Before I give you today’s heapin’ of gym business knowledge, I want to tell you about an event I have coming up.

Join me in Alexandria, VA, at the 2023 IDEA Personal Trainer Institute for my session, “Time Management for Fitness Professionals.” 

You’ll get early-bird pricing when you register before tomorrow 2/10, AND save an additional $20 when you use my code, PTI23Fisher. Learn more HERE

Now, today’s missive covers a very common question for training gym owners:

Do you have to pay for digital marketing?

The short answer is “maybe, but not necessarily.”

First, let’s concede paid digital marketing is the most powerful and accessible set of marketing tools in the history of small business. Whether you’re doing outbound/interruption marketing on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, or paid inbound on Google to show up for keyword searches in your area, previous generations could only have dreamed of this level of targeting and tracking.

Now it’s true, prices have skyrocketed over the past several years. But if you know what you’re doing, you can still get quality leads at prices that work for your business. And those prices will still be much cheaper than many other paid channels. And WAY less work than most offline marketing strategies.

However, depending on the size of your training gym, there may be other lower hanging –– and free! –– marketing fruit. While paid digital marketing can fill your coffers with leads, in most cases you’re best to start with things like referral marketing, email marketing to your contacts, and posting on organic social media.

Furthermore, leads from paid digital strategies are colder. You’ll need dialed in follow-up systems and more sophisticated sales skills to move them down the funnel into taking the first action and signing up for your trial. Otherwise you’ll be getting lots of contacts, but very few new members.

Beyond first contact, digital leads often need to be nurtured and warmed up over time. This is another reason to place paid digital marketing after email marketing in your order of operations. Because if you add these leads to your regular email marketing, the ones that don’t sign up right away will come to know, like, and trust you over time by consuming your content.

Ultimately, there WILL come a time when you’ll want to layer on paid digital strategies to expedite your results and increase your leadflow. 

NOTE: In many situations, it may make sense for you to outsource paid digital marketing. But marketing agencies are expensive. So you’ll usually want to bridge the gap by learning the basics of running ads on your own before hiring it out. After all, you can outsource the execution, but you’re still responsible for the results. 

(Want help here? We have a course on paid digital marketing for Facebook/Instagram and another for Google ads inside Unicorn University, exclusively available to members of the Unicorn Society.)

So in closing, YES, at a certain point you will most certainly want to run paid digital ads to get the best results.

Just remember:

1. Be sure your non-paid marketing efforts are on solid footing
2. Develop a base understanding of digital marketing so you’re not throwing money away
3. Refine your follow-up/sales process so you’re not putting leads into a bucket full of holes

Marketing works, but only if you’re doing it right,

Mark

PS: Here are four ways to get more BFU in your life:

• Learn more about our coaching group The Unicorn Society HERE.
• Subscribe to our Business for Unicorns podcast HERE. 
• Subscribe to Mark’s YouTube channel HERE. 
• Pick up a copy of my (new!) book HERE.

PPS: Speaking of “more BFU,” have you checked out my YouTube channel lately?

To see my latest video, click the thumbnail below.