Hi Steve!
I think you’ve done an incredible job with Charge Fitness. We’ve only just met, but I’m already so proud of you 🙂
Here are some ideas for your business.
- Create all customer personas you can think of. How old are they? What are their hangouts? What do they care about? (Saving time? Getting abs? Improving neuro health? Improving joint pain? Amplifying their sports performance?) Think about out what specific benefits are the reasons why they would choose EMS.
- Minimum dose, maximum effect
- With this concept in mind, you can ask some powerful questions. For example, how can I let as many people know about Charge Fitness as possible, with as little money/time/effort as possible?
- The fact that you already gained traction with limited exposure, means: more exposure = more customers
- Ideas to reach a lot of people with minimum dose:
- Partner with businesses with big mailing lists, so they email their thousands of staff or customers about you. e.g. big local companies such as Shaw or Telus, athletic events such as the marathon or Spartan Race or Tough Mudder, golf clubs (old rich people who are active), yacht clubs, crossfit gyms, bouldering gyms, biohackers (nootropics lovers, cryotherapy lovers). Rehab-related organizations too – physio clinics, arthritis foundations, etc.
- Partner with influencers (find them on Instagram, details below)
- How to maximize word-of-mouth with your existing customers?
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- SEO
- Great way to get free traffic. You want to be on page 1 when people search on Google.
- What do your prospective customers search for? Come up with a list of potential searches that will lead people to sign up to Charge Fitness. e.g. “Best gyms in Victoria”, “Personal trainers Victoria”
- Get on Yelp, and get happy customers to give you reviews. Get at least 9 reviews. Why? Because when you google “Best gyms in Victoria”, Yelp comes up as a top result. When you click into it you’ll see that the most reviews these gyms have is 8. Get 9 good reviews, and you’ll be ranked #1 on this list. This is free traffic!
- Blogging is a slow but steady way to improve your SEO ranking too.
- Instagram
- Follow all fitness influencers in Victoria, and follow their followers
- Build a relationship with these influencers by liking and commenting on their posts
- Then DM them to invite them for a free session
- Get them to talk about you to their fans on their IG. Maybe just a great photo of their workout, maybe a bigger incentive such as another free session (barter).
- Have your social media guru devise an IG contest. Or talk to influencers about contests. They are probably experienced.
- Barter
- Bartering with your service is great because a session is worth more to the recipient than what it costs to you. Plus it fills up your studio so it makes the business look great!
- If you have a booking for 1 person, it’s probably not a lot of extra time and effort add 1~2 more people to that session. When you barter, you can give these time slots. This shows scarcity too (because you’re not just giving away any free session time slot).
- Gather useful information
- In the first-time survey form, can add:
- “What convinced you to come?”
- You’ll discover what specific line converted this person. And you’ll see a pattern of which demographics get converted on which points.) For example, what convinced me to come was that you are yummy. Hahaha. Ok seriously what convinced me was when you mentioned the fast and slow twitch muscle toning, and improving neuromuscular connections.
- “What results do you hope to see?”
- This will definitely help you discover what lines to pitch to your prospects. For me, I hoped that EMS will help me play volleyball better and improve my neuro health. Oh and perhaps gain some abs!
- “What convinced you to come?”
- In the first-time survey form, can add:
- Split Test Your Street Sign
- What is the most persuasive line for random walk-ins? Maybe it is, “Come in for your free 20-min session!”, or, “Better joints and better muscle tones”, or, “Minimum dose, maximum results workout!” 😉
- Barter for a good PR
- A good PR is connected to all local media – TV, newspaper, radio. My friend got me on GlobalTV, CBC news, CBC radio, and the Vancouver Sun (to talk about alopecia), just by calling her usual contacts….contacts she built over the years. Find a PR with this type of influence in Victoria.
- Invite a bunch of good PR people individually for a free session. If they love EMS, barter a free membership in exchange for their service.
- Their fees are usually thousands a month, and if they are good they can get you repeated exposure – so this will be worth it!
- Throw Mini Launch Parties
- If the PR can do this for you, that’s ideal!
- Invite a small group of reporters or influencers, who can mingle and experience EMS during the party.
- Throw several of these, so you are taking many small risks, learning from each one, and improving the next one.
- Having several parties also means that you’ll get a series of publicity.
- Check out the Vancouver EMS studios. Not only will you learn from them, they can be your potential business buyer in the future.
- Fill up your time slots however way possible, even if it’s free (e.g. from bartering or free trial). When you have as many new people in as possible, you can collect many data points and learn lots to help you going forward.
- Think of ways to work with personal trainers
- Can they incorporate EMS into a session with their customers?
- Send out follow-up emails to people who didn’t sign up. Find out why.
- Come up with counter points to help you refine your pitch to future customers.
- For example, compare to 1 on 1 personal trainer sessions, EMS is not expensive. Compared to crossfit, it’s also not expensive. Compare to the results you get in the time and effort put into exercising, it’s very much worth it.
I hope you find some of these points helpful 🙂
xoxo
Tanya