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This is Kathy ...
Kathy owns and runs a small personal training business called Upstart Fitness along with her husband. Part of Kathy's duties including marketing the business to the local community to try and attract more clients.
What sort of marketing activities do you use for your business?
From a digital perspective, we have a website which I maintain, it was professionally designed by a friend of mine but she taught me how to do basic edits to ensure information is up-to-date and relevant. We also have various social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram with quite a few followers.
From a community engagement perspective, we have customer appreciation days and do letterbox drops advertising special deals.
What method works best?
Probably the website and the letterbox flyers. Most of our clients tell us that they found our website through a basic Google search and then contacted us from there. A good portion of clients also approach us with one of our flyers advertising a discount, especially older clients who are on a strict budget.
Who is your main client base?
It's about 65% young people who are working in corporate jobs and want to improve their fitness because they spend most of their days inside. Then about 20% are mums who are looking to lose baby weight and get fit again, I run a mum's and bub's class twice a week which is popular. The remainder is our retirees, many of whom live in the large retirement home in our neighbourhood. They love my husband because he visits their community centre and runs sessions for them three times a week.
How do you monitor marketing activities?
I have to admit, probably not as well as I could be. As the business has grown it has become almost a full-time job just managing marketing and client relations. However, my friend who designed our website has offered to run some Google analytics on our business to help us determine the types of people who are searching for our services, their demographics and potential needs so that we can better target our advertising to suit them.
Do you have a marketing plan or strategy?
Sort of, it's more of a broad overview at this stage but I really need to formalise it. I want to consult with a professional in the field, like a marketing consultant, to get their opinions on how to do it properly. This will tie in nicely with our upcoming expansion plans. We're looking at hiring two extra team members to help with the personal training, so we will need a much more formal plan to tie in with the increased client base we will soon be catering for.