A note from Dave: This is a guest post by Louis Allport.
Running your own business keeps you busy, right? 🙂
I run a business too, and there’s certainly a lot to think about, and never quite enough hours in the day!
In particular, for fitness and health businesses, you’ll have:
- Clients to look after
- Leads to talk to
- Classes to organise
- Marketing to manage
- Perhaps employees or contractors to manage
- Bills to organise (along with other admin)
- … and much more besides …
So let me ask you a question…
How would you feel if you could let technology to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you? After all, that’s what it’s designed for.
This could allow you to:
- Spend more time with clients (so you earn more)
- Make more money by marketing more effectively
- And best of all — it can give you a lot more time to yourself, rather than wearing yourself out working 12 hours a day, every day
That’s what I spend a lot of time focusing on for clients — ways to use technology that help businesses to thrive.
So first of all, let’s talk about:
How to Earn More With Marketing Automation
Marketing automation allows you to effectively communicate with your leads and clients almost automatically.
If you set such a system up the right way, it can work for you around the clock:
- Talking to leads for you
- Turning more leads into clients
- Turning more clients into repeat clients
So let’s initially talk about how you can automate emails and texts, to make more sales…
You may be offering something for free, to entice people to your business. Perhaps:
- A free class
- A free training session
- A free consultation
- … whatever makes sense for your business
But… does any of the following happen to you – even – incredibly regularly:
- Many people don’t turn up
- Or – many who do turn up don’t become clients
Now, let’s for example’s sake say 50% of leads you get either don’t turn up or don’t become clients. That’s a LOT of potential income that never makes it to your business
But, I know, I know, it’s certainly a hassle chasing people up. Especially when they don’t get back to you and you feel like you’re bothering them. But what if all that follow-up was done automatically for you?
Here’s the bottom line:
- The more you’re in front of people, the more likely they are to – (a) Become clients (b) Buy from you more than once
- But, if you just “hard sell” people all the time, they get annoyed. So you’ve got to come across as friendly and helpful, while also giving them a “nudge”
And you can set all that up ahead of time. So you’re (in a friendly and helpful way) nudging people towards your business. So this can mean:
- People who sign up to a class/session/consultation get one or more friendly reminders. These are sent automatically, and ideally would be sent by email and also text.
- People who don’t turn up get some friendly follow-ups to remind them to sign up for your next free class/session/consultation
- Existing clients of yours also get friendly reminders by email/text to come on time or let you know well ahead of time if they can’t make it. Dentists do this, so why not you? 🙂
Let’s talk through options:
Marketing Automation Options Available Now
These marketing problems aren’t unique to your business! So enterprising companies have already come up with solutions specifically for fitness and health businesses:
If you sign up to such a system – AND – if you use it, it may well solve many of these marketing problems for you.
However, many people buy software and never use it, so of course their business doesn’t improve, and they just end up spending money every month! I work with businesses that pay for Infusionsoft (very powerful marketing software) every month for years, but never use it, as they never quite get around to it!
So whatever solution you go with, you have to put it into action, or it just won’t benefit you. Of course. 🙂
Now, you can also create your own automation using other solutions that exist. This can be more technically complicated, but gives you more flexibility about exactly how it works for your business.
Put Technology to Work For Your Business… Today
If you’re serious about:
- Optimising your business
- Growing your business
- Automating your business
Along with marketing automation, there’s also another tool you need:
A CRM – Customer Relationship Manager.
This is software that allows you to keep track of exactly what’s going on with your leads and customers:
- You have all the most accurate information available in one place
- It also includes reminders and notes for you
- And it can generate detailed reports for you
For example, you could set it up so you instantly know:
- Who’s signed up for your free class in the last month, but not attended
- Who’s attended, but not become a client
- Who’s purchased from you only once
- Who’s spent more than £500 with you
And so on…
Basically, pretty much any information you want to know about your business is at your fingertips. No more running your business from Post-It notes and messy Excel spreadsheets!
So not only does this keep you organised, but it also allows you to discover opportunities hidden in your business. And in particular, by combining a CRM system with marketing automation, you’re getting the best of both worlds:
- Your business is organised
- Data and reports are instantly available
- A lot of the marketing runs automatically for you
For small businesses, I often advise using a combined CRM and marketing automation system, so you’ve got everything in one place. As mentioned there’s Infusionsoft, but it’s often overwhelming for most businesses as it just has so much. So similar software that works great, and is more accessible for small businesses is Active Campaign.
Now of course, like all these things there’s a learning curve with new technology, and you’ve got to make sure you set it up correctly. But once it’s all set up, running, and part of your business, it can easily help your business grow for years to come.
There’s a reason CRM and marketing automation systems are used by millions of businesses. Will yours be next? 🙂