Two Major Marketing Myths…And How to Bust Through Them
Year over year, studio owners place their faith in common marketing myths and tie their time and resources up in ineffectual tactics to generate leads and grow their businesses. Their misdirected views sound something like this:
“If I just run free classes all will be well” (even as the wrong people are walking in the studio and burning through our time and patience).
“If I’m not using Facebook ads, I’m not really marketing” (even as costs rise in most markets).
“I don’t have enough leads” (even as missed inquiry calls and emails quietly stack up).
The fact is most studios’ marketing isn’t broken. We’ve simply been taught to believe certain marketing myths that hold us back from incredible success. To help you move away from those misguided ideas and strategies, here are two truths to accept and related actions you can put into practice today:
- Marketing is designed to bring you leads, and your sales process is designed to drive revenue.
The two most important operational departments in your studio are marketing and sales and they work hand in hand. Marketing brings in leads and sales converts them into paying customers. If 100 leads come in through marketing, your sales process should convert 50 or more of them into long term members. That’s an achievable baseline for success.
If you don’t have an active sales process beyond automations, you’re guarantee to be missing out on sales. Furthermore, chances are you’re blaming those lost sales on your marketing department, not the missing sales process.
How do you fix this? Begin by building a client journey that tracks which marketing channels bring clients to your studio. Clarify the steps required to ensure that leads become long term members. Be sure to focus on identifiable steps in the journey, like where clients find and investigate you (yes, Google Reviews) and what happens when those clients are inside your studio.
- Your budget deserves more than digital.
Facebook ads are not meant to be your sole marketing solution. In actuality, Facebook ads have increasingly become one of the higher cost tools for marketing. In a healthy studio’s marketing budget, Facebook ads will account for no more than 30% of new leads, and therefore they should not exceed 30% of the overall marketing budget.
Here are some areas where you should be spending today:
- Referrals. No, they don’t need to cost you a dime. An excellent customer experience will mean that clients will happily refer others to your studio. A successful referral benchmark means every new client will yield three referrals and one new member. Without these referrals, your marketing budget will always be inflated.
- Direct Mail. Yes, that’s “snail mail.” Today’s direct mail is cutting edge with trigger-based campaigns that can target an individual who’s opted out of your e-mail list, clicked on an e-mail link for teacher training or just about any other indicator you can imagine and select.
- Google. Yes, this is digital marketing, but Google has grown up a lot and the results from their ads are proven. Start with a Keyword search campaign and scale to Display where you can retarget not only people thinking about your studio, but also your competitors.
About the expert: Lise Kuecker
Founder & CEO, Studio Grow
Lisa is the daughter of two entrepreneurs, and is that mythical mix of consultant + creative—she’s the woman behind taking that failing studio and turning it into a 7 figure, multi-state, empire; one that leverages systems to allow for a life of freedom and balance. Fun fact: at one point she was running a multi-million dollar business, and working 5 hours a week.
