If you own or manage a gym there is an abundance of opportunities to grow your membership base and improve profitability.
When it comes to growth, most gyms focus on member acquisition and marketing campaigns such as sales and special deals.
More traffic equals, more leads equals, more new members!
This equation is true however there is a better approach.
One of the most important metrics to track in your gym is the cost of member acquisition.
The problem with things like Facebook advertising is that it's expensive. You have to spend a lot of money to generate a lead.
I am not saying you should not do Facebook advertising for your gyms lead generation- You definitely should. What I am saying is that it should not be the single marketing weapon you deploy to generate leads and grow your membership
If you only rely on Facebook for your lead generation you are single-source dependent and your cost of member acquisition will be high.
If your competitors can acquire leads more cost-effectively they will be in a position to take the majority of new business in your market.
You can significantly reduce your cost of acquisition by deploying several cheaper alternatives.
The other side of the coin is where the biggest opportunity lies....
Introducing the gym profit formula - Gym revenue = Traffic x Conversion x Member Retention
To grow our revenues we can
1. Increase our traffic
2. Improve conversion of leads to memberships
3. Improve member retention rates.
Want to learn specific strategies for improving member retention in your gym?
Download our special report - 7 Pillars of rock-solid gym member retention HERE
As I said, most gyms focus predominately on member acquisition as their primary approach to growth and profitability however the biggest opportunity lies in improving member retention rates.
The holy grail of gym profitability is based on the following two principles
1. Low cost of acquisition
2. High member retention
If you have these elements in place in your gym you will have a world-class gym business that will crush all of its competition.
Optimising these two areas is easier said than done so let's explore 5 ways you can grow your gym's revenue and profits without relying solely on Facebook ads.
- Focus on member retention
The first one is obvious yet most gyms continue to underinvest in member retention. (Both in terms of time and expense)
What you focus on and measure tends to improve.
Member retention should be the number one focus for any established gym with a critical mass of members.
There are dozens of strategies you can use to improve your member retention but the core principles are around three key areas
1. Communication and connection with members
2. Delivering a result (progress)
3. Visitation (members coming to the gym)If you can improve your member retention rates (even by a small amount), this can lead to a significant impact on your bottom line.
Want to learn specific strategies for improving member retention in your gym?
Download our special report - 7 Pillars of rock-solid gym member retention HERE
- Develop a strong referral campaign
One of the best ways to improve your cost of new member acquisition is to generate leads for next to nothing.
The best way to do this is via word of mouth or referrals.
For most gyms referrals are an organic and passive lead generation method.
Gyms can significantly improve lead generation through referrals by simply asking.
We help our clients implement referral campaigns where they ask every new member at least 3 times if they can refer a friend of a family member.
The key is to give members something such as a special VIP pass that they can give or send to friends or family.
It's also important to incentivise referrals in some way.
Asking for referrals can be done by your frontline staff or can even be included in automated email campaigns.
A strong referral campaign can help generate more leads at a very low cost.
- Don't forget past members
When working with our clients we have noticed a common pattern that was very interesting.
When looking at their gyms lead source data we found that one of the biggest lead sources was past members returning.
In the current environment a lot of members "fall off the wagon", in other words, join your gym, stay for a few months and then get busy and quit. A few months later they may re-spark their motivation and rejoin again.
Many gyms make the mistake of ignoring past members. As soon as they leave all communications cease.
It is important to stay in front of past members in some way so when the time comes when their motivation picks up your gym is the obvious choice.
A great way to do this is via a newsletter where you continue to provide past members with useful information and tips for improving their health and fitness.
You can also have a re-activation campaign with special offers to help entice old members back again.
- Create an affiliate campaign
An affiliate campaign is a great way to generate dozens of new leads for minimal cost.
An affiliate is another business that is not in direct competition but has a similar target customer.
It may be a local physiotherapist or a local sports store or even a local school.
Most gyms ignore this channel or do it poorly.
The biggest mistake businesses make when it comes to building an affiliate relationship is they are only focused on what's in it for them.
The secret to building good affiliate relationships is giving value to your affiliate.
In other words, how can you help them grow their business? Can you interview them and put the interview on your blog? Can you email a special offer that business has to your customer email list?
It needs to be a win-win.
The goal should be to get your affiliate to email some valuable content such as an article with a soft offer to their email list.
You want to piggyback off their email database to generate new leads but in order to do this, you need to give value first by doing the same for them.
A strong affiliate campaign with half a dozen strong local businesses can help explode your content and special offers directly to the inbox of potentially thousands of local residents.
This can help generate dozens of very cheap, high-quality leads.
- Commit to excellence and survey your members
To grow your gym one of your best weapons is excellence
Excellent customer experience.
Excellent results for your members.Happy members stay longer, happy members refer friends and family, happy members lead to great reviews on google.
Your scorecard when it comes to member satisfaction is your member retention results.
Another scorecard that is very useful is the Net Promoter Survey.
The net promoter survey gives you a strong indication of your member satisfaction levels.
Members rate on a scale of 1-10 the likelihood they would refer a friend or family member to your gym.
9-10 = Promoters - These are members that are very happy with your service.
7-8 - Neutral - There are members who are satisfied - they are not raving fans nor dissatisfied with your service
6-0 - Detractors - These are members who have some form of dissatisfaction
If you have a low NPS score it means you have a lower level of member satisfaction.
You can even have a negative score if you have more detractors than promoters.
We advise our clients to conduct an NPS survey once every 6 months because it gives them a good measure of their customer satisfaction.
The higher the NPS, the more organic growth they can expect through things like referrals and word of mouth.
If you follow these 5 tips you will help your gym optimise the holy grail of gym performance (cost of member acquisition and member retention)
Want to learn specific strategies for improving member retention in your gym?
Download our special report - 7 Pillars of rock-solid gym member retention HERE
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