Is It Time to Run Paid Ads for Your Gym? with Sherman Merricks

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend. On today’s episode, I have a very special guest on the podcast for the first time. It’s Sherman Merrick. He’s the co-owner of Lasso Framework, lasso framework.com, and they specialize in marketing ads and sales training for gym owners. And in this podcast, Sherman and I talk about all the ABCs of paid advertising for gyms.

We talk about whether, how to know when it’s time to start running paid ads. Once you’re running paid ads, what to expect, what metrics to track. So if you are currently running paid ads or you’re thinking about. Finding an agency or doubling down to start running paid ads. This is a great episode for you to either improve what you’re currently doing or start something brand new to generate leads in your gym.

So keep on listening, my friend. 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help Jim and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business unicorns team each week for actionable advice. Expert insights and the inside scoop on what it really [00:01:00] takes to level up your gym.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.

Yeah. Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. I’m very excited ’cause I have a brand new guest on the podcast for the very first time. It’s Sherman Merricks, who’s the co-owner of lasso framework lasso framework.com, and they specialize in marketing ads and sales training for gym owners, which is something we love talking about on this podcast.

I’m so excited to have you today, Sherman. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat with you, Mike. Obviously we’ve been on with Mark on our podcast, so yeah, full circle moment. I’m excited to chat today. Yeah, and remind me the name of your podcast so people can go check it out. I. It is gym marketing made simple.

Love it. Love it. Yeah. I listened to the episodes. Mark did and so I’m still subscribed. I need to keep up, but gym marketing made simple. It was [00:02:00] fantastic. Thanks for having Fisher on. There was some great episodes. So tell us first Sherman, just a little bit about you, a little bit about your background, how you came to be the co-owner of Lasso Framework.

Let’s just start there. Yeah, definitely. So I’ve been in the, I’ve been in the gym industry for a long time. I was a previous gym owner, had a gym owner. Had a gym for 13 years, a CrossFit gym here in Florida. And because I currently live in Gainesville, Florida, that’s where I’ve lived pretty much my entire adult life.

And we had a gym and just over the course of time we. Basically continue to grow. We had success with our gym and you guys will get this. Having success with the gym makes other gym owners reach out to you and say, Hey, how can I, you know, can you help me with stuff? Yep. So basically started that way and I was running my own marketing and things like that for my gym, and a lot of people just kept reaching out.

I was helping people. And then I met my business partner at a conference and we talked about, oh, what could happen? [00:03:00] The thing that really pushed us over the edge was I asked my business partner to run, to basically run my marketing for me because I did it, but I did it outta necessity. I didn’t love it.

Sure. So I was like, Hey, will you run it? And he was like, yeah, I’ll do it. And the big thing is, Mike, he did it for free. Wow. And I was like, oh. I said, no, this is a. I was like, I think this is a business because I know I would pay him a decent amount to run it for me. Yep. So that’s how it got started. And we, we were mentoring for another company.

That relationship ended and we just jumped into lasso about five I. Five and a half years ago. Wow. And the rest is history. Wow. That’s amazing. Sherman. ’cause it so echoes almost every story I hear from gym owners about them and their marketing, which is almost no gym owner I know got into this business.

’cause they’re like, I just can’t wait to learn about paid digital ads and sales funnels and get good at overcoming a sales objection. Like no one, I don’t know anyone who gets into it, who is already in love with that, but it’s such an [00:04:00] essential part of the business and when they can find a company. Like lasso to outsource this too.

It unlocks so much possibility for them. So maybe let’s just start talking about that. So when do you, for all the gym owners listening, how do they know it’s, they’re a good candidate? How do they know it’s time for them to consider outsourcing some of their marketing? Yeah. Here’s one of the big things that we deal with when people set up calls with us.

We don’t do the hard close and sell, oh, your business is gonna. Shut down. If you don’t sign up with us, we don’t do that. So fear tactics. Yeah. Correct. So for us, if you have a, a solid business, your revenue’s 20 K or so around that are more, of course you have systems in place and you’re wanting to grow, which most gyms are, right?

Yeah. That’s the thing. Like we get on some calls with gyms. They’re doing 5,000 a month and they want to grow and they think, oh, well I need marketing. Just at that point, yes, you can use marketing, but marketing is expensive too. Like I tell everyone, we’re not the cheapest. This is going to cost you and at that revenue.

Mm-hmm. It just doesn’t make [00:05:00] sense. Mm-hmm. You know, you have to, you have to top your bootstraps and just work and figure some things out until you can hit a certain threshold. And for us, 1520 K is that threshold where, hey, you’ve, you’ve done a lot by yourself, but now you need to start offboarding, offloading some things so you can focus on growing the gym.

Mm-hmm. Because you can’t do everything. That’s one of the things that we see. We see gym owners, they have a successful business, but they’re just doing too many things. So when they leave, if they can leave. The business sorta either stays still or it drops a little bit. Yep. I’m just like, that’s not a real business.

No. You want the business to run the exact same way, whether you’re in Fiji on vacation or in your house eating breakfast. Yeah. Yeah. I so love that. That was your answer, Sherman, because it’s very similar to what we tell our, all of our listeners on this podcast and all of our Unicorn Society members at Business for Unicorns, is that you really have to be crushing the organic.

Lead generation gain, correct. Before you get into the paid game, right? You have to be, have some systems for repeatedly generating referrals, some system for getting past [00:06:00] members to come back, some system for getting your unconverted leads to come back at you again, right? If you have all of that under underway and you have some decent revenue where you can afford paid ads, then I think you start to become a really good candidate.

To put some money and time in there because your systems can support this organic flow already. And so I agree a hundred percent. And so lemme ask you this, when you first bring on a new client to help them with their marketing, and I’m guessing mostly paid ads, how do you set expectations? Because I find that gym owners, when they start doing paid ads or any sort of external marketing, it’s very easy for ’em to think, okay, now I’m paying Sherman X number of dollars per month.

So the le I’m gonna, these are gonna be raining down from day one. And we all know. Getting marketing to really get some traction takes some time. So how do you do that dance of expectation setting with people? Oh man, that’s a great question. So this is something that we learned over the five and a half years.

We started this probably a year and a half ago. So basically what we do when someone first comes on board, first we do the sales call. Yep. If they want on [00:07:00] board, then our next call, after they say, yes, I wanna do this, let’s get going. We say, okay, get you signed up. Give us some money. Our first official call is what we call A ROI and sales call.

So now when we get on that ro ROI call, like we look at their membership prices, we look at what they’re spending with us. We have an entire spreadsheet. We have two or three spreadsheets that we go over for about 45 to 60 minutes, so they can know what the realistic expectations are and what that ROI looks like.

If they do decent, we don’t get on and say, if you do this, you’re gonna double your revenue in three months. No. We give them realistic expectation because false expectations will have these people very upset. Yes, it it is funny. I like that you asked that question ’cause we had a guy. To remain unnamed, but he probably reached out to us about three months ago and he was like, oh, okay, if I’m spending X month with you guys, he basically told us that he wants a five [00:08:00] XROI month over month.

We all would love that. Correct. I told him, I was like, listen buddy, if I could do that, I promise you every single gym in America would be signed up with us. But he’s usually looking for a genie and a lamp. Correct. But the good thing is. He was honest with us. Yeah. So we were honest with him. And then we just knew it wasn’t a great fit.

Obviously it’s not gonna be a great fit for anyone. Yes. Except someone that lies to him. Yeah. But yes, like setting those real realistic expectations front are uber important, and we do that on the first call after they sign up. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think it’s so critical because you say this is a relationship that you wanna form over for many years to come and being on the same page about the pace at which digital marketing can grow your gym is really important.

And a lot of gym owners just don’t have an experience with it, so they don’t know what to expect, and I think it’s great that you handle that so well. Hey there, business Unicorns podcast listeners. I’m just making absolutely sure you have already gotten your free, instantly downloadable copy of my new book, the Little Book of Gym [00:09:00] Marketing Secrets.

You can find a link to download it in the show notes, or you can go to gym marketing secrets book.com. I worked super hard to make sure this is a less than a 30 minute read and is a comprehensive overview of all the things you need to do. To grow your gym, get more leads, more clients, importantly, change more lives.

Again, find the link in the show notes where you can download your free copy at gym marketing secrets book.com. And now back to the podcast. I. Let’s just talk a little bit about what’s working right now. When you, now that you’re running ads for lots of gyms, what are either the ads or offers that are working or the funnels succeeding?

Yeah. What, what’s cooking right now? Yeah. One of the things that we’ve noticed over time is when you’re running, again, I love that you talked about piece of guys, the organic piece is important. Yeah. And even when you’re running paid marketing, you should still be on top of your organic because. Let’s be, if I’m being honest, the organic leads are going to be.

A little bit, quote unquote, easier to sign up [00:10:00] because they’ve done some research. They are probably one or two steps away from you. So they know you, they trust you. They like you already. Yep. But when you’re running paid marketing, yeah. These people don’t know or trust you. They just may be at face.

Correct. They like, it’s possible. They just on social media and the ad pops up. They’re like, oh yeah, I would that. That looks pretty cool. Yeah. So for us. We’ve seen that having an offer, when I say offer, I don’t mean discount, but having an offer that isn’t a, I personally, I don’t like LBOs, low barrier offers.

I don’t like short offers. And when I say short, 21 day, seven day, stuff like that. So what we’ve seen, what we’ve had success with is people coming in and understanding that they’re going to stick around for at least. Two or three months, right? Mm-hmm. A minimum. So now that gives the gym owner and the client the opportunity to really get some work done so they can see that, okay, this is worth it.

Because a lot of people, they’re not [00:11:00] used to paying the amount of money that we charge in these micro gym, right? They’re used to, oh, I can go to gym down the road for $35 a month. Cuts not cut to come here is gonna be correct to come here is gonna be 10 times there. And they’re like, what? Yeah. So you have to prove your value.

So having people that really are coming in with the right mindset, that this isn’t gonna be a one month thing, this is gonna be a 2, 3, 4 month commitment upfront. We’ve seen a lot of success with that. Yeah. Good for you. I think it’s great. I think we, we’ve, we’ve both pitched for some gyms to have low bear offers and sometimes we think it’s probably right for some people not, yeah.

Especially in sports performance, they often don’t need it. Yeah. And so I think it depends. One of the stickiest points I see when folks again just start working with someone on paid ads is they go through that process of realizing that, oh, people coming from ads are strangers. They’re very cold, they don’t know us like us, trust us, and they go through this dance with their marketing agency to say, okay, I want.

More qualified ads. The more qualified leads. The people you’re sending me are unqualified. [00:12:00] You’re gonna sending me garbage leads and I’m not getting the RI want because it’s your fault and these leads are garbage. And so they go through this dance of trying to qualify leads a little bit more. And I think there’s something to that.

There are some obviously great tactics to better qualify leads to make sure they’re the right fit before a sales call. But in some cases, that’s just the nature of the game, as you mentioned. Correct. You’re just gonna get colder people. Can you talk a little bit about when you do. Put in some steps to qualify leads.

What are some that have worked for you? Yes, definitely. To jump a little bit back like you talked about. Yeah. Anyone listening to this right now, if any marketing company tells you they can get you all qualified leads. Either they’re lying. Yeah. Or they’re not being totally transparent with you. Yeah. And here’s why.

If they got you all qualified leads, that means that they are going to put steps in place that is going to make your CPL your cost per lead through the roof, because they’re going to require questions, and the questions have to be very pointed. Because if [00:13:00] you only want people that are ready to sign up that you’re just gonna be able to.

Bring them in and they’re gonna say, oh yeah, I already know the price. I’m ready to get going. Just take their order. Yeah. Cor Correct. Your cost per lead could be $500 per lead. Yep. Because, and the reason I knew that, ’cause I ran a. I started, ran a campaign like that years ago for my personal training. I just had it in the background running for a while.

And I would say I, I would vividly say, can you make it to the gym three times a week? Can you afford $750 per month? Ask ’em some questions like that. Yep. And if they answered yes, they got to the next point where they would meet me. Yep. But if they didn’t. It was push ’em to, I don’t think you’re a great fit right now.

Now it cost me five, $600 per lead. However, they were signing up for personal training, so month one I was making my money back. As we know, most personal training clients aren’t coming in with that short term mindset. Yeah. For us, I would say a couple things. You could ask them questions, right? You can ask them questions.

Those conditional statements on the lead forms, so [00:14:00] that. You could push ’em the right way or not, and you could just be crystal clear or you could be even clearer about who exactly you’re looking for, your program. Yep. Yeah, I think those, that’s a great advice. That’s a great advice Sherman, right? Because you can totally qualify them more and more with questions and surveys and things like that, and your, your cost per lead will go up.

Right, because you have to pay more. You’re disqualifying a lot of people who may be in a sales conversation you could convert. Correct. Maybe are not the perfect fit, but they’re just outside the bullseye. And you could, but you’re not gonna get those if you get too specific on your qu. Correct. So it’s a little bit of a dance you had to do.

What’s the cost per lead that you’re really, what’s the sweet spot or the range, the sweet spot you’re looking for. So 500 Yes. Is insane unless you’re selling something really super high-end. Yes, correct. What are most gyms looking for in terms of cost per lead? Yeah, so I would say a solid cost per lead would be 10 to 20 bucks.

For us, our sort of threshold is 20 bucks. If it gets started getting above 20, we’re starting to figure out, change, some creative and stuff like that. Yeah. But 10 to 19 is really [00:15:00] that sweet spot. And let’s be honest, in a place like New York, Denver, Chicago, highly market dependent. Yeah, correct. Like it, it could be a little bit higher than 20 in those places.

But overall, outside of these major. Major cities, 10 to $15, 10 to 20 bucks is gonna be a nice cost per lead. Yeah. Which is solid. But again, like you’re saying, you have to understand that. So for us, like this is what we do. So at last, so let’s, we expect a 10 to 20% conversion rate. From lead to close. So just to keep the math simple, if we get you a hundred leads that month, that means you’re only going to sign up 10 to 20 people at most.

And that’s crushing it. Yep. Now, but that means even if you crush it that month, there’s 80 other people that you had to contact multiple times that didn’t sign up. Yep. So some people get stuck on those 80 didn’t. So I wasted all my time like, like you’re saying, Michael. No, that’s just part of the game.

That’s the game. Yeah. [00:16:00] And I think it goes back to the organic part, that if you have a list of unconverted leads, so often people call this like your nurture list. These are people you’re gonna go back to again and again. We recommend people go back twice, twice a quarter and make an offer to those people who didn’t convert then who might convert later.

I remember instance, unicorns and at market. For sure fitness. We’ve had people join us and become lifetime clients who told us during their sales conversation. I’ve been following you for years. I’ve been correct an email list for seven years. I’ve been listening to your podcast for four years. Right? And it was just, the timing wasn’t right when we first made contact, but they stayed with us.

We continued to nurture them, get them to like us, trust us, stay in our universe. And they did convert at some point. So you never know that eight, those 80 people, hypothetical 80 people. They may come around at some point. It’s definitely not a waste of time, and maybe they had a great experience with you and they’ll tell other people about you.

So I think that’s, there’s other trickle down positive effects there, even if they didn’t convert. Correct. No, I like, I love that you say that because again, we’re all, A lot of times people just look at the immediate. The immediate signup, like we’re saying, okay, we expect a [00:17:00] 10 to 20% conversion rate, so we sign up 10 people that month, those 90.

Okay, now that’s an extra 90 leads that you have, and if you do that for a year, now you got an extra 10,000 leads that go, my math is off. You have all those extra leads. That’s basically going to help you grow your business because like you’re saying, just because someone doesn’t sign up now. Yep. It may be a year later and they may say.

Man. You know what? I’ve been following those guys at Mark Fisher Fitness and now’s the time. Like I’ve been putting it off long enough. Yeah, but they’ve been following you and keeping up and seeing emails for the last year. Yes. Yep. So 100%. We almost, we rarely get a Unicorn Society member at Business Unicorns who, you know, as a gym owner who hasn’t been listening to our podcast for at least a year before they contact us.

They just, they, that’s the reason we have those things. There’s the reason why we have an email list and a newsletter and a podcast and active social media platform is so people in the middle of our funnel there who didn’t convert it front at first, can stay in there and stay. We can keep them warm for a long time, and [00:18:00] so I love that.

I love that you brought that up. Alright, I maybe have, I think we have time for maybe one more question. Let me ask this. Another place where I see gym owners get bogged down when it comes to pay digital marketing and tracking all their marketing efforts is just tracking all the right metrics. I see them like develop these.

Giant, overly complicated spreadsheets and frankly, we’ve been guilty of this as well at Market. Mark probably might have talked about in the podcast, we like to see data, we wanna make data-driven decisions, and certainly when people contract out or you doing their marketing for you, you’re gonna come with your own tools and metrics.

Correct. But for all of our listeners who maybe don’t work with an agency yet, or maybe can’t afford it, what are the most important metrics for them to be tracking day after day, week after week, month after month? Yeah, I would say you definitely want to track. Your cost per lead. I think that’s uber important.

Also, you want to track the revenue. Mm-hmm. That comes from those leads. Yep. Because again, what happens at times is, let’s just say that someone is running marketing for three months, and over the three months, obviously they lose members, they [00:19:00] gain members. But if you can keep up with, okay, I gained an extra $2,800 each month and now those.

Every single one of those members over the last three months, they’re still in the gym because you, because they committed to three or four months. Yep. But my revenue. The gym has stayed flat. Mm. ’cause I’ve lost people. Your attrition rate isn’t great. Yep. Now, without these people that have come from this paid marketing, your revenue would actually be down.

So like some of these numbers you have to keep up with. And again, if I’m being honest, from what I’ve seen over the years of being a gym owner and working with gym owners, most people just don’t have the systems in place. That’s why like for us at Lasso, we have like software that we keep up with these numbers, but for us.

We try not to bog them down with a ton of numbers. Yeah. We try to keep the main thing, and what I mean by that, Michael, is we look at previous three to six months of the gym’s revenue before they [00:20:00] get going with us. We’ll look at how many leads they got. So we say, okay, this is your baseline, what you were doing before us.

Now you work with us for six months. We’re going to compare these numbers. We’re not gonna get into, oh, this lead came from here. This lead came from, oh, this is your average six months prior to working with us. This year, average six months after working with us, the only thing you’ve changed is your marketing.

So we’re going to attribute this to marketing because again, there’s some people. Man, they get bogged down in the numbers and it just distracts them totally from the important thing. Yeah, I love that you say that, Sherman, because I think it’s so easy. This is already overwhelming for a lot of gym owners, as we talked about at the beginning of this podcast.

They don’t, they didn’t, they don’t love doing the marketing piece. They don’t love doing the sales piece, many of them, not all. And so when they start to overcomplicate it, by tracking all these leads from multiple sources, all these leads from different conversion mentioned all these leads from different offers, and they just make it so complicated that it’s gonna make them even less want to do it.

Right? Yep. And so I think when you can [00:21:00] keep it really simple and just say, okay, how many leads are you getting? What’s your cost per lead? Maybe a few conversion percentages from conversion from a sales call, or conversion from an LBO if you have it right and your revenue and attrition. You know, those four or five numbers might be all you need to really understand how your marketing is growing or impacting your business.

I think the more people can keep it simple like you suggested, the more likely they’re gonna be able to make good decisions. Not get overwhelmed and keep putting one foot in front of the other and getting more people in the gym. Correct. I think that, yeah, it’s a good place to start. Yeah. Correct. I agree.

Um, yeah. Alright. I know I gotta start to wrap things up. Anything else I’ll just, let me ask you, maybe this final question for our audience, for all of our audience out there yet who have really not dabbled in paid marketing at this point, what’s your advice to them? I would tell ’em reach out to. One or two companies.

Yeah. Check out their testimonials and when you talk to them, ask them every question that you really wanna know because, and. Because it [00:22:00] is the gym industry in general. We’ve got a bad taste in our mouths about marketing. ’cause we started to think, we gotta do this bait and switch on the scorch earth method.

I’m gonna, it’s gonna burn my members out. It’s gonna have too many people in, they’re gonna leave. So figure out, make sure that the marketing feels good. Yeah. When you do it, make sure that it’s something that you can get behind. Because if you just have to, if you work with a company, you have to run their play time out at the time, because that’s just what we know.

I would say don’t do that. You should have a little say so in what’s going on, because again, it is your business. They have had success probably with other gyms. But you want this to be the right thing for you to grow your business. Yeah. That’s fantastic, Sherman. It’s gotta feel right to you. It’s gotta feel like the right representation of your business, and you can find that agency that works for you.

And listen, maybe it’s Lasso Framework friends, their link is gonna be down below in the show notes. It’s lasso framework.com. Go follow Sherman Sherman. Where else can they follow you? Instagram? Facebook, LinkedIn. [00:23:00] Yep. There’s not a lot of Sherman Merricks out there, so you’ll be, we’ll put all those in the show notes down below.

We’ll also put your podcast gym marketing made symbol so we can go find you there. But thank you for a great conversation. This was fantastic. It’s great to see someone approaching this topic in this industry with such integrity and such heart. I hope we need more Sherman Merricks in the world, but not too many that they tried on your territory, but, but yeah.

Thank you for this so much and I hope to have you back on the podcast again someday, my friend. All right. Thanks buddy. It’s been great

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