Your Attention Please!Achieving membership sales from the disengaged

Keith Burnet – VP Global Fitness & Spa Hilton Worldwide

Sponsored by:

Attention Please! Achieving membership sales from

the disengaged

This session is for you if:

• You are finding it increasingly difficult to get people’s attention

• You know that that people are tuning out without getting your message, much less acting upon it

• Your success depends on you ability to communicate effectively

Sales & Marketing Disconnect

Sales Marketing

Sales per Month# of Calls

Enquiry to Sale Conversion

Success criteria

# of enquiries, awareness. ROI

Size of SaleEase to close

Vision of the Customer

Responsiveness to campaigns

Transactional Relationship quality

Campaign basedLoyalty focused

Self directed v. Mission directed

Process Activity based v. Outcome driven

Lack of time to utilise Technology Source measurementCampaign Management

FOCUS

Sales & Marketing Strategy & Plan

Existing Customer

Engagement

Brand positioningPromotions

Service Delivery

Sales & Marketing

Plan

Market Research

Communication

Sales Strategy

Competitive Analysis

PricingLoyalty

PR

Product

What is the problem?

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Stuffed with information and starved for attention...

• People used to welcome and treasure communication

• 1965 – Email• 1st June 1980 - the world changed forever?• 1984...internet domain name system established• 1989...the internet as we know it today• Overwhelmed with information and people have

lost their ability to focus• Attention Dysfunction:

• Multitask Mania, Hyper-choice syndrome, Information anxiety, Attention deficit trait, ADHD

What needs to change:

To have any chance of attracting the disengaged consumer to become a member of a health club we need to ........stop the madness.........and change the way we communicate

Interesting is only the entry point.......your communication needs to be: exciting, fun, immediate, compelling, useful and most importantly RELEVANT

The value of disengagement?

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Engagement/Disengagement?

• Engagement is the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence you have with a brand over time.

• On average what % of your members are fully engaged customers?

• How many disengaged prospective members are out there?• What are they disengaged with: activity & exercise, health

clubs in general or a specific health club?• Why are they disengaged/ What is their level of

disengagement?• What will engage or re-engage them?

Disengagement Level Engagement Level

Active Partial Neutral/Passive Partial Active

The Cost of Disengagement?

• The positive economics of healthy brand relationships is well researched.

• Emotionally engaged spa product customers will give their brand a share of purchase 77% greater than the disengaged

• This even applies to commodities like buying petrol 12%?• Hilton: fully engaged customers will give a 63 % greater

share of their hotel stays than a fully disengaged customer• Consumers have greater choice and options than even

before. • Wherever there are options.....there are limits to the power

of location and price• Health clubs: Increasingly people now have options and the

brands that can engage their customers through the power of emotional connections will see powerful results

A compelling strategy for getting attention

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Know your audience

• In today’s world...• knowing your audience does not go far enough... you

have to get really close to them• Demographic studies• Get to know them individually not just as a group

through character sketches, Focus groups, surveys• Remember your audience is likely to be very different

from you

• CEOs are different.......• Data & compelling qualitative feedback required• 6 essential questions:

• Who are they, Where are they, How old are they, What is their occupation, How do they spend their work days, What do they care about?

Target Target market….market….

PrimaryPrimary

Target Target market….market….

EmergingEmerging

Common barriers to club membership

65

65

62

41

37

36

35

16

15

10

8

57

Base: All Prospects (n=46)

The price (perceived value) of membership / joining fee

Lack of time due to family or children commitments

Lack of time due to working commitments

Lack of motivation or desire to go to a heath & fitness club

No need to join due to doing other leisure activities

Lack of self-confidence

Intimidated by the thought of using a health & fitness club

No need to join due to good level of health & fitness

Feeling that clubs are unable to provide the support needed

Feeling that health clubs do not cater ‘for people like me’

Health problems

Physical injuries

Prospects (%)

Parents (84%)

Primary Market (69%)

• Communication is often focussed on what you want to say and ignores what the audience wants to hear. This is easier & familiar

• The most effective strategy for grabbing people’s attention is to focus your communication on their needs, not yours

• The most compelling headlines are:» You...» How to...?

• Provide information that is accessible, friendly and relevant.

• Just enough to make your communication useful but not so much you overwhelm your audience

“It’s not about me; it’s all about you”

Focus on YOU

Techniques to grab and hold people’s attention

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1. Create a focus

• One simple message• Your brand promise/positioning must set you

apart from your competitors • You must sacrifice, you cannot be all things to all

people• You must focus on one thing. What is the one

thing that I need the audience to know, believe or do

• Say it quickly, simply and so that your audience knows what’s in it for them

• Do not try to say too much as you risk losing your audience’s attention

3 steps to framing

1. Decide on the desired outcome of your communication

I want customers who are disengaged with exercise to make an appointment to tour my club

2. Link to the audience need

To enjoy a healthier lifestyle: make them feel better and live longer

4. Create a message concept in 10-25 words that meets the audience needs while achieving your objective

Our clear, simple promise is Personalised fitness for life.

“We will shape our service to suit your fitness needs: Be it weight loss, body shape , fitness for sport, fitness for health, fitness to slow the ticking of old age or relaxation, de-stressing or boosting energy levels, we’ll help every member to get what they want from their membership to suit their

life.”

Smart communicators make their messages laser-focused to successfully capture peoples attention

2. Fill in the blanks

• Your focus /message must be (extremely) tangible• Conceptual and vague don’t cut it• Abstract concepts don’t draw people in – but rich,

specific description infuses communication with energy• Avoid Jargon, marketing speak, buzzwords, big words• What do we mean when we say ‘value proposition’ or

‘brand positioning’• Get specific and use ‘thick description’ to bring your

messages to life. • Appeal to the senses by using specific description to

help your audience connect by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching

3. Tell a story

• It is the oldest way of getting peoples attention and still the most effective.

• Use storytelling often.... it keeps them interested• Use real life stories relevant to your audience• Newsletters are an excellent method on

communicating real stories that the disengaged customer can relate to

• Testimonials

4. Provide easy access to information

• Even if they had time to look for information (most people don’t)...the disengaged audience will not activity search for information on your products and services

• So it is essential you provide them an easy way to find what they are looking for even if they stumble across it in a place they wouldn’t expect to find it.

• You need to provide simple navigation that lets them access communication that matches their needs

• Get the headline right• Use bullets• Retailers are experts

5. Make it visual

• Visuals are a fail-safe way of grabbing people’s attention

• Different type faces/bold, colours, pictures, graphs, tables, photographs maps, Cartoons, filmed images

• Can convey a message at a glance..much faster than words

• Memorable....increases information retention• Make the complicated simple

6. Stay short and sweet

• So little time, limited attention....your audience needs communication that is concise and clear

• Put your MBAs to one aside and throw off the shackles of excessive length and say it simply

• Good communications worst enemy: EGO• Readability: communicate as if you were talking to

12 year old

“If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter”Mark Twain

Sales & Marketing Activity

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Reactions to some LivingWell Marketing Literature • “Fall in Love with Your Scales”

o Strongly disliked. Focus on weight loss seen to be negative and short-termist:

“It looks like an add for Weight Watchers. It’s OK if you want to lose weight, but I want to get fit.”

• “Make a difference in just 12 weeks”

o Mixed reaction. Some people felt that it lacked credibility, particularly for people who are already quite fit. A number of respondents said that they thought that there must be a catch:

“I think 12 weeks in order to make a difference is a ridiculous concept. Health is about long-term achievements. It’s not a race, it’s a marathon.”

“This creates the impression of a very pressurised club. I don’t want to be thinking, ‘I’ve got to do this in 12 weeks’.”

o However, some prospective members who had a specific objective like losing weight found the ad appealing, and most at least felt that it was more eye-catching and positive than “Fall in love with your scales” ad.

o The fact that there is a range of activities and people in the visuals is liked.

Life is full of disappointments

Reactions mainly negative.

Many respondents didn’t immediately see the relevance of laddered tights or the burnt toast, and it sometimes took a while for them to appreciate the link to the disappointments theme.

“It looks like an ad for an insurance company.”

However, a minority of people thought that the love hearts were an attractive image and something that had particular appeal to women.

Which message should be promoted?

• It is clear that people do see their membership (or prospective membership) of a health-club as being ‘results-focused’.

• However, results can mean different things to different people. For some, it is something tangible (like losing a certain amount of weight or running a certain distance), but for others, having a general sense of ‘well-being’ can still be considered to be ‘a result’.

• Although 62% of target market members said that they would welcome a results-orientated approach to health and fitness with incentives for achieving goals, the strapline ‘Results or Your Money Back’ got a very mixed reaction in the focus groups. The objections varied, but many respondents considered the word ‘results’ to be more orientated towards young, image-conscious fitness users who wanted a ‘quick fix’.

o “How would the health & fitness club define success or whether I had achieved my goals?”

o “I wouldn’t want my money back, I would want them to carry on trying to help me!”

• By contrast, the potential slogans that centred around the individual and focused on the word ‘you’ got an extremely positive reception, in particular “Helping you be what you want to be”:

o “’Helping you’ sounds really supportive without sounding pushy or threatening.”

Some marketing tactics to drive enquiries from a disengaged audience

• Make all communication accessible, fun and unintimidating....what is in it for them?

• Get personal...• Where possible get face to face with your audience

e.g. Schools...children influence their parents.• Get innovative with your PR• Referrals• Free Trial with a high level of personalised support• Newsletters, Testimonials, Advertorials, Real

success stories

Social Media

The consumer now holds the upper hand and brands need to recognise that the power now resides firmly with the online people. There are some common themes:

• Brands are seeking a best practice answer of how to engage with their customers through social media, though I don't think there is one.

• Businesses want to know the return on investment from getting involved, though it is doubtful whether it can be measured accurately.

• Less innovative and early adoptive brands see getting involved with social media as 'high risk 'to the business. I would argue that the risk of not getting involved is much higher.

• Organisations are unsure of how to integrate social media into their overall marketing/engagement strategy, which is natural when anything new appears.

• Some approaches used by brands seeking to gain consumer commitment via social media lack subtlety and will damage their reputation.

Summary

• Assume that over 50% of your target market is disengaged with their own health or health clubs to varying degrees

• Recognise your audience in suffering from information overload

• Get to understand and know your audience• Make sure your communication is relevant• Use the different techniques to improve your

communication to get people’s attention• Where possible....measure it!• Make Sales & Marketing is a team sport

Thank you for listening

Any questions?