Why Does Long Matter?

What does Gary V, Warren Buffett (i love buffet’s) and every other successful mofo have in common?

You never hear them say, play the short game. 

They play the long game. 

They know it chokes their competitors, builds a relationship with the market, and it means you have to start thinking more about strategy and consistently delivering quality and value than quick hit tactics.

And it’s no different to now for us in gyms during the lockdown. 

The market is definitely colder and more skittish than before this crisis. Surprise!

But it doesn’t mean that they don’t have problems we can solve for them. It just means the temperature of our marketing needs to match the temperature of our market. Read that again. 

Ok, real quick. Imagine a triangle. At the top of the triangle, there’s 3-5% of the market that’s ready to buy. It’s the smallest segment. 

Then the next layer down accounts for 37% of the market. They’re problem aware but not ready to buy yet. They will be, eventually, but that’s not where they are in the ‘buying cycle’. Meaning, their temperature needs to warm up. 

There’s another layer underneath that, the 60%. They’re cold af. They’re not even problem aware yet, we’ll ignore them for now (and forever tbh).

So in the past, to grow my gyms and your gyms to record levels, that top 3-5% was enough for us to go shopping for leads who were warm enough to sell. Boom. Happy days. 

THEN THE FKN VIRUS HIT!!!!!

And things changed. 

Don’t look at this as a problem, this is a HUGE opportunity. To innovate (like you have) and be better at what we do (like you have). 

And for the same reason why Warren All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet says that wise business people and investors know that fortunes are made in the dips, they’re just collected in the highs. 

And why a bloke called Henry Ford famously said “a man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time”

And also one of the biggest marketing battles of back in the day….Post Cereal VS Kellogg’s. 

When the Great Depression hit, Post Cereal stopped advertising to ‘Save Money’. Kellogg’s ramped up their advertising and took advantage of the market. When the economy came out of the recession, Kellogg’s profits had risen by 30% and they used this momentum to go on and become the industry’s dominant cereal company and WHO THE HECK IS Post Cereal? 

The lesson here?

Our gyms NOW need to play the long game, develop a longer term relationship with the larger part of the market, and take them along the buyer’s journey that eventually leads to purchase. And gives you a ‘honeypot’ that you OWN (you don’t own facebook traffic) and can dip in to when you need it.

We can’t skip the stages of the buying cycle, it’s human psychology and how the brain works. Think about it, you do it too. 

Especially now because of that bat virus.

How do we do this?

Via email. Which, btw, is still 40x more effective than social media for making $, check it out. 

The good news?

WE KNOW HOW TO DO THIS!

It’s a mix of 4 bits: The High Value Content (HVC) + The Funnel + The Offer + The List Building System.

The audience is presented (via ads, email, everything) a piece of content that solves their deep burning problems in exchange for their details. This builds your list.

They consume it, and are presented with an offer at the end. A tiny % will take it, fine.

The rest will drop into your sequence that we will build for you, where they continue to get value emails in a specific rhythm. And as they show certain behaviour, we’ll tag them so they go into different segments within your list. 

This will show us whose temperature is rising and are ready to be shown an offer.

And we show offers to ones that are ready to go. 

We have created some of this HVC already, and are already building our list. I would like to do it for you too, as part of our Geronimo service for those that stay active during lockdown. 

For new clients we get onboard, it’ll be an additional service because it’s a truckload of work (that people normally charge a truckload for).

I’d say the best way we can work together on this, is a mixture of you customising some of the content we develop and you develop your own too. Get your trainers involved (if they’re good at it), so your local market is seeing you guys and building a relationship with YOU. 

What will you need (or what we need from you to start)?

• An Active Campaign account, ideally the ‘plus’
• To provide us the logins, or create a login for us
• Your MindBody logins (so we can export and sync lists)
• Let me know if you want this piece of content “14 Day Lockdown Survival Guide” customised for your audience as the first bit of content we can use to re-engage your current email list and advertise into your local market. It’s already achieved amongst the highest open rates we’ve had with our cold audience.

And a final note..

Now that we’re all online, it’s going to get more difficult to stand out against other gyms advertising in your area, free workout apps (don’t get me started) and the competition of not doing anything.

But if you think it’s competitive now, wait till ScoMo says we’re allowed to reopen next week. 

It’ll be a bloodbath.

Gyms that have been open for years will do foundation memberships again. Slashing prices. Poaching. Pre-sales. Landgrab. 

But remember that top 3-5%? They’re all still only going for that layer. 

But the smart businesses and gyms have actually been spending time and investing in building a value-based relationship with the 37% this whole damn time. 

Relationships are the key here. People buy from people they know, like and trust. We’re influenced by them, we’re persuaded by them. 

That’s why we say we’re in the relationships business, that just happens to run fitness classes. Not the other way around.

So when ScoMo says it’s game time, you ideally have hundreds of people you can turn to and cash in on all that value you’ve given them. No slashing, no dropping your pants, no ill-feelings from your loyal members who have stuck by your side only to see you give blow-ins a better deal. 

Let me know your thoughts. 

Doza.