S1 Ep 13: Beyond Facebook: The New Way To Market Your Fitness Business

Welcome back to this episode. Pretty excited for this one. We're talking all things the new age of online marketing in 2021. Ev Chapman, welcome to the call.

Thank you. Good to be back.

Yeah, very good. Good to have you here. You're turning into a pretty regular co-host here.

I am. Yeah, I'm loving it.

Now, Ev, today I wanted to talk about the new age of online marketing, get straight to it. In previous episodes, if you haven't heard yet, I talked about when I started Orphean Marketing, And it was all about rankings and SEOs and Penguins and Pandas and getting to the top of Google. Basically, if you got to number one in Google, you would really get a floodload of leads. And then it was all about Facebook and AdWords and the cheap days. And then I think now we're getting, you know, marketing is getting a very matured audience and a matured process. I mean, when I say marketing, I talk about Facebook. Let's be honest.

Well, I think that's what a lot of people think, right? And that's certainly what we have. We do a lot of teaching on Facebook and, you know, I feel like, you know, being kind of in the golden age of Facebook, it's been easy. And, you know, I think every platform gets to a point where it gets harder. And it matures, as you say. And I think, you know, you went through that with SEO. It was like the golden age of SEO, the golden age of AdWords, the golden age of Facebook. And you kind of get stuck, I think, sometimes in these, like this one thing that, you know, like it works and everyone's doing it. And then suddenly it doesn't work and you're like, oh, what should I do?

Yeah. And, you know, what is the next? Uh, we can go marketing tactic. What is the next marketing tactic that's the new age of online marketing? I want to share, I want to share, I think, what is the new age. I want to, I want to talk about that, like, what is it?

Yeah. Uh, okay, so before, before we go there, um, because I think, you know, everyone's looking for the new kind of new thing, like shiny object thing, um, but I think that You know, the new way is really, um, it's, it's trying to, uh, I suppose it's kind of diversifying a little bit, would you say?

Well, diversifying, yes, but I, I mean, we diversify our marketing efforts. Now we're talking about marketing efforts on either organically, meaning free, or paid, whatever you're, whatever you're using. You're either using 2 2 of those, and each one of those has massive options that you can decide to use. When I started marketing, I was using SEO because it was free, and that was the one reason why I decided to use it for.

That's an easy choice.

Choice. I hated the days— I don't know if anybody can relate— when a company would call you up, right? An agency would call you up and then say, Listen, sir, what's your marketing budget? And I'd be, I'd be like, not sure how to answer the question. Like, what do you think my marketing budget is? It's zero. There's no marketing budget here.

No.

And, and that was the frustration for many years when I got calls like that. I'm like, what's the marketing budget? There's no marketing budget. And, and so I love the shoestring marketing approach, but I'll do one better. And this is what I predict. This is what I think. I think this is what's always been around, but I think it's becoming more relevant right now. So number one, the best way to get customers, the best way to get new clients into your studio, it doesn't matter how much competition you have, is to ensure that you have a following of people that know, love, and trust you. Know, love, and trust you. Now, obviously, if you're a new business, that may be harder than existing businesses, but existing businesses sometimes forget that. So I do think we have an equal playing field depending what you are, but I do believe that we need to get people to love us and our brand. That is the key.

Yep.

Now, once we establish that's the key, we need to figure out the fastest and cheapest, the most cost-effectively way to do that. And the reason why I say cheapest there is because most people on this platform are not getting investments or any equity, and the equity is their wallet, their money, their savings. And so we want to make sure that we're careful of where we're spending our dollar in marketing. And so that's the reason, the big reason why I believe most marketing can be taught instead of paying someone to do, because there's so many different sources. So this gets me onto my clue, and I guess this is where, you know, I've probably spent the last 7 years into this, is that I believe for a small business, marketing should be a multiple approach effect where We don't just go through one thing. I'm just going to put all on Facebook ads, or we're not just going to go. I'm just doing organic social media. We're not just going to do. I'm just going to do email marketing forever, which I know a lot of trainers won't do. I do believe that is that we must do at least four. I prefer five marketing marketing. Channels at the same time. And when we push them out at the same time, what happens? That's, that's when people can start to know us, love us, and trust us. When we decide to do one, which is either Facebook, and we just go along with Facebook, you know, I'll give you an example. People say, okay, I'm just gonna do Facebook ads. And then the, the negative of that, this is what the audience is going to think. Oh, those guys have got too much money, so they're going to be expensive to train there.

Oh,

that's the negative. The positive of that, people will see you and you'll pay for the ads. It's the same thing with SEO, search engine optimization. If you're at the top of the sponsored links, guess, guess what the first thing people think is? Oh, that's gonna be too expensive.

Yeah.

They've got money to spend on AdWords, right? This is really deep, deep in, in how consumers take information aboard. And so we have to know where the levels are, where we want to hit the, hit the button and so forth. And, and, and I prove my point of this is because I think I was saying before, like, oh, so Coles, or where do you shop, or what do you do? People walk into different stores Depending on the money they're willing to spend on a brand or a service or a product. You know, they don't walk into the store generally if they think that there's no way that they can spend money on that product.

Yep.

Or service, unless, you know, you're going for a bit of window shopping and that's something that you get a thrill out of, but majority of people don't. Yeah.

Yeah, I think you— I mean, females do this all the time as we veer away from shops that we think, oh, that's going to be too expensive, like I'm going to be embarrassed if I walk in there.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And so we want to be comfortable, and that comes back to the know, liking, and trusting and all those things. And so we have to build up, um, we have to build up that, that brand loyalty and brand love. And I was listening to, um, Uh, I was listening to a podcast about Nike the other day when I was on my lawnmower mowing my lawn. I listen to podcasts on it now, and that's another story. And, um, talking about when Nike went to market just to professional athletes, they started to actually lose revenue share to the everyday, um, women at the time. They were trying to target women and they were losing revenue share there, so they had to readjust their offerings to ensure that it connected. So they've still got professional athletes, but it connected the everyday person. And that's something to consider in your marketing.

That's really interesting, um, you know, because obviously they use a lot of athletes and, uh, high-profile people in their marketing. But it obviously wasn't connecting with the real people who actually buy their products.

Yeah. And the people that buy their products is the key. Phil Knight, that's who was on the podcast.

Oh yeah, cool.

And so we have to understand that if we have a product or a service, we're in the service-based business, and you want to get the right person that's going to pay for that, We've got to understand that they love you. So when you got that down pat, and that's the story for another day, that's making sure that you have all those attributes in place. We then want to talk about what's, you know, where should you wave the flag?

Yeah.

And I don't really mind wherever, but as long as you're waving the flag consistently on multiple platforms. So when I say consistently, and this is probably the hardest thing with what I'm saying, Is that if you're going to do Facebook ads and you say, I'm going to spend $20 a day on Facebook ads or $10 on Facebook ads or $50 a day on Facebook ads or whatever it's going to be, I've got to consistently do that. Plus, am I going to decide to send an email out once a week to, you know, in our program, Common Marketing, we recommend sending anything called sticky content out once a week, once or twice a week. And then you want to make sure that you can ask for the sale either through a Facebook ad or a short email to the database. We call that fast leads once every 2 weeks, so once a week depending on how much content you're putting out. And that would be the third thing I would do. And then it might be interviewing people in your studio, and that's a big thing— testimonials and interviews into your studio— and do that once a week. And so it doesn't, I don't think it really matters what you do, especially when you're a small business, locally based small business.

Yeah.

Our marketing is only going to a 5 to 10 to 15 to 20K radius. So you've got to stop the shiny object stuff. You know, when we look at marketing, oh, it's media buying and it's billboard advertising and it's remarketing. Yeah, all these things are okay, but remember you're doing all that within a 5 to 10, 15 to 20K radius. if that. And so you've got to be really consistent of putting that out all the time. So if you've got a database of 500 people or 100 people or a social media following of 300, well, that's amazing. You don't need a social media following of 20,000 or 10,000 or 5,000. You don't need that to run a successful studio. What you need is you need loyal following and loyal fans that as soon as they get your content, they're reading every word because they're your potential next client into your studio. So the key here is, are you doing 5 pieces of marketing consistently week in and week out? Most likely, most businesses that we come in contact with, the fitness businesses that we come in contact with initially, is that the marketing is stopping and starting.

Yeah,

it's not feeling fluid, like it's not flowing. And generally our flowing stuff, we may be having one or two things if that flowing. So it's always generally stopping and starting. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think so. I think, um, I think as well, like, people will— they'll do something a couple of times and then they'll be like, no, that doesn't work. And so then they stop doing it where it's like sometimes things work, it's just they take time and you're just too early to know whether it works or not. And I think that's another reason why, you know, having, you know, 4 or 5 different things on the go, if one isn't working, you can kind of like rely on the others and kind of fix the tap. We kind of talk about it in terms of like the levers, you know, like, you know, if you're at the local the local brewery and something's not coming out of the tap, they gotta like go back and look at the plumbing and see where the problem is.

Yeah, exactly like that. If you're at your favorite beer house, if you're a beer drinker, they definitely have, you know, 4 to 5 regular beers on tap. One runs out, you go back down and keep that flowing again. You can't just have one regular beer on tap. You need the 5. to, to ensure that, you know, if one does drop, person at the counter says, yeah, no dramas, I'll take the next one. If you have one beer on tap and that stops, everything stops. Everything stops.

Yeah.

And so I think we're all experiencing that through Facebook and, you know, Facebook ads. And it's interesting, depending where you're located, depending on the cost of Facebook ads now.

Yeah.

We speak to our New Zealand clients They're getting leads for $1, $2, $3, right? Sometimes in Sydney, built-up areas, leads are coming for $20, $25, $30 depending on how built up they are and really depends on how much competition they've got running. Now, both of those situations, person who's getting $3 leads thinks that's not good enough and the person who's getting $20 leads thinks that's not good enough. It all comes down to expectations of expectations, understanding the value of a lead, and is it actually working? Is it converting? And again, that comes down to ensuring that once you do things consistently, you'll know that if you're running a $3 a day, $3 a lead process, and you're converting at 10, 20, 30%, or you're— I mean, and you're running a $30 a lead process in Sydney and you're converting at 60%, well, happy days. Yeah, you've got to know those numbers. And I think that's the— that's kind of like the icing on the cake now, is that I think fortunately and unfortunately, depending on the type of personality you are, uh, tracking your numbers is a big part of now marketing and understanding where they're, you know, where they're all coming from. And if you've never tracked your numbers, you never run Facebook ads, you've never done organic You're probably listening to this and going, oh my gosh, this is going well and truly over my head right now. I don't even know how to read Facebook.

Most people don't know what the numbers mean in

Facebook.

Exactly. Yeah. But I think, you know, I think there are important numbers in your business and maybe we could do an episode on that, kind of, you know, what numbers to look out for in your marketing because I think there's not that many. You know, there's only a few that are really important and that can really like move the needle. So yeah, but so if people are struggling with Facebook, which I'm just going to assume that most people are at the moment because it's a bit of a hard landscape, what should they do instead? Like what's their next best bet?

Well, I think the next best bet is we call a theory called the $5 a day process. And the $5 a day process is what we teach a lot of our marketing ninjas. Basically spending at least $5 a day on your attention awareness content. And the theory is this, is that if Facebook isn't working for you and you're looking at the numbers and the digits and you're going, oh my gosh, I'm spending X amount, $300 a month, and I didn't get any leads at all, got no clients. That is true. However, you just got brand equity for $300. You built up your brand for $300. And we go back to Phil Knight. As I was trying to find his name, I was Googling his worth, by the way— $50.7 billion, 24th richest person in the world.

Wow.

Yep. And, uh, I can tell you that, you know, that's $50.7 billion of brand equity right there.

Yep.

So the $300 that you paid and you're annoyed at yourself because nothing happened, something just did happen. You just put up brand equity, and brand equity is the client that's going to walk in your door in a month or 2 months. Brand equity is when you send an email out consistently each week and then somebody actually replies back.

Yeah.

Brand equity is when somebody refers you. And so going back to my $5 theory a day, every day investing $5 to even either just boost your, your video out there to your local region, probably put a 10-15K radius on it.

Yeah.

Just boost it out there. The simplest thing you can possibly do. Facebook will tell you, we'd like to boost this. Say yes. To a 10 to 15, 20K radius. And so then people see that you're around and people see your brand. And that's perfect for local businesses that don't have a very big budget, but people start talking about their business in the community to their friends, etc., etc. And I just think that if you are in business And if you were down to your last, you know, $5 a day, you've got to make the decision, am I going to spend that on a $4.50 coffee or I'm going to spend $5 in, um, a boosted post that literally be seen to thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people? You know, if you're getting— I mean, the thing that I get really excited about is that if you actually have no money in marketing, it's pretty fun. Really fun. If you have no money to market your business, it's actually fun.

Yeah.

Because you're forced to come up with some really good content. You're forced to do more client interviews. You're forced to do organic marketing. You're forced to ensure that you're consistent in what you do. And that is just such a great way to, to master your craft. And if Facebook paid ads isn't working for you, well, that's just an ex— that's just a reason why you really need to take, you know, this whole space a little bit more seriously and say, okay, well, am I doing the one piece of marketing consistently like Facebook ads was delivering me but it's not delivering me now? And to do that, you actually can do it. You, you can organically make sure you post every single day. You can put $5 out there on a video every single day. That's on autopilot. You can ask for a client review every single day from one of your clients. You can do a what we call a hero video. You can film one of your clients about their story every day if you wanted to. You could do a really mindful marketing post around a written post around your, um, your client success. You could go out to your local partners, uh, allied health professionals or non-allied health professionals like local pub or coffee shop or meat pie shop or chicken shop, and ask them if they would like to partner with you and, and, and do some cross-partnering there. You can go to your local, um, I was going to say, um, your local community kind of, um, um,

community center.

Community, like, um, center, but, um, local community kind of— I forget the word of it— um, group. That has small businesses and you can put your business there.

Oh, the, uh, what do they call that? The, the business chamber.

Business chambers. Yeah. And so I guess what I'm getting to is that if you have no money to market, you generally have time.

Yes.

And so we need to be better with our time management so we can have then 4 to 5 marketing funnels working at the same time. And then that comes down to, you know, we're gonna go deep on this show, like Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn and things like that. That's what we teach now program. However, you either got time or you got money. Yep. And if you've got money, um, definitely you can, definitely you can run on ads. However, you, you've got to understand that you're going to have to be paying whatever the value of that is worth. And depending where you're located, that the, the, it would tell. And even though it doesn't matter if you have the best landing page or the best videos, I mean, running on Facebook or running AdWords is not what it was 10 years ago. So I think we've got to understand that that's— it's a great way to get business, but you need to be prepared to pay that way.

Yes.

If not, please invest the time in your calendar to say, I've got 2 hours a day and I'm going to spend it on this marketing. And I think that's the greatest way to actually know that your marketing is working for sure. So the new age of online marketing, as a summary here, is 4, at least 4 marketing funnels. And when I say a funnel, it means a process that you do in a weekly period. If it's once a day or once a week or every couple days on a consistent basis— and consistent is probably the most underutilized word right now in marketing— the consistency is the key to actually generate a consistent flow of leads into your business.

Yeah. I think it's just doing that, showing up every day and doing the marketing is the most important thing. I think we've had it good where we could pay to play and save a bit of time. But now it's like, no, actually the age-old word of consistency actually works and it works in the long term for us.

Totally. So yeah, if, if you need some ideas on that, just— we've got a group called Crush Your Fitness Marketing. You can jump into there. It's called Crush Your Fitness Marketing into Facebook, and that will give you some real tactical moves of how to actually, um, how to actually get these strategies working on a tactical basis. Um, some explainer videos and things like that. You can jump in and crush your fitness marketing in there. So that's the answer to the new age of online marketing. It's not— well, listen, there's always shiny objects on the horizon.

Yeah.

And I actually, you know, I'm— the jury's out still what the best next shiny object is. There's a few, there's a few playing in that space, but there's nothing that's, um, there's nothing that I— I think consistency at the moment is Definitely going to give you way more bang for your buck than spending the time going down the shiny object. And I'll tell you what, when there's a shiny object, you'll hear about it. So you don't really need to go out and find it.

There's plenty of other people who are saying what the shiny objects are.

Totally. Before we wrap up, a quick one that I want to ask you was that You know, just for those who are struggling with the first, like, just getting it all together, I mean, you're really good in the systems of things to get, you know, 4 to 5 pieces running at the same time or 4 to 5 different, you know, marketing strategies. That's a newsletter or that's partnerships or if that's referral marketing, you know, on a time component. How would you make that work to say, okay, I've got this many hours, You know, 4 to 5 sounds really a lot, like I'm only doing half of one. How do you break down, you know, the importance and the time process to get that done?

Yeah, I actually think the easiest way to do it is to find the shortcuts to get those things done easily. So for instance, if you're writing an email every week, have some kind of framework that you use, you know. So I write our emails every week. And I literally write an opening sentence, 3 points, and then a call to action. And that's how I write it every single week. And so rather than trying to just stare at a blank screen, I've got like a little kind of starter that I can fit it into. If you're doing partnerships, you know, should make sure that you have, you know, templates that you reuse all the time. If you're doing social media, have some kind of system. So like, you know, you might do Mindful Monday. you know, Workout Wednesdays, that kind of thing. So just like make it as simple as you can for yourself to get, you know, to get into the consistency of things. And, you know, even like you can cheat. Like if you had a really good post that you did, just expand on it and use it as an email. Right. And then, you know, like so all sorts of different things like that. Just like Be smart about, you know, if you don't have the time, then you've got to find smarter ways to do things.

Awesome. You don't have the time, rehash, reuse, re-expand, change it around because a lot of people don't remember what you posted yesterday.

They really don't. Like the internet goes super fast. Like and let's be honest, if you're posting things on your Facebook page, people like 10% or less of people actually see that. So you might as well double up on it.

And I do like when I see posts, you know, we do— we— you see posts, similar posts across different platforms. When people are following, it starts to get the messaging. If they're missing something, they're seeing the rest over here. So yeah, just, you know, keep the same theme going. Yeah. Awesome team. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. If you have enjoyed it, be sure to, um, if you want more of it as well, be sure to jump in our private Facebook group. It's called Crush Your Fitness Marketing, Crush Your Fitness Marketing, and you can request to join. It's a private group, so we've got a very nice, um, host at the front. Her name's Ainsley, and she'll let you in. Just say, hey, I'm keen to join, I found you on the podcast, and she'll let you into the group. All good. And, um, you can start engaging in some of this more tactical information in That group. Otherwise, guys, amazing to have you aboard. If you have liked it, I'm sure you're subscribing by now, or send us a review as well on the podcast. That helps other people to find out about us and to really help to expand these messages to where they actually need to go to, you know, to another budding fitness professional who really wants to make an impact in the community. Bye for now. Thanks so much, Ev.

Thanks.