Weight loss challenges are the "secret weapon" that some of the Big Gyms have been hiding for years - a secret to which LifeTime Fitness attributes their projected $15 million dollar revenue growth in 2011. Running weight loss challenges will:
--Put more members in your club each week
--Get new members coming in the door
--Help your staff sell training packages, classes and supplements like they're going out of style.
In this webinar, you'll learn how one club owner increased revenue by $1,000 per week using weight loss challenges.
We'll show you the 8 simple steps to running a successful, profitable weight loss challenge in your gym. And you'll get the tools to start a challenge in your gym immediately!
Plus, everyone on the webinar will receive two special bonuses, just for attending:
Webinar Bonus #1: My biggest trade secret of all, a copy of our vetted weight loss challenge rules. How do I determine the winners? What is considered cheating? These and many more questions are answered for you.
Webinar Bonus #2: A complete Tournament Launch Checklist that walks you through everything you need to run a profitable weight loss challenge in your gym. One of my competitors is selling a similar checklist for $219 a pop!
Most of your members quit coming to the club within six weeks. She's not seeing results, doesn't know how to work out effectively, feels isolated, and loses her motivation. With a 37% member attrition rate in the health club industry, keeping members motivated can go a long way toward keeping them as members. Part of that motivation comes from personal trainer marketing.
The trainers you already have can be a key part of your strategy to motivate members. They're the ones working out with members, showing them how to build strength and reach their goals. They know the members well, and members that use the personal trainers know the value of having someone help them one-on-one. Leverage that engagement by making your personal trainers the center of your member community.
When trainers are actively involved in the member community, you offer your members something that other gyms typically don't have: a sense of community to help them reach their goals. After all, how many gyms actually use personal trainer marketing - getting their trainers involved in member acquisition and retention - as a key part of their strategy?
Focus on motivating your members, and in the process, show them how your trainers can keep them motivated. As part of your personal trainer marketing strategy, set up group exercise sessions to motivate members. Some people may be nervous about working out alone, but if they can work out in a group and learn moves that will help them target specific muscle groups, like their arms or glutes, they may be more inclined to use a trainer in the future on a one-on-one basis.
Finally, think about holding weight loss challenges for your members. This will get your members motivated and working toward their goals, whether their goals are to lose 30 pounds, look great on the beach this summer, or be the envy at their high school reunions.
Keep your members motivated. Motivation is what will keep them coming back and even bringing friends and family to your facility.
Owning a successful gym is about more than just handing out t-shirts when new members sign their contracts. It's about creating a community where everyone feels like they're getting the support they need to meet their fitness goals and marketing toward those people who will want to help build a real community. Using social media for fitness marketing can help.
By definition, social media is built for relationships. People connect, share information, and ask questions in a virtual interface. Using social media as part of your fitness marketing strategy can help build a sense of community among your gym's members.
For example, you can set up a Facebook page for your gym and foster lively discussions on the discussion boards. Encourage your personal trainers to answer questions and respond to members, and they'll keep coming back and interacting with each other, as well as keep coming back to the gym. You can also use Facebook to find out if members would be interested in classes or group training sessions and find convenient times for those. Let's say five members were interested in a session on the best exercises to build core strength. You could poll them with Facebook to find out when a good time would be and schedule classes and sessions around that.
Social media is not, however, a place to blast marketing messages. If all you do with Twitter and Facebook is post promotions, without engaging followers and fans, you're not building a community. You're reverting to old-fashioned marketing methods that don't work in today's social media marketing world.
Add social media to your marketing strategy and use it to engage your members. You'll find that the community you build will go a long way toward keeping your members motivated and as members.
Want to make your members love you? Then give them additional value for their memberships. The core of your gym marketing strategy should be what you can do for your members, and when you add in the little things you do, you create happy members that serve as brand ambassadors for your gym. They love you, and they'll let all their friends in on it, too.
Go above and beyond member expectations. Yes, they're expecting a clean, safe place to work out. But what else can you offer to your members that will make them excited to come to the gym? Anyone - and any gym - can provide a row of treadmills and a set of dumbbells. Your challenge is to make your gym much more than that.
Make each member feel important. Karen swipes her key tag, hits the recumbent bike for half an hour - and then what? Do you know what brings her to your gym three times a week? If not, find out! Take the time to talk to your members.
Go above and beyond in each interaction. You're most likely to hear from a member when he's unhappy about something. The most he's expecting is a platitude ("Oh, yeah, don't worry, we'll take care of that for you.") Instead, follow up with him. For example, if he's complaining about a missing weight plate, call or email him once it's fixed.
Offer your expertise. You and your trainers are experts, and your members know that. Add in classes, discussion sessions, and even online communities so that your members can learn from you. As part of your fitness center marketing, you can even create tip sheets that members can take with them (e.g., a tip sheet on how to order food in a restaurant so that it's prepared without excessive fats).
The average health club spends tons of money on gym marketing to get new members. But little things like the ones above add up. Find innovative, interesting ways to keep your members engaged, and they will not only love you but keep renewing their memberships.
I regularly hear club owners lamenting the disloyalty of their members. But rarely do I see club owners really attacking the reasons why members leave. Members cancel their memberships when they’re not getting any value from the health club. Your most loyal members will always be the ones that get what they need from their membership.
The first thing you need to do is figure out what your members really want. You need three key pieces of information:
- What do they want out of life? This is important because for most people getting in shape is a means to an end. Maybe the want to look better, live longer, or win a body building competition. This information helps you market to them more effectively.
- What do they want from your gym? Why are your members coming? Some may come to the gym to lose weight, train for a 5K race, or feel healthier. Others may join because their doctor told them they needed to exercise. Find out why your members are at your gym, and you may come up with a host of fresh gym marketing ideas.
- What gets them to leave? Most people quit coming to the gym because they lose motivation. When that happens, they stop using the gym. And if they’re not using the gym, why would they continue to pay for it?
After you really know your members, you have all the information you need to create the health club experience that keeps them motivated. By focusing on motivating your members to use the club more often, you provide more value to them. But you can’t motivate them unless you know what they want. And remember, when members get what they need, they’ll become evangelists for your club.
When a member gets frustrated with something 90% of the time they won’t tell you. They’ll just find another gym. In an industry with a high attrition rate, your members’ feedback really matters. Your fitness marketing dollars are wasted if you don’t listen to your members.
Encourage your members to provide honest feedback. You want to hear the negative comments as well as the positive so that you can respond to members and fix problems while they're still small (and not after the problems have become too large and costly to fix).
One way to this is to survey your members and allow them to comment anonymously. You can do a paper-based survey or put out comment cards, but if you want to make it really easy for members, create an online survey. For example,
Survey Monkey is a free service that you can use to create questions for your members to answer and encourage feedback on things they like and don't like. You can also use it to collect demographic information, which you can use to tailor your fitness marketing campaigns.
Take your members' complaints seriously once you have their feedback. There is nothing more annoying to a member than giving the feedback and not seeing action taken to remedy the situation. Let's say that a few members have complained that the elliptical machines are always being hogged in the afternoon. Once you've had a chance to observe that, you can add more ellipticals or post signs to get members to give up the machines after 30 minutes when people are waiting.
The bottom line is, your fitness marketing strategy should always include a mechanism for honest feedback from your members. These are the people that keep your gym in business, and if they're happy, they'll keep coming back.
Like any business owners, you need your marketing dollars to stretch as far as possible. That means identifying what kind of clientele you attract and which clientele you want to continue to attract. Your health club marketing strategy has to focus on investing in the customers that provide the greatest return to your business.
Know your current clienteleStart out by identifying your most profitable customers. Look through your records to identify the top 20% of revenue generating members. Now get to know them by talking to them as often as you can.
You're looking for patterns that make sense. How old are they? How often to they come to the gym? Why do they come to the gym? What do they care about, both in terms of the gym, and in their everday life? How did they first hear about your gym? To really know your customers, you have to talk to them.
You can even send out a simple online survey to get basic demographic information.
SurveyMonkey.com offers a free survey tool that's really simple to use.
Find out both how your most profitable members currently use the gym and ask them for suggestions for what they'd like to see in the future. Would they like programs, classes, or introductory one-on-one training sessions?
Now get more people like themOnce you have a good idea of who your most profitable customers are, you have to figure out how to get more people just like them. The best advertising you can ask for are members who love your gym so much that they bring their friends. This is a win-win: not only do you get more members, but you also get members who are similar to your ideal clientele.
Double-down on programs that your most profitable members love. Take their suggestions seriously. And make it easy for them to refer friends.
As part of your health club marketing, create programs that your members will want to tell their friends about. You can provide a guest pass program, a training session where members can bring a friend, or some other perk that would encourage word-of-mouth buzz.
Create exciting programs
The more exciting your gym's programs are, the more likely your members are to share them with their friends. Classes, question-and-answer sessions with trainers, and guest passes are all good strategies. You can also hold weight loss challenges and provide motivation for your members.
These kinds of social motivation strategies fit well with health club marketing. Invest more money in customers that are loyal and likely to bring in new business, particularly as they fit your "ideal client" persona, and they won't be the only ones seeing results.
Renowned marketer and entrepreneur Seth Godin's Purple Cow describes how to transform your business by being remarkable. As a gym owner, how is your gym remarkable? Do you provide just another place to work out, or do you provide something more to your members so they feel like they're a part of something, not just another key tag?
Purple Cow highlights the advantages of using unique concepts and programs. To translate that into creative fitness marketing, think of ways that you can add value to your members without breaking the bank. What kind of unique programs can you offer that will offer real value?
Weight loss challengesA lot of members join a gym as part of their weight loss efforts. But they quit because they don't see results or feel like they're getting any support in their efforts. A weight loss challenge can give them the jump start they need and motivate them.
Planning is the key to a successful weight loss challenge. Think through your rules, how to ensure safe weight loss, and how to structure your prizes. There are tons of free resources on this site to help you get your challenge together. Get started by clicking the button below.
Event marketingWhen people think of gyms and health clubs, they don't usually think of events. This brings the "creative" into creative fitness marketing. Events you can hold include question and answer sessions with your trainers, complimentary group training sessions that give members a taste of what they can get by engaging the services of a trainer, and even member appreciation evenings where you serve healthy food from local restaurants.
Find the Purple Cow for your gym and reduce your attrition rate at the same time. Members that feel like they're a part of a community do keep coming back - and they bring their friends too.
Your members are the lifeblood of your gym. Every day, they come in, work out, and pay their membership fees. But how well do you really know them?
The most important part of any fitness marketing plan is to know your customers. Know their goals. Know their needs. Know how they use your health club. From there, you can offer more to your customers than just a handful of elliptical machines and a set of free weights.
DemographicsIt seems obvious, but what are the demographics of your members? Depending on where you're located, you may have a concentration of members in a particular age group. If you can, survey your members to find out where they are in life: age, marital status, whether or not they have kids, and what their household income is. Demographic information gives you important clues about how to create the right messaging.
GoalsThe next part of building your fitness marketing plan is to find out the goals of your members. For example, if you realize that you have a large contingent of mothers, their goals may range from losing baby weight to staying fit enough to chase after their kids at the park. Or you may learn that you have a group of people training for an adventure race.
Knowing your members' goals is the second big part of your fitness marketing plan. You can use that information to double-down on programs that are working. You can also use it to create more powerful marketing messages. When you know what your customers' goals are, you can create marketing messages that are targeted to those goals.
Gym UseFinally, find out how your customers are using the gym. Do most of them hit the cardio machines, or are there a lot of strength-training folks? How often are they using the pool? This information is critical to your fitness marketing plan.
If most of your customers use group training, then you should market to people who like group training. But unless you know how your members are using the gym, you can't know the best messaging to get more people like them in the door.
Once you get to know your customers, you know how to market to them. By knowing what they want and providing more of those things, your gym becomes a place where they can reach their goals. The key to a successful fitness marketing plan is to become what your customers want you to be. And that starts with knowing who they are and what they want.
When people join a gym, they're looking for more than just a workout. They're looking for a place where they can set and meet goals that will boost their physical fitness and self-esteem. They don't want to be another number on a key tag. They're looking for a sense of community.
To make it even more difficult for the small health club owner, it seems like every gym is offering the same deal. "Sign up now to get the initiation fee waived!" But what's the value the prospective member is getting? When you can't afford to lower your prices, you need to turn to creative fitness marketing and look at new ways to pull in members and keep existing members.
One of the best ways to keep your members engaged is to invest in creating the sense of community that many gym-goers crave. You need to create a place where members support each other. And it's not enough to just slap up a Facebook page. Facebook is great for facilitating interactions. But what are you doing in the gym to create commeraderie among the members?
People connect because they share a common interests or common activities. So the first step in building a community is to create common activities that appeal to most of your members. Community events where successes and failures are shared are a perfect way to start.
If your gym is focused on the body building crowd, hold a simple body building competition. Or if you're a family gym, create family based activities that encourage interaction. Bike races, 5k's, and weight loss challenges are all great concepts for a shared experience among the members.