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
Being the Best Isn’t Enough—Here’s Why They Passed on You
Stop wasting your fitness studio's marketing budget on expensive digital ads that drain resources and deliver minimal local results. The truth? When you're a local business, you don't need to follow the e-commerce marketing playbook that demands 20-30% of your budget for inconsistent results.
This episode challenges the conventional wisdom about word-of-mouth marketing for fitness businesses. While most digital marketers dismiss it as unreliable, I argue it's actually the foundation of community building—exactly what local studios need to thrive. By combining targeted local events with strategic digital tactics, studios can create sustainable growth without breaking the bank.
The power of community events cannot be overstated. Finding 3-4 targeted local gatherings provides free publicity, demonstrates community integration, and creates opportunities to showcase your expertise through mini-sessions. This approach builds momentum by connecting with prospects in your immediate 2–5-mile radius—your ideal client pool. Even better, having your Google Business Profile ready at these events enables immediate review collection that builds critical trust.
Reviews equal trust, and trust drives business. I share a simple yet powerful system: sending five personalized emails daily to long-standing members requesting reviews while offering incentives for friend referrals. When trainers participate using their personal profiles, it adds authenticity and algorithmic benefit to your online presence. This simultaneously improves your reputation and leverages existing relationships to introduce new prospects.
Remember that everyone judges a book by its cover. High-value clients want to see authentic values expressed through your visuals, messaging, and pricing. When you confidently communicate who you are, you naturally attract clients willing to pay for value. This isn't about tactics; it's about strategy—being the visionary who builds something remarkable in your community. Ready to transform your fitness business through authentic, community-focused marketing? Listen now and start implementing these proven approaches today.
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If you're a local establishment, you shouldn't be spending 20 to 30% of your marketing on that. In fact, you should be paying a lot less than that why it's a lot easier for you to get clients. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fit to Grit Cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and we're going to continue the thread of what we talked about in our last episode. We're going to dive a little bit more on ego. If you're the best, why aren't you showing up? So, to go into this a little bit deeper, you know that you offer more value than your competition, but why aren't your customers realizing it? What if the problem really isn't your service but how you, as a studio, are showing up to your audience? I've talked to a plethora of prospects, clients over the years and I always kind of get the same kind of response. I'm going to the conversation talking through their brand, what they're building. They keep losing their prospects, their clients, existing clients to other companies that are showing up. Part of that is going to come down to customer service, but a lot of that's really going to come into how you're showing up as an organization and how you're showing up with your marketing, your branding, who you are. Many companies really rely on that ability for word of mouth to really build them up and, in fact, you'll probably hear lots of digital marketers talk a lot about oh, you don't need word of mouth, it's inconsistent, it doesn't help me grow, it doesn't help you grow. It's very inconsistent. I'm here to tell you something else. I'm actually going to be probably one of the only marketers out there as I always say. I'm a marketer that hates marketing, when in reality I'm really just a marketer that loves authenticity. I'm a brander at heart. I love dealing with the messaging and all that stuff, but that is besides the point. I'm going to be the first to tell you that. What if you're looking at it wrong? What if word of mouth is the start of building a community? What if digital marketing can play a role in those efforts and what you're trying to achieve? You can build sustainability, you can build clientele and you don't need gimmicky tactics especially if you're under a million dollars to start building that consistency and that lead flow. So how do you combine that digital marketing, how do you combine that local we'll just say search results, local SEO, search engine marketing with your word of mouth camp and your existing audience and your community that you're building in house.
Speaker 0:We're going to talk a little bit today about the benefits of building more organic presence, your visibility, without continuing to increase ad spend, how to really build a review system for you and what you're trying to build internally and how that can actually help you build that trust you need for that first interaction with that next prospect and if you're of higher value, we'll just say 200 plus more memberships, how can you really attract the right audience and give them what they're searching for? So let's start off by going a little bit deeper. If you haven't already listened to the last episode that we put up, we talked a little bit more into the strategic approach on connection, confidence and contribution, how those three pillars can be your guiding factor to help you build a brand up and how to reach right audience within local search and your branding. But for this episode, we're going to dive a little bit more granular into those tactics, right? So more organic visibility without increasing ad spent here's something I see in the industry all the time. Let's do a whole bunch of Facebook and Instagram ads. Let's fatigue ourselves by creating all this great creative, all this great messaging. An offer page, a landing page. Try to send traffic to it. Tweak our messaging, learn from it, do it over, do it over. That works, it does. But it works for e-com brands. It works for organic type companies. They have a much broader audience. One and two have about 20 to 30% of their budget going to marketing.
Speaker 0:If you're a local establishment, you shouldn't be spending 20 to 30% of your marketing on that. In fact, you should be paying a lot less than that. Why? It's a lot easier for you to get clients. You're not me. I'm a marketing agency. I have to spread myself out. I have to put out 250 plus pieces of content a week just to stay relevant and to be able to build my audience. You're not going to compete with that on a local market. You're not going to compete with that fitness enthusiast that has millions and millions and millions of followers. And or they come to you and say pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars to send one person to you. That's stupid. You have to have a much more community centric approach. You and say pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars to send one person to you. That's stupid. You have to have a much more community-centric approach. So how do you build more organic visibility without increasing ad spend. Well, organic search is becoming all about brand awareness and brand recognition. So find community events.
Speaker 0:Going back on our last cast, we talk a lot about your confidence, building your messaging, your visuals and all that. Make sure that's all established correctly. And if you've already got all that and you're living by that and you understand your values as community, then you should already be looking this direction anyway. Focus on finding those people in your community through events. Find three or four targeted events. Grow your organic visibility through these local events Even better.
Speaker 0:Instead of creating these offers that have people come in, go to these events and maybe you have plant sessions at the event. I know that sounds crazy, right? Oh, no one's going to take time out of their day. Here's another thing You're going to get free publicity out of it. You're going to show you're building a community with your community and that's what's going to actually build momentum and that's how you're going to grow. It doesn't. Is it sexy? No, but it's a great momentum builder, especially if you're in a two to five. You're just getting people within a two to five mile radius. That's all you really have to do. If you have multiple locations, just spread out to the other cities or other locations and do something similar.
Speaker 0:There's way more ways that you can build organic visibility. But then you can take those events, you can get pictures, you can have a review system up front and here's a kicker you could have Google my Business or your Google Business Profile up on your screen when you're at this event. You can do an assessment, you can do these classes. Have someone that's not even an actual part of your audience, that's actually a member, leave a review for you and talk about how great it is. The session you gave them was I mean, think about it an hour of your time or your trainer's time. What you're paying them? $50 for a session, $65, $75 for one hour session. Basically, you're paying $65 for for a session 65, 75 for one hour session. Basically, you're paying $65 for 10 people to come take a class, instead of $2,000 to get all these people and going into Facebook and doing all this crazy stuff. I mean, seriously, people. That's how easy it can be.
Speaker 0:Now, how do you really build a review system that builds trust before your first interaction? I'm a very big preacher on branding, personal branding, taking that personal brand, really diving in and building a community around that personal brand Because, remember, if you're the owner, you're the leader of your establishment, your brand is going to resonate with what you are. You're going to bring in trainers that match your ethos. You're going to bring in admin that match your ethos, and so you need to look at it. But that's much more. On the customer service side, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about organization in a different series. This is the foundational series. We're talking about a lot of foundational elements here for marketing. So let's talk a little bit about a review system that actually builds trust. Think about it this way Reviews equal trust. That's a kicker. Everyone just looks at reviews and they're like oh, I need a review. The more reviews you have, the more trust you have. It's as simple as that. It's a good start. So let's talk about a system that works.
Speaker 0:I talked a little bit about this on the last episode. This is what I've seen work. This is what we've done for a plethora of the studios we work with, especially the ones that have very little reviews. You start off by you do a combination campaign. There's different softwares you can use. If you want to do this automatically, I kind of highly recommend you do it internally first. In fact, we'll leave a comment in the box below. We do have some partners that are good management systems for reviews that you can utilize for your audience, that we partner with with a lot of the marketing stuff we do for our studios. So I'm more than welcome to talk to you about those partnerships and give you a cross-promotional deal. Blah, blah, blah. For now, what you should really focus on is doing yourself first and getting an understanding of how it works.
Speaker 0:An email, kind of an email campaign, a pre-purchased email campaign Well, it's actually going to be post-purchase, sorry, because they are going to be existing clients. So what I want you to do is I want you to get take a, you know, go back to the last one if you haven't watched, and you'll get a start a bit. But overall, I want you to sit down and I want you to make a list. Make a list of all of your members, or get your list and organize it from the ones that have been there the longest to the ones that have been there the least. Start with the ones that have been there the longest. They're already your advocates, unless you no longer want those people as your clients and you're trying to weed them out. They should be the ones that value you and your growth and what you're trying to do the most, so they are going to be the ones that are most likely going to leave a review.
Speaker 0:I want you to send five emails a day. That's it. You could double your business with just five emails a day, would you? I know I would and start off by sending those reviews, and here's where the kicker comes in. I don't just want you to send and ask them for a review. I don't want you to send them some short link on oh, leave a review here. I want you and or your trainer that has those and this could be even better you could have your trainers do this as well, and I highly recommend this because of the personal brand aspect.
Speaker 0:I want you to do five emails a day and say I really appreciate you being part of this facility, part of this studio. You know we're really looking to build our community out. We'd love if you can leave a review here's the link to do so and then be like and, because of the good faith, if you leave us a review, we're also willing to give you one month for free if you bring one of your friends into one of one of our next classes, one of our next sessions, group trainings, a day at the open gym, whatever you prefer, but do that. And so it's kind of like you're doing a gimmicky offer, right? You're kind of saying, bring a friend in. You know it's not gimmicky, but you know, bring a friend and get a month free. You're doing that, but you're also asking up front. You're building trust and you're building advocacy with your existing audience. You're making them think about you leave a review, and then what happens? Then they're like, oh yeah, I can bring a friend. What does their friend say? Well, I'm kind of there, but I really know. And then they'll be like, oh here, I just left them a review, look at here.
Speaker 0:Now you just position yourself to the friend and the friend and in reality, that's branding and how local SEO really works to its best benefits. Even better if you have your trainers. Do it have their own profiles within. And Even better, if you have your trainers, do it have their own profiles within. And, like I said, we have software that can handle this. If you need to, but have your trainer's name, they'll say the trainer's name. And now you're starting to build more algorithm towards the rest of your team, building that we into the brand If it's not just you, the owners or the admin that no one talks to, but it's the person that actually understands them. And now you're doing a plethora of things here Reputation, positioning, experience. You're providing all three of those trust-building factors within a single review and you're getting clients from it and you're moving up in the local ranking. I don't know why people don't do this, why studios haven't been taking advantage of this more or why they don't think of how valuable it is, but that's a good review system.
Speaker 0:Start off there. So how do you start attracting high-value clients who are already searching for what you offer? This is a good one. So, first and foremost, I want you to really think about what I'm about to say. Everyone's searching for what you have to offer. Everyone's looking for you. Everyone's searching for what you have to offer. Everyone's looking for you. Everyone's looking for your particular offerings. You're just bringing in the wrong people.
Speaker 0:I talked about a story on our last episode. I'm going to go back to that story about how selling a thousand dollar package and then they're nothing wrong with, approachable, like I said, but is that really going to attract, or is communicating the ability to attract those higher paying clients. So what are you going to do about that? Well, you have to have the ability to one live out your values, leverage those values in your vision and communicate that through your visuals, your messaging, your offers and your pricing. That's how you are going to attract higher value clients.
Speaker 0:I'm going to leave a very simple concept to you. I'm going to go off an old phrase that we all talked about when we were kids. You ever heard the phrase don't judge a book by its cover. Everyone judges a book by its cover. It's inevitable, it's human nature to judge if it's going on a date, if it's hiring a business partner, if it's talking to someone at a company and you're trying to build a partnership and, in reality, building values are your guide to represent yourself in a way, but that's off the subject. Don't judge a book by its cover. We all judge a book by its cover. So if we all judge a book by its cover, why aren't you valuing yourself enough to showcase who you are and living by who you are and communicating that effectively? Why are you looking at the things that are actually going to move the needle as something cheap and keeping yourself in a plateau of just doing the work, doing those tactics, finding that next tactic that's going to work. I'll be realistic with you.
Speaker 0:Back to our original concept here more organic visibility without increasing ad spend. The more authentic you are with yourself, the better conversion you're going to have, the more people that are going to want to work with you, the more people that you're going to attract that want to work with you, the more community you're going to build around those people that you want to work with. And it's all about less so tactics and all about your strategy. It's all about you being a visionary. So be that. Move away from the operations, unless you're really good with the operations. Then hire someone to be the visionary. Be that person you want to be, spread your message confidently, contribute to your audience the way you want to contribute and connect with the people that you want to connect with. And that's what I'm going to leave it off with for today's cast. This is another episode of the Fit to Grit cast, where we talk through all those visionary ideas that come up to us as we're going through our normal daily activities. Again, I'm your host, zach Coleman, and we'll all talk next time.
