For many fitness studios, increasing sales consistently throughout the year can be a challenge, but with a little planning, the right tools, and an ongoing engagement strategy, this sales inconsistency can be lessened.
Here are my top tips for increasing gym membership sales throughout the year:
1) Keep track of member reviews
It is very important to make video reviews of your clients where they will give testimonials to other potential clients about how they have greatly benefited from the services of your gym. You can also take the consent of each one of your clients to track their journey to a healthy lifestyle and their progress towards the shape they dream of. Before and after videos of attaining fitness goals are also important. Not only can you use these videos for the sole purpose of marketing your gym, but also for the purpose of publishing ads. Thanks to the internet, most prospects now read online reviews, and this may have a huge impact on increasing your gym membership sales. Online reviews for your gym inform prospective members about your gym’s services, staff, facilities, and culture when they’re searching for a new gym to join.
Reviews help build trust and increase your search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking. SEO is how search engines rank your website among all other listings. Google Reviews specifically, can get you ahead of your competitors because gyms with more Google reviews will rank higher in search results than those without.
If you are don’t have enough reviews, an incentive program is a great way to encourage your members to leave positive online reviews. Freebies like smoothies, protein bars, or free classes will motivate members to leave positive reviews and create a positive outlook for prospective members during their research process.
2) Everyone loves a healthy competition
Offer individual and group challenges to your members to motivate them to reach their goals. At the same time, this is a great advertising opportunity to reach prospective members. What any gym can also do is host competitions in its community such as a triathlon, strongman/strongwoman, or any type of other entertaining competition. This will serve as a lead magnet to in order to get more clients to your gym. Different competitions may be tailored to different kinds of people, whether they happen to be athletes, or out of shape people. Another clever idea would be to set a weight loss challenge competition to members of the community that you are targeting to get into your gym.
What kind of challenges can you create for your members?
Try the Miles Challenge that tracks the most miles traveled by a member during a set time frame. Have them log their minutes/hours spent on cardio equipment like
treadmills or ellipticals and, at the end of the period, the member with the most miles tracked wins a prize such as a free month of classes, personal training sessions, or gym branded workout gear.
The always popular Weight loss challenge is a fun and motivating way to get your members engaged and working towards a goal. Choose a timeframe, have your members weigh in on Day One, and track their progress on a large whiteboard in your gym with names and the % of the weight they each member has lost. This will motivate members when they see their progress compared to other members’ progress.
Encourage your members to post their workouts and progress on social media and check-in at your gym throughout the challenges. This is a great way to hold them accountable and generate free advertising for your facility.
3) Prep Your Sales Team
Make sure your sales team knows what your overall objective is for the year and arm them with the tools they need to bring in the most members. Tips to increase gym membership sales:
· Host in-club events – celebrate members appreciation day and allow members to bring a guest to allow your sales team to communicate with prospects. Free membership visits should be handed out to your team in order to increase the probability of having more people see your gym and buy from you.
· Partner with local businesses – have local businesses in your area hand out free guest passes to your event. The main strategy is to find businesses and professionals that share the same target audience such as physiotherapists and dieticians.
· Offer a membership referral program – if a member refers a friend they’ll get a free smoothie or personal training session. It is very important to create a healthy competition so that your members are also excited as to who gets the most number of members.
· Attend community events/tradeshows – allow your sales team to attend a health fair or fitness convention to prospect. It is critical to expose your gym to other people and businesses where there is a high probability of being able to network with like-minded individuals.
4) Communicate and Automate
Communication is key when it comes to following up with prospects. Make absolutely sure that your front desk staff and/or sales team are getting the proper information like names, phone numbers, and email addresses so they can follow up with prospects. There should be a follow-up system made up of an automation strategy (tested by KPIs) that is followed up by a phone call. This follow-up system
should be automated according to different problems that your clients might be suffering from. For marketing purposes, it’s also great to ask how they heard about your gym. When following up with a prospect you’ll want to offer an action item, such as a free personal assessment, a tour of your gym or a free week pass.
5) Implement Gym Membership Software
Affiliate marketing is a system that can be part of the gym membership software that allows people around the world to sell your services or products in return for a commission-based profit. This is done without having any type of commitment between both parties. There should be a marketing campaign in place in order to find the maximum number of affiliates. Also, a rather personal relationship should be nurtured so that there is a better connection to the gym between the mentioned parties who are located and operating from all around the world. As the relationship with the affiliate is developed, your chances of having a full-time affiliate trying to sell your gym’s services and products become in your favour. Affiliates are a superb method to increase the sales of your gym. Referrals are when a compensation system is created for existing clients or employees. A system of referrals should be implemented. Referrals are to be strategized in a manner where it is clear in what direction they are coming from and their subsequent lifetime value. This system will show us exactly how many referrals are coming from each person in the database and how much these referrals are lasting. The reason behind using this system is to understand your employees and their respective behaviours. By implementing a gym management software solution, you can easily add, track, convert and engage with prospects. You can track your gym’s data through easy-to-use graphs, charts and reports on a simple dashboard, plus cut down on the amount of time and work and employee has to put in with automated reporting and dashboards.
