Access FIT

Marketing voodoo

A lot of owners and managers out there have convinced themselves that marketing is some kind of voodoo… a pinch of this, a lock of hair, some combination of esoteric ingredients, and an arcane incantation and poof…a successful marketing campaign.

It’s not very constructive to view marketing as voodoo because it takes your power away and gives it to some mysterious all-knowing shaman (read industry expert).

Of course, industry experts want you to believe its “magic” because that puts them in control… a pinch of colour, a big headline, a combination of tagline, font, image, and copy, and an irresistible offer and poof… a successful marketing campaign.

I have talked to owners and managers who have said that they are spending their time thinking of “prizes” or “incentives” to convince new members to join and I know of some consultants who will sell you a “spin and win” wheel.

It’s completely the wrong focus. We need to focus more on negative reinforcement and not just positive reinforcement… throwing prizes and incentives at new members.

Don’t get me wrong people do love free stuff… but once the free prize high wears off the negatives remain. And the negatives are why your new member will leave... free prizes and incentives are only a band-aid solution.

We know why people don’t join… and guess what, free prizes don’t address those issues.

Sure there are certain conventions to marketing but they are relatively straight forward (you can learn them in a day) it’s definitely not magic…

…if you want a more scientific approach to marketing read The New Rules of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Marketing: A Scientific Approach to New Member Acquisition, Retention, and Long-Term Loyalty.

It’s all about getting the right message, to the right people, at the right time, via the right channel… and once you understand the science behind the “magic” you’ll do much better.

Desperate times…

…call for desperate measures?

It’s funny that we often wait for times to become desperate before we consider something new.

Sure desperation is a strong motivator but we rarely do our best thinking in a state of desperation. In a state of desperation almost anything seems like a reasonable solution… even that Hail Mary play.

Of course, when things are good you don’t need to consider desperate measures… even when things are just OK there is still the hope that things will turn around if you just keep doing what you are doing.

When you are desperate is the wrong time to consider desperate measures because you lack the objectivity to think dispassionately… and when you are going well the status quo will do because there is no real motivation to change… after all if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

It’s a catch 22 that sees most owners and managers stick with business as usual until it’s too late and then try anything and everything as the business inevitably fails.

It’s human nature I guess…

…but the real challenge is to think desperately in the good times and plan for the desperate times during the times of prosperity.

Think about what you would do before a low-pricer moves in down the block… think about what you would do if that rock-star employee left to work for a competitor… think about what your members, and prospective members, want before they ask for it… come up with that effective, low-cost, marketing campaign before you need to abandon you existing marketing…

Desperate times are precisely the wrong times for desperate measures.

Marketing resonance (a quick tutorial for our first-movers)

Having researched the existing state of affairs in advertising and marketing within the industry for the past few months I have been entirely under-whelmed. And it’s not just me owners and managers have been living with the diminishing return on marketing investment for some time.

One of the marketing approaches that we have employed with a lot of our iPOS advertising is resonance. It’s not something that is used a lot in advertising generally, some estimate less than 10% of consumer products ads use resonance.

What is resonance advertising? According to Edward F McQuarrie. “Resonance occurs when there is a repetition of elements within an ad, and when this redundancy is such that an exchange, condensation, or multiplication of meaning occurs… resonance opens up the meaning of an advertisement. Resonance is a device for generating ambiguity and paradox… the use of resonance moves the advertisement in the direction of poetry rendering the meaning open rather than closed.”

What does all that mean? It’s a bit technical but basically, resonance advertising uses puns, metaphors, and other kinds of wordplay combined with an image to create a double meaning.

Here is an example from one of our iPOS advertising campaigns. This ad would appear in a hair dressing salon, day spa, or ladies wear store… where shoppers (mostly ladies in this case) are concerned with looking good or feeling good about themselves.

The rationale is simple… a woman who goes to the hair dressers, for example, to look good and feel better about herself might be happy with her new hairstyle but having spent 40 minutes looking at her double chin or flabby arms in the mirror might be motivated to improve her “look” a little more with a trial membership to your health club. And compared to the price of her cut and colour ($100 plus) the thirty dollars for this trial offer actually seems like great value… which of course it is.

The headline “look good from top to bottom” suggests to the customer… sure your hair looks good (top) but what about your butt (bottom)? I’m told that women tend to spend quite a bit of time thinking about their butts.

The double meaning here: looking good from head to toe… but what about your butt? The ad takes them from thinking hair and makeup to body image issues and immediately presents an irresistible offer.

Resonance advertising engages the customer more because they see something that they already believe (I’m in a hair dressers, of course I want to look good) and then flips the meaning in another direction… nice hair is one thing but what about your butt… flabby arms… double chin… are you willing to invest to improve them?

I’ll run a few more of these tutorials for our first-movers to get a feel for putting these kinds of ads together. In fact, we have hundreds of ads like this one that we’ll be making available for our first-movers over the next couple of months along with significant updates for version 1.x of our iPOS report.

The New Rules of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Marketing: A Scientific Approach to New Member Acquisition, Retention, and Long-Term Loyalty

Marketing is, along with retention, the biggest challenge facing most owners and managers today. The general consensus is that marketing isn’t producing the return on investment (ROI) that it once did. Traditional media (newspaper ads and inserts, direct mail, radio and television ads, lead boxes, billboards etc) aren’t pulling anywhere near the numbers they once did… in fact today many owners and managers are struggling to break-even with traditional media.

And as new media, in particular social media, begins to dominate industry thinking we thought the time was right to examine the current state of marketing and propose a new, more scientific, approach.

Our latest free business development report, The New Rules of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Marketing: A Scientific Approach to New Member Acquisition, Retention, and Long-Term Loyalty, is available as a Free Download (to your right).

We examine the decline in traditional marketing ROI, the rise of new media, how you should be spending your marketing dollars, why your marketing is failing, and what the research is saying. We reveal the new rules of health, fitness, and wellness marketing and deconstruct one of our iPOS advertisements in the context of the new rules.

The new rules of healh, fitness, and wellness marketing affect everyone operating in our industry. Preaching to the converted is a myopic marketing strategy, given what the research is telling us about why people have a problem with us as an industry. The new rules provide a practical framework for more effective marketing in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

As usual your comments and feedback are always welcome.

Download the Free Report here...

     

Is your management style “head-up” or “head-down”?

In a recent discussion I had with a local club manager and CEO about their hiring practices I asked the question, “Is the club profitable?” The manager and CEO were somewhat taken aback and, rather unconvincingly, assured me that the club was profitable after several years of mismanagement, high staff and management turnover, and a raft of “turn around” tactics.

They went on to explain that the business was now focused on profitability and that the previous club manager had been let go because of her operations focus and apparent lack of revenue generating ideas.

Fair enough… however, after examining their “job description” for the new club manager position it was almost exactly like the old club manager position. In fact, given the job description, the old club manager would have been the best candidate for the position… it was completely operations focused with no mention of business development at all.

The reason club profitability is an issue is because an unprofitable club (or a club focused on serious revenue or profit growth) and a profitable club require two completely management styles.

A head-down management style is characterized by an operations focus, is very command and control, top-down, hands on, in the trenches, and process driven. Think of head-down as someone with a jig saw puzzle industriously sorting and assembling the pieces in front of them… no need to look up because everything they need is right in front of them.

A head-up management style is characterized by a strategic focus, is more collaborative, bottom-up, arms length, and business development driven. Think of head-up as a coach watching a football game from the sidelines, calling plays according to how the game is unfolding, substituting players based on their individual performance, team needs, and opposition tactics, and reviewing important statistics on the run… if they look down for too long they will miss something critical.

A head-down manager is best for a profitable club because they are across all the issues that keep the business running successfully. However, head-down managers will miss opportunities to improve the business because of their process-centric focus.

Alternatively, a head-up manager is best for an unprofitable (or growth seeking) club because they are actively looking for opportunities to create a successful business. Of course, head-up managers aren’t across all the issues that keep the business running successfully (relying instead on others) because of their business development focus.

The lesson… don’t send a head-down manager to do a head-up manager’s job.

Do you know where you next member is coming from?

It’s a simple question… but very few owners and managers can answer it.

It seems odd to me that we run our businesses with very little attention to where our next member is coming from. It’s almost as if it doesn’t really have anything to do with us… they just show up… we run a “special”… we send out some direct mail… we run a radio ad…

The truth is that most owners and managers aren’t thinking about where their new members are coming from (or why) until it becomes an issue… we haven’t made our numbers this month what are we going to do?

It’s a mistake… and a big one.

Today it can even be a fatal one...

...so do you know where you next member is coming from?

Revised release date for The New Rules of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Marketing

Due to a delay with the editor our latest free business development report The New Rules of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Marketing: A Scientific Approach to Member Acquisition, Retention, and Long-Term Loyalty will now be released on 19/09/2011 our apologies for the delay.

The new rules of health, fitness, and wellness marketing release date

Our latest free business development report, The New Rules of Health, Fitness, and Wellness Marketing: A Scientific Approach to New Member Acquisition, Retention, and Long-Term Loyalty, will be released on 12/09/2011.

We examine the decline in traditional marketing ROI, the rise of new media, how you should be spending your marketing dollars, why your marketing is failing, and what the research is saying. We reveal the new rules of health, fitness, and wellness marketing and deconstruct one of our iPOS advertisements in the context of the new rules.

Persuasion in advertising

“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you are saying, and they can’t know what you are saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you are not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.” – William Bernbach