Tag Archives: marketing

Why do some HR and IT departments hate social media marketing?

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It’s a great time to be a marketer. The Internet and social media have changed the game completely in less than a decade. TV advertising, although still restricted to those with big budgets, is no longer as effective as it was when there were only two commercial channels. Now there are hundreds, and in addition the web offers other types of entertainment. So grabbing people’s attention is much harder.

Back before video and TiVo/Sky+ the only way to escape an advert was to mute, or turn off, or go and make a cup of tea. Now you can flash through it. Consumers are no longer interrupted by marketing communications. They can ignore us. They are in control.

IT departments hate social media marketing

But whilst they can shut the adverts out, consumers still have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. If they want to buy a new pair of shoes they’ll most likely Google the brand. Looking for a hotel in Spain, they’ll go online and look for reviews on TripAdviser. And they’ll ask specific questions like, “What’s the best Indian Restaurant in Preston?” Or, “Where can I find a Personal Trainer in Luton?”

Businesses who provide content that answers these specific questions will find their customers coming to them. Actually seeking them out. Social media and the web means that marketers can create a fine mesh of links from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIin, Pinterest to their own content of web pages, blogs, Q&As, videos, podcasts, white papers, and info-graphics. Interruption marketing (TV adverts, Billboards, posters) is giving way to content marketing. And whilst the former will never disappear, the advertisers have to work harder to successfully interrupt their customers and get them to react.

IT departments hate social media marketing

The great thing about this is that really powerful marketing is now much more accessible to smaller businesses with tighter budgets. And another advantage a small company is that they won’t be constrained by their own departments. In some places there is so much resistance to social media and online content that they create their own barriers to taking advantage of technology.

Social media is often blocked from employees. The HR department don’t want their staff on Facebook when they should be working now do they? But here’s the thing. This is no different to when individual phones started to appear on people’s desks. In those days, HR’s argument was that staff would spend all their time on the phone talking to friends. It didn’t happen.

It’s never been about the technology? It wasn’t back then and it isn’t now. It’s always been about managing the staff. Don’t block social media, because in reality your staff might be able to help promote the company or create good content for you.

Then there is the IT departments. Why do some IT departments hate social media marketing?

Why to they never phone you up and say, “Listen we’ve just seen this new App, and the marketing opportunities for you are amazing”? No, it’s me that phones them and says, “I’ve just seen this new App and the marketing opportunities are amazing?”

IT departments hate social media marketing

And they say, “We can’t let you use that we haven’t the bandwidth.”

Or, “We’ll leave ourselves open to infection with nasty viruses.”

Or, “We can’t take the risk of data leakage.”

You can’t fight against innovation you need to embrace it. No doubt some people resisted in introduction of mobile phones and of the Internet itself. But now it’s impossible to imagine life without these. But HR and IT resistance can hinder big businesses and give smaller players the advantage.

Social media and content are changing the way we engage with consumers, and unlike traditional marketing communications channels they are not restricted to those with huge advertising budgets.

The smallest business can take advantage of these wonderful innovations and make themselves visible. And when you are visible and you give people answers they want, they will want to do business with you.

Over to you: Have you experienced resistance to using social media from your own HR and IT departments? How have you addressed their concerns. Have you got them on board? Please leave a comment by clicking on “leave a reply” below here.

Content marketing for fitness professionals – how to get customers to come to you

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Content marketing is a hot topic at the moment. But if you are looking for a cost effective method of promoting your business then it is worth looking into. It differs from traditional marketing techniques in one important way. The customer is in control.

Most of what we marketing people have been doing for years is a form of interruption marketing. We send out stuff that we want people to watch, or to open and read and then follow our call to action. Letters. Emails. TV adverts. Bill board adverts. Magazine adverts. They “interrupt” you from what you are doing and try and make you do something else.

TV is a form interruption marketing. 20 years ago when there were only 4 TV channels you had to sit through the adverts (or at least go away and make a cup of tea). Now many people use Sky+ or TiVo. They record programmes, or pause them live, to watch them later. And the beauty of this is that you can zip through the adverts. And most people do. And let’s be honest. How many of us dive for the mute button when the Go Compare Opera singer comes on? I have to restrain myself from sticking my foot through the TV screen.

For these and other reasons interruption marketing is no longer as successful as it once was.

The modern internet world allowed a whole new approach to develop – inbound marketing – and it is based upon the premise that people search for information and content.

In some markets 90% of all buying decisions start with an on-line search using Google or another search engine. Arguments in pubs and bars and between co-workers are quite often settled with a Google search

content marketing for fitness professionals

This is the key to inbound or content marketing. People want answers to the questions they have. They want answers in the content they can find on the internet. If you provide the answers then your customers will find you.

Imagine someone in Liverpool wants to buy a really good barbeque chicken. They are not going to type the word “chicken” into Google. They would get billions of results. Neither will they type “barbecue chicken” because it would still create too many results. “Best barbecue chicken”  is still no good if the best is in New York. “Best barbecue chicken in Liverpool” – might narrow it down to a few local outlets.

In this new world we need to be there when people come looking. And that means your website or blog becomes your inbound marketing hub.

To get people to find you when they come looking,  you need to provide accessible and useful content that will pop up on Google. The centre piece of your inbound marketing hub is a series of relevant articles (i.e. a blog) about your niche.

Going back to the chicken example. If you had a blog which answered the question, “who provides the best barbecue chicken in Liverpool”,  then this would show up in Google and low and behold you would have a visitor to your website who is now a potential customer.

Obviously you need to make sure that your site is fully optimised for search engines – but again this is not as hard as it seems. Neither is it as expensive as you would think, especially with great software like WordPress.

What are the top 25 questions that your clients ask you, about their fitness regimes and their fitness goals? What do they ask you about different exercises, classes and equipment? What questions do they have about food and nutrition?

You know the answers to those questions. Indeed you could probably recite them in your sleep. There you have, already, 25 topics for articles that could be up on your website and optimised so that when people search for answers to those questions – you are the one providing them.

People aren’t going to type just “Personal Trainers” into a search engine just as they aren’t going to type in just “chicken”. They might type, “Best personal trainers in Liverpool?”

If they did would your website show up on the front page of Google?

Over to you: Would you like to learn more about content marketing for fitness professionals? Have you already had some success setting up your own blog and are using inbound marketing. I’d like to hear your stories. Please leave a comment.

Other marketing blogs:

3 Fitness Marketing Tips inspired by a Dragon from the Den

3 Fitness Marketing Tips inspired by a Dragon

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Last year I spent a couple of weeks traveling the UK doing a roadshow for my day job. Our guest presenter was well known Dragon’s Den star Duncan Bannatyne. Through his contribution to the seminars, and over a few drinks and dinners, it was fascinating to hear his stories about how he built up, first a care home chain, and now an empire of health and fitness clubs. Given my alter ego as a fitness and Yoga instructor, and my keen interest in the fitness industry, his insights into marketing, communications and business development were relevant for both my guises.

fitness marketing tips inspired by a dragon

Here are some of the fitness marketing tips I came away with which I think will interest to my fitness friends.

1) PR your business within the local community

This is not just about advertising in local newspapers, it’s developing PR relationships with those newspapers. Getting onto local radio. Sponsoring events in local schools and clubs. And above all embracing social media to create a network of links across Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to draw visitors to your website.

For more on PR see my earlier blog on PR for fitness professionals.

2) Seek business development opportunities from change

When Margaret Thatcher changed legislation for the care of the elderly in the 1980s, Bannatyne cashed in on this opportunity by building a chain of care homes. Whilst we are not seeing legislative change in the fitness industry it is still evolving daily. New programmes like ViPR create opportunities for new adopters. And just look at the success of Zumba and how that has taken fitness out of the club chains and back into the community. Some instructors have tapped into the huge demand for Zumba and seen their earnings rocket.

The most exciting change is in marketing itself and this makes it easier to be successful. The Internet has ushered in a new era of “content based marketing” (know as inbound marketing by academics). Until recently we have been more used to “interruption marketing” (known as outbound marketing).

That’s adverts on TV, unsolicited calls, junk mail; i.e. stuff that companies bombard us with to try and get us to buy their products and experiences. With content marketing the customer is in control because they are the ones searching the web for information. Whether it is the price of clothes, the cost of a car, or information about a new fitness programme, they are searching for specifics. If you have a website or blog that provides content that meets that specific desire for information you can succeed at this new marketing style.

3 fitness marketing tips

As a fitness professional do you have your own website and blog? Maybe you think you haven’t got time or the writing skills to think of enough things to say. Well just create a list of all the questions your clients ask about exercise, diet, classes and lifestyle. Then provide the answers. There you immediately have the content you need. Get it online, ensure that the search engines can find it and customers will start to come.

Of course it isn’t quite that easy, but with a little planning this is an exciting way forward.

3) Relentlessly network for new ideas and opportunities

Network either online or face to face. Our industry colleagues, and again those in the local community, all face similar challenges but all will have different views and solutions as to how to solve them. Again through social media we have access to a world wide club of like minded people, and a library of ideas, and business tools.

But the most important lesson a entrepreneurial Dragon can impart is to “get on and do it”. Yes there is information out there. You could read websites and white papers on how to use content marketing forever. The best thing to do to expand your business is to do more marketing straight away.

Over to you: Have you been successfully marketing your business via a blog or content based website? What are your fitness marketing tips? Please leave a comment and post a link. Would you like to read more on this subject on this blog? Please let me know.

I’m not a Social Media Expert – But I know what I know…

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Social media has become the buzz topic of marketers, PRs and consultants in just about every industry on Earth. But there remains a sense that many are still trying to work out where it fits with their overall marketing and communications strategy. I use social media. Am I an expert in it? No, and I would hesitate to believe the claims of any consultants who say they are, because the medium is still evolving. Daily. All anyone can do is claim to have had more experience with social media.

So what is it? To put it simply, it is the web equivalent of traditional networking and word-of-mouth, something that many people are already good at. It is all about having a conversation with customers and potential customers and building a community around your brand and service. If used effectively, it can bring enormous benefits to a business; improve service levels, boost word-of-mouth business and bring in repeat business.

You can turn customers into advocates by engaging with them and gaining their loyalty. In order to do this, a business has to think about what it can contribute to social media and how best to engage with its customers.

I like to think of it as a spider’s web of information, with data flowing out from a central point and returning to that same hub. A blog site with interesting and topical opinions can act as the centre piece. Twitter ‘tweets’, Facebook and Linkedin posts can drive customers to the blog which itself might contain links to your main business website.

By also creating links to other blogs and related sites, you can very quickly create strands that start to make patterns that Google can identify. Such social media activity immediately increases online visibility regardless of whether or not the company has a website, because social media sites are very search engine friendly.

Users have told me that they can’t, initially, sell directly off it – but it creates a forum for engaging with people and building up trust which will eventually lead to new business.

Facebook and Twitter can strengthen the strands you lay down. In the same way as someone may ‘like’ a Facebook post about you relaxing with a glass of wine, a Facebook ‘Like’ button built into every page of your website will allow your customers to create links back to you.

Social media also allows you to monitor what others are saying about your business, meaning that you can react quickly to both positive and negative feedback. Some have been able to address customer concerns simply by reading what they are tweeting.

Getting to know social media personally, at first, is a much easier way of entering into the space. Time is the only start up cost and you will be surprised at how useful it is for both personal and business-to-business networking.