| Leslie_Nolen The
chat will start in about 10 minutes, promptly at 10 AM Central. |
| Leslie_Nolen We'll
be starting in about five minutes. Hi, Robbi & GHFC. |
| Leslie_Nolen Welcome,
Sharon! |
| Leslie_Nolen Robbi,
what's your business? |
| Robbi im
the marketing manager at a hospital fitness center |
| Leslie_Nolen Hi
Mikel! |
| Mikel I'm
a personal training director |
| Leslie_Nolen GHFC,
I'm guessing yr a "health & fitness center/club" (given the HFC?)
|
| ghfcadmin Bingo!
|
| Leslie_Nolen Hi,
Lee - and you're from...? |
| Lee i
direct corporate wellness programs |
| Leslie_Nolen And
sharon? |
| Sharon partner
in a yoga studio here in Cincinnati |
| |
| Leslie_Nolen Great!
Well, welcome everyone and I hope your weather's better than here in Dallas -
hail and thunder, so if I suddenly drop off it's because the power went out
again! |
| Leslie_Nolen Let's
jump right in. Go ahead and post your questions and we'll do our collective
best to answer them. |
| |
| Robbi we
went to your magic triangle seminar in san diego and now we're totally
rethinking our website. it's kind of overwheliming and were wondering where to
start. |
| Leslie_Nolen Hi
robbi, what do you currently have on yr site? |
| Robbi
mostly what we have on there right now is about the center with
pictures, a map, and phone and directions. |
| Leslie_Nolen Robbi,
if you were at the magic triangle seminar i can see what prompted you think
about changes! i would do two "foundational" things. first, you need
to capture email addresses for everyone that visits your site so you can
communicate w/ them later. |
| Leslie_Nolen second
thing is to get intelligible website statistics so yuo can see what site
visitors are doing (or not) on your site. we did an article on this here:
How To Take Your Website's Vital Statistics and it's free and pretty easy to do yrself. |
| Leslie_Nolen Robbi,
the next thing to do is look at your home page - is it about you and your
business, or is it focused on your customer and their thoughts, feelings,
goals, concerns, etc. A rule of thumb: no more than 25% of your home page
should be about you, 75% should be about your customer's interests. So if
you're talking about how great your programs, people, etc. are, don't do that
on your home page! |
| Robbi you're so right! everything
on our home page right now is about our fitness center and we are
thinking we should change to be more about dealing with overweight and
health problems because that what's most people come to us for. |
| Lee for
robbi - one thing you could do is add some articles to your website on
different aspects of starting to get active, deciding whether to do it at home,
alone or in a group, and so forth. i was the |
| Lee guess
i typed too much. i was the marketing director for a regional health club chain
and this really appealed to potential members. |
| Leslie_Nolen lee,
thanks for sharing a great suggestion. |
| Lee Robbi,
the other thing i used to have my staff do was ask prospects about what their
concerns and anxieties were about starting to work out, join a club, etc.,. and
then we would do a FAQ on our site |
| |
| Leslie_Nolen sharon,
what's your question? |
| Sharon we
are sending a weekly email promo to our list. do you think that's too often |
| Leslie_Nolen Sharon,
once a week sounds like a lot - what are you usually promoting? |
| Sharon every
week we send a discount coupon to attend a free class |
| Leslie_Nolen Sharon,
one issue i see is that you're probably offering free classes every week to
your current students - that's probably who makes up the bulk of your mailing list.
couple of thoughts: keep the weekly frequency, but make every other email
informational/inspirational rather than a sales pitch. |
| Leslie_Nolen my
other thought: how's your student retention looking? |
| Sharon ok,
i see what yo are saying about the more educational email. our retention is
pretty low but i just don't think people here are that into yoga. |
| Leslie_Nolen Sharon,
to be blunt, if retention is low i doubt it's bc people in cincy aren't that
into yoga. it's probably something about their experience when they come to
your studio. have you guys started anything new or different or interesting in
the last 6 mos - year? |
| Sharon we
haven't added anything |
| Leslie_Nolen sharon,
i'd suggest talking to your students and get feedback on what they like and
think could be better about their experience with your studio. might be good to
add some new stuff - but listen to what they're telling you before you make any
new product decision. |
| Leslie_Nolen also,
i think you probably need to focus on marketing to people who AREN'T already
customers vs your email list of current customers. if you want to focus on
email, we just did a two part article with ideas on how to get non-customers to
subscribe. |
| Sharon i
know some of our students would like us to do a power yoga class |
| Leslie_Nolen Sharon,
it's great that they're telling you what they want. if you decide to add that,
you could use one of your weekly emails to share a "in their own
words" story from one of your students who's taken the hot yoga class, vs
just saying "sign up now" or "free class" |
| |
| Mikel i
have read that getting links form other companies is good for your website. is
that true? i get emails wanting to swap links all the time. |
| Leslie_Nolen Mikel,
if you can swap links with reputable local businesses - or reputable online
businesses that's fine, if they are logically related somehow to what you're
doing. are you guys doing in-person personal training or mostly
online/telephone? |
| Mikel mostly
in-person training but i want to use the website to get new clients |
| Leslie_Nolen mikel,
most folks don't find trainers off the web but through local visibility (not
paid ads) and word of mouth. so i would recommend against focusing on link
swaps, other than with reputable and related local businesses. a better
strategy would be to do some things locally to enhance visibility. for example,
we've had several clients that partnered up with radio stations to do a
several-week or several-month program where they worked with selected listeners
and then reported back live on the air periodically. no money changed hands -
it was just good PR for the wellness professionals and a good event for the
radio station. |
| Leslie_Nolen mikel,
another thought for you (and anyone else who sells locally vs online) is this
how-to article on optimizing yr site for local search:
Local Search: The Missing Link To Your Website
|
| Leslie_Nolen i
think everything in that article is free, too. always cool. |
| Mikel i see
what you are saying about the web but it takes mroe time to do local things vs
doing things on the web. |
| Leslie_Nolen Mikel,
the challenge is that the web is easy but not very effective for local personal
training - so it feels good and like you're doing good stuff, but i bet you're
not seeing great results. spending 25 - 30% of your time marketing is not
unrealistic for relatively new businesses. now marketing doesn't have to mean
sales pitches - it can be a free seminar for 50 people, too, which is both
efficient and effective. |
| Leslie_Nolen Mikel,
you might take a look at the email marketing articles as well -
50 Ways To Get Email Newsletter Subscribers and
the link to Part 2 is at the bottom |
| ghfcadmin Mikel:
Who's your market, who are you targeting? |
| Mikel we
train pretty much everyone. we don't really specialize |
| ghfcadmin Mikel:
Leslie can correct me if I'm wrong, but "Hey human resources (city gov.,
county gov., neighbor business) we'd like to offer a lunch and learn for your
employees. 'How to Lose Body Fat.' Hold a |
| ghfcadmin was
my post cut off? |
| Leslie_Nolen GHFC,
i think that's a great idea and a topic like that has (nearly) universal appeal
to both women, men, all ages, etc. |
| ghfcadmin I
just hope no one in this room is marketing to Gainesville. |
| Leslie_Nolen Only
thing i would add is don't just show up and present - get their business cards
or pass around a sign up sheet and put 'em on your email list so you can stay in
touch! |
| ghfcadmin Good
point. |
| Leslie_Nolen LOL
(laughing out loud) |
| Leslie_Nolen And
of course, actually send them emails. Not kidding - this is where a lot of
marketing breaks down and why we encourage an informational newsletter for just
about everyone. |
| ghfcadmin And,
from our experience, a lot of people don't sign in/up when they walk through
the door. But at the end of the seminar say, be sure to sign in if you'd like a
copy of the slides/tips/etc. that we p |
| Leslie_Nolen GHFC,
great suggestion to get names at the end - after you've earned them by
providing useful info. up front they won't do it bc they think you're going to
deliver a sales pitch. |
| |
| Lee we
want to send health reminder emails to our employees but i am worried about
privacy rules. how are other companies doing this |
| Leslie_Nolen Lee,
you're right to be careful bc HIPAA privacy rules could definitely apply here,
I think. specifically what kinds of emails do you want to send? |
| Lee medication
reminders, lifestyle modification reminders for exercise, smoking etc. |
| Leslie_Nolen Lee,
I gotcha. We've seen several approaches: 1) see if employers will sign a HIPAA
waiver - then you can do whatever's administratively easy. this is a good idea
regardless. 2) only send reminders to their personal email, never to their work
email; 3) use what's called "secure email". this is similar to what
big banks and financial firms do - you don't send an actual detailed email.
instead you send a link to an online message, and the recipient has to enter a
password that only they know to retrieve the message. does that help? |
| Lee those
are good ideas. we were thinking about using work emails but i can see the
problems with that and i hadn't thought about this online message approach. |
| |
| ghfcadmin Just
a suggestion: How about we share Web addresses, that way we can see what the
rest are doing? ghfc.com |
| Leslie_Nolen Thanks
GHFC...folks, if you feel comfortable doing that, feel free... |
| |
| ghfcadmin Taking
customer contact in a different direction: is there a txt msg marketing service
that you are familiar with or would recommend, say, for reminding folks of
there exercise goals. (Hey, it's Monda |
| Leslie_Nolen GHFC,
yes, I know exactly what you're talking about and we do know of some companies
that can work with you on this...give me a few minutes to see if we can get the
names or if i i need to email them to you. i gather this is something your
customers are starting to ask for? |
| ghfcadmin We're
just looking for something else to test out. |
| ghfcadmin Another
frontier. |
| Leslie_Nolen GHFC,
that sounds like a fun idea. would you invite members to "play along"
or just test it on internal people? (just curious, i love new technology!) |
| ghfcadmin I'd
need to find out more about the services for we could make that decision.
Depends on how the sign up works. "Txt 12345 to get personalized workout
reminders." Who knows. |
| Leslie_Nolen GHFC,
i pinged one of my colleagues to get some links - in case i don't get it while
we're chatting, if you'll drop me an email at lnolen@radialgroup.com i'll make
sure you get them this afternoon. |
| ghfcadmin Thanks |
We posted the mobile messaging answer on our blog after the chat...
go here to get our suggestions |
| Leslie_Nolen We've
got about five more minutes today - so last call for questions and comments for
me or each other! |
| Sharon what
about sending out postcards? |
| Leslie_Nolen Someone
recently told me they weren't sending postcards anymore because they
"didn't work." i don't buy that. i think oversized postcards are a
great and inexpensive marketing tool - BUT don't put the "same old same
old" on there about trying a free class. That's not how most brand new
customers make health/wellness decisions. You need to create an interesting
experience that you invite people to so they can ge t a feel for yr business -
then they're likelier to buy. |
| |
| Leslie_Nolen Before
we wrap - -any feedback for me on what worked today and what we could improve
for next time? |
| Sharon very
helpful. thanks. |
| Mikel i
wasn't sure what to expect but i like getting ideas from other people. |
