7 Reasons Why Fit Pros Should Start Content Marketing

Welcome to another episode of the Strength Matters Podcast, where today we're diving into the transformative world of content marketing for fitness professionals. If you've ever wondered why your fitness brand isn't achieving the reach or impact you desire, this episode is your roadmap to change that. Join us as we unravel seven compelling reasons why embracing content marketing can elevate your fitness business to new heights.

Timeline Summary:

• [00:01:36] Nurtures and Converts Leads
• [00:03:00] Educates Potential Customers
• [00:06:29] Marketing Is Scalable and Long-Term
• [00:07:57] Often Cheaper in the Long-Term
• [00:11:11] Word of Mouth Enhancement
• [00:12:39] Competitors Are Already Doing It

Key Takeaways:

1. Content Marketing Defined: A strategy aimed at creating and sharing valuable content to attract and engage a defined audience, with the goal of driving profitable customer action.
2. The Power of Nurturing Leads: Content marketing is crucial in converting unaware individuals into leads by providing valuable information that aids in building trust and establishing a relationship.
3. Education as a Tool: Educating your audience not only establishes your authority but also helps potential customers understand how you can solve their problems.
4. Scalability and Sustainability: High-quality content marketing efforts are evergreen, offering long-term benefits with increased traffic and authority on search engines.
5. Cost-Effectiveness: Compared to traditional advertising, content marketing often presents a more affordable option with greater ROI, especially in the long term.
6. Enhancing Word of Mouth: Exceptional content gets shared, increasing your brand's visibility and reach without additional cost.
7. Staying Ahead of the Competition: In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, not engaging in content marketing puts you at a disadvantage against both direct competitors and influencers in the fitness industry.

Websites and Links Mentioned:

• Strength Matters
• Free Strategy Call

Quotes:

"Content marketing is about helping them solve problems. It's all about creating awareness." - James Breese

"Your whole purpose...is to help attract new leads, new potential customers through your website, into your funnel." - James Breese

"Content doesn't cost us anything monetary to put up...we spend significant amount of time on doing that ourselves." - Andrew Wallis

"Create great content people want to share and enjoy. They will share it with the world." - James Breese

"Every personal trainer, gym owner, and fit pro I know moans about influencers. But what are they doing? Content marketing." - James Breese

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Chapters

• 1:36 Nurtures and Converts Leads
• 3:00 Educates Potential Customers
• 6:29 Marketing Is Scalable and Long-Term
• 7:57 Often Cheaper in the Long-Term
• 11:11 Word of Mouth Enhancement
• 12:39 Competitors Are Already Doing It

Transcript

[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media, Video, Print, Podcasts. 

[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: Today's topic is seven reasons why fit pros should start content marketing. And I think before we go into the seven reasons, James, do you want to define what exactly is content marketing? 

[00:00:17] James Breese: I knew you were going to ask me this and I just literally thought by saying, what's a, what's a perfect, what's a perfect definition.

[00:00:24] Uh, content marketing is creating a content of any type. to help educate the audience and help them achieve some goal or desire or some, some, something, how about that? They're helping them achieve and solve a problem. Some, some, something, something, something, dark side. There we go. Let's do that. It is, it's helping them solve problems.

[00:00:47] So it's all about creating awareness. So content marketing can be from blog posts. It can be from YouTube videos, could be podcasts. This is essentially a form of content marketing. We're not doing right now. [00:01:00] However, what we've seen over the years is if we're being brutally honest, health and fitness professionals are not doing content marketing and doing it very well.

[00:01:08] In fact, it's the last thing they're doing half the time because they're so busy stuck in the business, trying to help run their business, basically their technicians, as opposed to content marketing machines. So hopefully we can give you seven very good reasons why you should be doing it. And if you're not doing it, well, consider doing it.

[00:01:28] Which is the awareness side of things and then helps you lead the decision say whether you're going to do it yourself Or outsource it to somebody else 

[00:01:36] Josh Kennedy: Number one, it nurtures and converts leads. Do you want to dive a little bit deeper into that one, James? 

[00:01:44] James Breese: Yeah. So the whole purpose of content marketing is for people who are unaware of you, to find you, to learn more about you, and then start to convert them into leads.

[00:01:54] Now leads is when you take some of these email address and data and they get onto your email list and you start to educate them about more [00:02:00] about what you're trying to do. And take them through a very healthy relationship almost. So you want to like start dating them essentially without doing all the, all the, all the stuff that comes with dating, like buying dinner and, you know, marriage, all that sort of stuff, basically.

[00:02:15] Josh Kennedy: As we've spoken about before, marriage is the very last step. You can't skip all the steps in between, can you? You don't ask them to marry you on a first date, 

[00:02:21] James Breese: do you? That's basically assault, as we've learned from the idea of, The seven stages of intimacy. That's a great book guys, about in terms of marketing.

[00:02:30] So, ContentMarket helps nurture and convert leads. That's your whole purpose. Your website, your Instagram, your TikToks, all your social media platforms should be aimed for one thing. Help attract new leads, new potential customers in through your website, into your funnel, to get them onto your email list.

[00:02:49] Nobody is doing that these days. And that's what we're trying to get across to you guys. 

[00:02:54] Josh Kennedy: Reason number two, it educates potential customers. Why is that important? [00:03:00] 

[00:03:01] Andrew Wallis: Um, it's important because, well, essentially we've got to, we've got to build, um, a level of trust. You know, these people, potentially these prospects don't know who we are.

[00:03:13] who we serve and ultimately what services that we have on offer, which can potentially help them. So we've got to help them overcome that. And we can do that through educational content. And if we're answering questions that they've been searching for online, then, you know, that's going to give them, um, some, what gives us credibility.

[00:03:36] It raises our profile. And showcases the skills that we have on offer, which can then lead them into wanting to find out more about what we have to offer that could be if they're ready to take that next step into booking into a strategy call, for example, would be a good example, or if they're not quite ready and as James says, if they're still a prospect, and [00:04:00] we want them to move into the strategy.

[00:04:02] A lead portion of the, the journey, then they might want to download a lead magnet. You have a checklist, a cheat sheet, nutrition plan or whatever, but it's all about moving in from being cold audience member through to, um, understanding what you have to offer and then ultimately, um, you know, signing up in one way or the other.

[00:04:25] Josh Kennedy: And who else has got a lead magnet? Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

[00:04:28] Andrew Wallis: Yeah. 

[00:04:30] James Breese: Now, how funny is that? We should talk about that actually in a separate episode. Let's, let's save that for a separate episode. Right. Yeah. But I think just, just touching on Andrew's subject there. So we go think of the potential buyer or potential new client or patient, their journey.

[00:04:46] So three stages, awareness, consideration, and decision. Right. So awareness is. Let's use pain as an example. They've got a slight twinge in their back, right? They've, they're then going to go onto Google, [00:05:00] search back pain rehab solutions or how to fix back pain. So what they're doing is they're searching for information about it.

[00:05:08] How could, why could it be caused? What's happening to it? That then goes to a blog post. Where they then go into the consideration phase, right, because they now realize after trying for a few weeks trying to get out of pain, they can't get out of pain and they need some help. Therefore, they start to look for physiotherapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, nephropaths, right, in your local area to try and help you.

[00:05:32] So they're looking for a potential solution to the issue. They're not ready to go make that decision and commit yet. They're looking for ideas. But what if there's somewhere who's written blogs about how much it costs, what to expect your first appointment to the physiotherapist, all these sorts of things.

[00:05:47] It helps reinforce these ideas. So when it comes to the decision making time, right, they may download a free guide on how to help you get out of back pain, but they've tried that still doesn't work. So what are they going to do? They then go to that person. So there's [00:06:00] awareness, consideration and decision making.

[00:06:02] You've got to think about those three stages. In fact, we should actually do and talk about the awareness side of things because we're doing a really good. Awareness campaign at the moment is working for cricket matters at the moment. So maybe we do that for an episode afterwards. I was going to say, do you want to do that 

[00:06:15] Josh Kennedy: on another podcast as well?

[00:06:16] We've got two more podcast episodes just right there. Uh, number three, marketing is scalable and long term. What, James, what are the long term benefits of, uh, content marketing? 

[00:06:29] James Breese: Oh crikey, you get more traffic, it creates more authority for your website on Google, people find you, and it's what we call evergreen.

[00:06:37] Particularly in terms of blogs and YouTube videos. If you get the content right, and you get the search term right, and you get people who engage with that content, Google will reward you. Therefore, the more high quality content you put out that gets searched, It will then help reward all the other blog posts you put out after that too, to help get found.

[00:06:57] We get, I'd say a [00:07:00] vast majority of all our leads coming into Strength Matters and the awareness side of campaigns through our blog posts, through our YouTube channel and through our podcasts. So we're creating evergreen content that keeps coming and coming and coming. Whereas TikTok, as an example, less than 20 minutes, maybe, if you're lucky, for a bit of content to last.

[00:07:20] Yep, unless it goes viral within a few seconds. You've then got Instagram, which is hard to grow an audience as well. That's less than a day, potentially most of the time. And Facebook, who knows, as we said on the previous episode. So like, we don't know. So it's scalable long term. You've got to think about what is going to give you the most amount of time back.

[00:07:41] And for me, it's blog posts, I think, and YouTube and podcasts where people can just consume more and more and more. And it becomes evergreen content. 

[00:07:49] Josh Kennedy: Yeah. Fantastic. Andrew, back to you for point number four. It's often cheaper in the longterm. Why would that be? Why would it be more cost effective? 

[00:07:57] Andrew Wallis: Just with, um, um, social media [00:08:00] advertising.

[00:08:00] So Facebook ads, um, Instagram ads and the likes, um, there's laws of economy here. And I failed at economy. So, um, um, maybe I'm not the guy that should be talking about economics, but demand and supply. There's that much supply now that. Um, you know, the pricing of advertising is going up on, on social media.

[00:08:23] And I read something, um, a couple of weeks ago that realistically now we should have a minimum budget of a thousand pounds, dollars a month to, to invest into our, um, advertising. So that makes it, um, challenging for a lot of fit pros to be able to have 

[00:08:41] Josh Kennedy: that. It's out of reach for a lot of, uh, one to one for average fit pro in it.

[00:08:47] It 

[00:08:47] Andrew Wallis: is, it is. You can get a little bit of, um, success with the old five pound a day, but it's not enough these days really to, to, uh, make an impact and to [00:09:00] judge if your marketing efforts are working. So switching that content, um, doesn't cost us anything. Monetary wise to put up a blog post, obviously there is a cost element.

[00:09:13] There's a time investment to be made, but that's why we go all in on this because it, it historically, um, if you put a blog post up, for example, it would have took around three to six months for it to be found by Google optimized, and then start raising in the rankings. But now we've got clients, Sam Attard of Spiro Collective, for example, puts up a post.

[00:09:37] Um, it's well optimized. It's on point with her keywords, it's ranking number one already. And equally with some of our, um, um, posts as well, where, you know, we rank number one, so we know that the content marketing works and, you know, that's why we're, you know, spend significant amount of time on doing that ourselves and then equally [00:10:00] recommending it to our client base 

[00:10:01] James Breese: and also just in terms of cost.

[00:10:04] So I'll give you a rough idea. So the Strength Matters blog. And the website gets approximately 75 to 80, 000 hits a month. That's on average. If we were to do the same traffic, kind of like boost or like acquire the same amount of traffic via Google ads, let's go on average a dollar per click. All right.

[00:10:25] That's about 80, 000 pounds worth of advertising. Let's just put it into context now. So we are really going all in and creating content because it's cheaper, it creates more traffic, and for those who get this traffic and get the conversions, as we spoke about, are Our growth formula is growth equals traffic times conversions times sales.

[00:10:42] If you get the traffic bit nailed, you optimize it for conversions, then the sales will come as a result and you'll grow your business. So we are going all in on this. We want to get, we want to see a million hits to our blog a month, not just, you know, 50, 000 and that will then exponentially, you know, create growth for the [00:11:00] company.

[00:11:00] And you should be aiming for something similar too. 

[00:11:03] Josh Kennedy: Yep. Uh, next point, James, word of mouth. How can that, uh, yeah, go, go for it. Go. 

[00:11:11] James Breese: You create epic content, they share it everywhere. As part of that awareness campaign at Cricket Matters, that's a great example of what we've just done recently. So we've created a video, it's gone globally, it's created a whole load of new leads and potential customers long term and more eyeballs onto me as a cricketer, but also Cricket Matters as a company too.

[00:11:30] So word of mouth, create great content people want to share and enjoy. They will share it with the world. It's as simple as that. 

[00:11:37] Josh Kennedy: There we go. Go. Point number six, it builds trust with customers. We can, we kind of mentioned this one before, but just quickly, why is that important? Either one of you don't mind.

[00:11:46] Um, 

[00:11:47] Andrew Wallis: establishes your authority, gives credibility. Um, and if you're consistent in posting good quality content, there's always that top of mind awareness. And so that people within your [00:12:00] local area, if you're a locally based business or your target audience, if you're online and running a hybrid style, um, um, fitness operation, then top of mind, but credibility and authority, uh, are the key points there, you know, you're answering those questions, uh, that those people were searching for.

[00:12:20] Josh Kennedy: And finally, point number seven, your competitors are doing it. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I would say if you are a gym owner, highly likely that competitor gyms are doing content marketing. If you are a self employed PT, perhaps not as likely. So therefore you should do it in order to get ahead of the competition.

[00:12:39] Is that, would you agree? 

[00:12:41] James Breese: Yes. If you're staying within the same niche as personal trainers or gym owners. But what about the influencers? Look at who you're competing against guys. Every personal trainer, gym owner, and fit pro I know moans and complains about the influencers, but what are they doing?

[00:12:57] Content marketing. It's as [00:13:00] simple as that. Not necessarily doing it well. They don't know how to build a list or build a business off the back of it. They're just spraying and praying basically half the time, but they're doing it. They're technically your competitors. They are your competitors. You can't not, you know, see yourself competing with those guys.

[00:13:16] So, you know, all marketers now know the importance of content marketing and how important it is. All the big brands are investing into it massively. They spend millions on it because they know the importance of it. However, gym owners. Personal trainer studios, it is a blue ocean. And this is why we specialize in SEO and helping you guys do it because this is what we've done.

[00:13:38] This is what we think we should be doing to help you grow your health and fitness business. And we can help you. Absolutely. 

[00:13:43] Josh Kennedy: There we go. So that is seven reasons why Fitbit. Pros should start content marketing in 2024. Get on it guys. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe.

[00:13:53] And if you want to help get any more clients or patients, then book in for your free 15 minutes strategy call with us by going to strength matters. com [00:14:00] forward slash strategy.