Why Your Brand Is Invisible

Reputation management isn't just about damage control—it's the cornerstone of sustainable business growth that too many organizations overlook. When business owners feel frustrated by lackluster results despite investing in marketing, the problem often lies not in their product or service, but in how they position themselves in their local market.

We dive deep into the distinction between marketing locally versus attempting to emulate major brands, explaining why segmenting your audience geographically creates momentum and focuses your resources where they'll have maximum impact. Understanding the search volume for your specific services in your immediate area provides the foundation for building authentic visibility that resonates with qualified prospects.

The warm-versus-cold lead approach reveals why many businesses waste resources chasing unqualified prospects. Social media advertising functions like digital billboards—increasing visibility but not necessarily attracting ready-to-buy customers. For businesses offering premium services, inbound marketing that positions your website and Google Business Profile as validation tools naturally attracts prospects already aligned with your values.

The three pillars of effective reputation management—connection, confidence, and contribution—provide a framework for leveraging existing customers as advocates, maintaining consistent messaging across all touchpoints, and ensuring your visual identity matches your pricing structure. As one studio owner discovered, appearing "approachable" while selling $1,000 packages created a reputation-reality mismatch that attracted unqualified leads. Your brand's communication should naturally filter prospects, attracting those who value what you offer at the price point you've established.

Ready to transform how you position yourself in your local market? Implement these reputation management strategies to build sustainable growth through qualified leads rather than exhausting yourself chasing cold prospects who don't align with your business values.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Reputation Management
• 3:22 Increasing Brand Authority & Visibility
• 6:05 Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Strategies
• 9:08 Building Brand Reputation Through Existing Customers
• 11:32 The Power of Confident Positioning
• 13:53 Contributing Effectively to Your Target Audience
• 16:26 Episode Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Be confident about your customer service, about your team, make sure you're all on the same page about the messaging and all the communications you're spreading out there. Hello everyone and welcome to the Fit to Grit cast. This is our hybrid newsletter, podcast, video series that we put out every week, with interviews and individual casts where we talk through all those visionary ideas that come to us during our normal daily activities. Again, I'm your host, zach Coleman, and today we're going to talk about something a little bit different. As you're aware, this is our foundational series. I want to talk about all those kind of foundational elements that go into being a leader from the marketing side as a marketing consultant, and today I want to talk a little bit about, from a service perspective, reputation management.

Speaker 0: 0:50

A lot of us come through this pain where and I know I did where we deserve to be seen, we deserve to be heard as an organization and as an individual, and today we're going to talk about why you're not. Every one of us is trying to build something incredible. We have to go through those pain points as individuals, as we build a team, as we build a service, as we try to market that service and confidently spread our message the best way we can, but how does your market really know? How does your market really know who you are? We've come to this fad with AI. We're starting to push all this crappy content, but too many great businesses stay hidden. Too many CEOs and organization leaders don't understand how to market, don't understand the whole premise of building up yourself locally or building yourself up organically, depending on your audience and what you're trying to do, and they just kind of push marketing away and they don't necessarily put themselves in a position to build consistency throughout the efforts that they're trying to achieve online or in person. You know, I remember feeling very frustrated. You know, trying to take my business to the next level, understanding the difference between advertisement, organic content, getting that marketing fatigue that I push to all you guys. That happens, quite honestly, all the time in today's ever growing market of I need to be here, I need to be here, I need to be here, and still no results from your clientele. Your competitors seem to be getting all this business. They tend to be growing. Still no results from your clientele. Your competitors seem to be getting all this business. They tend to be growing, when in reality maybe they're not, Maybe you don't know their bottom line.

Speaker 0: 2:30

But today I want to walk through some local strategies, some ways that you can start building that advocacy for what you're trying to do. You know it gets very frustrating when you start spending all of this money and or you get to a point where you don't trust certain individuals to do stuff. You have certain people in house and you eventually have to get to the point where the trust is so limited that you start to actually spend less money on your marketing and or at all, and then there's a whole bunch of inconsistency in the growth of your studio or your local establishment. Let's kind of talk a little bit about it. Let's kind of go into the whole premise of the three main things that we're going to kind of talk about today. We're going to talk about you know, how can you really start to increase that brand authority and that visibility, to be seen what that really means compared to, you know, other types of marketing. How you can really focus on inbound leads versus outbound leads, start building that sustainable set of clientele that are actually going to close more frequently and really building a reputation based off of not spraying the wall and calling millions of people but through customers reviews, reputation, that brand reputation that you're continuing to look to build. So let's start off by talking about increased brand authority and your visibility, what you're trying to achieve when you're trying to grow your establishment.

Speaker 0: 3:57

Now, first and foremost, I want to be clear Marketing locally is not the same as marketing organically. I think too many individuals and too many companies look at all these huge brands like, let's say, nike, for instance, and they just assume that out of nowhere, they're going to have to have these crazy campaigns and these brand strategies and all that stuff. That stuff is suitable for, let's say, franchises if you have seven plus locations, even down to three but we'll just stick with seven for now for the case of this cast and you don't need to build a bunch of authority. So, going back to that local site, how can you really start to build that recognition you want? Well, first off, it's momentum. I first off, look at okay, who is my? Don't think too big. They always say think bigger. That's fine, but you can think about each of your segmented locations as a segment of your existing audience. So I want you to start there, start focusing your marketing efforts on certain areas, even possibly certain neighborhoods, depending on if you're located in a small town, you're in a big city.

Speaker 0: 5:07

That's going to shift. How many people are searching for certain types of situations? Now, because we're going to talk about local search optimization. And why I'm talking a lot about search here is because there's a big premise out there right now that you just AI everything and you just regurgitate a whole bunch of content and that's going to build you authority. I'm sorry to say it's not. You need to have your messaging down. You need to understand your audience and that's going to build you authority. I'm sorry to say it's not. You need to have your messaging down. You need to understand your audience and, first and foremost, you need to understand how many people are even searching for your types of services in your local area. And that's kind of the first plethora of what you need to do. And that's when you start focusing on that visibility, you start being able to spread your message and build more momentum. And so focusing on your local area is going to be, first and foremost, your biggest actually strategy, the very good starting strategy. Let's just focus on this market segmentation of this local area.

Speaker 0: 6:00

So, with that said, let's talk a little bit about the difference between inbound leads versus outbound leads. I like to call these warm versus cold. You know it's warm versus warm marketing versus cold marketing Branding. To call these warm versus cold, it's warm marketing versus cold marketing. Branding is a very warm type of segment of marketing as well. I would kind of say branding is kind of figuring out your why, figuring out your how, how you're going to take that and then moving on to how you're going to take that brand strategy into your local market and coming up with a system for that.

Speaker 0: 6:31

So there's nothing wrong with having an outbound type system. I mean, in the fitness industry for instance, you know outbounds become the rage. You have very large companies that say outbound is the way to go. Hire some sales reps and go out there and just call everyone in your area. But here's the thing outbound, you're going to have to sell harder. Outbound means that you are getting in contact with somebody. You are reaching out to someone that has no buyer intent right Now. Inbound people already have that intent.

Speaker 0: 7:03

Now, if you look at social media, for instance, if you look at Facebook ads, instagram ads, any type of social media, I want you to consider that kind of like the online version of a billboard you can put it in a certain spot. You can try to segment certain types of people by, let's say, you're putting on the side of a street like a billboard and you know that that's where this demo is, but you're always going to get people from the outside coming in and seeing that as well. They still have no intent, but they see your sign on a constant basis. So they're still considered cold until they reach out to you. So they're a little still a little bit harder to sell. I like to call those ones in the middle. They're not really cold, they're not really warm, but most of them are still unqualified. There's still a lot of work you're going to have to go into to sell those types of people.

Speaker 0: 7:51

Now, I'm a very big component of inbound. I'm a very big component on utilizing inbound marketing for higher value type packages. If you're a studio, for instance, that sells $1,000 packages, let your website, your Google, my Business, your brand, be your validation, let your messaging be your validation, all the stuff you're putting out there, be your validation and qualify the people that you want to bring in and focus a little bit more on that warm marketing approach through inbound leads. Now, this is much more going to be more of a strategy type cast instead of more of a tactic type cast, because, to be honest, I think a lot of people out there there's enough content out there where you can, you can listen to that's going to be like, oh, we need to use these keywords here or we need to do this. But you know, the the shifting of everything is moving so fast in marketing right now that tactics tend to fall short and have no real authenticity behind them if you're just listening to what other people do. So you kind of have to figure out your own tactics. But I can give you some strategies to kind of help you get started in understanding how to do this.

Speaker 0: 9:03

So let's really focus our last point for this video on reputation. How does your reputation speak for itself? Now you're going to have three really cores here. You're going to have your connection side. So how do you connect with your existing audience? So, leverage your existing customers as a strategy. Leverage them to, let's say, get reviews for you. Create a campaign to not just get reviews, but leverage your existing audience or your members to become your advocates to bring more people in. They're going to be the ones that have the same values, they're going to have friends that have similar values as them, and if they already match your values of your studio, you're going to bring in like-minded people. It's the whole concept of hey, if you bring someone in for free to do a free challenge and they bring a friend to do the free challenge, you're going to get more people that want things for free because that's what they value, right.

Speaker 0: 9:55

But if you start to bring in people that already are part of your studio, are part of what you're doing from a local perspective, and you just have them give you a Google review, you're kind of killing two birds. One, you're building reputation. Two, you're positioning yourself with great customer service under the services that you are providing. Three, you're providing the search result to show that reputation, to move you up in the rankings, and so that is kind of a strategy. But what you could do even further than that is you could start to take your existing members and you can twofold that. Take your existing members and build a reach out campaign where you don't just ask for a review but you also give them a free gift. You say, hey, we love a review for what we're doing here, and if you're willing to give us a review. We're willing to give you one month for free if you bring a buddy in. You're not necessarily asking them to bring a buddy in that they're going to have to pay. You're kind of pushing them to leave a review because that should be no longer needed as a selling factor, because they already care for your studio. They're part of those values. So start to think about it that way and create a campaign where you start to reach out to five members a day asking the member for a review and to bring a friend in.

Speaker 0: 11:14

Now the second component I wanna talk here about, um reputation in general, is confidence. You know, if you've watched my TEDx, you might have seen this is one of our pillars and it really comes down to your continued learnings of what you're, what you failed at and what you're getting better at, and spreading the message that you want to spread. Be confident about your customer service, about your team. Make sure you're all on the same page about the messaging and all the communications you're spreading out there. If you're very big on customer service, focus very heavily on your customer service and your values. Talk about how you live by your values.

Speaker 0: 11:51

Utilize that type of content within all aspects of what you're trying to do locally. Local search is basically like the yellow pages People are already going to have intent to come in and if they see you positioned in a certain way via website, via your Google my Business profile, for when they search already for that intent of your services and you match their ethos and they match your ethos, that's how you are going to make a qualified sale. The qualification comes through your positioning, not through calling a million people. The way you position yourself in a market will dictate your community growth. So right now, number one we talked about how to get reviews and a kind of a strategy that you can utilize your existing audience to double.

Speaker 0: 12:40

Two, your positioning. Three, I wanna talk about contribution. Two, your positioning Three I want to talk about contribution. Now. Contribution can come in many forms, right, and if you're really good at a certain service or a certain aspect, that is how you're contributing. That comes down to understanding the price points of your service and your offerings compared to high. Low Does it mean you price lower? No, does it mean you price higher? No, it means that you are contributing to your specific audience. You know your audience. You want to contribute to this world and to them. So contribute, be able to do the necessary tasks of understanding your audience, learning your audience, learning who they are, the who of your brand, and that just doesn't come from your audience. You representing yourself and contributing to your audience. You know them enough that you know how to communicate with them and you want to communicate with them. You want your offers to match them.

Speaker 0: 13:52

I'll give you a story here. I had a call with a recent studio owner. He sells $1,000 packages Probably brought it up earlier and they came to me and the first thing they said is I'm getting a whole bunch of crappy leads. Everyone will use it for crappy leads. So what do I first do? Go to their website. I want to look at their brand. I want to look at what they have right now before I have a call with them.

Speaker 0: 14:11

And I looked at my wife, funny enough, and I asked her I'm like what is the first thing that you notice when you look at the positioning of this brand without knowing anything about them, without going deeper into the research that most clients do? She said they seem very approachable. Do you think approachable is the type of feeling you want to give someone who's selling $1,000 packages. No wonder they're getting unqualified leads. They're coming off as unapproachable. I mean they're coming off as approachable. So everyone thinks that, oh, they match what I want and they're very approachable, so let me go in. Does that mean that you're being mean with them? No, it just means you have to communicate from all aspects, the values and the vision that you're trying to determine.

Speaker 0: 14:51

Your price point is not matching your image. You're not contributing effectively. So how do you contribute effectively? Like we said, if her audience is really to help, maybe she has to take a step back on her pricing. Understand her audience. And if her audience take a step back in pricing or vice versa, she needs to look at the messaging that she's providing, the communication of her visuals, the communication that she's confidently trying to spread to her audience and don't make it approachable. Maybe she has to focus much more luxurious so she knows hey, this company isn't going to have the price point necessary. You're weeding out the unqualified through visuals, through the communication that you're providing, not necessarily just getting millions of people to have a conversation with you. And I think this is where a plethora of people miss out on the warm approach. They don't understand how important it is to communicate who you are and who you're trying to serve in an appropriate manner and understanding how that correlates with your offers. So that last one.

Speaker 0: 15:51

There was contribution we talked a little bit about how you can really build a connection with yourself, with your audience, how that really contributes down to leveraging your existing customer service and or team to get reviews and leverage to bring more people of value into your organization. We talked number two we talked a lot about the confidence how to confidently spread your message. Know what you're spreading. Long story short, don't just throw up words on your wall, don't just create something that has no meaning. Lead by example and learn and understand and live confidently through the messaging and the communication that you're spreading to the world. And number three, contribution understand your audience and how you're communicating to them to understand if you're going to qualify them.

Speaker 0: 16:34

I think that's it for this video. You know this was another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. You know I want to end this by saying thank you for everyone who's kind of watched and gone through this overall rebrand to the Fit2Grit cast from our old brand. We're really trying to bring in and hone in all of our audiences into this one cast of leadership within the athletic space and really trying to help them understand from a high level how they can start setting goals, long-term goals of success for the growth of their brand and what they're trying to achieve, and so I appreciate all of you for sticking around for another Fit to Grit cast. I am your host, zach Coleman, and I will talk to you next time.