When to Hire a Marketing Partner for Your Health Club

As the owner of a health club or any business for that matter, you might be thinking about engaging with a partner to help you with marketing management. But before taking this step, you may have some hesitation. Maybe you worked with a freelancer for a period of time and had a poor experience, or maybe you hired a marketing firm to promote a specific event and were left disappointed with the results.

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Whatever your experiences have been when it comes to working with a third party marketing firm, the reality is that your business at some point will likely benefit from such an engagement. So, how do you know when? Here are three ways.

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‍Your Needs Surpass Your Knowledge

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‍This is probably the singular most important reason to seek out a marketing partner for your health club. If you’ve decided you need to strategically revamp your website, redesign it and optimize it for SEO, it might be time to find a qualified partner. Unless you have someone on your team that is a true expert in web development & design and SEO strategy, you can’t risk handing off such an important piece of your marketing to an amateur.

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Some business owners want to use their existing team for their marketing needs, so they consider delegating a responsibility to someone on their team and then try to empower them to learn how to execute it. This is a noble approach, but it almost never works. Take the website and SEO example above again, for instance. Sure, you could ask your marketing director to immerse themselves in web design and SEO strategy but, unless they take classes, have plenty of hands-on experience and focus solely on these skills, they will never be on par with a professional. And with everything else on their plate, there’s just no way they could become that skilled in these nuanced and complex areas.

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Certain simpler marketing activities, like email marketing, can absolutely be handled by nearly any savvy person on your team. But when your marketing needs far surpass your existing knowledge, it’s time to call on experts who handle those initiatives day in and day out.

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‍Your Team is Tapped Out

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‍Another sign it might be time to work with a third party on your marketing management is when tasks are slipping through the cracks because your team is burnt out. Maybe you have two people on your marketing team, and both have had to stay after hours almost every day in order to get the bare minimum done. This isn’t fair to them, and it’s also far from effective. If your team gets run into the ground, their output will suffer.

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The beauty of engaging with a marketing partner is that you can work together to decide what part of your marketing mix is owned by whom. Maybe your marketing manager is really passionate about content marketing and branding, so they’ve been reluctant in bring in anyone else for fear of those activities getting taken away from them. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If you find a qualified agency who has your best interests at heart, you can decide together how to best divide up your marketing activities. This way, you play to each other’s strengths and you can create a cost-effective arrangement in which everyone wins.

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‍Sales have Stalled

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‍So, what if neither of those two signs are reflective of your situation? What if your team has ample knowledge, and is adequately staffed (for now, at least)? In this case, you might be fine operating as you are. But there’s one more key indication to look at… your sales numbers. Are they consistent with what they typically are? Or are they dragging? If your sales have stalled, or are actually on the decline, it might be the best time to bring in an external marketing agency for some help.

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This might sound counterintuitive, because our instincts say we should cut expenses when our sales are dwindling. But this is actually one of the best times to put the pedal to the metal with your marketing. When you engage with a qualified marketing firm, you bring in new expertise and fresh eyes. An experienced team of marketing professionals will bring new ideas to the table, and may be willing to try an approach you haven’t considered (that could reach a new audience perhaps). And, their areas of expertise may just complement your own and be the piece of the puzzle you’ve been missing.

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Do any of these examples sound like your situation? Do you need expertise in an area that no one on your team has? Are your team members overworked, and in need of support? Have your sales slowed significantly? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you could definitely benefit from finding the right marketing partner.

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To learn more, and to see if we might be a fit, contact us here.