Making sales in 2023 is challenging. More and more people are competing for a piece of our prospects’ attention – and the cost of living crisis and other macro economic factors are making buyers more hesitant to commit.
So what’s the best way to make real connections with clients that cut through the noise?
The marketing ‘ecosystem’
Where once upon a time we may have relied on one channel to bring us the majority of our leads, industry instability means that we need to spread our marketing over more channels to give us a wider and more secure base. We need to ask ourselves: if our ‘primary’ marketing channel ceased to exist tomorrow, would we have our fingers in enough other pies to keep a stream of leads without too much disruption to the business?
If the answer is no, we’ve got work to do.
But planning a theoretical ‘ecosystem’ is only the first step: we need to make this strategy a reality with a consistent, systematic approach to our communications, both internal and external.
The solution: a Marketing Schedule.
A marketing schedule is a detailed plan that outlines your marketing activities across all your channels. It tells you when, where and what you’re sharing: and who’s responsible for each of those communications. A seemingly simple tool, your Marketing Schedule can make or break the success of your lead generation tactics: and have a massive knock-on effect in sales and revenue. (You can download the Schedule at the bottom of this page)
Plan your content
First and foremost, a marketing schedule helps you stay organised. By laying out your marketing activities in advance, you can avoid the chaos of last-minute planning and scrambling to promote your gym. Instead, you can allocate specific time slots for tasks like social media posts, email campaigns, or paid ad campaigns.
Get consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to marketing, and a schedule helps you achieve just that. When your marketing activities are sporadic, it becomes difficult for your target audience to recognise and remember your brand. A well-planned schedule allows you to create regular presence in the market –consistently sharing valuable content, offering promotions, and engaging with potential clients to build trust and keep your gym top of mind.
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Be strategic
A marketing schedule enables you to target specific segments of your audience with content that speaks to their needs. It also means you can coordinate lead generation with offers focused around planned sales pushes. And it allows you to proactively use seasonal themes to maximise sales – like New Year or the pre-summer influx. You can plan campaigns that highlight different aspects of your gym, such as personal training, group classes, or specialized equipment. By tailoring your marketing messages and timing them strategically, you can reach the right people at the right time, increasing the chances of converting leads into customers.
Track, evaluate, improve
Your schedule is also the key to tracking your efforts and measure results. By assigning specific goals and metrics to each marketing activity, you can evaluate their effectiveness – and feed this data back into your strategy. You can identify which channels or tactics yield the best results, which messages resonate with your audience, and how to allocate your resources more efficiently.
Align your team
Finally, a marketing schedule lets everyone in the team know what they need to do, when to do it, and how success will be measured. This means that all your staff are clear about their responsibilities, fostering accountability and making the best use of your resources. It also means that you can harness your team’s interests and strengths to get the biggest impact.
Got a coach who has a strong Instagram presence and loves creating video content? Put them in charge of stories and allocate a column to them in the Marketing Schedule. Outsourcing your paid ads to an external agency? Give them access to the Schedule so their work aligns with your organic strategy to boost results.
This simple document can form the basis of your weekly marketing meeting to keep everyone on the same page – and be used for a full review of your marketing outcomes on a monthly basis.
Not sure where to get started with creating a Marketing Schedule? Download our simple (free) template here.
Looking for the next step in marketing your training gym?
The JCV Marketing 101 Ebook gives you:
- Step-by-step instructions on creating a remarkable brand
- A simple, proven method for defining your target market – and engaging them
- A guide for collecting marketing data that will supercharge your results
- A 360-degree marketing infrastructure to create an agile multi-channel approach