90% of Signups are Online and Over the Phone!
USAG Virtual Congress Lecture 2020
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THE PROBLEM
In previous years, gym clubs would gain new enrollments entirely from community outreach and word of mouth. This is through events, school affiliations, walk-ins, articles, magazines, and referrals. However, in today’s time nearly everyone is on their phone and in social media; the average person spends over 2 hours a day on social media. In other words, they aren’t ‘out and about’ exploring new things anymore. Furthermore, now due to the COVID experience, people are going to want to explore your facility and programs and sign up, before ever walking into the door. But the majority of gym clubs do not have a process for this.
Another problem, that has been increasing, is advertisements for all sorts of products are taking up the online marketing real-estate causing people to get distracted and easily convinced by attractive ads. Therefore, just posting on social media, or creating a google ad, won’t cut it anymore. You need a real infrastructure, and a serious follow up system.
Lastly, even when there is an online presence providing leads, club owners have no follow up system, through call, email, or text. Furthermore, even when we do have a lead on the phone, we have no idea how to close them!
In a nutshell here are the problems…
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We struggle to capture leads online
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We struggle to follow up with our leads
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There is no online sales conversion process.
Let’s solve this problem…
THE SOLUTION
triple c process
Click | Capture | Convert
CAMPAIGN
Click
cAPTURE
cONVERT
You must have consistent attention grabbing content online that incentivizes the user to click to learn more. This is through social paid ads, search ads, and social posts.
An email, name, and/or cell submission form, prior to receiving valued content or desired action, such as a class schedule, class info, registration, or PDF downloads.
Funnel the user into an online registration process, and if they don’t convert, the user is placed into a contact list and automated or manual email or text journey. The follow up system will remind the lead of their previous interest for later registration.
THE proof
At Gymnastics USA, we started building this system based off the Triple C Concept about 2 years ago. Immediately we started getting results, however, it has been a work in progress and learned a lot along the way. It has developed into an automated system that continues to bring us new clients and revenue.
Here are charts of sales made for ONLY online over the phone. This does NOT include walk-ins, new sales at the front desk, or tuition. This is strictly new online and over the phone sales.
JULY 2019-2020
Total $485,374
Average $40,000/month
new members
573
Average
47 members/mo
THE 6 PHASES OF MARKETING
Campaign concept
Kanban
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02
03
04
05
06
campaign launched
PHASE 01: CONTENT
To start the process of marketing to your
community, you must begin with gathering content. This is through quality photos and videos...
• Quality wide photos of your gym
• Quality photos and videos of happy recreational gymnasts
• Quality photos and videos of serious competitive gymnasts
• Quality photos and videos of hardworking staff
• Quality photos and videos of happy staff
• Quality photos and videos of staff observing client satisfaction
• Quality photos and videos of all programs and services
In addition to media, you also need to ‘ad copy’ which is text content…
• Gym’s tagline
• Gym’s motto or slogan
• Descriptions of programs and services
• Descriptions of special offers
• Subject lines for emails or social media posts
• Inspiring quotes or messages that pertains to gymnastics
• Content to assist with the message you are trying to get across
Just remember, content is king.
Whatever you are posting to your community to showcase your gymnastics center, must be something people want to look at! A good guide we use at Stars and Stripes Management to determine if our content is compelling is by using the mnemonic VEST; content must be Valuable, Engaging, Stimulating, and Trending.
PHASE 02: MULTIMEDIA & DESIGN
Now that you have this raw content of photos, videos, and ad copy, you must spruce up the content by adding text, colors, graphics, etc. You do this by utilizing a graphic designer that can enhance the content by color correcting images, editing the videos, and adding your logo where needed.
The Multimedia & Design phase of your marketing should assure that whatever is being posted is up to date with today's graphic design standards of quality.
Here is a list of items that can and should be done in this phase…
• Enhanced images
• Edit Videos (with watermarks and text graphics)
• Altered video resolution sizes for various social media platforms
• Infographics for various uses
• Flyers for print
• Graphics for social media
PHASE 03: WEB DEVELOPMENT
Now that the content is looking great, it’s time to place it somewhere, and there is no better place today than the web. Your advertising needs to lead to your business management website or a landing page to capture your audience and generate leads. If you are the real deal, a separate landing page for each program, service, and marketing campaign should be created. There must be contact forms, call to actions, and/or click funnels to generate leads from your marketed material.
Here is a list of 'must haves’ in the web development phase or your website in general…
· Quality Website for your gymnastics center
· Content posted on website
· Separate landing pages or sub-pages for campaign
· Separate landing pages or sub-pages for programs and services
· Call to Action items (“call now”, “Text us”, “place an interest”)
· Click Funnel, a “How old is your child?” interest form
· Any CRM or form integrations
· Online registration tools
· Lead tracking embedded into the site
PHASE 04: SOCIAL MEDIA
Now it’s time to dive into the category of online marketing that everyone thinks they know everything about!
Social media is today’s most important marketing tool, because it spreads fast and it’s free. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch, you have to work at it!
Let’s take the content created from the Content and Multimedia Phase, and post on social media.
Let’s post the images, videos, ad copy, and graphics on Facebook, Instagram, and Google My Business.
Let’s assure proper hashtag use, three of which should be consistent with all posts, #gymnasticsusa [yourgymname], #wintergarden [yourcity], #gymnastics [yoursport], and maybe 5 to 10 more hashtags on what you are posting about; ie: #summercamp, #grandopening, #afterschool, etc. But we are not done there. Next step is to share the post with friends, followers, and other pages making sure to respond to ALL comments as much as possible.
Here is a list of items you should do when posting a campaign on social media…
- Create a description
- tablish your three main hashtags
- Develop post exclusive hashtags
- Post on Facebook, stories included
- Post in Instagram, stories included, IGTV when appropriate
- Post on YouTube, copy your share link for other social platforms ie: Facebook
- Post on Google My Business
-“Share” posts with friends, followers, and business pages
- Respond to comments as much as possible
-Tag people when necessary ie: employee or coach within post material
- Make sure to adhere to each social platform’s post requirements, ie: image size
PHASE 05: DIGITAL MARKETING
A lot of different definitions for this category, but digital marketing is using online digital technologies to advertise your business. The opposite would be traditional marketing, which is utilizing print ads, tv, radio, and billboards. We can say that this entire blog is about digital marketing, but that is not how we describe it.
Management, we consider the digital marketing phase to be an area that is focused on paid social media, paid search engine optimization, email blasts, and text message marketing.
This is the phase of your campaign that you will invest money into your social media platforms to “boost” your posts so they reach a targeted audience and obtain more views and leads.
This is also where we will focus our search engine efforts to make sure that we can be found quickly (and above our competition) on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
This takes some time and skill. You will often have to hire a 3rd party to focus on this aspect of your business.
This is a list of items to achieve this Digital Marketing phase successfully:
· Create a Google Search Ad
· Assure Search Engine Optimization through website Keywords and metadata
· Create a Target Audience list (by geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic)
· Boost the Facebook Post
· Boost the Instagram Post
· Boost the YouTube post (if applicable)
PHASE 06: COMMUNITY OUTREACH
This phase of marketing is one we are all familiar with, the oldest kind of marketing… belly to belly/face to face. This is reaching out to the community directly as a person or spokesperson of your business. Examples of this are physical going to the local schools, getting the local news to come to your facility, or participating in any fundraisers or special events. Getting physically involved in your local community is the most traditional, effective, and important part of marketing, and should not be neglected. Just keep in mind, the owner of the gym is the best person to do this kind of work. Here are some good community outreach efforts that are standard…
Local elementary school teach-ins
Local elementary school partnerships
Local business affiliations
Throwing community event(s)
Having the local news come to your community event(s)
Participating in as many local events as possible.
Participating in charities
‘Street Team’ efforts (physically handing out flyers)
CLICK
CAPTURE
CONVERT
On the following platforms and delivery methods, you must have consistent attention grabbing content online that incentivizes the user to click to learn more. This is through social paid ads, search ads, and social posts.
- Daily FB posts
- Daily IG posts
- Google My Business Posts
- Ongoing FB ads
- Ongoing IG ads
- Ongoing Search ads
- Ongoing Display ads
- Monthly newsletter or blogs
After the user clicks your material to learn more, there must be a process to obtain an email, name, and/or cell submission form, prior to receiving the valued content or desired action,(class schedule, class info, registration, or PDF downloads).
- “Learn More”
- “View Schedule”
- “Enroll now”
These links need to be discovered on your website or landing pages. These forms must integrate into a contact list for later use. No place is better for CTA’s than your website.
Each one of these “Call to Actions” must result into a contact form that obtains an email and cell at minimum. Additional info, like child’s name and age, is good but sometimes can cause user to “bounce”.
Funnel the user into an online registration process, through your class mgmt system. If they don’t convert, the user is placed into a contact list and automated or manual email or text journey. The follow up system will remind the lead of their previous interest for later registration.
You can do follow ups through…
- Automated or manual Email blasts
- Weekly text follow ups
- Manual call follow ups
This must be done through a contact mgmt system, software. We use monday.com, which is an adaptive mgmt platform, retrofitted for sales. In this system, all new leads are placed on the sales board, and we manually categorize leads in the following manner,
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New Leads
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Sale in Progress
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Previous Leads
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Hold
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Duds
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Closed
To close your admin must understand the sales funnel process…
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Open
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Qualify
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Build Rapport
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Transition
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Present
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Test Close
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Objections
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Close