The Only Thing You Need to Know About Marketing

As much as I’d love to tell you there is a magic formula or one special marketing strategy you can do to generate a ton of memberships — I just can’t. There is no such thing as a marketing home run. However, there is one strategy that I’ve found that works every time, 100 percent of the time.

Can you guess what that strategy is? I’ll have you know that it’s not direct mail. It’s not referral marketing. It’s not Internet marketing, it’s not signage or gift cards, or text messages, or Facebook, or corporate membership arrangements.

It’s none of those things because it is ALL of those things.

In order to guarantee a steady stream of prospects coming through your door you need to do lots of things, all at once. While that sounds simple, most gym owners, and small business owners in general, just don’t do it. Some have never heard of my theory, others don’t know where to start and plenty of others refuse to believe me and continue beating their heads against the wall trying to find that magic formula.

From my experience, the gym operators that ignore this theory or choose not to put it to use rarely grow and often fail. It’s very sad. By the way, I say that it is theory, but I’ve put it to use in many fitness businesses and 100 percent of the time it builds their business.

Using one marketing method after another is better than not marketing at all. However, in order to get the absolute most out of your marketing efforts, you need to layer strategy upon strategy at the same time. Utilizing all of the various free and paid marketing methods may not always provide us the immediate “direct response” that we are always looking for, but the cumulative effort over time will. This I promise you.

You don’t have to be perfect at implementing these strategies; you just need to do it. Many small business owners (even I have been guilty of it before) find themselves unmotivated from time to time. Marketing is often the first place we begin slacking, many times because we aren’t always sure if we’ll generate a response from our efforts. But I promise you that you will see an exponentially greater response from your marketing if you just do a little here, a little there, and eventually you’ll have so many marketing strategies out there that people will come in.

Growing your health club is purely a numbers game. The more marketing methods you have working for you, the more leads come in. The more leads come in, the more sales you make. The more sales you make, the more money in your pocket.

Bottom line: I don’t know of one strategy that will bring in 100 new members, but I do know 100 strategies that will each bring in one new member. If you do not have multiple marketing methods in place that run consecutively and simultaneously then you are not maximizing the return on your marketing dollar.

Here are 15 ideas that you can implement very quickly at your health club:

• “Lunch and Learn” at a local business
• Send a direct mail postcard
• Run referral contests
• Call canceled members
• Distribute gift cards
• Manage a lead box campaign
• Send faxes to local businesses
• Attend Chamber of Commerce event
• Distribute flyers at local university
• Run a canned food drive
• Member appreciation party
• Signage inside and outside your club
• Send a monthly newsletter
• Have a “Bring a Friend” day
• Give trial passes to local employees

On their own, each of those marketing strategies will be good for at least one new member. But when you combine several of them at once and continue to promote to your market in a variety of ways, the response will be exponential, and you’ll get a much greater return on your time and your marketing dollar.

Curtis Mock is the host of www.FitnessBusinessTelevision.com the TV show for fitness entrepreneurs. He is also the executive director of gymsuccess.com. Curtis can be reached at curtis@clubsolutionsmagazine.com.