Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) is by no means a new concept; however, it remains one of the most potent marketing tools for converting leads to full-fledged members of your fitness studio. But can you really enhance, boost, or control your fitness facility’s WOMM aptitude? This blog will cover the 5 Ts of word-of-mouth marketing and how to leverage each point to improve your gym’s ability to stay top-of-mind with your clients.
What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Before we dive too deep into the 5 Ts of WOMM, let’s first discuss what it is and why it’s important. To start, WOMM is a relatively new concept stirred up in the early 1970s by a psychologist named George Silverman, who noticed an interesting phenomenon in a study where participants were swayed readily by their peer groups. This concept has been pushed and manipulated over time to the modern era, where “influencers” attempt to mimic these benefits through monetization.
So why does WOMM matter for your fitness studio? Because it works. People tend to listen to their peers’ recommendations, especially if they are in close social circles. Additionally, successful WOMM can have a carry-over benefit for fitness facilities. It can help drive membership retention rates through feelings of community and belonging, two emotional factors that can get involved with their purchasing decision.
The First T: Talkers
If you are involved in the daily operations of your fitness studio, you may already know some of the people who are vocal about how much they love your gym. These people are your “talkers,” who are essentially your organic brand ambassadors due to their loyal support of your business and willingness to talk about it openly. These people can also be paid (like an influencer), but often, when your fitness facility is already built adequately around a specific target audience, these should come naturally. Additional talkers can also be formed over time by focusing on your customer experience and strategic points of distinction.
How to Leverage Your Talkers
Once you find your talkers, mobilizing them to endorse your brand to their social circles proactively is the next step. One option some brands and gyms use here is the influencer route, which can yield great results depending on the niche and gym type implementing them. However, as this method becomes increasingly popular and the market gets over-saturated with these roles, the overall value consumers place on an influencer’s goods or services could be diminished. Therefore, we recommend the more classic and established route of implementing a well-thought-out referral program, especially for fitness facilities early in the marketing efforts.
The Second T: Topics
Hopefully, by now, you realize that your fitness facility has talkers, but from an overall marketing and campaign development side of things, harnessing their efforts into your well-built system can make things easier. This is where topics come into play! Topics are the key points, events, or opportunities you want your talkers to discuss. It not only removes hones in specific talking categories for people (which can help make it easier to keep top-of-mind) but can also be tied in with the marketing efforts you are already implementing, giving these referrals a smooth transition into your gym’s sales funnel.
How to Leverage Topics
Running special promotions, unique events, or community experiences can be a great chance to give your talkers a communication point. Additionally, adding value for the talkers can promote further message reach by doing things like referral programs, raffles, or competitions. One of the other leverage points of topic utilization is social media. Having a socially “sticky” topic that is easily shareable, interesting, and able to stick in people’s minds regarding interest can help keep your talkers effective.
The Third T: Tools
Once you have your talkers and the topics you want them to discuss, the next step is equipping them with the tools necessary for success. Tools for gym word-of-mouth marketing can include flyers, social media posts, blogs, online communities, emails, landing pages, and more. These tools tend to also have carry-overs from other marketing aspects of your gym, which is why we emphasize the strong connection when developing this marketing tactic into your campaign structure and sales funnel.
How to Leverage Tools
When you plan to run a promotion (especially engaging types, like referral programs) or have exciting news with your fitness studio, developing a compelling way to present it to your client base can help boost success. By building your message to be interesting, exciting, and engaging with your members (especially the “talkers” mentioned above), you enhance the natural potential for message redistribution to their social circles via WOMM. One tip is to think about your messaging from your customer’s perspective and think if it would be something you would naturally want to discuss or mention to your friends, family, or peers.
The Fourth T: Taking Part
Word-of-mouth marketing done right is typically far from passive on the end of a fitness studio owner. From setting up the campaign and talking points to honing the message and enabling easy sharability, a lot of work and planning goes into getting others to talk about you. However, that does not mean you don’t participate in the conversation either. The fourth T involves you (or your gym as a business) getting involved. From responding to social media messages and comments to personally reaching out to people’s questions, gyms taking part in WOMM is a critical element to the program’s overall success (i.e., converting more leads to members).
How to Leverage Taking Part
The goal for managers, owners, or employees working on the outreach end of your fitness facility’s program is to work as a facilitator for people entering and traveling within your sales funnel. Whether your organization is answering questions left on a client’s reshare of your post or responding to a contact form inquiry sprouting from a forwarded email, taking part in your gym’s WOMM program in a way that helps guide the lead into your sales funnel or onto the next logical progression of converting is critical for effective growth with this type of program.
The Fifth T: Tracking
The final T is where the smarts get added to your campaign and turn educated guessing into data-driven optimization. The goal here is to find out what works and what doesn’t work through real-time (or as close to real-time as possible) data to show areas needing improvement or highlight factors that resonate well. Campaign tracking can come in many forms, such as website analytics, form completions, social media post reports, or even call-to-action follow-through on phone calls or visiting a specific landing page. But like any other campaign element that we want to track, monitoring the data and knowing what it’s tracking and why you are tracking it can help you quickly and effectively make changes to your campaign, sales funnel, or marketing elements to smooth out the process further and optimize results.
How to Leverage Tracking
We talk about data analytics and testing often, mainly because quantifiable feedback from your target audience can give you almost immediate feedback on aspects of your campaign. Testing these pieces in an A/B fashion can give you actionable insights and allow you to be agile with your campaigns to help enhance the overall effectiveness of your efforts and grow your business.
Making A Splash
Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful instrument in the box of marketing tools available to fitness studio owners when utilized correctly. Although some gym owners may assume WOMM is a passive tactic that comes with the territory, this approach can leave plenty of growth potential on the table. By being strategic with developing, implementing, interacting, and tracking your WOMM efforts, you can help increase the overall utilization and effectiveness of your talking members to help drive higher new client conversions.
