes for sure. I always preach not allowing your marketing to be focused on one platform. That's where the omni-channel marketing approach comes in. But when you're small, it's all about perseverance, validation, building momentum as you continue to grow and make mistakes and fix those mistakes, and so that would be my tip for today Focus on that. Cut everything else out. Find the one thing that's working.
Speaker 0:Let's say this, though let's say you're focusing on something that's being, let's say, you're doing cold calling. That could be a huge one. You have two sales reps in doing cold calling, percentage probably small, probably have a lot of churn because they're probably just sitting at the front desk calling local people. You have this whole email campaign, this whole situation. You know how much money you could save if you turn that around and use that budget to possibly hire a trainer or an admin person for operations, or tried to start finding the right people in the right spots, and you took the rest of that budget and you started to focus on something a little bit more simplistic that works. I'm gonna leave it to you at this point If you're watching on our YouTube channel, what kind of marketing systems are you using? Do you have marketing fatigue? And if you do have marketing fatigue, how are you trying to solve that marketing fatigue? Again, zach with Gym Break another episode, episode two here and thank you for listening and I'll talk to you on the next one.
