Okay, you’re a local fitness and wellness business. But do you market like a local business?
Test yourself. If you think that:
- Local search for businesses is all about using keywords to get your website on the first page of Google’s search engine results page (SERP)
- Your website is supposed to be the primary way that most new customers in your town discover you
- Blog posts about drinking 8 glasses of water or the general benefits of fitness or yoga or nutrition are the most effective ways that potential customers find you
- Email newsletters are great for getting customers
- Facebook page posts are a great way to get new customers
…you’re marketing like an online-only wellness business, not a local business.
This very common mistake costs you revenue and customers every time someone searches for “health club North Dallas” or “weight loss near me.”
We see this all the time and I blame all the online marketing “experts” out there who either don’t understand or don’t bother to explain this crucial difference.
So, let’s demystify this topic—and shorten your marketing to-do list at the same time!
Full disclosure
We used to give that list of advice to nearly all of our wellness clients: focus on keywords, write All.The.Posts, capture the email address for the newsletter, and so on. And for a long time, it was good advice that brought them new customers.
But part of our job is to pay attention to shifts and changes in what works, how Google’s algorithms and features are affecting search results, and how the behaviors of people looking for local wellness businesses are changing. And a lot has changed over the years.
Those strategies still make sense for online-only wellness businesses. Think Noom.com, YogaWithAdriene.com, KizenTraining.com
But these days, marketing is blessedly simpler for local health clubs, yoga studios and healthy lifestyle programs.
Google gives local businesses special treatment
Did you realize that 90%+ of prospects discover their local wellness business via content powered by Google Business Profiles, like the Local 3-Pack, and via Google’s local search Ads?
Think about that for a minute. Practically every customer you get finds you through your Google Business Profile and/or Google Ads. Period.
In a nutshell, Google can tell when someone’s looking to buy a local product or service, and it shows Google Business Profile content and Google Ads for the nearest businesses that best match that search query.
As soon as they click your profile or ad, Google sends them straight to your website to explore your business further and get upfront answers for their showstopper concerns.
What doesn’t show up when prospects search for local businesses?
Blog posts and social media posts. Most local business websites. These typically don’t appear at all in the first 10-20 search results. They’re not a factor in lead generation because prospects literally do not even see them.
The Local Marketing Triangle
We call this the Local Marketing Triangle for Health and Wellness, and it really is as simple as 1-2-3.
- Nail your Google Business Profile, every bit of it. Leave nothing undone.
- Invest in well-crafted Google Ads that take full advantage of all the features, from location optimization to callouts, sitelinks, images and more.
- Tailor your website to prospects’ priorities, not keywords. Because content that’s good for prospects is good for Google, too.
In a nutshell: do only the marketing that matters.
Saying the quiet part out loud
Those SEO contractors and online “experts” who say you have to produce a constant flow of fresh blog and social media content in order to get new customers are divorced from the reality of local fitness & wellness businesses.
In our experience, business owners and marketing managers actually know this at a gut level.
They’ll routinely say, “We do all these things we’re supposed to do, we post every day on social, our marketing person does the newsletter and we’ve got a contractor who does blog posts but I really don’t see any sign that any of it even makes a difference.”
They’re right. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t making a difference. The emperor has no clothes.
And that’s because blog and social posts don’t typically focus on the concerns of people actively looking to buy—so they don’t even show up in Google results when buyers search for local businesses.
Instead, these posts tend to focus on topics of interest to people just starting to explore a particular aspect of health, fitness or wellness. These folks are not remotely close to buying anything, and most never will be. Their searches are information- and research-related, like these:
- “tips for running in cold weather” (searcher reads RunnersWorld.com article)
- “how to sleep better” (searcher reads MayoClinic.com article)
- “is weight gain hereditary” (searcher reads CDC.gov article)
You see the common thread, right? Huge, popular, and extremely well-known web publishers, non-profits and government organizations have already inundated virtually every health and wellness topic with general-interest posts.
You can pay your own team or hire contractors to write posts like this until the cows come home.
Your local wellness business will still never outrank the megasites. This is their core business. Their livelihood depends on it, and they’re very good at it.
Why this is perfectly fine
Before you give up in despair, let me point out: this is a good thing!
Remember, 90%+ of customers find their local wellness business through Google Business Profile and Google Ads—not through traditional organic search results. Your blog post’s organic search position has nothing to do with getting new local customers.
Case in point: we had a client which was a multidisciplinary pain management practice that saw patients in person. They had a top-ranked blog post on at-home DIY back pain treatment. It got thousands of monthly views. Woohoo, right? Nope. 99.99999% of the people who read that article aren’t even in North America, much less in the state and city where they practiced. There is zero chance they will ever be customers.
Moreover, virtually none of these popular sites compete with your local fitness and wellness business. Most are for-profit content publishers. Their business model depends on selling ads on their sites, selling subscriptions to exclusive content, and partnering with adjacent businesses to promote their products.
They’re not providing in-person health and wellness services. Only you do that.
So let them do their thing. They’re awakening people to possibilities, educating on really basic principles, helping dispel fundamental myths and misconceptions.
All of this eventually benefits YOUR business, for free. Why spend time and money trying to duplicate their efforts?
Do only the marketing that matters
People searching for businesses locally are already conditioned to buy. They’re just trying to figure out which business to choose, which one will match their needs and temperament best.
If they had general health and wellness interests, they got that information earlier in their customer journey, mainly from those popular well-known sites we mentioned above.
This is why we tell most local fitness and wellness businesses that they can stop worrying about many of marketing rituals that they diligently execute and privately question.
Your gut check is right! Facebook business pages aren’t going to bring you new customers. Typical blog posts won’t either. Neither will your Instagram posts.
Again, people looking to buy local fitness and wellness services don’t even see that content. They see what’s on the Google search page. That’s it.
Online-only vs local
SEO works very differently for online-only fitness & wellness businesses. Online-only businesses serve people who share a common interest, regardless of location. Think KizenTraining.com, Noom.com or YogaWithAdriene.com.
Online-only businesses don’t have access to unique local tools like Google Business Profile, Google local search Ads, the Local 3-Pack and additional Map and Search placements.
For them, traditional organic search optimization is crucially important.
Unlike your local business, hey can’t easily pinpoint only the people looking to buy at any given moment. So their best bet is to get in front of as many people as humanly possible. At any point in time, a small percentage will be ready to buy, so as long as they get in front of enough people, the business model will work.
They’re also betting that if they can attract people early in their buying process, they’ll be able to stay top of mind with them until they’re actually ready to buy something, and with luck, finally get the purchase.
Keep in mind, though: this only works if enough of the people seeing their web, social & email content end up wanting to buy an online service. If they want in-person programs, the online business has nothing to offer them.
For these businesses, the key to success really is consistently producing lots of web, social and email content for all types of search intent and for all stages of the sales funnel—for folks barely starting to think about a particular aspect of health and wellness all the way through to people ready to click “buy” and purchase their online program, service or app.
They face an additional challenge: their content is often competing against all those web publishers, non-profits, etc, we talked about earlier.
It’s a numbers game. They put money on all the available bets, knowing that some will pay off and some won’t.
The bottom line for local businesses
Optimize your Local Marketing Triangle so you’re marketing to people actively looking to buy, and spend the time you save talking to your paying customers!
