• Amount paid upon enrolment
• Sales per day , per week
• Conversion rate ( per sales person )
Fulfilment :
• Attendance
• Retention
• Secondary spend ( programs and products )
• Member referrals . Although referrals are highly desirable , any business that relies heavily on referrals as their main source of new members is probably not optimising their marketing , and therefore missing out on potential new members .
Marketing for leads
The volume of new membership sales for a fitness business is totally dependent on the daily volume of sales conversations , which , in turn , is totally dependent on new lead generation . In other words , it all begins with marketing . Does the person responsible for marketing have a monthly budget – and are they authorised to spend it ?
In some fitness businesses , lead generation is the responsibility of sales people , through community outreach and constant follow-up of old prospects and ex-members . Although this can be effective , this activity risks irritating people and there ' s a risk of sales person burnout and churn .
Then there are clubs with a completely opposite culture when it comes to marketing and sales . Let ’ s call it ‘ Build it and they will come .’ Marketing and sales are low key , and the business is heavily reliant on enquiries from walk-ins , inbound calls and emails .
Whatever the model , it ’ s possible to use ‘ paid traffic ’ ( advertising ) to increase leads and sales . It ’ s also possible for the media costs of paid traffic to be self-funding .
Organic and paid social media marketing
While some fitness businesses may still do a little advertising in local print newspapers , paid traffic is now overwhelmingly online .
It ’ s important to clearly distinguish between organic online activities and paid traffic . There may be a team member who posts on social media , referring to free organic activities , but this is entirely separate to paid traffic on social media , which requires not only a different skill set , but also a budget .
In their earlier years , the two leading social media platforms , Facebook and Instagram ( owned by Facebook ), would make your posts visible in the newsfeeds of all your followers , for free . If you had 2,000 followers you wanted to promote a new offer to , you could reach their newsfeeds at no cost , and no risk . Sadly , it was too good to last . Those days disappeared when the social networks revealed themselves to actually be advertising platforms , restricting the visibility of organic posts to less than 10 % of a business page ’ s followers unless the page paid to extend the reach .
Of course , you get to see your posts ( making you feel good ), and a small percentage of your existing community of followers do too , but hardly any potential prospects will . Organic , unpaid posts on social media are the equivalent of placing fliers on the windscreens of existing members ’ cars in the club carpark . It ’ s very unlikely any prospective members will see them , and that it will lead to extra sales . But hey , they ’ re free !
How to cover your paid social traffic costs
It ’ s simple maths . Let ’ s say you set up a Facebook ad campaign spending $ 50 a day and run it four days every week , that ’ s $ 200 per week . If your joining fee is , for example , $ 99 , then the campaign need only generate two extra members a week to be , essentially , self-funding . The additional direct debit revenue that follows for the life of these extra memberships is the big payoff .
Look at it like this : imagine a large employer near your club rang and said ‘ We ’ re approaching all gyms in the area to recommend just one gym to our 300 + staff . They ’ ll pay full rates . The only catch is that we ’ d want you to pay us all joining fees received from our employees , which we ’ ll put towards the annual staff party .’ Would you say yes ?
10 steps to effective paid traffic lead-gen
Use the following steps to develop an effective paid traffic lead generation campaign on social media .
1 . Define your target audience .
The narrower the focus , the better . Think ‘ women over 40 who want to lose weight ’, ‘ golfers who want to add 5 metres to their drive ’ or ‘ men over 50 with back pain ’. It ’ s possible to have multiple target markets ( also known as avatars ), but if you do so , you will need to create lead generation campaigns for each group .
2 . Use existing solutions
If you don ’ t have a specific program to solve the audience problem , license a suitable one from a program provider . If you like developing
12 | NETWORK SUMMER 2020