Pilates Business Podcast

Marketing on a Budget: Cost-Effective Strategies for Studio Growth

• Seran Glanfield • Season 23 • Episode 230

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 In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield dives deep into what really moves the needle in studio marketing - without breaking the bank. Designed especially for boutique fitness studio owners, this episode is packed with actionable, low-cost and even no-cost marketing strategies that help boost visibility, attract high-quality leads, and increase revenue—even if you’re working with a tight budget. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed trying to “keep up” with studios throwing money at slick branding or fancy ad campaigns, this one’s for you. Discover how to out-strategize, not outspend. 💡

Whether you own a Pilates studio, barre, yoga or dance fitness business, you’ll walk away from this episode with practical marketing shifts to streamline your approach and grow sustainably.


Learn more about the strategies shared here when you join Thrive: Learn more here 👉 www.springthree.com/thrive


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Speaker 1:

Let me guess you know you should be doing perhaps a little bit more marketing, but every time you look at your budget you think where exactly is this extra cash going to come from? If that sounds familiar, then you need to know that you do not need a huge marketing budget to grow your studio. In fact, some of the most powerful marketing moves cost nothing except intention and consistency. So today I want to share with you some practical, low cost and even no cost strategies that will actually move the needle. No big, fluffy ideas. Real things that bring in real quality leads, build your brand and boost visibility without draining your bank account. So if you're tired of feeling stuck and maybe a little bit invisible in your community, this episode's 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. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Saran and I'm so thrilled that you're here with me today. I've got my coffee, the sun is shining and I'm here to talk about one of my favorite topics and that, of course, is marketing. Now I know that for so many of you, listening in, your big focus when you wake up in the morning and head into the studio is going to be your clients and your teaching, and you love what you do. In fact, that's why you started your business in the first place, sharing this incredible movement method and the way it makes you feel with others, and I want to help you be able to continue to do that for as long as you want to.

Speaker 1:

But maybe, as you are on this journey of business and entrepreneurship, maybe it feels a little bit overwhelming and maybe, especially when it comes to marketing, it can feel like perhaps a bit of an expensive game to play right, and that can feel perhaps not so great, especially when funds are tight. So maybe you've looked at that competitor's fancy brand photo shoot or seen another studio with that slick ad campaign. Maybe they have their own app and maybe they've even got a huge private equity backing them, with tons of marketing dollars being spent, and maybe you're wondering how am I supposed to compete with that? Well, the big secret that most people who are in marketing will not tell you is this, and that is that you don't have to outspend them. No, not at all, but you do have to be sophisticated with your strategy. So you don't have to outspend, but you do have to outstrategize them. So today I'm going to be talking all about cost-effective marketing how to grow your Pilates bar, yoga, spin, dance, cardio studio without dumping thousands and thousands and thousands into ads or agencies or endless hours that you don't have, because I know that you're wearing at least 17 hats already, so you don't need more to do, but you do need the strategies that work smart for you, for your business.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, first things first. I want you to take a deep breath and truly hear me when I say this. You do not need a massive marketing budget to build a successful, thriving studio business. In fact, many, if not most, of the studio owners that I work with focus on organic marketing first, and sometimes that is all. Their business needs to be full and their schedules full and be filled with fabulous clients. Most of the studio owners that I work with are not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on digital ad campaigns, but what they have learned how to do with the tools that we have inside of Thrive is how to focus on what is actually working and how to create consistency in marketing efforts and even perhaps creating the mindset shifts that stop overcomplicating things. Okay, so I want to share with you just five key shifts and strategies that you can apply right now, even if your budget is tight.

Speaker 1:

So the first big shift is that a lot of folks believe that there are certain things that is missing from their business or their marketing efforts right now, and until they have those things, nothing else will ever get better. Right, it's this all or nothing mindset and mentality. If I could just afford to hire someone to do my social media, then my business will be better. If I had the budget for digital ads, then my business will be better. But the reality is that your business isn't stuck where it is right now because of money.

Speaker 1:

It's probably because what you are doing in all of those things is only getting you halfway there, instead of focusing on the few things that will do really, really well, and so it sort of gets a bit scattered when it comes to where you're spending your energy, not where you're spending your money, but where you're spending your energy. So one week you might be trying to be posting a reel on Instagram and the next week you're sending out a random email blast. Then, maybe a few weeks, a couple of days later, you're trying to film some video to post, and it all is very scattered and, honestly, probably feels quite chaotic to you and all of that is often quite draining and exhausting for you as the leader of the business, who is often also the chief marketing officer, right? So you're putting an effort, for sure and this is what I see over and over again but it's fragmented. And when you're, when you have a scattered marketing effort, when it's fragmented like this, it doesn't create the traction that you want within your community and your audience.

Speaker 1:

So, instead of thinking about perhaps, or approaching this with that mindset of if only I had, then it will work, think about what I can afford to do, what can I afford to do? What can I put energy in today that will have an impact? What can I do consistently and strategically with what I already have? Because what I've seen and I cannot, I wish I could give you the what I've seen. I wish I could give it all to you, which is why I'm doing I share this with you on the podcast, but I wish you could see that what I've seen over the years where, having worked with huge, huge companies who spend a lot of money on advertising, what often happens is they don't have the same clarity that you probably could create for free in your business if you're willing to, and without clarity, you're likely going to, even with ads, lose money from marketing and adding spend to your marketing and adding spend to your marketing. So clarity truly outperforms cash. When you have that clarity, you have direction, you have intention and you're able to connect more with your audience, because ultimately, that's what it comes down to right. It's not about how much you're spending. It's about how many new clients you're getting. It's about the results and the impact of that spend, and it's not always guaranteed Okay.

Speaker 1:

So one of my Thrive clients was posting multiple times a week on social Okay, and she, similar to you, was occasionally perhaps spending a little bit of money here and there, dabbling with some digital ad spends, but it wasn't giving her the impact, the results that she wants. She wasn't getting leads, new clients, in the door on a consistent basis. So we took a bit of time to audit her strategy and found very quickly that the messaging, what she was saying in her campaigns, wasn't clear, it wasn't compelling and she didn't even have a call to action, a next step. Here's what to do next, and so we simplified things a lot, we took away all of the noise and we got really, really focused on her messaging. And when we did that, not only did she all of a sudden feel a huge weight lift off of her shoulders, but she also found that it took her half the time to put together the content that she wanted. And within a very short space of time just three to four weeks we started to see her introductory offers, see higher conversions again. So we saw people coming in the door, but people staying longer, and more of them staying longer as well, and that all happened without spending a single extra dollar on marketing. So when you have clarity right you have you are way more impactful, and the problem there isn't necessarily the budget, it's often the focus.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now the next shift that I want to share with you and perhaps it's really a common kind of, I think, misconception is what I'd call it. Maybe it's a myth, but it's a misconception is that when posting on your social media can be quite frustrating at times, right, because maybe you're feeling like it's not getting traction. Right, and we are in the world we're in today following a lot of people with big audiences, but the size of your audience actually doesn't matter, because the goal here for most of you, in fact I'd say 99% of you guys listening in who have brick and mortar studio businesses, is not about going viral with your posts. Okay, right, quote unquote gone viral had a huge number of views or likes that it often doesn't have the impact you would think it has on your revenue, your income, your new client numbers. So the goal is not to go viral, right, and so it's not about necessarily how many thousands of people you could reach with your post or how many millions of views you might get. It's actually about being seen locally, right? So you're not trying to become that global brand or rack up a hundred thousand likes. You are running a local business. So your goal is never going to be, and should never be, mass attention. It probably is not going to help you if someone from another continent likes your post. Right, we're looking for an audience that is local. So what we are looking for is targeted attention. So the people who live in your neighborhood, who drive past your studio they are the people who could literally be on your reformer later on this week. Okay, so the shift I want you to make is it's not about chasing the algorithm and using the latest, necessarily the latest trending audio or having that sort of latest trend that we're seeing. It's about showing up consistently and intentionally for your audience.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and there's a lot of different ways you can do that. I'd show my studio owners inside of Thrive all of the different ways that we can collaborate. I'd show my studio owners inside of Thrive all of the different ways that we can collaborate, for example, with other local influencers and business owners, and to set up referrals and so on. I show you how you can create posts that are focused on your town and where you are, so that people who are looking for what you do you are the one who pops up and that you're creating a sense of community within your community, right Online, but within your community, that is local to you, right? And so when you're participating as a local business in your local community, you're going to be more likely to draw the right people in, and then it's not about how many people who are following you or how many people like your posts. It becomes about what's the impact that you are having and then actually the result that then has on the performance of your business. So we've seen this make the studio owners, instead of thrive, do a lot of this type of work and the the impact is really really powerful and it costs you nothing in dollars, but it does take effort, time and savviness about what to post and who to your post, knowing who you're posting for, okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

So most of the owners are also super focused on getting leads, that they often also miss the total gold mine that they're already sitting on, and that is your existing clients. Right Now, your current clients are your most effective marketing tool. All right, but only and this is the missing part to part of the puzzle, I think for many only and this is the missing part to part of the puzzle, I think for many but only if you support that right, and oftentimes we rely on word of mouth. Our clients, they who love us, who love you, are going to talk about you with their friends and over time, you, they will probably bring you some more wonderful people. And what we often get, what often frustrates studio owners, is when they find that their business starts to slow down and they're no longer getting those word of mouth referrals.

Speaker 1:

And what we often find and we peel back the layers a little bit and do a little bit of a deep dive is that there is no structure behind the scenes that supports and activates your current clients to be advocates for your business. Right, and it's really important that your clients become advocates, become champions of your brand, talk about you with their friends. Right, and because what we know is that we trust our friends' recommendations more than we trust ads. That's why people go on Nextdoor to ask their neighbors about who they recommend as a plumber or to come and walk their dogs. Right, it's because we trust the people, people, real people more than we trust what might show up on social media. Right and fair enough. Right. So when a friend says I just started classes at this amazing studio, you're good, you'd love it, come along, that carries way more weight than anything that you would post online, and so it's really important that we are, we tap into that incredible gold mine, like I mentioned already, that already exists in your studio and helps your business to get more visibility and awareness.

Speaker 1:

Now a lot of people will say well, I already have a referral program. I pay my clients or I give them something for free when they bring a friend in, and that's fine, and that has been very sort of a traditional solution for many, many, many years. For as long as I've been in the industry, that has often been the way things have been done. But you know, if you know me at all, I'm not always a fan of the way that things have always been done. I think that we can evolve our strategy to be perhaps as sophisticated as our clients have now become, and we can be smarter than that with the way that we invite our friends to bring their friends, and so we want to be encouraging of that. We want to build a culture of that within our business right, and we want to make sure that you are in your the way that you're delivering your classes, the way that you're engaging with your clients, supporting the idea of friends working out with friends so that means that in your messaging it kind of that energy comes from you, and so when we peel back the layer of the onion, that is often what is missing when it comes to having a robust and really fruitful referral program. So it's often that you don't necessarily need to be super focused on spending more money on getting new leads in the door. It's often about supporting your existing network, right, and those people who perhaps have been in a few times or have come a little bit or have heard about you, to take that step to come back in, or to take that step to come in and try. So it doesn't have to be fancy, all right, it doesn't have to be complicated at all, but you do need to be intentional and smart about what you're, what you're, what you're doing to encourage those referrals to come in.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now the next one is for my perfectionists out there. All right, um, who you are, and you know, I think we're all maybe a little bit recovering perfectionists in this industry, perhaps. But maybe you're spending hours thinking about a post, filtering the reel, editing what you want to say, adding emojis in the caption, rewriting them, wondering if it's on brand or not, deleting perhaps pictures and videos because it's not quote, unquote, perfect. And even when you spend maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes an hour putting together a post, you still don't hit send, right, you still don't hit go, and so I want you to think about what the purpose of your posting your email marketing or anytime you're doing outbound marketing efforts what the intention really is behind it. Right, and you know. What we know is that we're in a relationship business, right, and we know that we're going to meet our clients. They're going to come into the studio, they're going to see you, they're going to see your space, they're going to hear you speak, they're going to engage with you, right, and so we're not trying to put on a show here, because when they walk in, it's going to feel like a bit of a perhaps they got duped, maybe right.

Speaker 1:

So this isn't about putting on a show and then and hoping that that's going to be enough to bring people in. You have a business that is based on relationships, which means it has to be genuine and authentic, and they have to trust you. And they have to trust you, and your audience is not looking for perfect, polished content. They often just need to see real content and, most of all, they need to see you show up regularly and consistently. Right. They're looking for connection.

Speaker 1:

So sending a beautiful, perfectly polished post once every three weeks is not going to cut it when it comes to building an audience online or building an audience in your local community. So, instead of thinking about how can I make this post perfect, how can I make this post good enough, how can I make this email good enough, right? And how can I make sure that I'm showing up consistently, so I'm building awareness in my local community, all right. So this doesn't have to be super duper perfect. It doesn't have to be polished. You don't have to have the perfect filter. It's all good. You can take what you have and turn it into connection content that really does connect, right, and there's a lot of different ways that you can create great content, a lot of different ideas.

Speaker 1:

We share so many inside of Thrive. Each and every month, fresh new ideas for what you can share, and so you don't have to be sitting there trying to come up with something on your own or reinvent the wheel every single time, right? And so what I'd encourage you to do is, instead of trying to think about something every single day and making it perfect and letting that sort of weigh on your shoulders because maybe you don't have time for it actually is to batch your content creation and to to make it good enough um, not perfect good enough and then see what works well for your clients, see, see what people like, see what people engage with, and then reuse the themes, topics and ideas that do well, right, so don't reinvent the wheel every time. Repurpose what you have, use the templates that we share inside of Thrive and spend maybe one to two, probably about two hours a month outlining your content and putting it all together, because what actually builds trust is not perfection, it's actually consistency and connection. Okay, so I want to wrap up these five key strategies with this.

Speaker 1:

Perhaps the most important shift of all, and that is clarity, because what is often happening when we look at a business that is perhaps has flat revenue growth, perhaps doesn't have a growing number of clients, is that we see a variety of different messaging in a variety of different places, and that means that you know, perhaps on your website you haven't updated that for a few years, it's not sharing your most recent sort of efforts when it comes to marketing. Maybe your instagram is. You know, you've been throwing up some random posts and reels that are sort of very trending right now. Right, perhaps your class schedule is buried behind quite a few clicks, perhaps you don't really have a call to action for new clients on a very regular basis. You're're talking about the event that you you know various events you have. You're talking about different things all the time, and what that looks like to anyone who is new to you is just a lot of noise.

Speaker 1:

So what we want is we want to be able to. We want for someone who is new to your studio, who finds you to be, to instantly understand what you offer and how to get started. And if that isn't completely, completely clear in all of the places that people can find you online and in person, then you've got a messaging problem and that confusion is 100% costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in missed revenue. So what works is having a very clear client journey, customer journey where you're guiding people step-by-step forward through that path to the point of purchase and to the point of becoming a long-term loyal client. That is, a brand champion for your business, right? And when you don't have a path for them like and you're not sure about what that path looks like, then that's what's going to be conveyed in all of your marketing as well. So clarity costs nothing actually, but when you have clarity and when you have intention behind your customer journey, it genuinely and truly dramatically increases conversions. And so when we work together inside of the Marketing Intensive, which is a part of my Thrive program, we go through the entire customer journey and we revisit your brand messaging. We make sure that it is aligned with what you're sharing in your social media, what you're sharing in your social media, what you're sharing in your emails, what you have on your website, but also what is happening in the studio, face-to-face, in the conversations in the classes and as you're building that relationship at every single step. And when we fill in all of the gaps throughout that customer journey and make sure that every single touch point is aligned with your brand, then we're building a business that is strong, that is stable and that is consistent in its revenue growth. So let's bring it all together.

Speaker 1:

Marketing really doesn't have to mean that you need to have a big budget. Great marketing can happen on a zero or a very low cost budget, for sure, but it does mean that you do need to be smart and strategic and intentional with where you're putting your time and energy. Okay, so it's not about doing more, but you do need to be clearer, have a bit more clarity around what it is that you do want to focus on when it comes to your marketing. I also want to remind you that your local visibility is more important than, perhaps, an online fame, than the viral posts, right? Your primary goal as the marketing chief marketing officer in the studio is to be known within your community your local community, right? Not the entire internet, okay, and remember that you have an amazing community of clients all around you. So encourage your clients, appreciate them, show them and encourage them to bring in their friends and spread the word and be proactive about looking for ways to do that. Finally, I want to remind you that done is always better than perfect. Consistency outperforms perfection every single time.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so when you embrace these shifts, marketing really, really stops feeling heavy and starts to feel doable and gets you great results.

Speaker 1:

And if this episode has had you nodding along but you're not sure exactly how to put this into practice in your own business, then know that's exactly what we work on inside of my Thrive program. We help studio owners, just like you, to build powerful marketing strategies on any budget. We help you streamline your systems, clarify your brand message and, obviously, as you would expect, grow your revenue, but here's the kicker without burning out. So if you're ready for a business that supports you, whatever stage of life or whatever season of life you are in, then DM me the word thrive on Instagram or click the link in the show notes to learn more, because I know that you can build a strong. To learn more because I know that you can build a strong, thriving studio business and you don't have to do it alone.

Speaker 1:

All right, I'll see you guys next week. Have a great rest of your day. 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.