The future of Fitness: the new marketing for the 2020s
Before we look ahead, let’s look back. Because if you look at marketing over the past 10 years, you’re looking at a true landslide.
Looking back: Marketing in the 10s of the 21st century
10 years ago:
Were we in the Netherlands still massively on Hyves
Only a limited part of the population had a smartphone
Websites were still mainly information leaflets for use on PCs and laptops.
Online advertising was only done on Home pages, in what was then called Google Adwords and with those annoying flashing banners.
We made our 1st successful advertisement on the already mentioned Hyves
Email still celebrates high tide
And Whatsapp didn’t really matter because it had only just been launched
How different has it been in the last 3 years?!
Focus on:
Mobile versions of websites
Today ‘everyone’ is mobile online so even focus on mobile website first
The increasingly crowded Facebook and Instagram ads
The further specification in those advertisements
Hardly any attention for free posts because the organic reach in Facebook and Insta is getting lower and lower (hint: LinkedIn still has an excellent free reach).
The first steps in the field of automation, chatbots, calling your club virtual assistants and so on
Future: Marketing in the 1920s
Let me nuance it straight away; this is not about the whole 20’s, but only about 2020, 2021 and maybe 2022!
Simply because there is no way to predict anything over a longer period of time. Yes there are ideas, yes there are promising technologies, but those technologies and the consumer are changing rapidly. So fast that the expected ‘next big thing’ is suddenly overtaken on the right by another technology. Virtual reality, for example, has been predicting a big future for three years now. It could be, but who knows, it may never take off en masse.
Top 3 marketing predictions
These predictions are not so much about a technology, but about a general marketing development. This is our top 3 marketing forecasts:
1 – The new AIDA formula
Anyone who has studied or had lessons in marketing knows the AIDA formula. It tells you how you want to format a message: Attract Attention, Create Interest, Generate Desire and Activate Action. Thanks to the still deteriorating attention span of people (everything has to be instant, now, otherwise you will lose my attention) speed is of the essence!
The new AIDA formula is almost the same, except for one detail! The new formula stands for Attention Drawing, Instant Desire Generation and Action Activation. You see, details make a difference, a world of difference. So forget about ‘extensive information’ and welcome ‘we’re here for you now’)! Instant contact with your client, so don’t send an email or call for an appointment an hour later, no right now, within 2 minutes or faster.
See my blog on LinkedIn on this subject:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-old-aida-marketing-model-dead-more-alive-than-ever-leezenberg/
2 – Individualised experiences
The beauty of the internet is that everything becomes scalable. One-size-fits-all. That’s right, look at all the marketing communications, member campaigns and websites in our industry. The chains mimic each other, the traditional clubs mimic each other, the studios and boxes mimic each other. Just like 10 years ago, everything resembles each other, only the technique is different, which makes results really measurable now. As a result, it is predictable what works best, what benefits most members; indeed, the campaigns as we see them resembling each other!
But the internet also makes it possible to create more personalized, more individualized experiences. That’s all about targeting, targeting special features in Facebook and Instagram, among others. It’s about offering space so that leads can tell their story to you online. It’s about speed (see point 1) of response and then especially from a service-oriented mindset says Fitness Marketing Groningen.
There are many tools available to do this as we do for our customers and continuously test: think of LeadConnect (virtual assistant connects club/studio and the lead within 2 minutes via phone), chatbots (both on your website and in Facebook Messenger, among others), qualification of leads via 1-, 2- or multi-stage forms (variants of our membership tests) and more.
Example: this simple 2-minute scan (fill in to see how it goes)
3 – Advertising in and automating messaging
As Gary Vaynerchuk said, “Marketeers break everything.” As soon as there are ‘eyes’ of people somewhere, marketers come up with a way to advertise. Now it’s time for the messaging tools like:
SMS (working on a revival)
LinkedIn (have you already seen ads in your inbox?)
Facebook Messenger (as with bots)
Whatsapp (Zuckerberg had promised ‘no ads in Whatsapp’).
If you’re upstairs
