What if you discovered, after struggling with a consistently small class, that the problem wasn't you or your teaching, but that people simply couldn't find your studio when searching online?
Now you may be thinking; "John, my studio has a web site." "When someone Googles [indoor cycling class or Spinning class + your city] I'm certain we show up."
You know what they say about making assumptions...
I teach for a large "Big Box" health club and I always assumed that they were great marketers. They would never make the simple mistake of not being Findable online.
So for fun I decided to try a search for myself. I Googled [Indoor Cycling Eden Prairie, MN] and the results floored me. None of my clubs showed up on the map Google showed. NOT ANY OF THEM! Just two bike shops. Please forgive me when I tell you that my initial reaction was WT_ is this!
Click here to see a map I made showing all the Indoor Cycling Studios missing from the results in Google from my little corner of the world. This isn't Google's fault. It's a complete oversight by my club's management and/or whoever is responsible for online marketing.
Now if I have you just a little curious, try this Online Findability Test on your studio or club...
Pretend you woke up this morning and decided to take your very first Spinning Indoor Cycling Class. Two questions you need answered are; "where can I find a class" and "what times are the class"
Most people nowadays will do a simple Google (or Yahoo or Bing) search for indoor cycling & the name of your town. Try it now and see what you find. If you also teach another format try that as well.
What did you find? A Map listing? Search results listing? Nothing?
If you did find your studio or club on the (hopefully) first page, click on the link and see where is takes you. Does it obvious answer those two questions; "where is it" and "what time is the class" ???
Leave me a comment with the results of your search.
Now many of you know that I'm all about solving problems for myself and other Fitness Professionals. So I have started a new blog and Podcast all about solving this problem of Online Findability for the studios where many of us teach.
Check it out at Fitness Studio Marketing if you are interested... or maybe forward the link to someone who has some work to do 🙂
John is a member on the AFS (Association of Fitness Studios) Advisory Council.
Holding certifications from; Schwinn, Heart Zones, Team ICG and Life Time Fitness, John's held regularly scheduled cycling classes between 1998 and 2015 when he moved to Florida.
When the weather permits, you'll find him riding and leading outdoor groups by himself or with his Tandem partner (wife) Amy.
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I think the first step is to find out if anyone is even seraching for cycling classes in your area, and if so, what keywords do they use (“indoor cycling”, “spin”, “spinning”, “bike workout” etc.)
Then go build your organic and paid “findability” strategy based around those numbers and keywords.
If you are guessing the keywords to use, I think there’s a big chance of wasting your time and money.
I agree with Tim, the key is first finding out what ‘key words’ people are using to find the services you offer.
If your studio is using WordPress to run it’s site you can take advantage of the Stats function which displays the keywords that brought people to your site and then see which key words you are missing, and add them.
The other thing is to make sure your studios site is easy to navigate/use and is it informative?
If you were to visit your studios site as a new client could you easily find out where the studio is located, how to contact it, what are the class times, cost, information on the instructors, etc.
It’s no use having the best instructors with the best facility if your site is anything less than the best … you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Tim, Keith good advice but I’m curious if you we able to find your studios and if so, were your questions answered?
There aren’t that many possible “key word” choices and your city is…your city.
So what did you find?
I don’t have a club John, but if I did I would be using tools like google analytics to find keywords people used to find my site and google insights + google adwords for general related keyword popularity.
Plus there is only so much you can do with optimising your own site for google’s listing. It’s a lot to do with who links to your site as well.
This is why if I search for “spin class” + my town or “indoor cycling class” + my town I end up with online gym directories and big fitness chains. On page 1, I don’t see any of the little operators that I know exist in town.
Then again if you search for “personal trainer” + my town, you get different results from goole. Instead of a listing, you get “local business results” listing on google maps, which has all the small gyms in town right there on page 1 and on the map.
So google is treating “personal trainer” differently than “spin class” or “indoor cycling class”.
This si because of google’s categorisation. If you register your business with google, they offer a “category” – which they define. No surprise, “personal trainer” is a category but not “spin classes”. In fact if you enter spin class you get “aerobic classes” as googles suggested category. So if you go search for “aerobics classes” + my town you get the same map based listing and all the cyclign studios are there, not directories and big chains, because google intends this tye of search to be local results.
So in sumamry, I would start with registering your business with google, and putting keywords into the description, but it seems you are stuck with their categories. Then see if anyone searches for keywords you think of (insights and adwords can tell you this) and then finally, if they are searching, get into your SEO efforts by A) optimizing your site and B) building links to it from credible source to raise your google juice.
That’s my five sents worth.
my typing was awful… sorry, little keyboard and on the move!
Thanks Tim,
What town do you live in?
In response to “I don’t see any of the little operators that I know exist in town.”
This is the exact problem I’m referring to and if I was a studio owner I would want that changed.
I don’t see Google treating sites that don’t fit a specific category differently – a search for indoor cycling Minneapolis will bring up a small studio as the only location.
It’s interesting that if I write a post about a specific fitness studio business it will jump to the front page. I just did one as a test – try a search for spinning or indoor cycling in wilmington nc
John, I live in Ballrat in Australie.
Maybe your wilmington result is because;
a) indoorcyclinginstructor has more google juice (incoming links) than your average small studio’s website
b) the effect of big chains and online directories is not as strong in that location so your article doesn’t get swamped in the rankings.
Regarding different treatment of search terms by google;
If you type this into google;
personal trainer, eden prairie, MN
You get a totally different screen layout and results listing than if you type this:
indoor cycling class, eden prairie, MN
The reason is that personal trainer is a category in google local business listing, so it shows you different output. Indoor cycling class is not. Try it. You’ll see what I mean.
Cheers,
Tim
err, make that Ballarat in Australia !