The Secret to Word of Mouth Marketing: FOCUS
If serious about building a profitable fitness business ….
If passionate about making a HUGE impact in the lives of people in your town and community…
If obsessed with learning and becoming the best possible version of yourself, so that at the end of your life you look in the mirror and know you played ALL OUT and left nothing on the table..
If devoted to bringing the very best tools and strategies into your facility to better serve your clients…
Then let me share with you the #1 thing I know to be true in business: Get obsessed with word of mouth marketing.
Why Word of Mouth Marketing Is More Important Than Ever
Now a days, everyone sees the power of this online machine and the amazing ability we now have to reach strangers across the world. It’s allows us the ability to show glimpses into our lives, minds, businesses and even hearts. But it’s also allows us to set up facades that are hard to discern truth from fiction. There are more tricks and playbooks out there than we can even sift through to try to find the “right one” for us. There are thousands of ads coming at us promising us that magic pill to our success. There are short cuts and half baked launches daily. As a result most of us have been duped once or twice and we are sick of being sold promises that aren’t upheld, they are skeptical.
But right now, I’m actually thankful for all of this because deep down when the market place gets loud with showmanship and crazy marketing tactics swirl around us, what makes or breaks any brand ultimately comes down to quality. Plain and simple. Chances are if you’re good at your job, you will create happy and successful clients. And the ONLY way to really verify this is word of mouth marketing. That’s why word of mouth marketing is the critical difference between real quality services and facade services.
Word of mouth is always KING in identifying quality. And if you’re a service provider like me, it’s the ONLY consistently proven way to sustain sales and build a waitlist for your services irrespective of price.
Yes I hear you on needing a larger reach, on wanting to get in front of the right people. Even we use Facebook ads and funnels to connect more strategically with our ideal clients. But the key here is that our foundation is word of mouth marketing. If you come to our town you will know we are respected, we get results for people and we have a good reputation. We have more 5 star reviews than anyone else locally. And this did not just happen by accident.
How do you build word of mouth marketing? You FOCUS.
If you’ve followed super successful businesses and entrepreneurs, most of them eventually quote a book called ‘“The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan. IN this book they essentially say you create success by going all in on ONE thing. Not several. Not all the things. One thing. And you FOCUS.
Avoid the Temptation & Distraction of Doing It All
In fitness we are tempted so much to do it all. Why? There are a couple of reasons.
1- You want to serve everyone in front of you. When you talk to someone who is a potential client and they are looking for services you don’t specialize in, it’s hard to point them in a different direction. You see the vulnerability, the hopelessness, the stress and the hopes they have in working with you. You don’t want to crush their hopes and you believe you probably can help them, if you had the time and resources.
2- You diversify to stay afloat. Fitness is a HARD business to make good money in. So with tight profit margins, underpaid coaches and clients always wanting to find the best deal in town… it’s super tempting to keep adding small complimentary services to your business to get a couple more dollars out of your clients.
3- You get energized with new service launches. Most of us entrepreneurs are total idea people at our core. We light up brainstorming. We love to envision a brighter tomorrow. We love the energy of creative problem solving and most fo the time we’d rather plan to grow sales than curb expenses. So it’s fun for us to add more to the plate of what we can offer people.
Now please understand, I’ve done ALL of the above things and felt entirely justified in doing them. BUT I didn’t experience the growth I’d hoped by doing any of these things. What I did experience was distraction, indigestion of the business and stressful finances.
So let me share with you what does work.
Focus on being the BEST in class to help foster genuine word of mouth marketing.
In Gymnazo, as practitioners we are the BEST at taking someone with pronounced movement dysfunctions and working with them to get them back doing all the things they love to do and restore their quality of life.
But what we realized is that we’re the best at that ONLY because we have created a system of education and hands on training that allows us to take an incredible practitioner like Michael and replicate again and again with the same client results.
So it turns out what we are actually the BEST at is teaching and fostering quality coaches. Coaches who know how to program smart workouts, how to connect and relate to a variety of different people and demographics, how to create a memorable and consistent workout experience and who are humble and inspiring humans. Through these coaches we can change lives and impact thousands of clients.
So we are focusing right now and going all in on this. Our focus is on delivering quality and value to each person who joins our movement because we know it’s not about flashy marketing. It’s about delivering on promises. It’s about getting results. It’s about building a reputation that rides on actual people sharing what transformed in their lives and businesses.
That is our focus right now. And we are all in.
