Marketing: that big, intimidating mountain that all business owners inevitably need to climb. Business-owners in the health and wellness industry are experts in their field, and yet, marketing can be an ENTIRELY different animal. So how do you wrestle with this part of your business if you aren’t 100% sure what it entails? 

What marketing ISN’T

The key to understanding marketing is to first understand what marketing is NOT. Marketing is not: 

• Throwing up a random Facebook ad without a proper tracking system (like Pixel).
  
  
• Generating a mass amount of ads without a clear strategy, goal, or call to action.
  
  
• Selling OR sales! (At least, not all the time.) Marketing and sales are related but mutually exclusive. Marketing gets your customers in the door, and your sales strategy is what gets them to purchase. 
• A bandaid for a poorly systemized business. Marketing won’t fix a poorly systemized business; in fact, your marketing strategy can break it! Your marketing strategy relies on the strength of your internal business structure to handle the influx of customers, track the trends, and convert that attention to sales down the road.

What IS marketing?

So what is marketing, then? Marketing, in simple terms, is creating a MARKET for your product or service. It is letting people know:

• who you are
• what you do, and
• how they can do it with you.

That seems simple, right? Well, as many of us in the wellness industry know, what seems simple on the surface is usually complex at heart. Master the basics, and the rest of your marketing strategy should fall right into place. 

Does my marketing strategy need to be expensive to work?

NO! In fact, just throwing more money at the problem can make it worse. I’m guilty of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on stuff that just didn’t work. Our team was capable and experienced, but ultimately, I just didn’t know what I wanted. Without that focus, we couldn’t leverage that focus into paying customers. 

Bulk marketing doesn’t work; FOCUSED marketing does. That’s why the 5 pillars are so crucial for business owners like us! 

Like any good exercise routine, it’s better to master the basics than to continually try new, potentially-damaging moves. 

The 5 pillars of marketing (and why they matter for your wellness business)

When it comes to my business, I’ve found that marketing consists of 5 major pillars. Each one has its own function, and because they feed into one another, each pillar should be done in this order, too. Knowing these pillars can save you lots of money, so take note!

Attraction

This one may seem a little obvious, but it’s the first step! Marketing boils down to attraction. You want potential customers to look at your business and immediately get a feel for who you are. They should want to learn more about who you are, what you do, and why you do it. That starts by talking about their pain points and IN their language! 

Engage

Once you grab your audience’s attention, now you have to actually continue the conversation. A one-sided conversation dies pretty quickly! This is where you transition from people knowing you to people liking you.

You need to nurture relationships to make them meaningful, and that’s what marketing ultimately aims to do. You want to convince your client that you know what’s important to them, whether that be getting back into a fitness routine, easing pain from a recent injury, or accomplishing a new wellness goal for 2022. 

This helps build trust when it comes to your customer, and trust is the biggest unspoken currency in existence! (You’re ALSO taking this time to filter out people who don’t see eye to eye on your values or goals, leaving more room for customers who want to engage with you.)

Offer

Once you have established that trust with your potential customer, now it’s time to let them know what you can do for them. (Note that the sales pitch comes AFTER this crucial engagement!)  Now, you can offer particular packages or services that meet their needs. 

Serve

Who says marketing needs to end after the sale? In fact, a good marketing strategy works as hard to keep customers coming BACK as well as introducing new customers to the mix.  If you can continue to serve and support them through the process, you’ll continue to build that trust.

This can happen a few different ways. Maybe your customer struggles to attend their current classes and would benefit from a different class package. Maybe they would benefit from another coach across town that you could refer them to. If there’s any way to encourage your clients in their journey, it doesn’t just keep them healthy; it nurtures your business relationship as well. 

Retain and re-engage

Remember: it’s easier (and more fruitful) to keep a current customer happy than to bring in a new one. Your marketing strategy is never “done” when it comes to regular customers! Continue to re-engage so that you can meet their needs, even when those needs change on the fly. 

In order for a marketing strategy to be successful, you need to have all 5 of these buckets systemized and running on autopilot in the background of your business. 

Let’s make these marketing pillars work for YOU!

Interested in learning how you can integrate these pillars into your business? Check out my signature program Fit Biz Foundations!

This program covers Marketing, Messaging, Sales, Accounting, Finances, Team Building and Leadership, and more! Anything and everything you need to know about your fitness biz, ESPECIALLY those things that you’ll never learn in a regular classroom. 

Plus you get access to a community of other female business owners doing the exact same thing as you are!

Don’t let your marketing strategy overwhelm you this year; check out the Fit Biz Foundations, and get your business on the right track (WITHOUT bursting your budget!).