To succeed in online advertising, especially with increased competition in the digital marketing landscape, you need to focus on three key goals:
1. Establish yourself as a likeable and trustworthy authority figure in your market. Most in the blogosphere call this the know-like-trust factor.
2. Capture leads (prospective client contact information)
3. Nurture your leads and convert them into new member sales
This list is written in order of importance. Most gym owners attempt to drive cold traffic directly to a signup page on their website in hopes of increasing sales. As a microgym owner, however, your #1 marketing and advertising goal is to first prove to people why they should listen to you and consider your gym.
You need to consistently provide value to your audience if you want them to know, like and trust you. You can create value in many different ways. You can write articles and blog posts, Facebook Live Q&A’s, video tutorials or webinars. Ask yourself, “what are the most common problems that current clients are looking to me to solve?” List out those problems, prescribe solutions, and distribute those in the form of online content.
Your ads will consistently underperform if you skip ahead and drive traffic to a front end offer. Offer your prospects something of value first before you ask for the sale.
You need to dedicate part of your advertising budget to audience engagement – to nurturing your audience with content.
Using your ad budget solely to advertise and promote your front end offer, like a 21-day rapid fat loss program or a 6 week challenge, will lead to suboptimal results. When your front end offer looks and sounds the same as every other gym in your area, there is very little to set your apart from your competition. Instead, build engagement campaigns that educate your audience on who you are, what you do, and why you can help them. If you haven’t promoted your valuable content to your audience and they see your ad for a 6 Week Challenge that looks just like the gym down the street, your prospect will have to make their decision based on price. No one wins this game.
Creating and promoting content is easier than you think. You can promote your content and build a large, warm audience with as little as $1 a day. Tune in next week where we’ll show you how!