How to Create a Marketing Machine
Marketing; we all need it, we all do it, but most of us aren’t satisfied with the results we’re getting from it. There are two primary reasons why clubs aren’t maximizing their marketing efforts. First, they don’t have a 12-month marketing plan that utilizes a diverse number of mediums to create a synergistic effect in their marketplace. Sadly, most don’t have any plan and make decisions month to month. Second, operators don’t make a clear enough distinction between marketing and sales with their membership departments. As a result, one of the most powerful marketing tools—salespeople—don’t help drive membership sales but rather make sales only from those prospects already walking through the doors or calling for information. May sound like doom and gloom but the great news is that for most clubs there is an incredible untapped potential for creating a club marketing machine. Let’s explore those possibilities.
We’ve all heard the expression “proper prior planning prevents poor performance.” This adage certainly holds true for marketing. Successful clubs have a well thought out marketing plan that includes something from ALL of the following efforts EVERY month:
- External, like newspaper, radio, television or direct mail;
- Internal, such as referral campaigns and alumni and missed guest strategies;
- Guerrilla, including such things as lead boxes, flyer drops, joint marketing with local businesses and general one-on-one networking.
- Corporate, which would be any way to promote memberships to local businesses, and;
- Community, which is any PR or philanthropic effort that creates good will.
Clubs that use a majority of their monthly marketing budget towards traditional efforts such as newspaper or direct mail get some response but clubs that take the same budget and disperse the money out over all five of the marketing efforts get a much greater number of leads and membership sales. The reason for this is because a customer needs to see, hear, read or experience something about a product or service 5 +/- 2 times before they will respond. These are called “exposures.” Therefore, if a club has diverse marketing efforts, prospects are much more likely to meet the threshold of 5 +/- 2 exposures quicker, resulting in their taking action to call or visit your club sooner. Of course, an entire book could be dedicated to this subject. Our goal in discussing it here is simply to make you aware of the need and motivate you to begin formulating a comprehensive annual marketing plan.
If a club’s comprehensive marketing plan is the machinery, it is necessary to have the right operators to run the machinery. This is where the second aspect of effective marketing is applied—knowing the difference between marketing and sales AND how to operationally manage those differences. Let’s begin with identifying the differences.
Marketing involves any activity that is designed to generate prospects now or in the future. “Sales” or the selling process only begins once a prospect has been identified and involves any activity designed to earn that prospects’ business. Obviously, marketing must occur before the sales process begins. All too often, club operators hire salespeople without clearly defining and establishing expectations as to the role that person must take in marketing. This can easily result is a sales staff that waits for information calls and walk-ins and resents being asked to self-generate leads. Operationally, there are three key things that club operators can do to ensure that the sales team they hire become part of the marketing machinery.
First, club operators need to hire natural marketers, which means someone who instinctively likes telling other people about a product or service they are involved or even just happy with. Many employers are under the impression that all salespeople are natural marketers, but that just isn’t true. Often, aggressive salespeople are so focused on closing deals that they get too easily frustrated with the prospecting process.
The interview process is the ideal time to find out if a candidate is a natural marketer. At some point in the interview, turn to the candidate and say the following, “Let’s assume for a moment that I have absolutely no marketing budget. That said we still will need to generate new sales. Take a minute to think about and then tell me how you would go about bringing new sales into the club?” A natural marketer will immediately say things like, “Well, the first thing I’d do is call all my friends and family and try to get them down here. Next, I would go down to the mall and pass out cards or flyers or whatever we could.” I recently had an interview where the young lady said, “I used to work at Bob’s stores and we sold a ton of sneakers. I could go back and talk to the manager and see if we could put a promotional piece in every box of sneakers.” I hired her and she was fabulous. Any type of response whereby the person quickly thinks of ways to get out and talk to people is a good indicator that they are comfortable networking and marketing themselves—even if their interview ideas are way off the mark. Conversely, if the person responds with such things as, “Maybe we could work a trade with the local paper or radio station,” red flags should go up as to their ability and willingness to network and market.
The next operational key to creating a marketing machine at your club is to involve the entire staff in generating guerrilla marketing ideas and implementing them. The ideal time to launch this is at an all-staff meeting where you can mix employees up into diverse groups to maximize creativity and tap into the existing networking relationships current staff have in the community. If an all-staff meeting isn’t a reality or is not scheduled soon enough, all-department meetings are the second best forum. Here’s how to do it.
Open the meeting by telling everyone that you have convened to ask them for their creative assistance in finding low or no cost ways to generate networking and guerrilla marketing activities within the community. Next, share with everyone the importance this type of marketing has on the overall success of the club in generating new prospects, letting them know that traditional forms of marketing are both expensive and decreasingly effective. It is quite effective to ask the group, “Guess what the average marketing cost is for us to generate one new member?” Let the group yell out their guesses, which are always a fraction of reality; when they hear what the actual costs are, they are usually anxious to assist. Then, give the group 5-10 examples of networking and guerrilla marketing activities that have been done successfully over the years. Next, divide up into groups of 5 or 6 people (this size allows most people to feel comfortable speaking up). Have one person volunteer to be the scribe and give them 30 minutes to come up with as many creative ideas for networking and guerrilla marketing as they possibly can. Let them know that no idea is too crazy, as one idea may spark or morph into another.
Club operators are always amazed to find out how many people on their staff have incredible contacts within the community AND wonderful, creative marketing ideas. Best of all, with the entire focus on no or low cost, these ideas are inexpensive but effective. One way to make the event even more interesting is to add a competitive angle to the meeting. Give prizes to the team that comes up with the most ideas or the team that has the best single idea. Any way to add some excitement to the brainstorming process will pay off in the end.
Of course, tapping into employees for creative marketing ideas needn’t be limited to an annual meeting. One club I worked with constantly encouraged staff members to think of new low cost marketing and networking opportunities by offering a financial incentive. Each month the owner would identify the best idea and give a $25 bonus to the employee who had made the submission, along with an announcement to the rest of the staff. If the club used the idea at any time in the future, and the employee was still working for the company, they received a $100 bonus! These type of incentive programs create a culture of employees who become marketing machines—regardless of whether or not they are officially in “sales.”
The third operational key to creating a marketing machine at your club is establishing set goals and times each week for salespeople to complete their guerrilla marketing activities. Often, managers instruct salespeople to “get out and network,” or “go out today and do some marketing.” That is like sending a five year old up to their room to “clean it up.” For effective marketing and networking to be accomplished a manager must set specific goals for each time a salesperson goes outside the club to market. “Today you are going to place 3 lead boxes and 4 take-one’s.” Or, “Today you should distribute 200 fliers at a minimum of 10 businesses with similar clientele.” In addition, clubs must have tracking sheets that salespeople use as an organizational tool and manager’s use as an accountability tool. For example, when monitoring lead boxes, a single tracking sheet that monitors the date the box was set, each time it was checked, how many leads were obtained from the box, and who checked the box is a must. This type of tracking must be done for every guerrilla marketing activity. Although some owner/operators may think this is excessive micro-management of employees, one must remember that you must inspect what you expect if you want to maximize productivity.
By creating a diverse, annual marketing plan, hiring natural marketers for your sales positions, engaging the entire staff in the creation and implementation of low-cost/no-cost guerrilla marketing efforts, and being sure that salespeople have clear goals and accountability systems when they leave the club to market and self-generate business, your club can create a wonderful marketing machine. With consistency, the results will be a greater number of prospects at a lower customer acquisition cost. We all understand it, we all want it, but only those that follow the steps necessary to accomplish it will reap the rewards!