The popularity of the fitness center is growing not only with increasing modern equipment, smiling and experienced staff, above-standard services and cost-effective entrances. The way to a successful gym is through building a fitness community.
Although it is quite common that visitors of the fitness center are set different conditions (different conditions for professionals, coaches, business partners and last but not least good friends), try not to visibly prefer anyone. When building a functioning community, it is important that everyone feels special. If your clients feel that someone is more important to you, you will lose your credibility.
You don't have to be a passionate analyst, but you should sacrifice a certain amount of money and your time to see who primarily forms your fitness community. Once you find out who is the most frequent visitor of your gym, you can customize a lot of things. For families with children, start building a children's corner. If seniors come to your gym in the morning, you can include a lesson with physiotherapist in your services.
Music belongs to workouts and especially to demanding workouts in fitness centers of all types. For many, it is the driving force, so make sure you choose the music well. Not everyone can be satisfied, but there are genres that are appealing to a large part of the audience. It is important that you motivate gym visitors to better performances through music, which will be difficult with regular radio stations. How about GYM Radio?
If you have the space to do this, build a café or even a restaurant in your fitness center, where the gym visitors will have the opportunity to sit together and share their common interests - weight training, muscle building, weight loss and last but not least food. In this way, the gym members establish personal relationships very quickly, a strong community begins to form, and people will be happy to return to you.
When you practice crossfit, people work together and compete with each other. That is what makes them closer. In a classic gym, everyone usually exercises alone. Challenges connect people so provide your clients with free group trainings with a trainer a few times a year, or organize a simple contest in the style of "who lasts the longest hanging on trapeze bar, etc.". Publish results with names in the gym. Reward participants and winners. Usually small prices are enough.
Social networks are a great marketing tool to build a fitness community. Engage your fitness center visitors in current events, share photos (if you have permission) and contest results (see point 5) and allow them to discuss with each other. With social networks, you can get valuable feedback, promote your services and products and especially connect visitors to your fitness center.
It is clear that a better workout experience leads to higher retention. Hospitality is a great example. The hospitality industry is all about experiences that keep retention high. They think about all the aspects of the customers’ journey, including the smell of the shampoo and the music in the lobby. Have you thought about your music as well? It's quite important.
Marketing is most of the time focused outside the gym, and most of the budget is spent on member acquisition. And I totally understand why, you need to hit the new members' KPIs. But acquisition is just the beginning of the funnel, not the end, and some of the budget should be spent on engagement and retention.
It’s almost January and your gym will be flooded with new members again. You’ll probably experience a flow of different groups with different characters, your music should change to fit the group(s) currently in your gym.
