Episode 311: How to Spot the Difference Between a Marketing Problem and an Operations Problem

Not sure why your business isn’t growing — or where the problem actually is? In this episode of Female emPOWERED, host Christa Gurka breaks down how to diagnose problems inside your boutique fitness or wellness business so you can fix the right thing — not just the most obvious thing.

Too often, studio owners say “my marketing isn’t working” when the real issue is a gap in their sales system or operations process. Just like identifying the root cause of a client’s pain, you need to know whether your business has a marketing, sales, or operations problem before you can prescribe a solution.

Christa walks you step-by-step through:
 ✅ The difference between marketing, sales, and operations — and how they connect
 ✅ How to spot the “kink in the chain” that’s slowing your growth
 ✅ Key metrics to track (inquiries, conversions, retention, churn)
 ✅ How to know if your marketing is actually working
 ✅ What a real sales system looks like inside a boutique fitness business
 ✅ How operations — client experience, team systems, and delivery — impact retention
 ✅ Why fixing the root problem leads to more predictable revenue and better margins

If you’ve ever wondered whether your business struggles are really about marketing, sales, or something deeper, this episode will help you pinpoint exactly what’s broken — and how to fix it.

🎧 Listen now to learn how to assess your business like a CEO, not just a service provider.
💻 Join Fit Biz Foundations: www.christagurka.com/fitbizfoundations

📲 Follow Christa on Instagram: @christagurka

Transcript

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies: 0:51

Hey there everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Female Empowered Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Gurka, and today, our episode is all about how you can diagnose different problems in your business. For example, how can you tell if you have a, a sales problem? A marketing problem, an operations problem, because sometimes, what happens is people will say to me, well, my marketing isn't working and I wanna know, how do you know you have a marketing problem? when we're working with patients or clients, They might have back pain, but how do they know they have a back problem and it's not a hip problem? Or maybe they're, in Pilates they're. Trying to do the teaser, and someone's your abdominals are too weak, but how do you know it's actually their abdominals that are too weak and not their hip flexors? it's really important before you decide on a solution to diagnose and assess whether you have a marketing problem or a sales problem or an operations problem. today in this episode, we are actually gonna break that down for you. We're gonna tell you, I'm gonna walk you through how you can figure out where the kink in the chain is. the point of marketing, What is marketing in our industry? Marketing really is. Getting the market to know about you, making sure that the right people are aware of you and your services and are interested enough to become buyers. That's really what marketing is getting in front of the right people that are interested in your offer and are willing to pay for it. that really is what marketing is. what is involved in marketing? It is your positioning and your offer. Who you serve, who you serve, why you're different and what you sell. Messaging and creative. messaging. Why should someone care? About you and your service. Why should someone choose Pilates in the Grove over Club Pilates? Why should someone choose, uplift pelvic floor PT versus, another business? And how, what kind of brand identity are you putting out there in your web copy, in your emails, in your social videos, What kind of marketing channels are you using? SEO, search engine optimization, paid advertisement, meta ig, Google, YouTube referral sources. Partnerships. What are the different marketing channels that you are using to try to get in front of that right person that's interested in your service and is willing to pay for it? how are you capturing new business? How are you capturing new leads? are you using landing forms? Are you using lead submission forms? Are you doing book now type of things? What is that path? What is that path from customer journey to awareness. They become aware to you. They get into your funnel and your world, and then they eventually buy. What is that? Do you have a strategy? Do you have a pipeline? Do you have a system for how that is going to work? that would all be considered marketing, What marketing is not is how you convert those people into paying customers once they become aware of you and sign up for a lead magnet or a, A new client special or an evaluation or an intro offer. Marketing is not how your team answers the phones. Marketing is not the booking process. Marketing is not the delivery service. what kind of experience do they have when they come in and do an evaluation or a first class? Marketing is not retention. All right. Marketing is the top of the funnel. Getting people to become aware of you, right, and then know you and like you and trust you, and then once you're trying to get them to buy, that's sales. What is sales? Sales is taking those leads and turning them into paying customers. That is what's sales. you're turning your interest, your leads, your acquisitions into recurring, hopefully revenue and repeatable cus client, retention. That's what sales is. things what type of automation, what type of scripts, how are you selling to them? And by the way, selling isn't just saying, do you wanna buy this? Everything we do. at Pilates and Grove, we had a fully built out sales system of what happens when they get into our. Ethos are infrastructure, right? It's how you speak to them. It's how you interact with them in the class. It's what you say when you're done with the class or session. It's how you promote to them to come back and keep being returning customers. now what is operations? operations is. Your schedule, your. Delivery. how you're delivering that service, what kind of experience they have in the evaluation. Are the physical therapists good? Are the Pilates instructors good? Do they, was it clear where to park? how do they know how to schedule? Did the front desk greet them by name? What kind of experience did they have once they arrived at your facility? Everything fromwas it easy to find your place? Did they know what to expect? Was it easy to park? did they know what to bring? Were they greeted when they came into the studio or clinic? All of these things. And then what's your follow up process after that? Did they feel special? you have marketing, sales, and operations, and really it's important to determine where the kink in the chain is so you can properly address the problem, not just the symptom, right? how can you tell what is a marketing problem versus a sales problem versus an operation problem? marketing one of the best marketing KPIs. Is first visits. first visits, whether that's intro packages for a studio or a class base, whether that's evaluations. How many first visits are you getting? each month. How many Inquiries are you getting each month? How many people are reaching out, inquiring about your services and ideally tracking where those people are coming from. If you're actually doing paid ads, you can look at these metrics how many people are converting from your ad into a first visit. if you're getting a good amount of leads. Then you know, your marketing is working. the next phase is how many of those leads are actually showing up and coming to the evaluation, intro session, et cetera. Because if you're getting a lot of leads, but not a lot of people are showing up, maybe your marketing is working, but you're not getting the right people in the door so you're not getting qualified leads, which sometimes happens. You're getting crap. To be honest, and this is where I'm doing, I'm actually recording a podcast episode all about what to know if you're working with a marketing agency, because a lot of marketing agencies will be like, we'll get you all these clicks, but. Not all clicks are created equal and you wanna make sure that you're getting qualified leads and qualified clicks. you're getting a lot of. Clicks, you're getting a decent amount of inquiries, but they're not really showing up or they're showing up for that one session, but they're never coming back. Are you getting in front of the right people? And this is where you have to go back and see were these the right people that were coming in? Was this IR idea a client and was it or was it not?'cause if it wasn't, then you have to go back to your. Messaging your copy, your maybe revisit who is your actual ideal customer? Talk to them. Get their own words from them.'cause when you can use a customer's own words in your messaging and in your marketing, that's when they're oh my gosh. It's you're in my head. Yes. That's exactly what I'm looking for. That's exactly what I need. If those people are coming in and you're no, these are the right people, but why are they not staying? Then you have to look inside your business and say, is this more of a sales process, a sales problem, or is this more of an operations problem? And one way to determine if it's a sales process versus an operations process is do you have a sales system? Do you have an exact framework for. What happens after that client comes into the door? at Pilates in the Grove, we had a very, And in Fit bis Foundation, there's a whole module teaching it. what does that look like? they come in. They're here for their intro class at Pilates in the Grove. We sent them two to three emails before their first session. It told them where to park, what to where. This is what our machines look like. It had a video for me saying, welcome to Pilates in the Grove. I'm so happy you're here. You may not see me, but I am the founder and it's so important to me. Then on their first day, the front desk should know their name. they should greet them by name. The instructor should know about their name, and the instructor had a, a framework of introducing them maybe to another client in the class or asking if they had an in any injuries. then after the class, the instructor was supposed to also say, how do you like the class? They're supposed to talk to them and take them back to the front desk. The front desk is then supposed to give them information on what to do next. Then we also have a follow-up sequence that's automated. we have an automated text that goes out, an automated email that goes out, and then usually aa contact from our manager. we found in Pilates in the Grove that it took 4.5 touch points for someone to convert from a lead into a member. And those were combined with automated touch points like email and. Text message and in-person touchpoints where it was face-to-face being greeted, et cetera. if you don't have that, if nobody is telling them what to do next, if they come in and nobody says hi to them and nobody tells them after they're done, if you schedule before your interest session is done, you get 10% off your first package, then you don't have a sales system and you have a sales problem. From an operations problem, that's really the day to day. is there no one sitting at the front desk when these people come in? that's how your business model is, but then what is the process? How can you make these people feel welcome even if no one's sitting at the front desk? You can still have automated systems in place. Are your instructors and physical therapists good at what they do? Are they good at guiding a class? Are they good at performing an evaluation? Do they exhibit confidence? Is the studio clean? Is it easy? Does your schedule convenient? These are all things that are operations, when you're looking at metrics. How can you determine what is actually working and what is not working? I said, from a metrics perspective, you can look, some people track inquiries, inquiries to leads, to first visits. inquiries to booking. Sometimes they call it, they'll say this, many people call, they're reached out via email or submitted a lead form. And then from all of those people, this many people book. let's say you're running an ad. And you get a hundred clicks on your ad, and out of those a hundred clicks, five people fill out a lead form or call your business of those five people. Two people book, which is pretty normal. once you get further down on the funnel, it's, it's harder to convert, right? That's why you just actually need lots of people at the top of the funnel. if you get two people to convert, and then of those two people convert, one person becomes an actual long-term member, you know that you got one person from a hundred clicks. if you want 10 people, you need to get a thousand clicks. And that's how the pipeline works. if you have a lot of people filling out that lead submission form, but you don't have a lot of people booking, there might be something wrong with either it's not the right type of client or your system and process to get those people to book is not great. Then if you have a lot of people book, but you have a lot of cancellations and no-shows, that's another system problem. Maybe you need reengagement emails. Maybe you need reminder emails. Maybe you need to have openings in your schedule you can get people in sooner. And they're not waiting. If they get from inquiry to booking to coming in, but then they don't come back, that's usually something happened there in the studio. They didn't have a good experience for some reason. maybe you did everything right, but then they came in and they really wanted like Lagree Pilates versus traditional Pilates. Well, then we're going after the wrong type of people and we kind of need to backtrack and figure out how can we manage that before they come in. that's how you can find kinks in the chain. metrics to look at, new visits or inquiry to booking, that's a marketing metric. Weekly revenue is a sales and an operations metric. If you're continuously getting new revenue or you're staying on track, that means operationally you're doing well, and then retention or churn, whichever way you want. either high retention or low churn means you have a good, that's an operational metric. How you're doing day to day, week to week, month to month means your retention strategies, your product is good, your customer service is good. if you have high retention, 85, 80, 80 5% or higher, or low churn, five to 10% or lower, that means you probably have good operations. plugging the bottom of the funnel. Because what happens is if you're getting a lot of leads, your marketing's really working, but your operations and your sales is shitty, then you're gonna just keep leaking out of the bucket. And we all know that attracting new clientele is way harder and more expensive than keeping those people in your business. things to look at, take the next 30, 60, 90 days and track those metrics. How many inquiries are you getting and how many of those are actually booking that's gonna tell you? Is your marketing working? Is your messaging working? Are you getting the right people? Once you are getting, you're getting the right people, but they're not staying. Do you have a sales process, a problem or an operations problem? the product you're delivering is not great. All of those things have to work together cohesively for you to actually have a successful sales, marketing and operations for you to have a successful business. Both have to be happening. if you have a great sales and operations problem, you have a shitty marketing problem, process, then. You are not gonna fully be able to fly, fly your plane if you have a great marketing process, but a shitty sales or operations problem, same thing. You're gonna be getting all these people in and no one's gonna stay. And that old sayingsays, it's hard to make a second first impression. So there are, those are the ways that you can really decipher where is the kink in the chain in your business. Now, if you have a marketing, if you're trying to decide where in your marketing funnel isthe kink in the chain, there's other ways that you can do this as well. So front end metrics, how many clicks are you getting is a front end metrics. if you're not getting a lot of clicks or engagement on your ad, there's something wrong with the ad itself. That means people aren't resonating with the message or the creative or the placement or something If you are getting a lot of engagement and clicks and views, but people really are not taking the action on wherever you're sending them the the form or the landing page, then there's some sort of disconnect between what you're advertising on the ad and the action you want them to take on the backend. What you wanna see here is how can we optimize the landing page or this customer experience to really fall in line and make it super, super easy that it's a no brainer. This is what I saw on the ad, I clicked. It's exactly what I wanna do, and I take the action over there. So there's all ways for you to be able to assess. Where the actual problem is. And II invite you to think of that, when you're treating a patient or working with a client when you see something on the surface, They used to teach us this in PT school, and I think it was, I might be wrong, but I think it was Ida Roth that said, find the pain and look elsewhere for the source. wherewhere The leak is coming out of in your roof if you have a leak, might not be where the source is. It could be coming from three rooms down. So it's important the same way we look at our patients and our clients and say, where is that really coming from? Is it really coming from their back? Or is it that their ankle isn't moving really well and it's sending forces that way up into their spine? where is the problem? Don't just throw your hands up in the air and be well, paid ads don't work for me, or marketing doesn't work for me. No. let's figure out where the actual. Problem lies because once you figure out where the problem lies, you can really get to the root source and then you can really optimize and fix that one specific thing rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water. Alright, I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I'd love for you to reach out to me, DM me over on Instagram. I love getting dms. I read all of them. if you have questions about this or something about marketing, consider reaching out to me. DM me over on Instagram, and if you're really into learning more, I just uploaded into the Fit Biz Foundation's business training program. Whole new modules, specifically on Google Ads training, when to use them, how to set them up, best practices, if you're interested in getting access to that, our Fit BS monthly membership is only$99 a month, ladies,$99 a month. That is less than any of you charge. For a private session or a PT session and you get access to live group coaching calls, you get access to these video trainings. I guarantee you, you will find value for$99 a month. If you're interested in checking it out, head over to my website, christagurka.com/fitbizfoundations. I hope to see you inside the community, and until next time, my friends, bye for now.