Digital Marketing 101 for Pilates Studios

In this episode, host Seran Glanfield delves into the power of digital marketing for boutique fitness studios. 

The episode covers the essence of digital marketing, harnessing social media and email marketing, understanding the importance of SEO and paid advertising, crafting compelling content, and finding your unique path in the digital world for studio success. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Are you ready to up-level your studio's online presence, but perhaps you're not sure where to start. Today, you cannot avoid having a strong digital presence if you want to grow your boutique fitness business, and so, in this episode, I'm gonna dive into the essentials of digital marketing, tailored specifically for your boutique fitness studio business. From social media to email marketing, I'm gonna share with you some of the insights that will help to put your studio on the digital map. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah in Glenfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio.

Speaker 1: 0:59

This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah, and I'm so thrilled that you're here with me today learning a little bit more about marketing and, specifically, a little bit more about digital marketing. Now, when I first start talking to new studio owners that join my programs, I get to know them and their businesses really, really well, and I learn a bit about what they have been working on when it comes to marketing and where they think they might. We talk about where they think there might be opportunities for their marketing to improve so they can get more clients in the door and improve their retention and improve their lifetime value of their clients and their customer spend. All of those things are driven by what happens in your marketing and often it's really important to get that journey right and to have that messaging right from the very, very, very beginning. And when we think about marketing, often in the unaltered world today, most folks are extremely focused on how they can optimize their social media marketing, which is often where we go to when we think about digital marketing. But today I'm going to share with you actually a little bit more than just social media. We are going to talk about that, but we are going to talk about some of the other things that you can do in your business that will help you to stand out in the digital and online space, even if you are not an online business.

Speaker 1: 2:26

We know from the way that we behave when we buy things these days that we aren't just walking down the high street, popping into every store, seeing where things are and what's happening in these stores. We are often looking online first before we take that next step to go into a studio, into a store or to try something out that is new. People will often follow people for a while before they actually take the leap to join a class or book a session. So we use the online world, the digital world, as a place to have a look and see and see what you're all about, what these businesses are all about, and so I'm sure you've been there too, whether you're looking for anything that from a new vacuum cleaner to a new studio to a new workout where we go online, we look at their website, we search for them in Google, we look at them on social media platforms, and we're so incredibly influenced by what we see online and, in fact, it really can make or break the decision to take the next step.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So the digital presence, your digital presence, is critical, and we have to make sure that we are really focused on making sure that it does align and reflect with the values of your business, what happens inside of your business and, of course, the amazing experience that you give your clients. So, when you're wearing a lot of different hats. Obviously, that is not always the simplest thing. You're not spending all your time on marketing. So there is a few things that we can do to make sure that you are getting your bang for your buck, I should say, out of your digital presence.

Speaker 1: 4:08

And we all know that running a studio, whether that's a Pilates studio or a bar studio or yoga studio, isn't just about perfecting the hundred or mastering the reformer. It is about connecting with people. It's about bringing people together and sharing with them an experience that is going to make them feel happier and healthier and stronger. And when we do that, we also want to make sure that people outside of your studio, outside those four walls of your studio, are aware of what happens inside. And that's the most challenging part of marketing is making sure that it's understanding and figuring out and learning how to market your business in the right way and to communicate the value of what you have to offer. Once you have that marketing messaging down, it changes the game for your studio. I have seen studios that have been sort of stagnant in their growth for a very long time. And once they learn the skills, and once the studio owner will say learns the skills of how to communicate and market their studio business. They will shift the trajectory of their business and start to see growth and scale in their revenue. And digital marketing is a very powerful tool that you have at your fingertips when it comes to growing your studio business and increasing the visibility and brand awareness for your business.

Speaker 1: 5:30

So today I'm going to share with you some of the essentials of digital marketing. I'm going to share with you some of the things that you should have an awareness of and perhaps have some sort of minimum implementation strategies to really make sure you have a baseline for all of these things. I'm going to share with you today because I want to break it down for you into some more manageable, actionable steps. So I'm going to talk a little bit about why having an online presence is more important than ever. Truly it is and, like I said, it truly can be the game changer, the thing that really shifts the direction and growth of your business. You know, like I will. You know, the world is so close to us. We're always just a click away from that next studio, from that next purchase, from that next connection, from that next influencer right, and you want to make sure that your studio is in the mix.

Speaker 1: 6:26

When someone in your local community is looking for what you do and someone in your local community is looking for Pilates or looking for bar or looking for yoga, that your name is the one that pops up that comes to mind, and we can only do that if we are super present in the online space. So where do you start? What platforms do you use, how do you create content that resonates and, most importantly, how do you do all this without feeling overwhelmed? These are questions I answer every single day for studio owners that I work with inside of my programs, and so I want to share just a couple of insights with you today. I cannot share everything with you today, but I will be sharing some of the things that make marketing super effective, digital marketing super effective, and you know, when we think about effectiveness of marketing strategies, what we're thinking about is not getting new followers or likes, and I know that it's really hard to sort of switch off that switch that says this is the measure of the success of my marketing, but that is not really the measure of success of your marketing. The measure of success of your marketing efforts is tied directly to the number of new clients you have in your business and the level of retention you have in your business, and you'll ultimately see that trickle down into your revenue and your profit numbers. But primarily, you're going to see the number of clients in your business increase. And if you're not seeing the number of clients in your business increase as a result of your marketing efforts, then that tells you maybe there's a little bit of work to do when it comes to your marketing.

Speaker 1: 8:09

And when it comes to your marketing, it's not necessarily about doing more. It's often about what you're doing. In doing what you're doing in a way that is smarter and refining it. I'm not here to tell you that you're going to have to spend 15 hours a week on social media marketing your studio at all. You don't have time for that, but I do think it's important that there is a baseline of presence there, and I also think that there's a way I know I should say that there is a way to do it that is incredibly effective and incredibly powerful and incredibly impactful for your business when you have the right tools and the right messaging in place. So why should we focus on digital marketing at all?

Speaker 1: 8:48

If you've listened to this podcast, you probably heard me tell you that it's not the only way to market, and it's not. It really really isn't. There are a lot of different ways that you can market your business. In fact, in my marketing intensive program, I give the studio owners inside multiple different avenues they can go down to attract more clients in their business, and one part of that is digital marketing. But there are lots of other ways that you can grow and build your presence, and all of them are incredibly powerful in different ways to your business. And so what I say is that you want to start with one thing, you want to master that, and then you layer in and add on the next tactic and the next strategy, because you do not have time to do it all at once, right? So it's about staying focused and getting one thing working really well and then adding as you go. So if you're ready to up-level your digital marketing, then this episode is going to help you tremendously. Okay Now, in today's world, your online presence is just as important as your physical presence.

Speaker 1: 9:53

So perhaps in the years gone by, when we were talking about online marketing, it might have just been tied to online businesses, but in today's world, even if you don't have an online service that you deliver. Perhaps you're not doing online classes or selling anything digitally, perhaps you're not doing hybrid classes and you don't have a video on demand platform. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be doing online marketing. In fact, online marketing is sort of a prerequisite for all most I should say 99% of successful businesses, and in today's world, it's not just about being seen or selling online. We use the digital marketing space to create a connection and to develop relationships with followers, with people who are watching you and thinking about joining you, but also about deepening that connection with your existing clients.

Speaker 1: 10:45

Okay, so where do we start? Well, let's start where I know we're already talking about right now anyway, which is social media and building a strong brand presence on social media. And when I talk about social media, I'm talking about all the platforms, right, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be on all the platforms. And so where should you be? You should be where your clients are, all right. So if your clients are on TikTok, you go to TikTok. If your clients are on Instagram, you go on Instagram, and that might be different to the place that you like to hang out online. So just be aware of that, but it's really important to have a presence on those platforms where a significant portion of your target demographics spend their time.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Establishing a really robust presence here will allow you to really connect with your potential clients in a place that they often show up, right? I don't know what the average is for the number of times someone picks up and checks Instagram or Facebook or TikTok every day, but I'm going to guess it's more than once a day, right? And people are in and out of their checking in, and so it's important that we take that into consideration when we think about how we're going to market our business in these platforms, because what we know is that the algorithm serves up things in different ways and it's not always in chronological order, and some things get more focused than others and all of these things. So you do not need to become an expert marketer. You do not need to go and get a marketing degree to be able to have a strong online presence, but you do need to be there in a consistent basis, and when you are showing up there, it's really important to have content that is connecting you to your clients, and when I do the exercises that I do with my members of my marketing intensive program.

Speaker 1: 12:36

I share with them a long list of ideas and suggestions and swipe files and templates that they can go away and use as their own inside of their marketing plans, because there are certain types of content that really is designed to deepen the connection with your clients and designed specifically to get new clients in the door and specifically designed to demonstrate the value that you provide to your clients. And these are all different types of content in a very finely tuned, balanced, proactive way that you're presenting them inside of your social media. And it's really important that you are thoughtful about the types of content you're putting out there and you're sharing content that you know your followers are going to be interested in. But it's the type of content that your followers are interested in that are also going to ultimately encourage them to become your clients is where we kind of walk that very sort of fine line. And what I see often the mistakes I see people making often is they are sharing a lot of content that is not really driving people towards a specific action in their business. Or I see the flip side of that. I see a lot of demands on social media by this. This is our promotion, last minute, special 20% off, 30% off, 40% off and it's a constant push and there is a balance there that you are looking for that is going to create that sense of connection with your studio, with your clients from your studio, so that they see you as some they want to follow and they're interested in what you have to say and interested in what you're doing and what you're sharing online. So it's really important to share content that builds that relationship, that shows that you are credible in what you do and shows the value of what you have to offer in your studio business. So, social media we definitely want to have a consistent presence.

Speaker 1: 14:36

The next thing I want to talk to you about is something that, again, is often really overlooked but so incredibly powerful, and that is email marketing. With all of the tools that we have available to us today that are so straightforward to use they don't really take a long time to learn to use you can really send some very powerful emails to your clients, and we love email marketing here at Spring 3. I'm a huge fan of it. I share all sorts of things with my studio owners inside my programs on how they can be more effective with their email marketing because it truly has the highest return on investment when it comes to making driving revenue in your business, and so we want to make sure that we're sending out emails, just like we are with social media. The key is consistency, and it is the most challenging part of it always, right, because you're getting pulled in so many different directions but you do want to be consistent with your email marketing and you certainly want, again, to have content in your emails that is going to connect you to your clients. They're going to deepen that connection with them, and you want to make sure that you are. These emails are well-crafted and written in a way that is engaging and informative, but also inspirational to them and helping and encouraging them to continue to move.

Speaker 1: 15:58

In your studio. One of the most powerful tools that we have available to us now is the ability to personalize and segment the emails that you're sending, and that means you can send your emails to a certain group of within your email list and not to some others, and there's a lot of really interesting and very, very, very powerful ways that you can use segmentation and personalization to drive extra revenue in your business, and I'm seeing this firsthand with the studio owners that are using these tactics that I share with them and that we craft together inside of my programs, and this type of approach really increases the likelihood of the folks who are opening those emails feel like they are opening an email and reading something that really, truly does apply to them. And that's the key, because once you start to, once people start to find your content whether that's in social media or in your email not as interesting, then honestly, they do stop following you, they stop looking, they stop engaging with your content, they stop reading it and we start to see a decline in the number of opens and the number of clicks in your emails, and that really is an indicator as to how informative and interesting the content is. So it's really important that you are consistent with your email, but again, a lot of this is about crafting content that is driving engagement amongst the followers and amongst the readers of your emails. So don't leave emails off the list. Continue to send them. Again, the consistency truly is the key. If you're sporadic about it and you're only sending an email when you've got something to sell, that's kind of a red flag that perhaps it's time to revisit email marketing as a marketing strategy. That might be an opportunity for growth in 2024.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Okay, let's move on. So we've talked about social media a little bit. We've talked about email marketing a little bit. Now let's move to the kind of the next check on the list, which is SEO and being the ease of getting found online. Okay, now, when people want to find your business online, they're going to go and Google you. I mean, that's pretty much what we do, right? People are looking for something in their area or they're looking up something or looking up your studio, because they've heard about you from somewhere else. They're going to go and they're going to Google you. Okay, and when they Google you, where you show up on that page is going to be dependent upon the ranking of your websites and how Google sees your website from its perspective. Right, and when you have a strong SEO and SEO stands for search engine optimization it really helps Google and all the other platforms that are search engines to find you and to put you as high as possible on the list.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Now, there's a lot that you can do to make sure that you are as high as possible on the list. Some of it involves perhaps paying a little bit of extra money, a little bit of not too much a little bit to get you ranked higher on that page, but it actually isn't always necessary. It really kind of depends on a lot of things. So we want to make sure that you are on that first page and we really want to make sure you're kind of in the top of that first page. On that SEO, on that search engine search, that when people are looking for your studio or a studio doing what you do in your local area, okay, now, when you have a great ranking on Google or any of the other search engine platforms, you will have a much better likelihood that that person looking for what you do is going to click on your link to your website and show up there and find you. And so you want to make sure that you are optimizing all of the things that will help Google to find you as easy as possible, and that means that you want to make sure that you have got some keywords in and on your website and all of the places that it's going to help Google to find you from their perspective. And you also want to use all of the Google tools to share information about your business and manage your online presence across Google, including search and maps. So the Google my Business profile if you haven't given it any love for a little while, now might be the time to go and check it out and add some more information and make sure it's 100% up to date and reflective of your studio business.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Oftentimes people will change things in their business and on their website and then they don't change things on the Google my Business profile or on the Apple Business profile, and when there's a mismatch there it sort of negatively impacts the SEO for your site. So you want to make sure it all matches and it all looks good. When you have a strong presence, when your SEO is fantastic, you're going to find that you get a very steady stream of new clients coming in the door very organically, and that is really wonderful for your business because you're not paying a ton of money to get those people come in. And if you do any sort of research, when you are welcoming new clients into your business and asking them how they found you, you'll find a lot of them will say I just found you on Google and if that is the case, then that tells you that your ranking is working for you very nicely. Ok, so that is really, really, it's so important.

Speaker 1: 21:23

Ok, moving swiftly on, I do want to talk about online advertising and utilizing paid ads. We will call them Facebook ads, but it applies to Facebook and Instagram, and there's also TikTok ads, and we also. Obviously, you can also pay for ads on Google too, and paying for and advertising your business online can be very, very powerful for your business, and I always say that my kind of caveat for adding cash to your marketing is that you have to have the foundations in place first. You cannot build a skyscraper on quicksand, all right. So if you do not have the fundamentals in place for your marketing first of all, it doesn't matter what you build on top of it and how much money you put into that building, it might not work for you, right? So we want to make sure that you've got great marketing messaging, you've got a great website that is going to drive people towards that first session of that first booking, you've got an introductory offer that is well designed and priced appropriately, and so you want to have some of those, all of those kind of fundamentals, in place before you start spending money on ads.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Ok, but if you do have all that and you're ready to scale and grow your business, then paid advertising can significantly extend your reach and target specific demographics. It's a really powerful tool for studio owners to increase brand awareness and attract new clients, and you want to make sure, if you are going to go down this road, that you're super clear about targeting the right audience with the right message. Ok, so you want to make sure that you've got that copy down, you've got the graphics down, you've got that video right. Whatever you're doing there with your ads, that it is the best that you can do and the best that you can put out there, because in that scenario, that really is then going to help you to get the maximum ROI on your ad spend. Ok, so I say it is an absolutely a fantastic strategy to use, and it's especially powerful when you already have all of your marketing ducks in a row and you're ready to go to the next level.

Speaker 1: 23:34

Ok, finally, I want to end with talking about content creation. So you know and as I was talking to you about social media and email marketing, you know a lot of it is down. A lot of your success in those areas comes down to the type of content that you put out there, and that means that, to some degree, you do have to be thoughtful about what sort of story and what sort of message you want to share with your potential clients, but also with your existing clients, and that how to and there's a lot of different ways you can put together content and, like I said, I share a lot of insights and ideas and templates with my studio owners. But that but you know, if you are willing to be a little bit creative, there's so many different things that you can do. Obviously, in today's world, a video is huge, but that's not to say that send it to the writing articles and posting those regularly to your site is also quite helpful for your search and for the SEO, and also for sending to people to share, perhaps a different way of communicating your value and your expertise.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Ok, so, whether, however, you decide to share your content and sometimes it's helpful to try different things to see what works well for your audience and what you enjoy doing but it's really important that you are thoughtful about the content you put out there. This is a huge part of marketing and it's a huge part of why people who are successful with digital marketing are so successful is because they're able to share content that establishes their expertise, that inspires people, that motivates people and really positions their studio as the place to go and you as the leader of the community. Okay, and when you share content, that works really well, this builds trust and builds credibility amongst not just your current clients but also potential clients as well. So you want to make sure that you're thoughtful about how, what, the type of content you want to share, and when you're sharing it and how you're sharing it. All right, it's really, really important again that all of your content and I cannot, I cannot emphasize this enough it's really important that all of your content truly does align with your brand and your values and the experience that you offer inside of your studio. And when you unlock the kind of the doors to that content creation process and I show the studio owners inside of my marketing tent of how to do that you find that there is just, oh my goodness, so much that you want to share that you can't really even put the put the lid back on the can, right, it's. There's just so much that you can share once you get started, and then it's about organizing it and getting it out there into the world in a way that feels really good for you. So I hope this is helpful to you as you kind of perhaps embark on up leveling your digital marketing in 2024.

Speaker 1: 26:28

We talked about social media and the importance of a strong brand presence and consistency with your presence there. We talked about email marketing and how you can personalize and segment your emails to help to those the content to really resonate with specific people within your audience. We talked about the importance of SEO and online presence and getting found online and how important all of that is. We talked about online advertising and why it's important to have those ducks in a row first of all, before you dive into adding some cash to your, to your marketing campaigns. And finally, we talked about digital content creation and the importance of creating content that is truly reflective of of who you are and what you're doing in your studio. So I hope this was helpful to you to kind of give you that big picture view of where there is opportunity in your, in your business and in the world for up leveling your marketing.

Speaker 1: 27:32

And you know the digital marketing space is really a very much an evolving landscape and what we know about marketing is that the consistency and the persistence and the creativity are the things that will set you apart. So start small, stay consistent and you'll see that your overtime you will see your online presence grow and you'll see people start to react and engage with you and bring to you and share with you that they have seen what you are sharing with them in email or online or on social media, and this brings new opportunities and new energy and, of course, new clients into your studio business. So I truly encourage you to embrace the digital world. You do not have to become an expert in Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest and all the things, but I do encourage you to start small and be consistent.

Speaker 1: 28:29

If this is helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business, I would invite you to go to wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review it. It would mean so much to me and would help to get some of what I'm sharing here with you out into our community and to other teachers and business owners. Just like you as well, I use those reviews and the ratings to help me to come up with content and ideas for future episodes. So head over there if this was helpful to you and let me know. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to Spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.