Every month, health clubs spend large amounts of money on lead generation. After all, the only way to make money is to spend money, right? But do you know if your money is well spent?
I don’t want to waste my marketing dollars on campaigns that aren’t reaping any rewards. As a result, I rely on our CRM software to tell me which marketing campaigns are working so I can make informed budget decisions. If you’re a health club manager, you can leverage your sales software or lead management tool as well to save your club valuable marketing dollars in the long run.
Capture Lead Information: Start by electronically capturing all lead information, including the source the lead came from, in your sales software. I recommend setting the lead source field to be a required field so that sales staff are prompted to ask the lead how they heard about your club and enter it with the lead’s details. I’ve found the best way to standardize the lead source responses is to use a drop down for your lead source field, so staff can select from a pre-populated list. You should also check if your lead management software can be hooked up to your website or Facebook page so that all web leads flow right into the software. Therefore, your lead sources are pre-populated and are automatically scheduled for follow-up.
Define a Consistent Sales Process: The next step is to ensure that your sales team follows up and proactively sells to every lead. Use your sales and retention software to set up scheduled emails, text messages and phone calls to ensure that your sales team is actively reaching out to each lead. On average it takes a minimum of four points of contact to make a sale, so having a follow-up plan for each new lead helps staff avoid letting a lead that you’ve spent money to acquire get missed in the selling process.
Make Adjustments Based on Results: Lastly, run reports to check which marketing campaigns are yielding the best results. Because all your leads will have been entered into your sales and retention software with their lead source, you should be able to easily pull a report that lets you see which lead source brought in the most leads. You should also be able to see which marketing campaigns result in the most sales from your reports.
By following the steps above, you’ll know exactly which marketing activities are generating the most leads and the best quality leads that convert to a sale.
Armed with this information, you can make informed decisions about which campaigns to cut back and which ones you should spend more money on. Because your sales staff should be logging all their activities in your CRM software, you can be sure you’re not throwing marketing dollars away by generating leads that never get followed up on.
Rachel Lai is the marketing manager for InTouch, the global leader in solutions to acquire and retain members for health and fitness clubs. She can be reached at rlai@intouchtechnology or visit intouchfollowup.com.
