How Typical Crossfit Advertising is hurting you
Part 1.
How does a new member pick your box rather than another local box?
I live in Miami, Florida and according to the official Crossfit Affiliate map there are a total of 85 listed affiliates in Miami, Florida. I have no idea what makes them different from each other besides location, different coaches, class schedules and parking situations. Miami is not a very large city in terms of land space so, some of these facilities are literally on top of one another. Not literally, but you get the point as shown in the picture below.
Google Maps directions said I could visit to both of these facilities in under 5 minutes.
What’s even worse is if I ask my friends, associates, and colleagues which box to choose they all say that the box they go to is the best one so, the decision does not get any easier that way either.
As an Owner or Manager, How does your box stand out from from the rest in a growing or crowded market?
Crossfit is not new or revolutionary anymore so, it’s safe to say that over the past 10+ years most people have for better or worse heard of it in some way.
How do you attract a new audience in your local community that doesn’t understand the benefits your facility offers over others?
A new audience, not just a new member but a whole new “group” of people with the same goal as your current members.
How do you reach the person who thinks/doesn’t understand how Crossfit might actually be a great fit for them?
You might be inclined to say something like “our coaches are more qualified/experienced and our programs are better”. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is the general public does not understand the difference between good coaches, bad coaches, the difference between quality continuing education and“BS” continuing education. So, we need to “rule out” those types of responses as a marketing strategy.
Read More about why here :Dear Tracy Anderson: STOP: “Welcome to the fitness industry, where selling the myth is better than facing reality.”
How Typical Crossfit Advertising is Hurting Your Ability to Reach A New Audience
What you typically find around Crossfit advertising is pictures/videos that show physically fit people doing intense exercises, sweating a lot, someone struggling during a WOD, the success of a Personal Record attempt and the typical before and after pictures. Those intense types of images are what made Crossfit stand out as it grew in popularity. There is nothing wrong with that but, it’s only hitting the emotional triggers or inspiring a small population of people. Chances are those people are your members or already part of the dynamic Crossfit community. Don’t believe me, take a look at your Box’s homepage, social media images, and even the pictures featured in Crossfit culture magazines.
While these images/videos are “sexy” or “provocative” examples of what some people might hope to achieve with their own level of fitness it doesn’t mean they are effective in creating an emotional connection in driving someone not involved in Crossfit to make a change. There are a lot of goals someone can have when starting a fitness journey, other than just getting a six pack, lift heavy weights, or competing in events. This is the population you might unknowingly be ignoring when you stick to those “typical fitness marketing” techniques..
Don’t get me wrong, simply by being different initially, the scene around CF has done a great job of creating a special kind of community with some cool catch phrases and marketing material.
“Forging Elite Fitness” “Strong is The New Skinny” “Your workout is my warm-up” “cheat on your man/women not your workout” “eat clean train dirty” “out-lift a runner, outrun a lifter”. They all look great on your t-shirts but at the heart of it all they only tend to make an impact or connection to someone who is already within the community.
The Big Data Your Members Provide Is Your Golden Ticket
Cool taglines and slogans are fun for t-shirts, but they don’t really say much in marketing. For instance, if someone asked you why they should join your box over the one down the street would you say “CrossFit EXAMPLE… Lift Hard, Eat Big, Get FIT!”? No, if you did the person you were talking to might think something is wrong because, no human being actually talks in slogans like that in conversation.
Sure, a Crossfit box might be different than other types of fitness facilities but the people that make up your members are humans the same as the rest of the community around your facility. In fact, the people that come to your box are walking and talking information data centers about your brand, business, products, and services that have nothing to do with the way they look or the way you design their programs. It is this data you should be taking advantage of for potential marketing campaigns.
This is nothing new if you look at industries outside of fitness. Tons of other businesses are collecting data about people to further target their marketing efforts. Google and Facebook already do that to you when they choose what ads to show you or the results of your searches. Companies who choose to advertise on these platforms can even target you as their primary audience because of all the info that they collect on you.(remember that the next time you fill out a “cool Facebook survey” to find out which Game of Thrones character you are. They are a bit more sneaky, annoying, and aggressive at getting this type of information. You won’t have to be.
Getting the Important Data
I don’t particularly care about the training methods and style you use on-board/on-ramp, or assessing new members but, I do care what information you ask them to provide when signing up.
If new members don’t fill out even some general information about themselves other than billing info, then you are missing out on a ton of data you can use down the road. If new members don’t fill this information out then I can reasonably assume that your current members never did either, that’s a problem. I’m not even talking data surrounding their exercises, experiences or training progress like body fat %, weight loss, training maxes and girth measurements . I am talking about simple stuff, “everyday human stuff” like:
Age
Sex/Gender
Marital Status
Occupation status
Field of employment
Health history
Current health condition status
Injury history
Medication Dependencies
Hobbies
Favorite sports teams
Are they parents
Current Activity levels
Favorite foods
Favorite local businesses
Why they chose to try crossfit
Favorite Restaurant in town
Shirt Size
Spirit Animal
Do they like Dogs or Cats
etc.( the list goes on and on)
Regardless of the title you want to call yourself this is the “personal” part of being a personal trainer. The answers to those questions are the genuine human side of the community within your box, an aspect about your business that has nothing to do with the actual training you provide. You can pretty much ask for anything you want to know or, that you think would create a connection to the established community that your box is surrounded by. Once you have all this information you will need to update some it from time to time in order to create some results or visually see some changes in the community within your own facility. Updating a lot of the more personal type of information shouldn’t be to hard or time consuming if you and your coaches do more than just instruct WODS, and talk to the members of your facility like human beings. Remember that “Training” is both a mix of exercise sciences and personal coaching. The more info you have, the more you can make some pretty interesting, and engaging pieces of advertising that you never really thought to use but, really describe the community within your box and the value of your services.
Believe it or not people find inspiration, motivation and even a sense of community in many different ways. It can be based off their personality (competitive alphas), similarities between people(we both like dogs), or even based off raw statistics and numbers(David & James are 32 yrs. old and 1RM squat 315). Regardless of what it is, you want to make sure you hit those emotional connections when you generate some specific and targeted advertising campaigns.
Remember, you’re not trying to sell “the fitness” your facility can offer, if that strategy worked they would already be your members. Instead, you’re trying to show someone there is a community of people like them out there already having successes together. This way it creates a connection with a deep sense of meaning, and can be used as one of the driving forces in their personal journey to change.
Stay Tuned:
Part 2 : Use The Data to Address the Real Issues within a population.
Part 3: How to Collect Client Data…without being creepy
Part 4: We collected the data . How do we analyze and make sure it works.
Thanks For taking the time out of your day to read.
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