Today’s thought may be obvious to some of you. But man o man, do I see this messed up a lot.
Ya see, there aren’t an unlimited number of ways to generate leads for your gym. And as you build up capacity and want to increase your lead flow, at a certain point you’ll need to add more “fishing poles,” so to speak.
But here’s the thing: different markets are often WILDLY different in regards to the play that will work best.
At a high level, there are four different markets for a a gym:
- Tier 1 City
- Tier 2 City
- Suburban
- Rural
Based on where you’re located, you’ll want to prioritize different strategies.
For instance, I LOVE running well designed ads with good offers in a local newspaper. Bonus points if you can get a gig writing a regular column to grow your audience and build more credibility as THE local fitness expert.
But this doesn’t fly so great in midtown Manhattan. The New York Times isn’t exactly the best place to put our messaging. Though even here, we actually DO some marketing with a neighborhood specific media outlet.
Furthermore, a unique challenge of Tier 1 markets is a high volume of tourists. So many “ground game” strategies to hit the streets could result in a lot of emails for people who don’t live in the area.
On the other hand, if you’re in a rural market, you’ll have a completely different set of obstacles and opportunities. An attention- grabbing, guerilla marketing flash mob won’t make sense in a rural market because there’s rarely a highly dense gathering of possible prospects. Though even here, you COULD do something at a local farmer’s market if you know there’s lots of turnout from your avatar.
Now as you see above, you can often do a version of a given strategy. You just need to adapt it to your market.
Furthermore, there are strategies that always transfer. In almost all markets, tricking out your Google Business Profile and driving reviews will improve your organic search rankings, no matter your market.
All that said, you can’t swipe the exact marketing strategy that works in one market and expect it to work as well in other markets. By all means, try stuff out. Just be a critical thinker about what’s likely to be most effective given where you live.
Marketing is another word for “test,”
Mark
PS: Here are four ways to get more BFU in your life: