When I became a President of a Fitness company, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I was all of sudden in charge of making a big impact on our sales, marketing, and online presence and I couldn’t fail and let my team down.
There was too much at stake.
I was out of my comfort zone.
I didn’t know what type of marketing to do, how much money to spend and what type of return I could expect.
This is where a lot of entrepreneurs struggle. Their expertise isn’t in an area that impacts their sales, the return on investment and can leave them never fulling getting to the goals they want to achieve. They don’t have a marketing strategy, are spending LOADS of money and aren’t speaking to their audience.
We even hired a marketing firm. It was brutal. They couldn’t tell us what our spend would get us and we didn’t know that we had any other options. So we spent $20,000 (Their recommendation was a 100K brand makeover). We were actually pretty happy with it at the time. We thought…hmm…okay. This is a benchmark that we will work with.
Fast forward 6 months and we did the same damage in sales with 20% of the spend. I’m so glad that I was under the umbrella of a bigger organization to learn this lesson. Imagine being able to save $16,000 on a marketing project and not knowing that was an option?
Marketing is your RISE or your DEMISE. So treat it as such. Here are the 6 hard lessons you don’t want to learn anywhere else.
- Tell YOUR story. To beat your competition, you need to be uniquely you. I’m a fitness industry expert, President of a Fitness Company and serial-entrepreneur. I’ve worked for the 2 largest fitness companies in Canada – GoodLife and Steve Nash. I can assure you there is no one out there with that exact same experience which makes me so very different and specialized. You have a story too. Please – Tell it and don’t be afraid. People will buy from you because of it.
- Know YOUR Customer. Who are you talking to? If you are talking to everyone, you are talking to nobody. You need to speak directly to her. Like you are sitting beside her and able to say, “Mary, I know you feel like giving up. I’ve been there before.” This type of intimacy creates trust and a special bond. You can’t have that bond with everyone so be very selective of who that bond if with so you can be precise in your messaging.
- Speak to YOUR Customer. Before you write any blog post, share anything on social media or design any corporate material, review your customer persona. You need to be so dialed into how your word things, what words she would use and what problems she has. You will get 200% more return from being intentional with your messaging.
- Don’t Blindly Use Facebook Advertising. I’ve seen it time and time again. Create a Facebook ad wanting to promote a service or sale and having no strategy on people you are targeting. The most targeting that is typically done is age, female, and interested in health and fitness. Sounds familiar? GO deep! What job does she have? What books does she read? What blogs does she follow? Do you already have a customer list you can re-market to? The answers about your customers are there. You have to go deep and find those details so you don’t waste advertising dollars.
- Don’t Kid Yourself Of Where The Money Is At. 20% of your time gets you 80% of your results.  Know this inside and out. Spending time on social media doesn’t build your business. You do. Spent time providing value and content – videos, blog posts, interviews, workshops, etc. It is time well spent if you are actually helping others vs fooling yourself you are doing research while browsing Facebook and Instagram. Stop it.
- Spend Time Building A Content Plan. Advertising is a great way to increase leads if you are already doing everything you can content-wise. If you aren’t providing consistent content (Insta – 2 posts per day, Facebook – 1 post per day, Blog – 1 post per week), then start here. This is a free and easy way t get going first. There is no point investing in advertising if you aren’t doing the free stuff first. Additionally, if you don’t provide value, people won’t trust you enough to buy from you.
