We were lucky to catch up with Jason Bahamundi recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?
When I started Run Tri Bike, I was managing the social media channels on my own. It was burdensome and I hired somebody to manage it. My direction wasn’t clear and so the platforms themselves lacked a focus and didn’t really convey the vision and mission of the company.
In the middle of last year, I brought on a partner who would be responsible for the social media channels. We meet weekly and talk daily about what we are posting, what has worked, what hasn’t worked and we continue to fine tune.
By meeting weekly and chatting daily, we have been able to grow all of our platforms and introduce a podcast. It is work, but what we are seeing is that there are people engaging in our content in various ways. They may be on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. There are those that watch our show on YouTube or listen to it via podcast. Then there are others that are on the business side and follow us on LinkedIn.
It has taken some time, and patience, but I feel like we are moving in the right direction in terms of our social presence.
Jason, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a marketing professional with nearly 30 years in the marketing and advertising business. I launched my business toward the end of 2020 with the goal of telling the extraordinary stories of the ordinary athlete.
In endurance sports, I noticed a lot of focus on the elite level athlete, and rightfully so as they are doing amazing things. What I didn’t see was the person who works 40-50 hours per week, goes to school, is a parent, a business owner, etc and was still training and getting to their finish line. I am motivated by those stories because I am those stories.
We publish these stories in a variety of ways. We have a bi-monthly digital magazine, our social media channels, a live interview show on Instagram that gets broadcast via YouTube and podcasts as well as additional stories on our website. We offer advertisers an opportunity to market their products through our platform and connect their brand to those amazing stories.
We are a low cost, high-quality content multimedia platform that celebrates the everyday athlete while pursuing our mission statement of: there is a spot at the starting line for everybody.
In addition to our multimedia organization, we also provide an opportunity for clients to outsource some of the marketing tasks that take a lot of time. We are SEO Copywriting certified along with being certified in social media and email marketing. We offer our clients article writing, landing page copywriting, email design (copy, subject line, preview text, A/B testing) as well as social media management. These are the things that can bog a business owner down and we do it well and at a low cost to them.
Have you ever had to pivot?
When I launched Run • Tri • Bike, we printed a physical magazine and distributed it to running, cycling, swimming and triathlon shops across the country. It cost the shops nothing, but it was very costly for us to distribute.
In early 2022 I decided that it wasn’t feasible for us to be able to continue to print and ship 3000 to 5000 copies of the magazine and we pivoted to a digital version.
My concern was advertiser acceptance of the new format and looked for ways to make sure that the digital version was better than the print version. I chose a digital magazine provider that allowed me to embed links for our clients as well as include videos. By having those opportunities available to our partners we could add value at no additional cost to them. The conversion to the digital magazine was well received by our advertisers as well as our writers and readers.
The digital magazine has been more successful than anticipated and allowed us to create a Best of 2022 issue, which was the first Best Of issue we ever had. We look forward to doing more special issues (or one off issues for clients) in the future.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
The most effective strategy for growing our clientele has been to focus on the clientele.
Our goal is to be profitable, but more importantly it is to make sure our clients are profitable By focusing on their needs and growing their business we feel that we put ourselves in a strong position to be referred.
Referrals are gold. They tell the prospect, from a current client, that we are trusted and a conversation should be had.
In the conversations we have with our current or prospective clients, we don’t fabricate our abilities. If we cannot do something, we tell them and refer them to somebody that can. This helps us build trust with our clients.
Earning their trust and growing their business has led us to be able to grow our clientele.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://runtrimag.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/runtrimag
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/runtrimag
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/run-tri-bike
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/runtrimag
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@runtrimag
- Other: Apple Podcast – https://apple.co/3QrMAff Spotify – https://spoti.fi/3XQ0Ssf