Pilates Business Podcast

Inside the Marketing Playbook Fueling 40+ Top Fitness Studios with Zach Mills from ONBRND

• Seran Glanfield • Season 23 • Episode 228

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Ever wonder how top-performing boutique fitness studios generate consistent leads and convert them with ease? In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield is joined by Zach Mills, the marketing mastermind behind OnBrnd, a boutique agency fueling over 40 studios worldwide. With experience scaling YBell Fitness to acquisition and leading marketing at Xponential Fitness, Zach pulls back the curtain on what actually works when it comes to lead generation, conversion, and building a marketing machine that runs on autopilot.


Whether you’re struggling with ineffective ad spend, low lead quality, or just want to stop relying on free trials to fill your classes, this episode is packed with real talk and tactical strategies. Learn how to ditch the outdated tactics, improve lead quality, and set up systems that work while you sleep (or finally take a day off!).


Connect with Zach at www.onbrndmarketing.com


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Speaker 1:

What if you could generate more leads, convert them faster and build a marketing machine that actually runs without you while you're teaching, leading or finally taking a day off? Today on the show, I'm joined by someone who has done exactly that, not just once, but across dozens of studios and globally. Zach Mills has helped scale YBell Fitness to an international acquisition. He ran marketing for Exponential Fitness and now runs OnBrand, a boutique marketing agency that is quietly powering over 40 fitness studios behind the scenes. So if you've always wanted to know what happens behind the marketing scenes at some of the most recognized studios what happens behind the marketing scenes at some of the most recognized studios this is the episode for you. Well, hi there. I'm Saren Glanfield. 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:

This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Well, hey there, and welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Saren Glanfield. I am a business coach, I'm a systems geek and your biggest cheerleader when it comes to helping you build a thriving studio business without burning out. And, as you know, I like to cut through all of the noise and nonsense and talk real strategy for studio owners who truly want to grow and scale their businesses, not just for tomorrow, but perhaps for years to come.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you ever felt like your marketing isn't working for you, it's common that I hear that Maybe you're posting, emailing, boosting some posts here and there, but you're not quite getting the new clients through the door that you wish you were. You are not alone. This is one of the biggest frustrations that I hear studio owners share every single week, and the truth is it's not always about doing more. Sometimes it's about being smarter about what you are doing, and so that's why I'm really excited today to welcome on today's guest, someone who's not only cracked the code on fitness marketing for their own business, but who's done it in the real world, at scale, and is now helping its year owners, just like you, to do the same.

Speaker 1:

Zach is I'm going to say it marketing powerhouse. He has built his own brand, he sold it, and he's worked for one of the biggest names in the industry, where he led marketing for two of their top brands and has gotten to see front row seat to what is working and what doesn't right now when it comes to launching a studio and growing a boutique fitness studio business. So I'm so thrilled to welcome you here, zach. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate the invite. I'm stoked to be here, Saron.

Speaker 1:

So you have been in the industry for quite a while, and over the time you've been in this industry, your role has switched from being a studio owner to be a brand developer, to working for Exponential. So tell us a little bit about, take us back a little bit. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and perhaps some of the pivotal moments in your career that have gotten you to where you are today.

Speaker 2:

Totally no, I mean. I think that's a great place to start. It's a little all over the place, right. In terms of where the career actually started. It was more so on the agency side, working in sports marketing for a couple of years, moved over to a smaller boutique agency and that's actually when I got recruited to go to a small little company called Y-Bell Fitness. For anybody who's out there who's sort of just like a diehard functional fitness fan, you know, was those little triangular weights that were a dumbbell, kettlebell type of hybrid, right. So if you've taken any f45 class during the majority of their programming, so I had the the pleasure and the opportunity to really build that brand from the ground up and, as sir on spoke to a little bit earlier, I was with him essentially all the way through acquisition, through trx. He was actually now we're working with on the agency side, funny enough, and that's through the world coming full circle.

Speaker 2:

But after Wide Vow Fitness and we saw the writing on the wall in terms of the acquisition, I got recruited by Exponential Fitness. From there I was brought on to run marketing for two of their brands, yoga 6 and AKT, and it wasn't until I actually got to Expo. They're like hey, y6 is actually crushing it. You should really just focus on this little redheaded stepchild that we have called AKT, which, for those of you who aren't familiar, is a dance-inspired fitness type of Gucci concept. It started in Nomad in the heart of New York City as a single standalone and the Exponential team thought that they could essentially replicate it at scale across various different markets. So it was a very niche product for sure. We did what we had to in terms of sort of repositioning and redefining the brand and working alongside the education team and providing the best in studio experience, and it was very much roll your sleeves up and dig into the studio and dig into the studio.

Speaker 2:

I think my first year at Expo I spent, I want to say, four out of the five business days in one of our corporate-owned studios in the Southern California area. So it was really just a crash course in terms of hey, how the hell does this stuff work, right, yeah, and so it's funny. It was a little bit of a humbling experience going from, you know, like director, quote, unquote of marketing to hey, man, you're making phone calls, you're passing out flyers, you're attending grassroots events, all of that right, but it was really kind of trial by fire and the best way to learn is by doing so. Did that for a couple of years and was able to really kind of understand the Expo playbook kind of in and out, and really saw some points of optimization that I felt could be applied at a little bit larger of a scale and a little bit more of a strategic of a scale, because it's not a one size fits all. As we all know, right, markets change, modalities, change, experiences, change instructors, demographics, you know really everything. So I really just saw an opportunity and started consulting, you know, relatively small time and started consulting relatively small time and over the course of let's call it nine to 10 months or so, my consulting business had really kind of grown to outpace what I was really doing at Expo and thought, you know what, there's definitely an opportunity here, just based on the initial conversations and connections that I've made.

Speaker 2:

So I decided to leave Exponential full-time and go all in on OnBrand and since that time call it two, two and a half years later where, as Sharon said, we're working with 40 plus studios really specializing in the Pilates and yoga space. We've got a team of 11 people. We just had a new hire new account manager start as of June 1st, which is awesome. She's a total rock star and yeah, I mean that's kind of what brought us here. We do everything specific to boutique and really just dig into the details. We know there's a lot of agencies out there, but not a lot of them have sort of been in the trenches where I really understand the pain points of studio operations and where there is room to really optimize and grow. So that's what we brought to the table and stoked to share the story with you guys.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, and it is what a story, what a story. So tell us a little bit about what the work that you've been doing more recently on, specifically on, I'd say, lead generation. I think when we talk about lead generation, especially in the digital world that we're all in, what do you find that? What are some of the mistakes that you see, or misconceptions? What do people get most wrong about lead generation? What are you seeing?

Speaker 2:

A good question. I think it really comes down to what your primary KPI is right, or what your main goal is. I think the vast majority of not only studio owners, but primarily digital agencies, they focus on lead volume and CPL, or cost per lead. So typically that is essentially the threshold or their grading system in terms of how well they are at their job. What they are not doing is how many leads they pump for your system and at what efficiency, right?

Speaker 2:

I think the primary difference with on-brand and what studio owners should really kind of take into pass is not just how many leads but the actual quality of leads and how many convert at the end of the day, right? And a lot of that comes upstream in the sense of what is your initial offer that you're putting out to the marketplace via these ads, whether it's meta, whether it's Google. We've worked a little bit on TikTok don't necessarily recommend it, but those are really two primary platforms and it always comes down to the same thing High ticket offers convert anywhere between three to five times higher. Leads come in a little bit slower, they come in a little bit more expensive, but the ROI on it proves the model time and time again, and that's really where we started to double down.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's really interesting. Okay, any reason why you think that might be. I have some good guesses, but curious to hear your thoughts. No, 100%.

Speaker 2:

I mean, again, a lot of people love the first class free or the low ticket offers of seven days for seven bucks, one week for 10 days for $10 or whatever it may be, and at the end of the day, people just don't have skin in the game, right, the customers don't. What is a first class for you? Cool, I'll give you my information, and there's really no sweat off of my back whether I take you up on it or not. Right? And so that's really where you turn your paid media machine and just target people who are just kind of clickbait to a degree. Right, they just say see an ad? Cool, yeah, right, got it. They just say see an ad, cool, yeah, right, got it. And then, when your sales process is implemented, your front desk team is doing what they're supposed to do and following up with these leads. I would imagine nine times out of 10, I'm like who the hell are you guys? How'd you get my information? Right?

Speaker 2:

When it comes to that more high ticket intro offer, anywhere between, ideally we don't do anything below $60. Usually that $60 to $110 range or so is where we like to play around. Really, given the demographic in the market that we're marketing in. There's just an added layer of credibility there. People essentially know what they're signing up for, because $60, $100 to people is quite a bit. We all know the boutique is on the more expensive end of available fitness and wellness options. So we want to make that transition a little bit easier for them right On the sales side of things. So people aren't coming in for a first class free and then they're hit with a oh my gosh, it's $300 a month to do unlimited Pilates, like how the hell does that work? Type of thing. So it's a multifaceted type of approach that we take and that's sort of the rationale that we've seen from the marketplace.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it makes so much sense. You know the quality of the lead is important and having that that higher or that, I should say maybe it's not even, it's it's the relative value of versus the next sell to be in more, more aligned Right, and so then you're to some degree of pre-qualifying that client and so you're not wasting time, they're not taking your space in class and you're not wasting time trying to convert someone who is never going to convert, which no one's got time for, right. That's so good, okay, so so interesting, so that so definitely we don't like. First, actually it's so funny because this week I actually had um twice, I've told two separate studios. Please can we take away the the very, very low single drop-in class price as your intro offer and please, please, please can we take away the free one too?

Speaker 2:

purchase please if you take anything away from this.

Speaker 1:

Please just go please, no, no, no, yeah. So that first step is um is really, it's really it's important to get that right. And then what happens next? What's? What are the parts? Cause? I think I think when people think about um, especially digital advertising, um, it a lot of a lot of folks think it is sort of just this sort of like magic wand you wave and you just need to throw an ad up, and as long as you know how to put an ad together and put an ad up, life is good and everything will be marvelous. What? But I think that's not always the case. So tell us about what happens next. After you have kind of have your intro offer aligned, your trial offer is in the right price point. What happens next?

Speaker 2:

No, great question. I think that's spot on right. And as good as these platforms are in terms of AI and just their machine learning doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of optimization, targeting, creative feedback, copy things like that, you still have to have a finger on the pulse, right, just sort of understanding and dictating and mitigating really what is working versus what is not. Are we a year or two away from it being essentially completely autonomous? Probably to a degree, but that's a little bit more of the grander scale. This hyper-localized lead generation tactics that we dive into takes a little bit more of a manual effort to really kind of dig into. So, in terms of what happens after we've established the intro offer and we have opportunity there, it's obviously digging into the creative, using those kinds of best practices and really UGC is what we see converts the best across the board.

Speaker 2:

For those of you that don't know, ugc is user generated content.

Speaker 2:

So it's really anything that you can just snap with your iPhone within the studio itself, right, and just kind of pinging through and just showcasing what the community is about, what your studio is all about, and really just sort of encapsulating that in a quick 10 to 15 second video right.

Speaker 2:

So we have the creative piece. And then, where we take a step further on the on-brand side, is actually a post-click experience. What I mean is, once someone clicks on the ad, particularly when it comes to Google, we dig in and we develop a couple of different landing pages for each campaign and each intro offer that we're running on a monthly basis, of different landing pages for each campaign and each intro offer that we're running on a monthly basis. So what that does is, again, it just provides an added layer of credibility to where people are able to land on this page. They take the time to consume the information, really understand what your studio and your brand is all about, and then, if they're completely convinced, they'll submit that lead form and then they're essentially into your system, again all reiterating what it is that that primary intro offer is. So it's just an added layer to get them to your system. So that's essentially steps two and 2A, I guess you could say in terms of once the intro offer is established.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, you know, and I think it. You know it's interesting that we have. You know, you mentioned that you have specific landing pages, right? We're not just sending people to a homepage, right? We're not just sending people to your website, it is to a specific page which has been designed specifically for that audience. Who is, you know, if they're coming from a Google, they're looking for you, someone like you. If they're coming from, you know, Meta Facebook, instagram, then they're looking. Then they're coming from a Google, they're looking for you, someone like you. If they're coming from, you know, meta Facebook, instagram, then they're looking. Then they're interested in something that you may have shared. Right, and so you're, and so you are, you're, you're. You're giving them some information based on knowing what you know about them, which is that they may, they may or may not be completely convinced that you are the one. Right, and so it's. You know, you're not just sort of throwing them into your homepage, which may or may not be optimized for that audience right, that's 100%, spot on.

Speaker 2:

I mean, at the end of the day, we live in a very, very competitive space, right? Or we work in a very, very competitive space. Speaking from Southern California, there are, you know, six Pilates studios within, let's call it, a two, two and a half mile radius of where I'm at in kind of downtown Huntington Beach. So how do you make your way through the noise?

Speaker 2:

It's really sort of understanding and designing and just iterating what it is that separates you from your competitors, and those are the pieces that my team really helps dive into and kind of understand and position you in a very specific light, a very specific light. And when it comes to the landing page in particular, like you said, you can have the most incredible experience, the most seasoned instructors, the state-of-the-art facility and reformers, but if what you're conveying online doesn't necessarily match that, you lose instant credibility with this new audience that you're looking to bring on board. So the point of us designing these landing pages is to absolutely 100% showcase what it is that you offer. We bring the lead straight from the top of the funnel and then we get them through the middle and bottom again, just kind of reiterating the same sense of continuity throughout the brand.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, along all of that, even to that stage. You're tracking data, and so what are you looking at and what are you seeing right now?

Speaker 2:

data, and so what are you looking at and what are you seeing right now? Now, 100%. I think again, this is an area of opportunity where a lot of studio owners don't necessarily take advantage of whether they don't know or they just assume an agency is going to do. But any campaign that we ever start running for any of our studios, we ensure that the Google Ads and the Meta Ads are directly integrated with their POS system, whether it's MindBody, whether it's Walla, whether it's Mariana Tech, Club Connect or Club Ready, glowfox, moments, whichever one it is, some of them are easier than others in terms of integrating right Like Moments in particular, they're fantastic, and with that integration, walla is kind of the same way. Mariana Tech's brand bot is decent. Mindbody is a little bit of a pain in the ass, to say the least, but we have a few custom tools.

Speaker 2:

Our developers are very, very privy to understand what that integration looks like, because the last thing you want is to be spending money on advertising people submitting leads, and then they're just sat there, they're not going anywhere, you don't know that they're in their system, they don't know that they're engaging with you right.

Speaker 2:

So it's definitely building that bridge so that way we can then track exactly the second a lead entered the system, how many folks actually purchased whatever intro offer it is that they were pushing, and then, even more importantly, after that, how many of them converted to a PAC or a membership, right. So we essentially dig into that data from the inception of the lead, from a CPL standpoint, all the way through to CVR conversion rate. And then we dig in a little bit deeper LTV or lifetime value to see what the conversion rate is and apply that backup stream saying, hey, intro offer A converted at 12% last month, while intro offer B converted at 8%, converted at 8%. Okay, let's probably double down, put a little bit more money towards the 12% or option A, just based on that fact, right. And so again, we think there's just so much more opportunity and so much more data to inform our top of the funnel strategies on the paid media side to where people are actually converting at the end. So that's the way we track.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the data tracking component I talk about all the time is just so important, especially when you're spending money on advertising. Right, you know, when you're doing organic social, like it's a nice to have, and if you have time and you want to go and try and do that and follow through on all the links and all the stuff, you can totally try. But when you're spending money, you need to make sure you're having you, you're making there is a return on that investment, of ad spend, and so the data component really becomes so much more critical.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100%, and I'm happy to announce there's a little bit of a teaser I believe I've told one or two of our clients, but for the last let's call it 30 days, 30, 45 days or so our development team is building a custom reporting dashboard that essentially has an open API that will connect to pretty much all of the major software providers MindBody, mt, walla, moments and ClubReady and we'll essentially be able to track again any moments and club ready and we'll essentially be able to track again any lead that we generate all the way through each individual system and you'll have your own very visual, friendly customer client dashboard to see again, hey, what leads are converting at what rate, and so that will essentially help dictate and just provide a level of transparency for our clients, and so that way keeps us honest. They're 100% in the know in terms of what's working and what's not. We're probably another 30 days or so from from launching that, that MVP product, so we're excited about that.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. The more data, the better is what I say.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now you also you know when, when you take a very sort of holistic approach to the way that you run ads and work with your clients because, as you mentioned, you care tremendously about not just getting clicks and leads, it's also about the conversions and the lifetime value as well software that studio owners are using and the systems that you know we can set up behind the scenes to help improve retention and conversions. Can you talk a little bit about you know, when you work with studio owners, what the process looks like to make all that happen and how generally you know. How are you seeing? Are those set automations that are already set up? Are those what you're doing?

Speaker 2:

Or is it sort of case by case? No great question. And again the answer is probably option C. It's case by case. There are certain studio owners that we meet with we end up working with that essentially have nothing built right and it's shocking to see how successful their business has been over a course of five, 10 clients who have been had studios for 15, 20 years or so that really didn't have just that basis of digital infrastructure right to where we're essentially building it from the ground up. And then there are others that are a little bit more privy to the actual capabilities of the softwares that they work with within Moments, within MT, within LoyalSnap, et cetera.

Speaker 2:

You know, and have some pretty standard, you know automations in play, at least to an elementary degree to check the box. I guess you could say so. For us, typically it's kind of a combination. It's a case by case basis to see, hey, what exactly is needed right SMS, breaking it into eight different types of stages of the actual lead funnel, whether they haven't purchased an initial offer. Have they purchased but not booked. Have they booked but not showed? Have they expired? Are they cooled off? Are they a win back, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2:

So we have that rather robust strategy and instead of just saying, for someone who has automation set up, we dig in and be like yep, nope, that's wrong, you got to go with this one. We take a look actually at the data in terms of overall delivery, open rates, click rates, conversion rates, etc. To see, oh wow, this is actually a, this is, this is a great automation, this is a great tactic. It's a great little sequence that you've been, you've been deploying over the last six or so months. We're going to leave this as is, maybe tweak some things you know here and there in terms of messaging or the way the email graphic or the sms message is actually configured to just optimize and then essentially iterate from there.

Speaker 2:

But I think in terms of the overarching process, we manage everything within our project management tool called Notion. We just have our onboarding checklist Once we get access to all the systems. Really, the main area where we start is on the automation side, because that's where we think it's going to make the most immediate impact, because without that, a middle of funnel where you're actually consistently touching leads um, you know, what we're doing at the top of the funnel on the paid media side really isn't going to bring any value. So before you start spending money on ads, you want to make sure that the infrastructure is really set in place and set in stone to convert any new people that we're bringing into your system at that top of the funnel. So that's really where we start and we essentially move out from there.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, yes. All of that. Just repeat that. Does everyone rewind? Listen to that again. It's so important. Yeah, you know, I think it. And to anyone who's considering spending money on ads, you have to have the funnel fully, completely set up, and so so many owners have so much, so much at their fingertips a goldmine right At their fingertips that are not is not optimized fully, and I think that you know, before you start spending money on ads, that that's the part that is really going to help support business, because growth in scale in boutique fitness is about retention. Right, and if you're getting leads walking in the door but you're losing them as soon as they, you know, walk in, then you know your business is not going to grow, revenue is not going to grow. So retention is what it's all about, and retention is about all of those touch points down the road.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about some of the projects that you have been working on recently. I know you've worked with a lot of studios who are in this sort of opening and launch phase, and I know that you've had many Pilates studios in that phase, and I'd love to for you to talk through a little bit about what that looks like and timelines of how you have worked with studios in that, in that phase of growth.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yeah. So I mean it's fun, right? I guess what you could say is our first studio clients in Natural Pilates founders Laura Wilson out here in Southern California. They started with four locations when we had them three years ago, right, and to this point we're set on opening the seventh location next month in Manhattan Beach. And funny enough, I was on with Laura last night and she was talking about she's flying to Miami this morning to go discuss two leases in South Miami and then two additional ones up in New York.

Speaker 2:

So really just exponential growth in terms of what has kind of trigger pointed since that time. But a lot of it sort of really just comes down to she feels as if she has the fundamentals of her business locked in, right, she has her go-to marketing team, she has her sales process, she has her operations manager, everything like that. So now it's time to kind of crank up the heat and run with it, right? So we have that essential, you know, client where we're running pretty much all the day studios, while we currently have one in presale set to open in the month of July, so next month. Meanwhile, we did another presale back in January for a studio in New York City that opened up, right. So while we're still maintaining that sustained studio on the go-to, we have our go-to presale strategies right that were typically deployed anywhere between eight to 12 week time span.

Speaker 2:

We feel like that's really where you kind of have the sprint to dig in and really make an impact within the community without promising, hey, we're opening our doors this day and just continuing to kind of kick the can down the road, right. So in terms of sustained versus pre-sale, we really understand it all. No-transcript, they know what they don't know. I guess you could say, right, and they're more than happy to be like, hey, we've seen your CV, we've heard you from X, y and Z, you know how can you kind of help us out, right, and so we've got a sustained studio right now, technically in soft open. Grand open is about to happen next week, funny enough. And then pretty much everything in between, we just signed for Zeek 57 up in New York City. That's been around, obviously, for quite some time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

We're taking a look inside their systems and really just looking to, you know, kind of dust the cobwebs off, if you will, and see where there's area of optimization, again starting within their POS system, which is Moments, which is a pretty nifty and today's digital age I guess you could say right in terms of the capability. So just taking a look and seeing, hey, where can we optimize and how do we build this funnel to where it is just recurring and there's an opportunity for it to essentially automate right over the coming months.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely so. Lots of growth, lots of opportunity in the industry. Obviously we touched on owners should be really paying attention to, as we sort of look ahead to the next 12 to 24 months when it comes to marketing online?

Speaker 2:

Are you talking AI specifically or just digital marketing as a whole?

Speaker 1:

Well, we could talk about it all. How long have you got Touche?

Speaker 2:

touche.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, no. What would you say? I mean the both combined and separate. What would you say I mean the both combined and separate? What are you seeing and what are you expecting?

Speaker 2:

Totally. I mean, when it comes to AI in particular, I think there's so many areas of opportunity that just individual studio owners can leverage right. Chat GPT is again sort of the standard in this. But when it comes to crafting emails, crafting social copy, creative direction, visual direction, everything like that, really lean on that and sort of develop your prompts to save yourself five to 10 hours a month just ideating around potential content, ideas for organic social right. Take that one step further. On the email and the SMS side of things, right Again you have this list of contacts within your database that have all been familiar with your brand. So craft email and SMS campaigns using ChatGPT right, just based on specific promotions, specific people or audiences that you want to target, et cetera, to essentially build that right. And that's just kind of specific to ChatGPT.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to industry agnostic type of technologies, the industry, as we know, from a digital perspective, is usually a few years behind that of its counterparts. So what we're actively doing on the on-brand side is really searching for ways to further solidify our tactics across middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. To further solidify our tactics across middle of funnel and bottom of funnel, right Top of funnel, is really just going to be meta Google, your paid ads, for the most part right and obviously grassroots and organic to complement those. But middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, how can we get much more personalized with the overall nurturing and closing of leads? Right, that can essentially be automated. So there's a handful of different softwares that we're currently in data and just trialing right In terms of call rails, voice agent, AI voice agent. In terms of plugging directly into our CRM system and following up with leads and gags, it's just an AI voice agent, essentially just designed to vet different leads and lead them to purchase an intro offer. You can definitely tell it's an AI voice agent.

Speaker 2:

On the other side, right, same thing with simpletalkai. Those are the two ones that we've found to be the most advanced at this point, but there's still another year or so away from really cracking where there's opportunity there. But on the texting side, mini chatai is definitely an opportunity again to just continue to nurture leads. So you're not necessarily stuck as a keyboard warrior following up with questions, faqs, customer service pieces like that.

Speaker 2:

But at this point in time I think really it's just leveraging the free versions of ChatGPT and even Canva from a design perspective to just get your brand intact and to really just mitigate a lot of that admin-esque type of work, right In terms of ideation, copywriting, just the mundane tasks that aren't necessarily difficult, they're just time consuming, right. So I think that's the immediate area for people to take advantage of it. 12, 24 months down the line, it's really going to be those AI tools that are implemented at the middle and the bottom of the funnel to not necessarily remove your front desk, but have front desk, be front desk right, as opposed to sales ops or sales reps.

Speaker 1:

Right. It will make your front desk just way more efficient.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's interesting you say I think I you know, I'm finding the same thing that there are a lot of tools coming, but I'm not sure I would recommend many of them yet. But they are the pace of sort of evolution is is quick, it's not. It's not years and years away, it's it's months, you know, and so 100 yeah, for sure, fantastic.

Speaker 1:

well, thank you so much, zach, for sharing such insight. I'd love for you to let people know where they can learn more about you, onbrand, and what you do and how to get in touch blabbed about for the last 30 minutes with Saron.

Speaker 2:

Instagram is at onbrand underscore. Linkedin, again, is at onbrand underscore. So if you guys have any questions, comments or concerns, just shoot us a message directly via one of those platforms and we'd be happy to have a chat. But excited to be in this industry, excited to kind of keep pushing forward and, honestly, the likes of rubbing shoulders with us, saron is an incredible company to be in, so we're excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, zach. I appreciate it If you've been feeling a little overwhelmed by your marketing. I hope this gave you a bit of a sigh of relief and a little bit of spark of inspiration as well. Marketing does not have to be complicated, it just has to be a little bit perhaps strategic and also aligned in the way that your studio works. So if you want to learn more about Zach, I'm going to share everything in the show notes so you can click over there and find your way.

Speaker 1:

And if this episode sparked an idea or perhaps helped shift your thinking a little bit, do me a quick favor share it with a studio friend who could use a little marketing clarity as well. And if you haven't already, please hit that follow button so you never miss another episode. 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.