Building a Customer Recruitment Strategy

In our last post, we saw how important it is to be present on the Internet, especially if you’re looking for new customers. Everyone browses the Internet to research their interests, needs, and hobbies. They also check the ‘net when they are looking for a Pilates studio or rehabilitation center. It’s time to build up a good on-line strategy to recruit new customers. In today’s post, we’ll discuss how to do just that.

Online Strategy to Win Customers

This strategy is based on four phases, including: the creation of landing pages, paid advertising campaigns, organic positioning campaigns in search engines, and the results analysis.

Phase 1: Creation of Landing Pages

Let’s say that in your Pilates studio you offer three types of very different services: classes for people with scoliosis, sessions for pregnant and postpartum women, and personalized injury rehabilitation treatments. In your website you will provide information about each of these services, where your center is, who the professionals are who work there, your pricing, etc. Landing pages, however, only offer specific information relevant to the interests and needs of the potential client who clicked on the marketing link. The pregnant woman who’s following her doctor’s advice to exercise during gestation will not be interested in your classes for people with scoliosis, or in rehabilitation of injuries. If she clicks into your website via a search for prenatal Pilates, she will be much more likely to choose your studio if she immediately falls on a landing page relevant to her needs.

How to Build a Landing Page

A landing page is one screen with no navigation or menu. In it we condense the most relevant information about what we do, where we are, and how to contact us, so that we can turn visits into real sales. To achieve this transformation from the virtual to the real world, we must offer an attractive service and, if possible, a good offer. This offer does not have to be a discount on the price of your services, but it should appear to be a valuable offer to your visitors. Offering a free trial session is often a very effective formula to transform those virtual customers into real clients. If we return to the example of the Pilates studio offering different services, a landing page oriented to pregnant women would include: pre- and postnatal class descriptions, available schedules, a contact form, the address of the center, the qualifications of the specialized instructors, and a button to contact the center to book an appointment or ask for a free trial. The goal is to catch the attention of customers whose needs you can meet and to generate a good database of potential clients that you can utilize when sending out marketing information (calls, email blasts, etc.).

Phase 2: SEO Optimization

Not everything is worth being on your landing page. If you want to be effective and get good results from your advertising campaign (which we will see in part 3), you have to plan the content of the page very well, including information that clearly defines the services you offer, your studio location, etc. It is also essential that the page be optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that search engines can “read” it easily. These technical needs should be clearly stated when hiring someone to build your landing page.  If you do decide to build it yourself, remember that it is essential to have the correct SEO structure and implementation on your site. IMPORTANT: Do not forget to install your analytics tracking code on your landing page. Google offers a free analytics service that you can easily install on your site to track your traffic. We will address this in our next post. Remember that your landing page should fit the device where it is displayed. If your landing page is not mobile-optimized for customers who find your site on their phones, you’ll be throwing your money away.