Mastering Public Relations: Strategies to Elevate Your Boutique Fitness Studio with Candice Smith

In this episode of "The Pilates Business Podcast," host Seran Glanfield welcomes Candice Smith, the visionary behind French Press PR, to unravel the dynamic world of public relations in boutique fitness. 

This episode is a goldmine for fitness entrepreneurs, packed with strategies to boost brand visibility and trust. Candice and Seran dive deep into how effective storytelling and strong media relationships can transform your studio's narrative. From the significance of PR in enhancing studio credibility to the nuances of engaging with media professionals, this episode covers it all. 

Whether you're a brick-and-mortar establishment or a digital platform, these insights are key to expanding your influence and establishing your brand as an industry leader.

 Tune in to learn how to craft a compelling brand story and harness the power of PR to elevate your fitness studio in a competitive market.

Connect with Candice at www.frenchpresspr.com

GRAB YOUR FREE RESOURCE:
The Studio Owner's Guide to MASTERING REELS

📲 Follow Seran on Instagram @seran_spring_three

❤️ Loved this episode? Leave a review - your review helps spread the word about the show and I read each and every one!

🎧 Never miss a new episode! Be sure to follow or subscribe to stay up to date

Work with Seran:

🌟 Join the Thrive Membership and get the support and accountability you need as you grow your business

🌟Enroll in the Marketing Intensive and get everything you need to master your marketing and finally build a thriving studio business

Join my FREE FB group - and ask me your biz questions!

🤳 Join the Growing A Studio Business Facebook Community

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

It's all about getting seen and building trust in this super competitive fitness world. When it comes to improving visibility and building credibility, pr is your key to connecting with a wider audience and sharing your unique movement philosophy, with the goal of ultimately drawing in new clients who totally get and love what you're all about. So in today's episode, let's chat about why PR is your secret source to getting at your studio in the spotlight. 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: 1:03

This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm San and I'm so grateful to you for joining me today here on the podcast. Now you know how much I love talking to you all about marketing, and today I'm diving into a very special niche within that umbrella, because today we are talking all about PR, something that in our industry, is often underutilized and overlooked but, when done properly can significantly enhance your visibility and also your credibility, which is very, very important, especially in the really highly competitive marketplace that we are experiencing today.

Speaker 1: 1:56

So I'm here today with a very special guest, candice Smith, who is the founder and CEO of French Press PR, a public relations firm that helps mission-driven organizations and founders. Now she is a business founder of more than once over and knows how to wear all the hats. She knows exactly how it feels and over the course of the many businesses that she has founded, she refined her ability to market her business while wearing all the hats and juggling all the things, something I know you all can relate to. Now, today, she has taken that skill and she is passionate about helping small studio, small business owners and startups refine their brand story and build a successful and effective PR strategy so all things that we want. So I'm so excited that you're here with us today, candice. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat about all things PR Fantastic.

Speaker 1: 3:02

So why don't you fill us in a little bit? I mentioned that you had founded more than one business. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you kind of got started and how that led to where you are today?

Speaker 2: 3:15

Absolutely so definitely didn't plan on this being my life path or my career path, but I'm very grateful I ended up here. Just to ground my story I always like to start with. I'm the first person in my family to go to and through college. I was very, very, very blessed to receive full scholarship to Harvard, and when I got there I did not know what I wanted to do with myself. I didn't have any role models ahead of me to kind of show me the way, and so I realized what I wanted to get into was education, and I think when I take a look back at my journey, I realized even then I wanted to amplify people's voices. I wanted to help people be heard and share their stories, and so I ended up.

Speaker 2: 4:12

After graduating, I went into Teach for America, and when I was in the classroom I discovered my first passion, I would say, for creating a business that would help solve some of the inequalities that I saw in the classroom. So one of those big issues that I saw was around the number of students versus the number of me, and so it was one of me and so many students, and I realized that I would not be able to help everybody all at once. So from that my first business was born, and that was a scholar advance, which was a distance learning program that was brought to schools that didn't have enough teachers to adequately meet the needs of every student. We would hire teachers from all over the country, whether they worked from home or they were, you know, not actively working at a school at that time, and we would connect them to students in the classroom. So through that I got my feet wet in the business world, ended up pivoting about four years later into a sexual wellness subscription box for couples, which sounds like a total deviation but actually aligned with my major in college, which was women, gender and sexuality studies. So I was very passionate again about helping people amplify their voices and better communication through gameplay which we put into subscription boxes.

Speaker 2: 5:56

Now that was where I found quite a lot of difficulty getting the word out about what we were doing and how we were doing it. So there was a lot of shadow banning and, you know, just couldn't market myself openly and if I was willing to pay, my money was no good and it didn't matter. We tried so many different ways of. You know, there's no human pictures whatsoever, right, and we just use like the most basic language of you know consent and couples and you know adult date night, that sort of thing, and we would still get shadow banned. So with that, I decided to start marketing myself and I discovered PR.

Speaker 2: 6:44

And so the way that I like to describe PR I think because folks tend to have different definitions of what that means and everybody has their own idea of what PR looks like. The way that I think about it, for a small business owner especially, is you've got your marketing as the story that you tell the world about yourself and PR is the story that others tell the world about you, right? So we make it really simple like that, what you tell about yourself and what others tell the world about you. So when you combine those two things and that's what I like to call your visibility strategy, because you need to answer the question how do I tell my story in such a way that I get other people excited to tell it to the world? Right?

Speaker 2: 7:35

And that's how I see marketing and PR really fitting together for small business owners. And that was the question that I had to ask myself as I was starting to market myself and try to provide value to journalists and build these relationships, and yeah did really well. It worked out so well, in fact, that I realized my true passion was telling other stories. And now we just celebrated our third year officially as French Press Public Relations and we have helped dozens of small business owners get into well over 1,500 top tier publications.

Speaker 1: 8:23

Amazing Congratulations, what an amazing journey you've had so far, so far. There's more to come, I'm sure, so tell us a little bit. We did touch on where marketing and PR sit together and tell me a little bit about when it is a good time for someone to perhaps consider traveling with PR, or and how that kind of looks for a small business owner.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Absolutely, you need to think about your visibility path. I like to call it your visibility path because there's going to be elements of your marketing story that you need to figure out, how you want to tell your story. And then you need to figure out who you want to tell your story to. When it comes to a business that, let's say, maybe isn't e-commerce related necessarily, but is more brick and mortar or physical, or, because of the pandemic, definitely teaching online classes is still an option. That is something that could still be a source of revenue. Think about where your end goals are, because you're always going to want to think what drives traction for me? What moves the needle in my business? Truly, what type of visibility do I need in order to get in front of my ideal clients? What's going to bring them to me?

Speaker 2: 9:55

If we're thinking brick and mortar, you're going to want to think local.

Speaker 2: 9:59

If you're thinking e-commerce, or you're thinking digital course or one-on-one coaching or something along those lines that is virtual, then you can broaden your scope a little bit more and think about more of the digital sphere, maybe even going national or focusing on one particular social media avenue or something along those lines. But let's say for argument's sake that we're just staying local, we're just focusing on brick and mortar and you're trying to get the word out there. Think about what's going to bring people in the door to you. This is the top of your funnel, where you're bringing in those clients or customers who could be interested. And so if you don't have much of what I like to call a footprint so whether that's a digital footprint or a physical footprint or just presence in your local area think about who you can make relationships with, and that's the other thing that I like to say about PR. It's not just public relations, it's about personal relationships. Who can you make those relationships with? That will help expand your network.

Speaker 1: 11:18

Yeah, it's so important, especially with, like you mentioned, with a brick and mortar space, those local connections, those local networks. They really do have a huge impact on the depth of your potential client base. Absolutely, that's so important. Tell me when you start working with someone and what does that process look like and what should people consider perhaps to be a typical outcome of a successful PR campaign.

Speaker 2: 11:53

Yeah, absolutely. First things first. When we talk about PR campaigns, always keep in mind that you're going to want to think of your PR efforts not in a silo. You're going to want to think of it as an ongoing marathon that you measure in small sprints. So you want to see what's working for you and adapt accordingly, because you have very limited time and bandwidth and you're working in your business, you're providing services to clients, you're doing all of those things, you're probably managing schedules and wearing all the hats and you have to think about how much time can I really spend telling my story right? So you've got a lot to navigate there. So identify first at the start of your let's say, your campaigns, or maybe even, as you're thinking about the whole year, right, and you're like, okay, next 12 months, what are the ideal outcomes? What would I like to see happen in my business? And make some of those big, audacious, like hairy goals that you'd really like to see happen in your business, and then kind of plan backwards what will it take for me to get to that? What can I test right? Pr is always about testing, because there's never a guarantee that you're going to get somebody in the door because of a personal relationship, but it never hurts to test these things, right? So what are the three or four avenues that I have the time and the bandwidth to test, let's say over the next four quarters or over the next quarter? Right, that will help me figure out the best way to move forward. Right?

Speaker 2: 13:33

So you start there. You start with that goal. What could drive more feet in the door? Let's say that's what you wanna see. Or you wanna see more? Yeah, let's say that's your goal. More feet in the door, more foot traffic, right? So if you're starting with foot traffic as your goal and increase foot traffic, take a look at the actual foot traffic that you have right now. How many folks are coming in the door now? Do you have a sense of? Is there a cycle? Obviously, around January, there's a lot of people with resolutions that are coming in the door. So you might wanna think about for them. How do you retarget them? How do you get them to come back once you've brought them in the door in the first place? But since that's not your primary focus and you really wanna be focusing on getting those first feet in the door, what are you going to do to raise awareness and get them excited to come through, right. So that's where you're going to want to then sit down and say, okay, what are my options? How can I build out my network or leverage existing opportunities that are happening in my sphere in order to be able to tell my story and get folks to tell my story, right? So, and that's kind of what we do when we're working with clients is we're figuring out what is the landscape looking like for you.

Speaker 2: 14:54

Now, I like to call it the media landscape, and media landscape is just what is happening in your industry, in your niche, doesn't matter if it's national or it's extremely local and extremely niche. What's happening, what conversations are happening, what are the, let's say, for a client of mine who works in events, right, and so she's kind of in the hospitality sphere, a little bit in the food and beverage sphere, and so the way that we think about increasing foot traffic is how do we inspire and peak the interest of local news reporters who would want to come by and see what this event is like and what this experience is like and it's very similar to a brick and mortar store as well, right, if you think about enticing folks to come to you in your local sphere From the perspective of hospitality, let's say, right, from an advanced perspective, what is that experience like for them? That's gonna make them really open their eyes and say, wow, this is a great place. I had a fantastic experience and I can't wait to tell my audience about this. Right, so identify who those folks are in your sphere, in your local sphere. They could be local news reporters on TV. They could be folks that are just writing about things happening.

Speaker 2: 16:22

So I'm in Raleigh, for example right, so I might be looking for reporters who write about health and wellness and fitness in the triangle. Right, and so once you get that solid list of articles that are being written, I look to maybe put together a list of like 25 or something right, the 20 best gyms in the triangle. Or here are five things to do outdoors or whatnot. Right, you get those articles and now you not only have a list of people to reach out to, who you know cover that particular topic, but you also can see who your competitors are, and so with that, you can either decide do you wanna reach out to your competitors? Maybe they're in a similar space, can you do something together, or what can you learn from them and how they've been telling their story. So that's kind of what we do when we look at a media landscape to get a solid understanding of who to reach out to, what type of story to tell and who else is telling that story Right, exactly, that's really helpful and presumably you know.

Speaker 1: 17:37

Obviously your company helps with putting all of that together. But for those folks who perhaps are not quite ready to go down that path, what do you sort of see when people DIY it? What kind of hold people up or get some stock and what kind of gets in the way of them actually getting the results that they're looking for?

Speaker 2: 18:00

Absolutely. So. There are a number of different ways that folks can trip themselves up when it comes to doing their own PR, and I firmly do believe that anybody can do their own PR. You have to have the bandwidth and the desire to do that, obviously. But things that trip people up putting all your eggs in one basket right. So thinking I absolutely must get into this one publication, and that is the only thing that I'm going to try to do. Right, when there are so many other folks that you can meet, so many other relationships that you could be nurturing, right, don't just go after the big fish in your pond. Get your name out there, because then the big fish will notice you. Right, so don't just focus on those. Putting all your eggs into one basket.

Speaker 2: 18:51

And then, for, another mistake that I see folks doing is not doing their media landscape research. So you're just and what I mean by that is, if you don't have an understanding of what stories are being told in your local area or in your industry niche right now, you're going to be going into pitching and the idea of telling your own story without getting any external feedback. Right, you're going to be kind of stuck in your own thought bubble and so you haven't done your homework. Basically, and when you don't do your homework in order to figure out what type of story would be most attractive to tell, right now, you run the risk of just getting crickets right and no one responds to you, because it either sounds like everything else, or it doesn't sound that exciting, or you weren't thinking about what. Maybe there's something else that you wouldn't have known had you not done your research.

Speaker 2: 19:55

So third thing that I would say folks don't do enough of is really think of journalists and media and bloggers and local influencers as people, and what I mean by that is really think about cultivating personal relationships. Right, there is nothing wrong with reaching out to somebody who is in your local area saying, hey, I love the work that you're doing to share news about blank, and because of that, I would love to invite you to come try out our services, or here's a coupon on us, or would you like to grab a coffee and just treat them like a person, like a human being? You can reach out on LinkedIn. You can reach out on Twitter. Maybe. Don't reach out on Instagram. That might not be. That's still kind of like a little blurring the lines of personal and professional, unless they're influential, unless they're influencers. But just think about ways that you can truly build those relationships in your own network.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Go to events, go to check out your local chamber of commerce. What are they doing? What are things that? What are thinking outside the box? What are ways that you can get on your local Reddit thread, your subreddit for your local community and figure out what are new transplants trying to figure out how to spend their time right? So really just thinking about ways to engage with folks as people and just remembering, like, don't be afraid to reach out, but also don't approach people like hi, I know you're a journalist, write about me, right, approach them like a person, yeah it sounds like having a little bit of thought behind you know, having a little bit of a plan of what you kind of want the next step to look like, would be really helpful.

Speaker 1: 21:59

And what I see often, I think, when people sort of start down this path, is that often anyone who is in you, know in media or is actually looking for a story. And so if you can give them a story about why your studio is the way it is, or what your mission is, or what your values are, what you care about, or even maybe a case study on something or a challenge you've run, give them something to write about. That would be interesting to a wider group of people. I think, like you said, inviting someone to say, come into my, take a class with me and then write about how great my studio is is probably not gonna get exactly what you want. So it has. I think putting a little bit more thought into what you're kind of asking them to do and what the benefit is to them as well, is probably gonna get you more success.

Speaker 1: 22:52

And it might be like you said, it might not be this one time thing and ideally you wanna have a build this relationship such that this might be something that they come to and they talk about you in lots of different places, like you mentioned, on the top 25 places to work out.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Plus they do a deep dive on January resolutions. Plus you know, and your name pops up more than once I think. When I've worked with studio owners who've done this successfully in the past, that's been what has been. I think one of the most wonderful things to have happened is that this is they get, they have the write up and then they get invited to be on the local segment on the local news channel about you know something else, and you you say you cultivate this relationship so that you're like the person on the other end of the phone that they're calling when they need some a story about movement, wellness, fitness, wellbeing and so, if you can kind of make yourself that point person, it's, I think, way more beneficial longterm than trying to just get someone to write a quick article about you in pitching.

Speaker 2: 23:52

And that's kind of something that I've seen with the folks that we've worked with, and the focus that we have on driving ongoing success for them is not just us coming with our little Rolodex and trying to get them into different features and then that's it. It's no. How can we help our clients truly start to cultivate these relationships? How can we position them in such a way? Right, so we help them tell their story, but then we try to help them also cultivate those relationships. Especially if they're going to be in a local area, I want them to be on a first name basis with the influencers and the storytellers that are in their area.

Speaker 1: 24:33

Yeah, it's so important. I completely agree. So tell us a little bit more about how people can learn more about what you do and how you help the people that you work with.

Speaker 2: 24:47

Sure, yeah, absolutely so. Like you mentioned before, my agency is French Press Public Relations. You can find us at wwwfrenchpressprcom, and there's actually a number of different ways that we work with business owners, from full service folks who are coming in and they're like listen, I can't do this all on my own. I need help. Please come in and help us with our campaigns. We're launching something or we want to improve XYZ, so we come in and we help with the visibility strategy overall. So we figure out what is that machine between marketing and PR to make sure that they're well integrated and they're driving results for our clients.

Speaker 2: 25:32

So we have full service programs for our clients and packages there. And then we also have a bit of a hybrid approach as well for folks who maybe want to do some things in-house or they want to do it on their own and they don't have that budget to hire a full service publicist. But they need the strategy or they need some help figuring out list building and things like that. So we've actually created a full course that allows you to go through at your own pace and figure out what your strategy needs to look like. We give you feedback and that's actually called the Ascend program. So that's something that we are relaunching this year. And then, lastly, we do individual consultations. We build out playbooks, visibility playbooks that give you a full map road map of what you need to do for 12 months, and we do visibility audits and all those things in between. So we got Aalik Hart all the way up to full service.

Speaker 1: 26:36

Wonderful, so helpful and so needed. I think it's one of the things that you know when you you know it's always kind of on that list of that's one thing I could do, but how do I even get started with it? So I'm so grateful that you offer the services that you offer. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Yeah, for sure, everyone's got different entry points and different needs as small business owners, so we try to be flexible and adaptable. One other thing I will say if you are interested in learning more about your own visibility path and you've been listening to this episode I would highly recommend you check out our free visibility paths quiz. It's actually at bitly B-I-T, period L-Y, forward slash 16, the number 16 paths P-A-T-H-S, so that's bitly forward slash 16 paths, and that is a free five question quiz. After you take it you'll figure out what path you're on. So we have a little algorithm that figures out and tells you what path you're on, and then you get a PDF that gives you some top suggestions of what to lean into and what to avoid as far as your visibility strategies.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Fun. I'm going to go and take a look at that right now. I'm excited. Perfect. Let me know how you do. Candice, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your amazing insights and knowledge and expertise with us. I really, really appreciate it and I will add all of the links in the show notes. So, for anyone who's listening, who wants to get in touch with Candice and learn more about French Press PR and grab that quiz, check out the show notes. Thanks so much for joining us, candice. I really appreciate it, thank you.

Speaker 2: 28:18

Thank you again.

Speaker 1: 28:23

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.