Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Owning a small business is a juggling act of priorities that range from putting out small metaphorical fires, to big picture thinking about the scope of the company. At what point does a float center owner prioritize hiring a marketer to shoulder some of this burden and how can an inexperienced business owner find the right one for them.
Graham and Derek tackle these questions and offer some advice for running a small business and the types of mentalities and practices that lead to the longevity and peace of mind that comes with finding someone to trust with some of that big picture thinking.
Show Resources
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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right. Hello everybody. This is Graham, and there is no Ashkahn today because as some of you may know, there is this thing called the Float Conference that’s right around the corner, and he is the kind of head honcho, I guess this is what we call him for the Float Conference and he’s busy preparing all the festivities and activities come mid August. So in his place we have Derek Wyatt, who you may recognize from previous episodes. He was here for social media week. Say hi, Derek.
Derek: Hi Derek.
Graham: Perfect. And before we launch into some more marketing questions for you, I did have a brief announcement which is that, the aforementioned Float Conference is coming up, and early bird tickets end very soon. So make sure to get them by July 19th, and after that the price shoots up. So if you haven’t gotten your Float Tank conference tickets yet, go nab them now.
And today’s question is, “should I hire someone to do my marketing for me? And how do I find someone?”
Derek: Should you? If it’s not going to be you, then yes. You should not do marketing.
Graham: As a professional marketer, how do you feel about that question, Derek?
Derek: Well, if you’re going to hire me, then the answer is always yes. But, no, somebody should be doing the marketing. So if it’s not the person who’s running the center, or the person who’s working that day-to-day, the shop manager, whoever it may be, that knows what’s going on, and how to spread the word of floating. If they’re not doing anything marketing related, then yes, you should hire a marketer.
Graham: So I guess that’s like a really big question in the sense that there is a bunch of different kinds of marketing going on. I feel like one of the most common things that people end up hiring for their centers is just social media marketers. But there are people who will run the entire marketing for your business, and even community outreach, and every kind of channel that you’d want to get to.
And I think one of the big problems for float centers is just that they can’t really afford people who are running their entire marketing setup most of the time. Like that might be, and correct me if I’m wrong, that’s like a mini thousands of dollars a month kind of position that you’re tossing it into at that point.
Derek: Well, I mean if you’re strapped for cash, the first thing you should hire somebody who’s going to bring you immediate cash. So kind of this nebulous, “I’ve got somebody running my branding, and somebody kind of doing loose PR”, and that doesn’t directly relate to dollars coming into the center in a short window of time.
Probably not your top priority to hire. Now on the flip side, if you had tons of money, then hire a full blown agency that could do all that, but I think for most float centers out there, hiring somebody that’s going to be able to do ad management, if somebody is not assigned to daily social media marketing, and maybe that kind of goes hand in hand, because with ad management you’re gonna probably direct people to a Facebook page. They’re going to want engagement on that Facebook page. So flashback to social media week. You definitely want to have at least a good balance between organic content and paid content.
Graham: That makes sense. And I guess, so most often just to kind of skip to what I see a lot of float centers doing, which I think works well for them, is they will, the center owner will end up managing a lot of the marketing that’s going into the center, and most often especially with outreach, with collaborations with other wellness professionals. All that kind of fun stuff. Going out to dinners, and putting it on the company card, and then they’ll hire out for the really more mundane time consuming things.
And Float On is kind of no exception. We actually do a lot of our marketing in house, and then we initially brought Derek Wyatt on board for the first paid position with Float On running our social media. That was kind of the first part of marketing that we had outsourced. And it’s because it happens every day. It’s kind of a moving target in terms of what best practices are.
So if you do want to keep on top of good social media content, to me it means you not only have to be posting everyday and generating content, you also need to be researching, and finding out what’s good on social media. And at some point to me that’s just worth paying an outside person to stay on top of. Like that shouldn’t be what you waste your time on as a business owner, in my opinion.
Derek: 100%, especially if it’s not your forte. If you don’t even like to check Facebook for your own personal life, definitely hire somebody to run your business.
Graham: And that’s a good, I almost like I’ve heard many apprentices coming through saying, “I guess I’ll have to make a Facebook account so I can manage this Facebook page.” And they might have to make a Facebook account, but if they’re just making a Facebook account for their business, they’re probably not going to manage it the best.
Derek: And they’re not going to understand the little nuances that go into making a good online presence if they don’t already kind of have that baseline knowledge. So the answer keeps going back to, probably you should hire a marketer. It’s kind of one of those things that, you can do a lot of the in person face-to-face yourself, and you should.
I mean, if I’m going to be building a community relationship with you, I want to be talking to the owner, not some third party person brought into what, negotiate midway like, you definitely want to do all of your in-person stuff yourself, and then anything after that, go ahead and start seeking out an expert.
Graham: What do you think should be the range of tasks there the marketing person? Like what’s the scope of marketing person that a standard float center should be looking for in your opinion?
Derek: Well, I mean somebody with a proven track record it’s usually a good start. So I mean, there’s a lot of freelancers out there. There’s a lot of people just getting started in marketing. Some of them are fresh out of college and they can be a good option. Some of them are doing a complete career flip, and marketing seems like an easy alternative for them.
And so there’s a lot of I mean, in Portland alone, I’ve probably met a hundred people getting into marketing as a service provider with no marketing experience. They watch a lot of online tutorials, take a lot of classes, parrot what the social media experts and marketing experts say out there to people who know a little bit less than that, and get hired, and then they fail miserably pretty quickly. So I mean, what should someone hire for, how should someone begin hiring?
Graham: So it’s kind of like the second part of the question too is like, how do I find someone? But I guess right before we launch into that one, what are the tasks ultimately that in your mind the marketing person should be doing? Like what am I hiring someone to do as a center owner.
Derek: Well, I mean the outreach online. So that goes with social media posts, email. So if you’re doing like a monthly newsletter, or some kind of onboarding drip campaign, if you don’t know what those words mean, you should definitely hire a marketer. So I mean it comes down to anything technical, is probably going to be one of those first initial tasks like setting up your Google analytics, and making sure you have tracking, and putting in the Facebook Pixels and all that stuff. So the first couple of things should be small tasks. See if they know how to, I guess we’re jumping into the, what they should be looking for.
Graham: That’s great as long as it overlaps. But the online presence stuff I think is good. Potentially, if the person or firm can do PR, I think that’s great. Or you might have to hire someone else to do occasional press releases.
Derek: And there’s something to be said about the, “I know how to do everything” marketer, versus hiring a specialist. So I can dabble in SEO, and I can dabble in PR, but I’m really good at copywriting, digital strategy, social media. So I stick to that. And if you Graham wanted to hire somebody for PR for Float On, probably don’t turn to me. But at the same time, if you get a single freelancer that says, “I’m a graphic designer, and I’m a website expert, and I’m, and I’m, and I’m,” you probably want to like, hold up a red flag because that’s a warning sign right there.
Graham: If someone claims to be good at everything, they’re probably in fact-
Derek: The generalist.
Graham: -pretty mediocre at everything.
Derek: So that’s something that kind of also look out for like, hiring a specialist probably is a good idea. If you’re completely blind to Facebook ads, probably hiring a Facebook ads expert is a good idea. If you hate social media, probably getting a social media community manager is a good idea. And maybe those are different people.
I would bet that your Facebook ads person should also be good at social media. That should probably be one of the things that if they’re not good at organic posts, probably not going to be good at paid posts. Because all paid posts is putting money on something that would be good organic otherwise. Good copywriting, good imagery, idea of audience in mind. They should have that whether it’s paid or not.
Graham: Cool. So a lot of I mean, it’s kind of a lot of stuff that I would think too. And I guess certain people have marketers on board for branding and more I guess soft, sort of marketing like that. And I would say, you’ll probably need to invest something that at the beginning, especially if your background isn’t in graphic design, or logo creation, or something like that.
But after the beginning, and after your brand is established, you don’t really need someone on board long term, who that’s their goal is to maintain your branding or something. You’re not like Nike where you need to make sure that your logo is always a certain size on all the T-shirts that gets printed on and stuff like that.
Like once you have your brand, it’s pretty much set. So, I guess I agree. So it’s kind of the, just to recap then the online stuff is social media, mailing list, maybe some PR. Those are kind of the things we’re looking at a marketer for if we’re hiring one.
Derek: So I’m going to pose an interesting question back at you. So when we first met probably what, seven plus years ago now, you had a good, you have still a good marketing mind on you, and you could have done all the marketing things for Float On. What point did you decide, “I need to get somebody else to help out with this?”
Graham: It was more like as soon as I find someone qualified to take over anything that I’m doing, I really jumped at the chance, especially if it’s like I said, the kind of repetitive things. And I guess this goes into that philosophy of why you should hire a marketer in the first place, and why you should also do your own marketing at least partly if you are a small business owner, which is I think your job as a small business owner, is to work on your business. The classic cliche of like work on your business, don’t work in your business.
Derek: In your business.
Graham: But it’s, working on your business, especially for a small to midsize business, you’re not making these huge strategic alliances with other gigantic multibillion dollar corporations. You’re not for the most part, like deciding where your next 30 stores are going to be set up, and doing these big things.
So to work on your business and to grow it, you need to work on marketing that and it’s a not uncommon business philosophy that for small business owners they should be what they should work on with more than half the time is, that marketing, making sure their business cranks along, that the customers are coming through the door.
So I think there’s that side. But then again, as soon as that gets repetitive and I realize I have it locked down, and I know exactly what you’re supposed to do, like with social media posts and getting this content out regularly, I would love to ship that off to someone else.
It’s like that piece of the puzzle is in place, and you came along at a very good time for me to say, “great, well this person knows what the heck they’re doing. Let me give some of this to Derek, and he can take that off my plate so I can work on these other more abstract marketing ideas that I have, and hopefully get some of that on lockdown too.”
Derek: And I think that’s a good point to make, like I’ve talked to a lot of float center owners, “I don’t get marketing. I’m not a marketer. I don’t have this knowledge of marketing like you do.” I think that as a business owner, forget float center owner, you need to have a base understanding of marketing. You don’t have to have the technical understanding of how to do Facebook ads, or how to set up Google analytics, but you have to have a base understanding of, how to define your audience, how to state what you do is a solution to someone else’s problem.
There’s a lot of things that are out there that I feel like, all float center owners and all business owners should at least have a foundation of basic marketing strategy, that kind of stuff because, then you’ll know exactly which direction you’d probably want to take your business in the marketing world, and then know what to hire for. You also know how to smell bullshit that comes your way. Like if somebody is like, “I’m going to just do these buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword.” You could probably go, there’s no substance there. There’s no, you’re just telling me tactics, you’re not telling me strategy.
Graham: “I’m going to be your guru of engagement.”
Derek: So I mean, I can give book recommendations, but I think some of the fun of finding what appeals to you in marketing education is finding the books that appeal to you. I mean, there’s a lot of good marketing knowledge out there and just picking up books, and if it doesn’t hit you the right way, put it down and go get another one that does. All books are written in different tones and manners, but pick up a couple of, like the more modern ones, pick up some older ones. I love the 22 immutable laws of marketing, it kind of helps you with positioning, and strategy, and stuff like that.
Graham: That’s great.
Derek: And just get that base knowledge. So when you do go to hire, you’re gonna at least hire closer to the right person.
Graham: It’s true. It’s just like in anything. It’s hard to hire contractors to do construction, if you don’t have experience in construction yourself. And it’s just going to be hard to hire a really good marketer if you don’t have experience in marketing yourself. I mean, recommendations is great, and it’s just like we say for contractors too, if you’re going looking for a marketer, get references from past businesses they’ve worked with.
Actually check those references, make sure that you talk directly to people who have worked with them. Because even if the end product is good, and you like their social media campaigns, and you look at the websites they’ve worked on, it might have been a totally miserable process actually getting that out of the marketer. So call the people up and make sure that actually working with them went well, and that they’re happy with that process as well.
Derek: And if you’re interviewing a marketer or an agency, asked them not for a free work, but ask them for a few ideas of where they would take your business. So if they have any substance to them, they’re not going to give you their one and only idea and then not have anything. They’re not going to be afraid to give you their idea then have you go do it.
They’re gonna have plenty of ideas and strategies in the bank. So at least testing the depth of their knowledge is going to be good too as far as like, “what would you do? Give me a three month strategy”, and if they have any substance, they shouldn’t be afraid that you as a small business owner are going to run with that strategy on your own.
Graham: For sure. I think that’s it for this episode, but-
Derek: There’s plenty more to come.
Graham: Look for-
Derek: Daily
Graham: -more marketing advice coming right up. Just check your podcast feed tomorrow. And in the meantime, if any of you have questions of your own, go to, floattanksolutions.com/podcast. All right, thanks everybody.
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Latest Blog Posts
Timeline for Opening Up a Float Center
Opening up a float center is a lot like climbing a mountain. Even if you can see the peak, it’s a lot further away than you think, and when you finally get there, the journey and the destination usually end up being different than previously assumed.
In this post we’ll lay out a general process and timeline of what you may encounter on your path, from initial idea to actually operating a center.
Can you have volunteers at your center?
So you’re thinking about using volunteers in your float center?
Before we clarify what a “volunteer” actually means, we’ll first explore why a float center might be considering them in the first place. While it can be a way to provide floats to people who are otherwise unable to pay, the impulse to bring in volunteers can also stem from a desire to get some sort of free labor (later in this post we’ll dive into why you can’t actually do this, but it’s important to recognize that the instinct is understandable, especially when you have someone lined up and willing to work for free).
In addition to a desired boost in overall productivity, it’s also a way to invite more people into your center to experience what you do. Some customers actually want to help out and see what happens behind the scenes at a center.
Floating and Athletics, a Strong Relationship
One of the beautiful things about the float tank is that it serves to rejuvenate the whole person. — the body, mind, heart.
Broadly speaking, it’s a tool for homeostasis, an ideal environment that supports balance, health, and growth. This piece will look specifically at floating and athletics. For anyone who defines themselves as an athlete, or as a general pursuant of athletic endeavors, the float tank can be a powerful asset.
In this post, I’ll discuss individual athletes who float and how to look at this from a marketing perspective. I’ll also discuss past and present research, and share some thoughts on how the relationship between the athletic and floating communities might continue to unfold.
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I think it’s time we addressed the giant metaphorical elephant in the salty metaphorical room — there are lots of exaggerated and untrue claims about the benefits of floating being spread around the industry.
Some are anecdotal, some are only half true, and some are just patently false. Floating has historically had a strong oral tradition tied to it — the practice has survived through word-of-mouth, one passionate floater teaching another everything they know. The unfortunate thing about this is that the information disseminated can’t be reliably tested or shared with others on a broader scale. You can’t use “my buddy Chris” as a source for a health benefit of float tanks in a newspaper article, much less for a research paper.
Now that we’re becoming a bit more mainstream, we thought it would be nice to add some clarity to what we should and shouldn’t be telling people about these difficult-to-understand, saliferous containers.
