Jake Anderson is the CEO and co-founder of One Life Social, a fitness and wellness membership accelerator who have helped fitness studios across the world become successful. Using social media advertising, sales training and video content, Jake and are experts at bring fitness studios to the next level.
Subscribe Where You Get Your Podcasts
Transcript
Jake: What people do is they don’t know who’s interested and they will spend a lot of money to start this ad campaign. They will waste a lot of money because they don’t actually know the right kind of people that are clicking and engaging, whereas if you spend less and start slow and understand who is engaging, and start to know the audience, so they start to understand the product, and trust it and like it. Then when you actually know who is interested, you can dabble down and spend your money in the right places and get better results.
Kevin: How is it going everyone? Welcome to The Fitness Founders Podcast. I’m Kevin Mannion, VP Marketing here at Glofox. This week Anthony and Tara talked to Jake Anderson, CEO and founder of One Life Social. One Life Social is helping wellness and fitness businesses around the world attract new members through social media and sales best practice. Jakes talks about making sacrifices for making business success, where and how to invest marketing resources, and if you really need a salesperson in your gym. Okay, let’s have a listen.
Anthony: We are delighted to be joined by Jake Anderson from One Life Social Media. We’ve been working with One Life Social Media here at Glofox for a while and absolutely delighted to have Jake on the line. They are the best of what they do in the industry. He worked exclusively with fitness studios and gyms, help them to ramp up their leads and conversions to their membership acceleration programs. Very welcome to the podcast, Jake.
Jake: Thanks, Anthony, mate. It’s good to catch up with you again. And we are really happy to be on it as well as humbled to be on it. So we go in a bit more detail about some of the challenges and some of the things that we’ve learned over the last 12 to 18 months.
Anthony: Yeah. I think, you know, that the area you’re in is something that we get asked the most by our customers and it is definitely something that everybody is struggling with. You know, nobody can ever have enough new business coming into their studio or gym. So before we dive into sort of the meat of our discussion today, it would be great to learn a little bit about your background and how you came to start One Life.
Jake: My background actually is not fitness background. I left the UK when I was 21. Went to America coaching football after graduating in a university and then I ended up going to do some photography and travelling Southeast Asia like the usual run a lot of people do when they graduate which is fun. And then I got to Australia with no real plan. I met with a few friends at that time, and then they were like, then we got a lot of money left, they were doing a lot of random jobs in Australia. So I basically decided I want to get sponsored and stay or I will go back to the UK. One of my friends got a role in recruitment and got sponsored so I decided that I was going down that route and see what’s to recruitment, so I ended up getting a role offered in Melbourne. So I worked in Melbourne for 18 months in recruitment. And then my friends decided that they wanted to move back to the UK, but I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the UK, so I just decided I was going to leave Melbourne. I’ve made some commission in recruitment. I went travelling on my own and I went to Japan, Philippines, India, travelled Australia, travelled New Zealand and then I go back to the UK. And again, kind of run out of money, spent all the commission. And then the company in Melbourne that I left, I’ve done pretty well for them, so they offered me a job and sponsorship again to go back to Sydney. So I went to Sydney and work for them for two years and did really well. Basically built a [unclear – 03:01] business and it was turning over like a million dollar revenue a year and then I left.
After two years, I got my permanent residency and I left that company and then I decided that I was going to start my own recruitment company. Started my own recruitment company with a friend who I used to work as well, and the first six months we actually worked at F45, you know, windows, and with two phones and two laptops. And we got the business to a point where we had enough money to obviously get an office and actually start growing. Got to 12 month point and we basically sold the million dollars between two guys in a room. But I wasn’t fulfilled. I wasn’t very happy and I would have lot going on in terms of making decisions where I was going to stay. And I was one time want to go back and be close to the family. I just decided that it wasn’t about the money really. I used to go to F45 every day train and I was like I want to do somewhere in fitness. I just decided to, I broke up with my ex-girlfriend. I left the business, sold my shares in the business, left Australia. I left all my mates and went to Thailand. And this was just over probably just over 2 years ago. And then when I get to Thailand I was considering opening a gym. I came out, I was training at F45, I was like I’ll open a gym. But really when I got here I was like, well nobody actually knows about some of the best gyms in the world that I am training at. So I was like, well, I think I can actually help gyms grow all around the world but obviously I need to learn how to do that. So while I was driving I started self development stuff, going out on a way to actually learn as much as I could. Then I go back to the UK which was probably around just after Christmas, after in like 6 months of different gyms around the world.
And then I just went in to the process of setting everything up and moved to London, and then set the company up. And then literally moved into a flat, lived on my own in London. I was in like a very far out, about 45 minutes out and literally just got my head down and started working. And then that was the point when I was like, well I just need to make this business work. I’ve got a lot of cost. I’ve gone from being probably in the top 3% of earners in Australia to be in having no money in England and really not selling anything in England. So it was quite a tough period in my life but it’s also a big learning experience because I knew that I only have one option to learn. Learn quick and started basically run around London, met as many people as I could. And the strategy was if I can sign the best gyms then I should be able to work with other gyms. I start the business and I did everything on my own for probably four months and that’s when we started hiring. We’re then just over 12 now being live. We’ve got a team of nine and before that obviously it was just me on my own just over 12 months ago. So it’s been a pretty crazy year.
What we are trying to build here as a business is to actually help gyms grow. Like the whole point of the business is I can use my business experience that I’ve got to actually help gyms grow. But the other side of it is actually I love going to the gym and I love the effect as to my body and so helping out more people get into fitness. And the way I can do that is by generating more awareness in social because that’s really where the attentions is right now. It is great for gym owners but it is also great for like gym goers to get fit and feel good. So that’s my WHYs as to why I set the company up and why I want it to grow and working a lot as well, so that kinds of answer the question.
Anthony: Congratulations on all of that like to do all that in such a short time and to have the level of clients that you have is just super impressive. You know, we obviously said at the start we are so impressed you got it at Glofox. So I think it would be good maybe at this point maybe for you to give a little bit of an explanation around the exact type of services you provide. You know, what type of business you target. I know you mentioned that a little bit already, and just maybe a flavour of some of the results that you’re getting as well.
Jake: Yeah, definitely. So really what we do, you know, our whole process is that, it is called the Membership Accelerator. We also do content, video content for gyms as well. But the main product that we offer is the Membership Accelerator. And that’s a system that we’ve built from learning about the problems and the challenges and the insights in the industry across in our market and in sales. The system that we’ve created is about using Facebook and Instagram as platforms because that’s where the attention is. That’s where at the moment you can really measure your results, you can get value for money. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to reach a lot of people. You can do retargeting which is basically, now you can start to follow people around across geolocation. We can go into that a bit and more detail later. At the moment the way Facebook and Instagram set up, there is not that many big businesses that’s spending a lot of money on it. So local small business can win on those platforms and not spend that much money and reach the right people, and target the right people and generate an ROI quite quickly.
That’s kind of the front end is we generate awareness using video content and take people through a story of that product in that local area if they live or work close to a studio. And if they are interested then we start to go back at them with more content and different office and as to what the studio wants to offer to get more people through the doors. But then we take them through a process from social, so the consumer when we take them to a process to actually generate high conversions from social than say website. So we would use sales funnel, we would use landing pages and we would use a process after it to actually get high show rates to actually bridge the gap between somebody going to the landing page, giving the details to actually coming into the gym. And then when people come into, you know, like a new lead goes into a gym, we also actually provide some insights and sales training to gyms to actually help them convert a more show ups as well because there is a process to it. I need strong sales process. I have the right systems in place like what you guys have built with Glofox is going to really change the industry. You might have been. So, really what we do is we will help the gym generate awareness in the local area.
So the biggest challenges that we’ve seen so far within the industry, probably Top 8, is that number one is awareness and nobody knows about the studio. [unclear – 08:57] Number two, will be that lead generation is a big problem. So not enough leads are actually coming into the studio so again in between maybe 10-50 leads a month, and then maybe getting 25% showing up. Number three, lead nurturing, so we don’t actually have the time to actually manually text and email every lead back that comes through. Number four, sales. Gyms are struggling to actually get people on the door and then convert it to members. Number five, lead management. So this is obviously something where Glofox will definitely solve this problem. And around that leads are all over the place and they don’t know where the person is in the sales process. Front end websites. There are loads of people going to a website but not many of the traffic are converted to leads. Retention, gyms can see who is joining but don’t know who is leaving so they are not really growing. And number eight would be short rates so the actual leads are not coming in.
So there’s a number of reasons around all of those challenges but if you really can start to tailor and target the right people that live or work within one to two miles of the gym and start storytelling to those people then you got a much better chance of getting more people to show up. And you’ve got much better chance of actually increasing overall sales and growth. That’s really what we looked to do, get high show up rates, help the gym sell more also then retain people longer because they actually live or work close which means it is convenient for consumers.
Anthony: Yeah, I think the thing that astounded for me there is, luckily we’re going to deep dive on some of the things that you mentioned there. But it is the systems and processes that people need to get in place in order to make their whole business more efficient. I think a lot of people when they start a fitness studio or gym their passion is to fitness, it is training people and making an impact in their lives. And then that enthusiasm gets them so far then they realize, actually no. This is like any other business and I need to fill it with new leads at one end and convert them along and a sales funnel as well. And I think it is at that point you see where fitness studios or gym will either fail or succeed if the person can move to the next level and create normal everyday business processes like any other business. So like the fact that you are in the marketplace help the people to do that like it is great. And I think, you know, I’ve seen the impact that you’ve had on a lot of businesses. I think, you know, where you started as well in terms of retention, where people are and you mentioned Facebook and Instagram, and I think that’s obviously a great starting point because everybody is familiar with it anyway. As you said like the data and the analytics on it are so good. I think that’s a nice segway into our next section where Tara, my c-host here, is going to maybe do a little deep dive on Facebook and Instagram ads with you. And yeah, over to you, Tara.
Tara: Yeah, marketer and talk about marketing things. And I’m actually thinking what you are saying is kind of the perfect lead into this because like Anthony mentioned we are all users of these platforms. But looking at them as marketing platform is a completely different piece. You know, like you need to think about them in a business context, and coming from a user perspective to a business perspective is kind of I’m sure a sticking point for a lot of people there in the fitness industry. So you know, maybe if we could actually start with the basics. How do you think about, how should a fitness person be thinking about Facebook and Instagram advertising as opposed to when they were just a user?
Jake: Right now the attention is on Facebook and Instagram and mobile devices. So 90% of the traffic, or 90% of the leads that we get come from mobile devices for gyms, so you need to make that the whole process for a consumer is mobile centric but also led by video content because that is the two most powerful thing that’s helping social media grow. So that’s where the attention is. If you look at traditional marketing compared to social media marketing then for a local business, for a local gym, let us just say the gym in Dublin, if they decided to spend £1,500 on a billboard or flyers then that’s not where the attention of consumers right now. When somebody walks down the road they are on the phone, so when they’re given a flyer it is kind of invading popular place whereas where you can start to show them the right content on the platforms looking at then you’re starting to kind of, you know without them really realizing it, [unclear – 13:12] And once they click into one ad, you can start to obviously give them more content or more ads. So it is a bit more subtle and it is much more targeted because you actually know he is interested. And you can target the people actually live or work in your location. Whereas when you are flyering or when you are using billboards you can’t really track it. You can’t measure it, but you also don’t know if you are actually talking to the right people that live or work near a gym or fitness, or age range that would actually come to your gym or fitness studio. And value for money like I can pretty much, the best ROI that you will get in terms of customer lead will be from Facebook and Instagram if you know how to use the platforms correctly.
I’ll give you an example like we’ve worked with a gym in Norwich region location in the UK and a fitness space that we work in there was pretty sceptical about going down the route of social. They’ve always done flyering and spending £1,500 in flyers and getting 30 leads a month. I was like you will definitely get better results than that with what we do so get it a go. And within four months they’ve had a thousand leads and they spent £2,000.
Tara: That is quite an increase.
Jake: So we’re getting leads for £2 compared to leads for £1,500 divided by 30, whatever that would be.
Tara: And that isn’t great.
Jake: And the leads that we are getting probably weren’t like targeted, they probably are not the people at right age range, they never work close to the location. And any sales process from social takes 6-8 touch points so people need to see that product again, and again, and again in the feed to finally get it engrained in their brain. Like if you think about football pitch or football ground and you’re watching a game then around the pitch is loads of like Toyota, or Etihad, or any of the brands, but you don’t go to a game or you watch TV and go like, “I’m going to book a flight or I’m going to buy a car” Every time you see these brands it cycled and go into your brain. So where the people at the moment, the attention is on Instagram and Facebook. Where do you get those search points, those platforms, how are you going to build your [unclear – 15:12] on those platform, and then it’s about taking through the actual process to actually getting them into the studio. So that’s the most important thing, and then retargeting which we kind of went into there is so powerful because anybody that clicks on an ad means that you could basically follow them not just on those two platforms, but you can actually target them on different apps that that consumer would use and on the mobile device as well. Other things like Facebook, the data from Facebook is used across Messenger, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram. So let’s just say a F45 studio in Dublin, if somebody has typed in F45, [unclear – 15:46] WhatsApp, that gives you us an opportunity as an agency to then essentially target them on Facebook because they wrote F45 into WhatsApp.
Tara: Yeah, absolutely. There are just so many more things that these social media companies are consistently coming out with to make what they do that much more powerful and therefore what you do that much more powerful. It is a little daunting to try figure to figure out the best way to go about it but you touch on some really good, you know, retargeting is a huge one. People can get tons of potential just from the fact that something visited their website and they cannot follow them around.
Jake: A good one is always for a gym especially like people might go to a landing page. We put Facebook picture into a landing page and to a website which gives us the opportunity then that any traffic that goes to those sites but don’t confirm. It means that we can then go back and then follow them with more content. But the good thing with that is even if they don’t convert right away to build an audience and the people that are converted. Then you can basically tailor your messages to people who haven’t been converted yet and be like, “You haven’t taken any trial yet. Why don’t you come in and look at these guys having a great time.” So you can really tailor the message depending on where that consumer is in the journey.
Tara: Yeah, absolutely. And so much more powerful than just throwing a bunch of flyers at a wall.
Jake: Plenty of time as well. It is time isn’t it for staff going out and you’re going to pay for the… you’re going to pay for the flyers, and give them out effectively hopefully. And you can’t really measure how many people coming off the flyers. So yeah, like times have change. And it is definitely at the moment, the most time effective and most cost effective place to actually advertise for local business. And which won’t max because as soon as big companies start actually changing their techniques, you know, putting the money into TV, and billboards or flyers, when they start spending more money on social then the price of that is going to go up. Now is a golden age for local businesses to still win and because it is not that many people actually spending on Facebook and Instagram yet.
Tara: Yeah, absolutely, and a place where you can actually stand out as it work.
Jake: Yeah, definitely. Yes.
Tara: Great. Well, as far as the targeting. Is there any other points that you think gyms need to be aware of when they are thinking through how to get people in their local market? I think locality is a big one as well as far as Facebook knows where people live which that sorts of horrifying when you think about it. Is there anything else that you think is important for them to keep in mind?
Jake: Yeah, definitely. So we speak to a lot of gyms and we’ve spoke to hundreds of gyms and a lot of gyms will say, “Yeah, I am blooming on to the moment.” I’ll go into the actual detail and it might be boosting a post instead of running an actual ad in the backend of Facebook. So there is certain things that you can do in a boosted post. They are similar to a paid app like age and gender targeting, interest targeting, location targeting but it is not that specific the location targeting, and then likes, comments, shares. But when it comes to ads then there is about under the 10 things that you could do with that. So you can do boosted post which makes it tailored and targeted. Probably the most important one is what you talk on that Tara is geo-targeting. How are you going to, and if you got a gym and maybe you’re not the high street, how are you going to make sure that everybody is aware and they know you exist. And it is by targeting people on their mobile device within one mile, the people that live or work in that location, the right age ranges that are coming to the gym. That way you’re going to use your ads spend effectively and you’re going to start to work out who is interested. And then you could start to optimize off that as well. So people are actually logged into Facebook and Instagram on that phone 90% of the time which means you can target everybody that are in the area often or they live close. So it is quite granular in terms of how targeted you go in terms of geolocation. And then it is a process of working now, who is engaging in the videos that we are putting out there for them on social. And I’m looking at the data of who is actually converting and then it is about looking and optimizing the best performing adsense and audiences. And what I mean by that is most gyms at the moment, we work with females maybe between 25-35, probably perform the best and coming to the gym is possible lead. So if a gym has a really small budget then we really need to keep an eye on how much and how much it cost to certain age ranges and then re-spending the money effectively for that gym.
Tara: So yeah, Jake, you actually touch on it but retargeting I think is a huge potential for social media. Could you go into exactly what you mean by that? Like, what is involved in that process?
Jake: When we work in the gym we usually want awareness at the start of actually get them run awareness in a local area which is actually cheap for the clients, how much they spend and people they reach. Then we look at the data of let say video, how long people engage in that initial video. So say, people watch the video for 25%, or 50%, or 75% then we’ll start to understand who is watching the video and how engaged they are with the products. At that point we’ll look at the age ranges of men and women, and then we’ll go back and retarget. Retarget basically means go back at the right people within the next video and maybe different copywriting and author. Because really what you don’t want to do when it comes to paid advertising is trying to sell to people that don’t understand what the product is. Similar to, you know, would you propose on first date, probably not. So it’s like there is an etiquette social and you have to kind of build that know, like, trust with the audience first, before they can be ready to actually trust you and give you their details and exchange for an offer. Retargeting is really about the fact that you can really hone in on the people that are engaged, they are getting warmer, they are trying to understand the products and you can keep going back and say more video content, or images, or offers to actually get them, to actually convert and go into your studio. Another really cool part is the traffic from social, the most important thing about traffic from social is that you convert the data. Really you came for the data so highly converted data and that’s by using a really mobile, optimized landing page. And most websites that we see probably convert like 1% or 2%. Whereas our landing pages convert between probably 10% to 7% to 8%. We’ve got landing pages, for F45, and the half traffic from social 80% convert on landing page because… Well, people that don’t convert, or people that go and they are not ready to buy, then what we usually do is we can go back the right tailored messages of them. Because we know that they are close to commit the details, but they weren’t, so then you go back and you can tailor your message at those consumers that are close to actually buying the product, and you can go back and write, “Hey guys, we know you’re close. We know you are interested. Look at these guys really enjoying the trial”, and then your picture, yoga session. And that really starts to tailor the consumers’ journey and you’re going to get that results as well. So retargeting is really important. Geolocation is really important. You can target the right kind of people and then optimize it to actually bring the possible lead.
Anthony: Yeah, for me that’s the real power in online because traditionally when you created an ad campaign for TV or Radio. You know, you had your ad and you had no way of knowing did this person like they ad, where they thinking of buying the product, and you literally just have to keep serving the same ad. Well, now it is like okay this person is showing an interest. They have put their hands up, and so now I know I can send them something a little bit more convincing or an offer that they might need just to stick over the line. I think in something like fitness it just makes so much sense because everybody feels like, “Oh, should I be going to the gym?” or “If that gym looks interesting well I’ll go.” You just need that little extra nudge to get you there. And using Facebook to do it is such a great way to get the results you need and as you said, it is so inexpensive.
We’re going to jump back a little bit to something we spoke a little bit at the start, Jake, if that’s okay. And it is something, it is probably very close to my own heart which is sales and sales processes because like you I didn’t start in software in sales I was actually a solicitor and I left, practice as laywer, but five years ago. And sales is something that came naturally to me but it is something that I have to learn as well. And I spent a lot of time studying and learning techniques and reading books, and practicing, and things like that. It is something that I encourage, like anybody who to any type of business no matter what it is to make yourself good at selling because sales to me it is absolutely everything. You know, everything you do across every part of the business has a selling component to it. And then obviously, you know, face to face sales are really tough and that’s what guys in gyms are faced with every time they want to convert somebody into a member. So maybe talk a little bit about your processes, what you teach to the guys and sort of your experience of what you found people’s sales process to be like now in gyms and studios.
Jake: Yeah, not a problem. So this is definitely another big area that we try help solve and trying to give as much insights to gyms. So say, with all the clients that we have, we usually look at the top 3% to 5% and why they are so successful from the leads, from the awareness that we’re getting from our system. And usually it comes down to the fact that, again, they have like a business process in place which means they have enough results, is in the right positions, do they have somebody at least consistently focusing on sales process. All of the best performing gyms that we work with have somebody that were consistently spend between 4 to 8 hours a day and chasing off leads. So when you get a lead from social, then ideally you want to be trying to bring them, we only say within 15 minutes but they just replied on the mobile phone. The best time is straight away because they’re still be on the phone, and just have a chat with them, and find out why they are interested. And not really talking about the product, it is talking about them, and why are they interested. What problems do they face at the moment in terms of why they wouldn’t like to commit to a studio or why they have not train in a while? So that’s what we always suggest straight away, not trying to sell at new leads but chatting to find out why they are interested.
We’ve actually brought couple of things which would be like a lead to sequence SMS and email to all gyms as well, to actually get those touch points because on social you probably need 6 to 8 touch points on the sales process to somebody to actually give the details as a lead. When the gym gets the lead, then there is a nudge process which can be to make a sale can be 8 to 12 touch points, which a touch point could be SMS, emails, phone and then a really underrated technique from gyms is actually using social media to actually connect to them again. So one of the best response rates that we see from gyms is when they get a lead and they manually WhatsApp the lead. WhatsApp gets a really high response rate and they usually come back to the gym owner. So that’s a really good tip. Adding leads on Facebook and Instagram, or adding leads unto a Facebook group and connect to them is going to help the gym. So there are all the touch points before somebody even maybe shows up in the gym. How you are going to nudge them, how you are going to connect to these leads again, so you don’t actually lose contact and they actually show up to the studio.
And what we believe in is that sales funnel, so you need a certain amount of leads at the top of the funnel which means you need a good offer on social to get x amount of leads which means you’re going to get x amount of those showing up and then how could sales processes, and then x amount are going to convert. Again, depending on the sales process. But if you don’t get the amount of leads that you need at the top, then definitely you’re not going to get enough show ups, to have enough sales that you actually need to a target. And most gyms that we see are probably doing between 15-30 memberships a month but the price point is different to the gyms that we work with. And really what we aim to do is to really increase their leads. So if gyms are getting around on average 10-50 leads a moment which is probably the case, then really straight away what we want to do is increase those leads and get them leads that people are interested, the right age that goes to the studio. Our record in terms of leads is I think it is 600 or 590 in a moment. And usually we do between 50-600 in a moment for gyms, so on average let’s say 200. So if most gyms are getting 40-50 then we can say we can increase your leads and buying. It depends on the area but let’s just say on average 200 is what we are getting. So we are getting 200 leads then our aim is to get as many shops as possible. And show up wise you might get, looking at the data, essentially 30%-40%, so let’s just say 80 people show up max, maybe less. Then how many of those can you convert? So you want to be converting at least 20 of those leads, so you’ve made 20 sales plus any of the sales that you’re getting from any other channels as well. But most gyms are only doing 20 sales. So what we aim to do is try and help gyms double overall sales. But how they are going to do that is by having always somebody that focuses on the sales process.
Another big tip that we tell gyms straight away is that, the biggest resistance you’re going to have especially probably in Ireland and England is that people are scared to go into the gym on their own. So when a salesperson brings up a lead, how are you going to get them into the studio? So it is going to be can you ask them if they can bring any friends or any new referrals with them because that can obviously get you more leads for free and they are going to feel more comfortable going into the studio. And the other resistance is going to be down to their fitness level. So getting somebody to try and book in straight away for class at sometimes might not work because we are booking next week. Whereas if you breakdown the barrier even more and you schedule them in for a consultation, and for say 15 minute chat they can actually, you know, you can get them booked in on like a calendar which we do in our system, like an Automatic [unclear – 30:05] System. They book in to the calendar, the lead will show up and they’ll have maybe 15-30 minute consultation where the salesperson can speak to the lead. Find out why they are interested, what’s the goal, what they are trying to get off coming to the studio, and then you can kind of talk about examples as a salesperson, as somebody similar to them who has been on the same journey and where they’re at maybe 12 weeks on. So we always suggest trying to get people to come in as a consultation ideally if the area is high resistance so people just booking in and coming in. And that’s going to get more show up rates for the gym. And we also suggest the gyms like as a salesperson, the best time to actually try and close them is probably on that first visit. Because if you’ve got a 7-day trial and you get them in, you don’t really try and sell anything or get any commitments from them on the first day, then they might come in for that class or one of the class in the first week, which means towards the end of the week, when you’re going to do the sales pitch or you’re trying to get them on as member, they might not be there again. So the best thing to try and do always is to try and give them a talk, consultation even before you have them booked online. When they come in how can you try and get commitment from them straight away if they are not ready, try and give them another offer within one week that they can take so you’ll know where they’re at during that week, so there probably the best techniques.
And another really good one is, when you get a lead, say it is a 7-day free trial for a gym. That lead then got 7-day free trial but there is no real urgency to come into the gym, so this a more of a digital forefront. But what we would always suggest is try to use like a phone software. So that you could go in the next 48 hours, we’ll give you another week for free, or we’ll give you x amount on your first month. You know, you may get a free PT. Something then to close the loop between, and giving the details online, and again a 7-day pass so that he comes in to the studio. At the end of the day, we want to get more people in the gym.
Anthony: Yeah, it is interesting you say that because it is actually something we built into Glofox because we notice that like if people sign up and then they don’t come, so we actually built in a simple and automated email where if somebody signs up for membership doesn’t book a class, whatever it is. In x number of days, they’ll get an automated email trying to encourage them to come in. That’s definitely something that we’ve seen in our analysis as well. I think what is really interesting there, Jake, is you know you are obviously in marketing and social. A lot of your processes a bit are trying to automate things and make it easier but you still refer back to the importance of manual processes in sales, and I think we sometimes we can rely too heavily on technology and automation when sometimes the sales is a human relationship. It is person to person. And even you know you are sending in WhatsApp, it is a personal WhatsApp, you know and you sat down and you texted it. I think that makes it a world of difference when it comes to sales and feel better business when they finally decide to go ahead and join us.
Jake: Yeah, just little tips that I’ve seen before as well at gyms I’ve gone. Say if it is liek a one week free and then they give say if you come in the next 48 hours, you’ll get 50% off your first month. People then, there is a much higher chance they are going to show up. When they come in to the studio, you need to keep people in the gym for 4-6 weeks so they’ll learn a habit, they’ll get results. They start to know people, and that’s how you are going to keep them long term by keeping them that initial 4-6 week period. But another good one that I see in sales process is, a salesperson or even the owner manually WhatsApp-ing, or manually texting them two weeks join that trial period, four weeks, to see another on because the majority of gyms won’t be providing that level of service. So the more community feel that you can make it, the more opportunity that you’re going to get of actually growing the business as well.
Anthony: Yeah, no, definitely. So we actually have kind of, we have some audience questions, am I right? We reach out to people. This is brilliant.
Tara: Yeah. Before the episode we fielded some surveys on our Facebook, actually in our Instagrams, so you know… And we want to go through some of the results with you and one big thing that came out is content creation. And you have mentioned this a couple of times actually around video content and how important that is on social media. You know, just looking at my Facebook feed it is mostly video. So I think that we all sort of know how important it is, but it is definitely something that’s daunting I think for people. I mean, even for us we struggle with how do we create this, how polished this has to be, how perfect? So if you have any tips in how people can just get started. I think that that would be really handy from a content creation perspective.
Jake: Yeah, definitely. And I think that people might worry it has to be perfect, and content doesn’t have to be perfect. Like do it and then, but if you will look at my content, from the start up to now, it is probably not that good, and you’re probably laughing. So it is you have to start somewhere and then obviously you’ll get more comfortable on camera, and you can get better equipment as you go, you can learn more. But the most important thing to start I would say is, for a gym especially, is to talk about the product. You know, I’ve been using an iPhone and you can do a Facebook Live, you can do Instagram Live because that’s going to help you as well on the platform and boost results when it comes to paid advertising if you start doing that. But the most important thing is to actually talk about. I am sure as a gym owner or fitness studio owner, they probably didn’t ask similar questions a lot of time. So you are supposed to be writing down those questions and then talking about those questions as content back to your consumers because that’s the stuff they are interested in. So that’s number one tip in terms of why and how you create content on the phone. Other content that will be looking great would be personal brand, like owner of the gym or head trainer, because people are going to find to people and trainers. Like one of the most important things for a gym when it comes to retention is going to be how strong the trainers are as well and the relationship they have built with their members. So if they’ve got a really strong trainer, then I would be asking that trainer to start producing more content around the kind of questions he is being asked for from the customers. And if you’ve got challenges coming up, you can give them tips. But to start off with I would always recommend to choosing an iPhone and keeping the cost down. If you wanted to run like actually outside of what we do then I would always recommend making more professional content. But the content really needs to be pretty simple around the product, around the offer that we are providing, around the video of the product as well. So talking about what the product is, the story of it, talking about the offer and actual showing the gym off to people in it. Because when I sent video content before it was our strategy. We will use images and like carousel images at times in social. The problem I see with a lot of people on social, they can put on like a picture at the start of the strategy. And if you use an image at the start of any strategy then you can’t actually analyze data because all you can see is people that have clicked on an image. Whereas if you use video, you can start to understand how long people are engaging on that initial video. And then it’s like, okay, now we know who is actually interested a little bit so these group of people that have watched 75% will now see this video… So you can really start to tailor depending on where the consumers are in the journey as well. That’s more on paid advertising whereas organic posting then I would probably say the best content is to talk about what the consumers want to know. They are the questions that you are getting asked a lot in the gym.
Tara: Yeah, that’s really cool. I never actually thought about using video as the way of gathering more data. That is genius.
Jake: It is the best way, yeah. It is the most [unclear – 37:46] What most people do is they don’t know who is interested and who is interested in the product, and they will spend a lot of money to start on campaign and run it and they’ll waste a lot of money because they don’t actually know the right kind of people that are clicking and engaging. Whereas if you spend less and start slow and start to understand who is engaging and then start to know the audience, so they start to understand the product, and like it and trust it. Then when you actually know who is interested you can dabble down and spend your money in the right places and get better results.
Tara: Yeah, absolutely. And it is all about building that trust and consistency over time. I mean, and video is a really good way to do that. I think also just to point out, just get started.
Jake: Just get started, testimonials, video testimonials are so important in success stories. You know, people that have changed their lives from fitness, in the gym like that kind of stuff is really going to help studios get more customers in the area as well. So I really recommend trying to get as many success stories or testimonies you can on video.
Tara: Yeah, absolutely.
Anthony: I just realized I’ve been doing a lot of nodding. [unclear – 38:51] great for a podcast. [unclear – 38:56] Look we are running close to time, to the end, and I think just at this point, after listening to this if any gyms or studios are picking up the phone to call you guys, you know. They really need to have a think about it. So we just have kind of a closing question as well sort of to the podcast that we are going to ask everyone. And it is basically, Jake, that if you could back to when you started your business either give yourself a bit of advice or change something, or something that you would do differently. Can you think of anything that would fulfil that criteria?
Jake: Yeah, definitely. I usually try and review everything on a monthly basis with the business because it is not like, you know, people see social and people see all the videos and that you’re killing it. Actually guys, I know that you know that it is difficult. It is challenging, against a lot of problems and then you have to work out. So social doesn’t probably show off everything that’s going on within a business. But my thing that I would probably change would be that I move from Sydney, went travelling, didn’t work for certain period of time and then just moved to London, got my own flat which is expensive and I wasn’t making a wage for probably 18 months. So I kind of put a lot of pressure on myself and by doing that, and if I went back in time, I probably would have maybe went in a room and share to somebody else but. Again, if I look at it then I didn’t have as many distractions. I have to work even harder because to get there quicker. So you can kind of say, yeah change it, but in a way it probably did actually help and do more even harder. But definitely one piece of advice would be business cost but even in personal cost if you start a business, then you really want to sacrifice as much as you can for as long as you can. It is actually growing your business and focus on that one thing because if you’ve got too many of instructions or too many costs then that really usually the biggest problem to start ups is finance is why they fail. And definitely focus on cost and keeping the finances down and obviously work as hard as you can, would be my advice.
Anthony: Yeah, I think that is so true because there are so many extra hours in the day if you can find them to explore business opportunities or doing something different on top even if you have a regular job and other commitment stuffs. If you make it work you can definitely find the time and do these things and put yourself in a really good place before you can kind of take the final plunge to start something yourself. Do you maybe just want to call it like what is the best way to get in touch with you and your company if somebody wants to reach out?
Jake: Probably the best way to get in contact with us will be on our website which would be www.onelifesocialmedia.com, where you can apply there or you can email me on [email protected].
Anthony: Excellent. Thanks for coming on the podcast as we enjoyed a lot of what you said. We’ll look forward to seeing you on the next one.
Jake: Thanks guys! Speak to you soon.
Tara: Thank you!
