We all know that effective marketing is key to building a successful leisure business. But, when time is short and budgets are limited, it’s hard to know where to start.
Using the data available from your membership system can really help to focus your Marketing efforts. Once you know who your most profitable members are, it’s much easier to find more just like them. You can also avoid wasting money on campaigns that just don’t work.
Here’s a Five Step Plan to get you started.
Step One: Review the key metrics on your members to help guide your planning and decision making. Create a profile of each member type you want to attract or retain. Who are they? What are their interests/concerns? Investing a bit of time at this stage will really pay dividends later on.
Step Two: Set targets for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. Use the data and be realistic. For example, in the UK Sports and Leisure market only 25% of people are likely to open an email and the clickthrough rate is 3%. The response rates for a direct mail campaign could be as high as 5% for a well-targeted and executed campaign but as low as 0.1% so bear that in mind.
Step Three: Decide on the correct method (advertisement / post / email / text / posters / social media etc.) to deliver each campaign to each target group – think:
· Who am I talking to?
· What am I saying?
· Why will they be interested?
Always match the promotion to your target group – younger members might respond better to social media and SMS, older members will probably prefer a personalised direct mail piece. If you’re not sure, test some different options. Think about the costs involved for each method and don’t forget to work out how you are going to measure responses.
NB If you are looking for new members don’t forget to exclude current members (especially sleepers) and members of staff from your mailing list.
Step Four: Ensure the design of the campaign is exciting, engaging, relevant and has a clear call to action. You need a great title, an easy to understand message and a fantastic offer. Don’t forget to use images, colours and typefaces that are consistent with the rest of your branding.
Don’t send the campaign out until you have checked, double checked and triple checked it for errors, run a couple of tests and made sure you have set things like the delivery times correctly.
Step Five: The last step is to measure and review the campaign. And, of course, use the data to improve your understanding of what worked and what didn’t ready for your next campaign.
Our Communicate software can make running marketing campaigns even easier and more effective. If you would like to know more please give me a call on 07730217377 or email craigcampbell@cascade3d.com.