Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Paid advertising: What’s the difference between, “Just do it,” and, “Buy these shoes today and get 10% off”? Today you’re going to get the answer, and you’re going to find out how to improve marketing at your gym. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin. Please hit “subscribe” wherever you’re watching or listening. With me today is gym owner, Two-Brain mentor and marketing expert, Colm O’Reilly. He’s also the founder of We Do Your Paid Marketing, a brand-new company that helps you do exactly what the name says. Colm, welcome from Ireland. How are you today?
Colm O’Reilly (00:30):
I’m great, Mike. I’m great. Thanks for having me. It’s great seeing that intro live because I’ve heard it so many times every week on the podcast, so it’s great seeing it actually.
Mike Warkentin (00:38):
That’s good. Well, you’re at least a second- or third-time guest already, but we haven’t had you out in a little bit, and I’m very happy to get you back here to talk about marketing, which is something that’s near and dear to you. I’m going to ask you this right off the top: differences between paid branding campaigns and paid direct response campaigns. What are they and what are you trying to accomplish?
Colm O’Reilly (00:56):
Yeah, absolutely. So, in general, when we take someone on for marketing mentoring, we start with the direct response or what’s known on Facebook—and by the way, whenever I say Facebook, it’s shorthand for Facebook and Instagram, and we can dig into that a little bit later if we want. But generally, when we start with someone’s gym, we want to get them leads straight away. We want to get them people who have at least an interest. Maybe it’s cold, maybe it’s super warm, but at least an interest in improving their fitness and health. And that’s a lead campaign on Facebook, and that’s your direct response. They’re scrolling along, we come along every third or fourth post and we’re like, “Hey, do you want to get fit?” Something like a message to that extent, and that’s a direct response because they click into that and we’re like, “Sweet, give us your name, phone and email.”
Colm O’Reilly (01:41):
Next step, privacy statement. No one ever reads the privacy policy ever, but we all have them. And then the next step is either like, “Thanks, one of our expert team will be in touch,” or “Hey, do you want to take the next step and book a consultation, book a free intro, book a No Sweat Intro?” So, an intro, that’s direct response. Why we start with that is because if we’ve got a limited amount of advertising dollars and we’ve got a limited amount of time, we want to invest it in the thing that’s going to bring us closer to sales because, let’s face it, most gym owners need more people in, or at least they need to up their sales, or frankly they need to develop their lead nurture and sales skills. So, that’s direct response. Brand awareness on Facebook is generally done to two other platforms.
Colm O’Reilly (02:21):
It’s known as the engagement campaign or the traffic campaign. And I’ll speak to engagement campaigns because that’s the one we’d recommend. An engagement campaign is basically boosting your already great organic content out to a targeted audience. So, if you’ve got a great post about how Samantha lost 20 pounds or how Jill got her first pull-up, or how Bethany managed to find time in between mining her kids and her busy job, you’re speaking to your avatar. That’s more brand awareness, and that’s building the whole idea of the, “Look, people like you achieve the things they want by trusting our company.” Now the great thing about engagement campaigns now on Facebook and Instagram is they used to just be like, you’d boost your post and people would see them, like, “Oh, that place is cool,” but for them to take action, they’d have to go into your profile, find your link, go ahead and book, and now Facebook and Instagram give you the ability to put a link on a boosted post, so when they see it, after a couple of seconds Facebook registers you’re reading it, and it will change color. So, it’s like prompting you to click in and visit the site, and it builds more—it gets them to take more action.
Mike Warkentin (03:32):
You already answered this to a degree, but I’m going to ask you this again just to restate it. If an owner is going to run ads, like we’re talking a gym owner is going to run paid ads for the very first time, what kind would you recommend that they start with, and why?
Colm O’Reilly (03:44):
Well, honestly, I’d recommend if they’re in Two-Brain, they just wait until the marketing mentor can help set them up for it. And I know that’s a plug for Two-Brain, but every other week, I’ll get a call from someone who said they spent an hour, two hours, three hours trying to figure out the backend of Facebook versus jumping on a 30-minute call with myself or one of the marketing team—we can take care of that in a few minutes, which saves you those precious hours you have. Because let’s face it, most gym owners, they’re up, they’re running a 5 a.m. class or a 6 a.m. class, they’re getting home, they’re cleaning the gym and they’re finishing at 8 most days of the week. So, we know your time is at a premium. Let us help you. But if you want to do it yourself, you’re going to set up what’s known as a lead campaign and a lead campaign will be something that says, “Hey, please fill in this form,” essentially.
Colm O’Reilly (04:34):
And that form generally is name, phone, and email. The reason why we want to do a very simple form to kind of extend out the answer is you want to make it super easy for people to take that next step in their fitness journey. So, when someone’s scrolling Instagram or on Facebook, they’re not in buying mode. They haven’t gone and looked for, “Personal trainers in my area,” “CrossFit gym in my area,” “Fitness class in my area.” They’re on there to be entertained, see some cat videos, see what their friends are up to or just dissociate for a few minutes. We come along and we’re like, “Hey, we’ve got the solution to your fitness problem,” so we want to make it super easy for them to take action because they’re not in action taking mode. So, we make it super simple, very, very simple form, name, phone and email.
Colm O’Reilly (05:18):
Generally what most people on the social media platforms, that’s already prefilled. So, it makes it easier again for them to click in and say, “Yes.” And then boom, we’re like, “Hey, the next step is to book a 30-minute consultation or come on down to the gym or book a phone call or book a Zoom consultation.” But you want to make that first step super easy for people to take action because social media is not where they’re taking action. It’s where they’re browsing, chilling out, being entertained. That’s probably a longer answer than you bargained for, wasn’t it Mike?
Mike Warkentin (05:46):
No, but that’s—what you’re doing is you’re asking people to take action on something and you’re not just putting out your brand in the sense that, like, “We do this thing; we have this feeling.” The example that I use is a Budweiser commercial if you’ve ever seen one of those. The giant horses roll across carrying a carriage or whatever, and it looks glorious, and there’s cool music, and at the end there’s a beer can, and that’s the brand, right? And they’ve done this for decades, and it’s very powerful and so forth. As gyms, and Colm, I want to ask you about this specifically. Most of us don’t have great brands, so running brand campaigns right off the bat maybe won’t do exactly what we want. That’s not to say they’re a bad idea, but we talked a little bit about this before the show. What you really need, if you’re going to start spending money, is return on that investment, and a branding campaign is going to take a while to get some traction. Direct response can make some gains quickly. So, talk maybe a little bit about that. Why is maybe branding not the thing to focus on right off the bat as a gym owner?
Colm O’Reilly (06:40):
Yeah, and I think you raised it very well with the likes of, say, Budweiser or Coca-Cola. That’s building the idea of like, “Well Coca-Cola sells this image. It’s fun, it’s bubbly, it’s poppy.” They don’t talk about, “Hey, it’s probably contributing to your diabetes,” and that, amazingly, they dropped that part.
Mike Warkentin (06:57):
Just left it out. Yeah, that’s cool
Colm O’Reilly (06:58):
Ditto with the beer commercials. It’s like, “Yeah, crack open a cold one with the boys,” and so, that branding makes sense because you want to be aware of that. Now again, you’ll see that like with insurance companies when they pay for stadiums and that sort of thing, it’s like they’re planting the idea, so when it comes time for you to take action, you’re front of mind. And that’s actually very true for us as well. But again, start with something that you can see in instant return. It’s very easy with a lead ad to say, “I spent $100, I got 10 leads, $10 a piece. Found one of them, they paid me 200 bucks. Boom, I spent a hundred bucks, I got 200 bucks.” For those in Europe, that’s euro; for those in the UK, that’s quid. So, there we go, international.
Colm O’Reilly (07:40):
For branding, what you’re doing is you’re building your know, like, and trust factor, and you’re getting your posts out to people to warm up your audience. But it is a slower burn, and it’s harder to see the direct benefit of it. There is a phrase in marketing that’s like, “50% of all advertising works; we just don’t know which 50.” So, from the … area, absolutely, you put up your Heinz commercial, you put up your Mercedes-Benz commercial, and you’re hoping that this works. And it’s not as easy to say, “We did this, and we got that.” It’s not a strict A B; there’s a more complex path. For gym owners with our branding—and again, you live in a very, very small market. We’re very, very geographically tied for our gyms. And even if you take some of the biggest gyms in the world, they’re still very, very geographically tied.
Colm O’Reilly (08:30):
As much as I might like Invictus, for example, well, I don’t live in San Diego so I’m not going to see them. As much as I might think Gary down in Waterford has great branding with his gyms, it’s still a two-hour drive from me. I’m not the market for them. He has a very specific market. So, with branding, what you’re doing is you’re taking your best organic posts and you’re giving them to people in your area, in your age demographic who you want to see more of. Now what you should put out is, if you think—because I want to give you more of a direct instruction—if you think of your best client, your seed client, right? And I’m always picturing her because our target demographic is busy working parents, busy working moms predominantly. So, I know … So, all my posts, or 99% of our posts, are directed at, “What would she need to see a week before joining a gym?”
Mike Warkentin (09:26):
Great question.
Colm O’Reilly (09:28):
So, that’s where I’m going. So, for example, you’ll see a lot of Murph posts, and we do Murph in Ireland, and despite the fact that, not like it’s an American holiday, but it’s a big CrossFit event, and we want to be part of the whole CrossFit ecosystem, and it’s a big thing in my gym. Everybody goes and does it; we train for it, et cetera, et cetera. So, we’ll definitely put up a, “Hey, great bank holiday,” Murph post, or we had a barbecue in our gym last week as well, great internal event. We were like, “Thanks, Gus, for putting up the barbecue. Thanks, Aiofe, for taking the photos. Thanks to the loaders, et cetera, et cetera.” They’re great posts for our members, but most of our posts are like, “Hey, look at Arthur saying, ‘Great people, great coaches, the system works.’”
Colm O’Reilly (10:09):
As a busy parent, that post goes and gets a boost. So, people say, “Hey, I’m like Arthur. I’m a busy parent. I’m 40 plus. I’ve done … in my time. I can do this.” Or we can say, “Well done to Linda for kicking ass on our nutrition challenge.” And they’re like, “Hey, I struggle with my nutrition. These guys helped Linda overcome a struggle too, like she didn’t know what to eat or how to count her calories or her macros.” They’re the types of post you put into brand awareness, not the great barbecue or great Murph ones.
Mike Warkentin (10:38):
So, as you said, and I’ve seen this in the Two-Brain resources, it’s very easy to track the ROI on direct response stuff. There are formulas that are very great, and you said, “I put out this many ads, I got this many leads, I got this much front-end revenue, I got this much recurring revenue out of it, this minus this equals, ‘I made this much,’ and I spent this—it was a win.” I even can go down and boil down, “I can spend this much per lead because I know I’m making my money back.” Like it’s a science, and I love it. It works really well. Branding, a little bit different. Is there any way to measure the ROI on branding campaigns?
Colm O’Reilly (11:09):
Not for gym owners, I would say. It is harder to measure because there are so many variables that change month to month. So, some people have a slower July; some people have a slower August. Some people have a great January and September; some people don’t. And even if you compare year to year, things change outside of our gym as well. So, it is harder to directly measure it. Now if you’re going to measure it, what you would do is you would monitor your number of “organic leads,” so website leads or people who didn’t come like, “OK, this person paid $5 to see my ad,” or whatever on Facebook or, “I paid $5 to get them.” You would track your organic content between running engagement ads and not. Now, that might seem like you shouldn’t run brand awareness or engagement ads at all as a gym owner.
Colm O’Reilly (11:58):
And I will caveat this by, “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” I do paid marketing for most of my day, so of course I’m going to recommend paid marketing. What I can tell is we went to all our seed clients or most of our seed clients earlier this year, and we said, “Why did you pick us?” To get to my gym, you have to drive off the main road past another CrossFit gym. As you turn the corner, you pass by a bootcamp. As you turn that corner again, you pass by a personal training studio. If you take a wrong turn, you’re going to end up in another gym, and if you take another wrong turn, you’ll end up in a High Rocks gym. So, to get to ours, it’s very, very easy for people to have choice, and so many of them, the response that they could remember was they saw us first, and they liked our vibe.
Colm O’Reilly (12:43):
So, brand response is being there in front of your client when they’re ready to take action, and we don’t know when they’re ready to take action, which is why we need to be there all the time. I ask people this quite a lot; it’s like, “Can you remember the last three or four ads you saw on Instagram or Facebook?” And they’ll say, “No.” And that’s because you’re blind to it until your reticular activating system, if I got that right—that’s where your brain is primed to look for something—when that’s ready, it will spot the ads. So, that’s why your brand awareness is so far. So, when people go into the “Discover” feed or click on the things that pop up in your story, you can then see, “Oh hey, this is a great gym.” Like, “Hey, if you’re looking for your sign to get fit, August is the perfect month before the kids go back to school and the madness begins,” for example. So, no, you can’t directly test to see if, “OK, well I put $5 a day into it, and I got two clients at the end of the month. It’s not as simple. I do think it is important once you’ve developed your lead nurture and your sales process, and you’ve honed your skills with the direct response marketing.
Mike Warkentin (13:49):
And that’s a great response. Chris Cooper is the proof. I’ll give you a quick anecdote. Chris started blogging about how he was fixing his gym back when he was a young and unsuccessful gym owner. That thing that he started—it was on a website called “Don’t Buy Ads”—spiraled, with some work of course, into Two-Brain business, which is now the largest gym mentorship company worldwide. It works, and he’s built it on content, which is essentially branding. He’s also run ads and so forth. But the idea, Colm, that you put out, I think, is great for gym owners. You have to pay to get people’s eyes, and you can very easily track that ROI, which is fantastic because I hate it when people—like I used to work in radio, and you say, “Oh buy these radio ads; they’ll work for sure.”
Mike Warkentin (14:29):
And people would just say, “Well, how do I know for sure? Like, “Ah, people …” you know? And you can’t really track the ROI. In the digital age, you can track ROI very clearly so that you know, all of a sudden, I spent $1,000 but I made 2,000. This was a win, and you know that. So, you can track that money, and it’s an investment, not a cost at that point. With branding though, I love what you said, where you can do things organically where it doesn’t cost you anything but your time. And if you do that all the time over and over and over and over like Chris did, you build this whole entire structure behind that pointy, the sharp tip of the spear—that’s the paid ads. When people look further down, they start seeing your website, your social media, your smiling clients, your testimonials, your blogs, your YouTube, whatever else you have.
Mike Warkentin (15:11):
All that stuff costs you nothing but time to put up. It builds your brand, and then eventually, maybe, once you’re a very successful business, you can maybe run some paid ads, a little bit of branding content and so forth with boosted posts. But I really like that idea. On our blog this week, Chris Cooper’s got two things for you. One of them is a direct response tactic. It’s called “sell by chat,” where you’re going to use anything on social media, whether it’s paid ads or not, to start talking to leads and people who know who follow, comment and like on your stuff and sell them stuff. You’re going to ask them to come in for a No Sweat Intro, free consultation, and then you’ll sell them something. He’s got the exact steps laid out. That’s a direct response campaign that makes inroads very quickly. Another thing that he’s talking about in terms of branding is a concept called the Quickcast.
Mike Warkentin (15:52):
And I won’t lay it out in detail, but what it is, a very short podcast that you put up regularly on YouTube and a podcast platform that helps you get your brand message out and talk to your current clients and prospective clients. Doesn’t cost you anything but time, and that combination gives you the pointy thing, which is the direct response and the background stuff, which is when people look at your shit and say, “What’s this all about?” and they find lots of great stuff. Colm, what do you think of that plan for a gym owner right now? Just those two tactics. Simple and trusted.
Colm O’Reilly (16:26):
Absolutely. So, with sell by chat, I would say that getting customers is hard regardless of any business. And we’ll make the path easier for you by giving you a sell by chat guide, by giving you the type of images and type of content that, on aggregate, we know work for paid marketing. And we’ll give you the blog post ideas and, “Look, here’s how you set up a podcast.” There’s all courses for them in it. I don’t want everyone to think that getting customers is super easy. There is a skill, and there’s an attrition rate because what generally happens with people when they start, like they send 10 DMs the first day on Instagram to their new followers like, “Hey, it’s Colin from CFI, thanks for following us. How did you happen to hear about us?” and 10 of those might get all left on read or not even opened.
Colm O’Reilly (17:11):
And then they go, “Well, that didn’t work.” And like, I did it, and because John first suggested, “Start DMing new followers.” I did it, and it was two weeks of absolutely nothing. Then finally Isabelle replied and said, “Actually I was looking for a new CrossFit gym.” Then it was easier for me to go, “Hey, I can see you’re into rugby. Are you still playing? Have you retired?” et cetera, et cetera and got her in. So, what I will say is that if you’re using sell by chat or any marketing method, any conversation starter, understand that attrition is part of the game. So, you are not failing; you’re not doing anything wrong. If the first 10, the first 50 attempts don’t work, it just becomes part of what you do. You could put out the best Instagram post in the world, but some world-breaking headline takes place, and nobody’s going to talk about it.
Colm O’Reilly (17:58):
There’s nothing you can do about that. Matt Temby actually said—he was talking about strategies once on a call—and he said, “Just because a football play doesn’t execute perfectly, it doesn’t mean it was a bad play. You might just have to run it again or run it again with a different variation.” So, when you start with sell by chat and it doesn’t work the first time, that’s OK. You’re getting good reps in, and also you’re getting more comfortable starting conversations, which you can then bring into the coffee shop. You can then bring into your neighbors, you can then bring into your gym members and just be like, “Hey guys, we really thrive on referrals. You mentioned your brother, you mentioned your boss, you mentioned your sister—how do we get them in here for a free trial or a free chat?”
Colm O’Reilly (18:39):
So, that’s sell by chat, absolutely do it. We do a podcast, and I think we’re the third most popular health and fitness podcast in Ireland, which says a lot for the health and fitness podcast here in Ireland because we’re only talking to our members, right? Like most of the time we’re talking to our members and we’re like, “Why do we do strength? Why doesn’t it matter if you miss a PR one day? Simple changes for your sleep, how to manage your stress.” All we’re doing is just putting out content. Now realistically, what you’re doing with content like that is you’re giving people a vibe, like, “This is the type of person you’re going to deal with. These are the humans.” And then if that resonates with someone, it’s going to work. But again, with that, if you put out content one week, miss a week, put it in two or three weeks later, it’s not going to gain traction.
Colm O’Reilly (19:24):
And as Coop has said, this stuff compounds. So, now Coop has, I don’t know, 10 plus years of emails and blogs, but he still writes every day. So, first of all, it refines, it sharpens his message, and you do it more with your gym because, I might be talking too long, but like if someone says, “Work for everybody as a gym,” you’re not. Like, I’m only for the people in the Sandyford area of Dublin and about a 15- to 20-minute commute. I’m not for the people of Bangladesh or Brisbane or in Baltimore. So, you’re not for everybody for a start. You are for people in a specific area, which is why we talk about keep mentioning your area in your posts, in your podcast, in your sell by chat. And I’m not for people who don’t want to get coached, who don’t want to be social. I’m not for people trying to make the CrossFit Games, and that’s just to instantly get it filtered out.
Colm O’Reilly (20:16):
So, but the more you refine your message, the easier it is to say who you are and who you aren’t for. And I totally get the fear of saying, “Well we’re not for that type of person,” but in reality, if you can be like, “No, we’re not that type of person.” And I’ll give you an example. I had someone, she went ahead and booked a phone call with me. Talking to her briefly on the phone, and she said, “I’m very nervous about CrossFit because all I see are 20-year-olds running around with their shirts off.” And I said, “Well, luckily we’re all 40-year-olds who run around with their shirt off.” We didn’t have our shirts off, but I said, “We’re more people who are busy. They want to come in a couple of times a week, have a great workout, de-stress and get back to their day.” And most of our members are in the same age range as you. But that took time for me to be able to refine that message, to be able to say that we’re not that type of CrossFit. And if you want that type of CrossFit, if you want to be competitive, I can absolutely refer you out to another gym.
Mike Warkentin (21:08):
And that makes perfect sense. If you try to appeal to everyone, you won’t appeal to anyone because people look for very specific things, right? And so, you have to understand your avatar. Who do you serve? Who is your exact best client? And when I talk to gym owners on this show from our leaderboard, these are the top gym owners who crack the Top 10 in metrics for Two-Brain every month. They always tell me they can rattle off in quick succession their exact avatar brief. It is a 30- to 55-year-old woman who wants to get stronger and lose body fat in this area or whatever it is. And it’s some variation of that. That informs everything they do. Their paid marketing is directed at that person. Their branding is directed at that person, and you’ve already talked about exactly who you are for. People of this age who do this kind of thing in this area of this city, away you go.
Mike Warkentin (21:55):
I’m going to ask you this: You said a really interesting thing earlier in the show about, “What does this client need to see a week before joining?” Now what does that look like on the branding side? So, if someone says, let’s say for example, a person sees one of your calls to action, something direct response saying, “Hey, come do this thing, join our gym,” whatever. Let’s say they don’t act on that, but they start creeping on you in the background and going to one of your social media platforms or your gym or whatever. What does that person need to see to join CrossFit Ireland?
Colm O’Reilly (22:21):
Well, I’ll answer the question more broadly than CrossFit Ireland, but it will apply to everybody. It’s that, for most people—it’s very difficult for gym owners to grasp this because we love fitness. It’s integral to part of our life. We understand the physical and mental and social benefits that fitness gives us. For most people, fitness has never been rewarding in and of itself to do—sorry, rewarding in terms of actually losing weight, getting in good shape, or it never been intrinsically enjoyable. They’ve hated running, they’ve hated lifting weights, and they haven’t found that thing that makes them go, “Oh, I actually can enjoy this, and I can see benefits.” So, that would be the start is telling your clients that you understand them. So, you could put—we put out a post once, and I remember it was my social media girl, Garrett, fair credit.
Colm O’Reilly (23:06):
She put out that, “Everybody has 24 hours in a day,” post. And I thought it was going to be one of those nonsense, “You can find a day,” and it’s very, very, of course, blaming the person. And she goes, “But we get, you have demands on your time. We get you. That’s why we have a flexible schedule. That’s why we also allow you to bring your kids in if you can’t find a babysitter.” So, we’re saying, “We get you, and we can help you overcome your problem.” So, that’s one thing to say; post, like, “We get you. We get your objection.” And how you find them out is you just listen during your No Sweat Intros, and you listen during your phone calls or your sell by chats to what objections people are saying, and then you just turn it into a post, and then you boost that post. “We get you. People like you achieve what you want to want to achieve. And here’s how you get started. Here’s the first step.”
Mike Warkentin (23:51):
I’ve got to bring that up for listeners. In your No Sweat Intros, free consultations, you are going to hear problems that you can solve. You will offer your solutions. What Colm just said, which is a great piece of advice that you should take from the show, get that solution for these clients, prospective clients who are joining your gym, get that in front of the people who are out there and tell them how you’re solving the problems, right? If you can do that and they come and they look and they say, “Ah, this problem that I have; here’s how it’s solved,” and they see that right away there, it’s a greasy slope right into your gym. That’s a great, great idea, Colm. What’s a problem? Give me an example that a gym might copy. What’s a problem? You said busy schedule, right? That’s one that you’ve seen in No Sweat Intros. And so, your posts and your branding will start to talk about flexible. Is that how you do it?
Colm O’Reilly (24:32):
Yeah. So, well, you’re flexible to your times as well. And I know other gyms lean into the, “No, you train every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6 a.m., and that’s your spot, and that’s your crew, and that can work for them. And that’s not our brand, but that works really well for them. So, it’s finding the brand you want. Another problem I can definitely hear in my demographic is, “I know I need to do strength work, but I don’t know what to do.” So, we say, “Everybody knows you need to keep strength up as you age to avoid health problems. For a lot of people, they don’t know what to do. We teach you what to do; we hold your hand accountable every day of the week. So, you don’t have to worry about that.” Another problem people have is gyms, they have the perception that everyone’s super fit, and they’re going to be judged. So, we say, “We’re a nonjudgmental supportive environment.” That does not mean slagging free and friendly-abuse free. It just means nonjudgmental because there’s plenty of that.
Mike Warkentin (25:25):
Oh, I know your personality and a little friendly abuse is part of the deal. So, that’s your avatar, right?
Colm O’Reilly (25:30):
Absolutely, yeah, it’s not bullying, it’s just your turn.
Mike Warkentin (25:32):
But think about this, listeners: You put up a post—it’s just your turn. That’s funny. Think about it, listeners: So, you put up a post or a paid ad, and someone sees it but doesn’t act on it, but maybe takes a peek at your stuff and then sees people like them doing certain things that they might want to do and then a bunch of stuff around it that says, “Here’s how we make it easy. Here’s how we solve your problems.” And a great one again is if someone’s market avatar is like, “Busy urban professionals within 10 minutes of walking distance from the gym,” on a lunch break, that might mean 30-minute classes. And it’s like, “We give you 30-minute classes because we know you’ve only got an hour because we checked with all the businesses surrounding, and many of our clients work in your buildings. You have an hour. We’re going to get you in and out within 30 minutes and fitter faster.” That’s an easy solution. If someone sees that, then that paid marketing campaign starts to take effect because they understand how it solves their problem, and away things go, which is a really, really interesting way that branding can help direct marketing work much, much better. Colm, talk to me about your new company and what you do as a Two-Brain mentor and as part of that company.
Colm O’Reilly (26:35):
Oh, as a Two-Brain mentor, most people will come to me when they’re midway through Stage 1 or Stage 2, and they’re ready to start paid marketing. So, they’ve got their consultation area, their free No Sweat Intro set up. They have an on-ramp package, so they’re ready to onboard new clients in a much more pleasant way.
Mike Warkentin (26:51):
And we teach people how to do exactly this stuff to get it into that space. Keep going.
Colm O’Reilly (26:55):
And the consultation is that if you’re nervous, we’ll sit down and have a chat with you or the free No Sweat Intro because people don’t want to go in and show a fitness instructor, “Look how terribly unfit I am.” And particularly in front—this is in their head. So, that’s the idea of, “What’s in my prospective client’s head?” “I don’t want to be embarrassing.” “I don’t want to hold up the class.” “Well, that’s why we start you with one-on-ones in an on-ramp to make you comfortable in the gym to teach the movements and to find the right level for you.” So, the paid marketing is extending out to say, “Hey, are you ready to make a change in your fitness?” So, we deal with the backend of Facebook and Instagram, so you don’t have to figure out the ever changing how they’ll change the algorithm, how they’ll change the user interface on it as well. We’ll set up your ads for you, and we try and set up what are known as evergreen ads that don’t change.
Colm O’Reilly (27:43):
And they can run without too much of you going in and having to spend your very precious time in figuring out what to do and what to look for. Then, We Do your Maid marketing is, again, we save you that time long-term by: We take your brand images, your best images from inside your gym, we create ads around them and then we monitor your performance for you, so you don’t have to worry about the lead generation. That’s taken care of. You know what’s working best from thousands of gyms across the world, so you’ve got a much greater data set to pull from so we can get you, “OK, well this is what’s working the best for your market.” And then you can focus on conversations with people, which is why you started the gym, anyway, was to coach people.
Mike Warkentin (28:23):
And that’s really great because you are going to see the performance evaluation; you’re going to see the reward. So, “I invested this, and I got this.” It becomes a clear investment rather than a cost, which is a huge deal. You also get advice like this because when I started doing this kind of stuff, it was, “Use these lines. This exact script has been tested in, it was like 100 gyms around the world. It’s working really, really well. Use it in your market perhaps with a tiny variation like this for your exact demographic or perhaps just as is.” I also got advice on exact photos to use, and eventually we tailored things to a different degree, but that was all helped out as well. What does your company do?
Colm O’Reilly (29:01):
Well, We Do Your Paid Marketing is the extension of the setup, that we will take care of that for you long-term, or if your ads go stale, we’ll be able to regenerate them a lot quicker. So, rather than you having to go in, figure out what type of images work, figure out what type of copy works, what type of headline works, figure out if anything changes in the Facebook marketing—we’ll take care of that. So, that saves you that time, so you can just invest in the conversations and the No Sweat Intros. So, really what that is, it’s saving you that time and that exploration because if you’re a gym owner, you maybe don’t have a month, two months, three months or $1,000 to figure out what type of ad works. So, take what we know.
Colm O’Reilly (29:42):
This is like, “Well this one works,” and we’ll fit it to what you want to say. So, some gym owners hate the word “tone,” even though that might be what your client says. So, if you don’t want to focus on people who want to tone up, we can talk about strength and muscle gain for you, but I know which words are going to pass the Facebook filter, and I know which words are going to resonate with your market and which ones aren’t historically and in aggregate. So, we can take care of that for you long-term with your branding as well. We can also run your brand awareness and your engagement ads, which then is providing you feedback on, “These are the types of posts that are getting the engagement. These are the types of posts that are getting people to click,” and I’ll sidestep from talking about We Do Your Paid marketing for a moment to say Facebook and Instagram will tell you to push video because it keeps people on the platform. So, over the last 30 days—I pulled up the stats before I jumped on this call, so I’m talking off memory—but in my brand awareness, I have my ad set broken up into reels and images, and reels got 18,000 engagements over the last 30 days. Images got 425. So, you’re thinking, “Oh wow, cool. I should definitely do reels.” But images got 225 actions taken on them, as in people clicking through to visit my website.
Mike Warkentin (30:56):
How many actions?
Colm O’Reilly (30:57):
It was about, for every two people who viewed an image, one person clicked through. So, it was about 200, 225 out of 450. Reels were about 50 out of 18,000.
Mike Warkentin (31:07):
So, that’s interesting, and you wouldn’t know this if you didn’t track your data.
Colm O’Reilly (31:11):
No. And this is the type of thing that we can track for you and do for you long term, again, because then you don’t have to worry about popping up and looking at ads manager. And ads manager is like a nuclear reactor we’re using to toast marshmallows. So, it can be very easy to get distracted and get bogged down and get lost in numbers that don’t matter versus the numbers that do, and that’s what we can do for you.
Mike Warkentin (31:33):
Here’s my theory on this, Colm, and again, this is just my theory, but when I start scrolling through reels, I’m watching reels. That’s what I’m doing. I’m not clicking out of things; I’m not filling out forms. I’m there just to stare at a screen much like you did 20 years ago watching a TV program, whatever those are now, just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I’m not into stuff. However, if I’m looking at an image and reading something, I am much more inclined to, say, read and take action on something because I’m not in that scroll, scroll glazed over kind of thing. That’s just my theory, but that’s how I operate. Listeners, think about your market, and again, if you aren’t tracking data, you won’t have this info, but that’s a really insightful thing that Colm has laid out based on the data that he sees. Where can people find out more about We Do Your Paid Marketing?
Colm O’Reilly (32:18):
Yeah, you can go to wedoyourpaidmarketing.com, or you can just find me on Facebook and Instagram, Colm O’Reilly, and just send me a DM or email me.
Mike Warkentin (32:28):
That sounds like a direct response campaign right there.
Colm O’Reilly (32:30):
Right? Right is, yeah. … smoke signals, whatever. Whatever works for you. I’ll answer.
Mike Warkentin (32:36):
On the way out the door, I always like to give listeners something that they can do today. So, tell me about a direct response action that they could take today to try and get a few more leads or clients. What would you recommend? Something simple.
Colm O’Reilly (32:48):
Quite simply, put up a post or send an email to everybody and say, “Hey, are you ready to get started in your fitness this month?” I’m not even going to name the month because I don’t know when you’re listening to this podcast, but change this month to August, September, October, whatever it is.
Mike Warkentin (33:03):
Should be August. Yep.
Colm O’Reilly (33:05):
Yep. But you might be listening to this in two year’s time in the middle of … So, if you are, it will still work. It’s just, “Hey, are you interested? If so, reply or shoot me a DM.” Make it very, very easy for people to take action because then you make it easier for them to take the next action, and that will help.
Mike Warkentin (33:26):
What happens in your experience when someone sends an email like that? What—do they get clients of it?
Colm O’Reilly (33:31):
Most of the time, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I will caveat that sometimes you might just hit people at the wrong time. So, we launched a summer campaign last year. Boom, 10 people in; it was sweet. This year, two. Same campaign. Sometimes that happens; sometimes the things bomb, and you just roll onto the next thing. Nobody remembers that. Nobody remembers that email. Even if they got the email, even if they follow you, you just send it again like, “Hey, oh, the next month has rolled around.” And you want to give people an excuse to start. So, if you say, “Hey, are you ready? Our August intake is open.” “Oh, OK, their August intake is open.” No, chances are people can roll into your gym at any stage, but now you just said “the August intake,” boom, you’ve given them an excuse to get started.
Mike Warkentin (34:18):
Consistent daily actions to build your business. Chris Cooper talks about it all the time. This is one small thing. How long would it take you to send that email? I don’t know, like 30 seconds. Send it, and then at an interval, like Colm said, send it again. You will get some clients sometimes, maybe you won’t get any another time, and then you’ll get some at a different time. But if you don’t send that email, you’ll get no clients guaranteed. So, try that tactic, easy, away you go. Colm, thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate it.
Colm O’Reilly (34:44):
My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you.
Mike Warkentin (34:46):
That was Colm O’Reilly. He’s a Two-Brain mentor, he’s a gym owner, he’s an amateur comedian and he is also the founder of We Do Your Paid Marketing. This is “Run a Profitable Gym.” I’m your host, Mike Warkentin, and please hit “Subscribe” on your way out the door. And now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (35:00):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you, have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness every day. I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today.
