The point of client programming is to add value to the lives and fitness of your members. There's a lot of talk about specialty programs that appeal to hyper-motivated gym aficionados. We all know those shining stars of fitness, those super-fit fanatics who continuously push the limits to find new fitness experiences. However, what about the rest? The average people who just want to get into shape and stay healthy? Here's the thing, most consumers are just looking to get fit stay fit and fit fitness into an already overcrowded schedule. It's up to small gym business and fitness club [...]
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A Pro Tip For Small Gym Business Client Acquisition If you look at your small gym business from the broadest perspective possible, client acquisition is the one central function that drives your operation. Arguably, everything else is a detail. Of course, some of the details are critical, but they address the members you pick up as part of the acquisition process. However, the cost to acquire new members isn't as useful a measurement for you as the lifetime value of those new memberships. Everything other than that drive for client acquisition is a refinement or facilitated by it. Your income [...]
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Take These Ideas And Become A Fitness Entrepreneur Do you want to become an entrepreneur in fitness and operate a small gym business? If you build a full-service fitness club from scratch, you're looking at an investment the size of a house. If you've got the cash or enough to entice a suitable investor then maybe that's the right way to go. If so, you might be the exception. If you want to dip your toe in the industry before you commit your family fortune, a very sensible attitude, these fitness entrepreneurship ideas are for you. 1. Boutique Fitness Studio [...]
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The Digital Age gives small gym business owners real choices for club management software. Now, everyone can have enterprise-grade options for information technology. That means that what was once the exclusive privilege of the big box fitness brands is out there for you in one form or another. Fitness entrepreneurs still have the temptation to collect different capabilities piecemeal, but that leads to much less useful results in the long run. That is why you should start as you mean to go on and invest in dedicated club management software. Liberation And Efficiency Through Automation So, what is ROI? And [...]
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Every once in a while I like to put out a few ideas for owners on the Gym Insight Blog. This time I have a few points about how to raise the profile and profitability of your small gym business. When you've scrambled to launch and run your business, you deserve to get the most fruit in return for your many labors. You probably started out with too few resources, ate your own dog food as they say, and slept in the back office once or twice. Why not seek out opportunities to multiply your returns with a little more [...]
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The On And Off Wearable Revolution So, things in the realm of wearable technology are moving pretty quickly. Last year I was singing the praises of wearable devices. Then, earlier this year I thought they were going flat. Now, I'm changing my views again because of recent announcements. Everything changed in the time since I decided to write this post and when I actually sat down to compose it it's like a whole new topic. While the wearables category includes everything from connected clothing to sticky medical sensors, it's the new smartwatches that seem to be getting traction so suddenly. [...]
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Data Is The Answer But What Is The Question? Whether you are a new club owner, a professional trainer, or a veteran of fitness club management you can always benefit by extracting more information from the data that you generate in your gym business operations. With every transaction or response received from prospects or members, you create data. This might come in through your payment system, setting up a new account in your membership management system or getting a response from an email blast that you send out to a list. In most cases, these days the data will come [...]
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Businesses Built On Fitness Certification Paper Fitness certifications are essential in the gym industry. The qualifications you hold are the frameworks that tie this people-intensive profession together. Earning additional personal trainer certifications will help you grow the business. Helping your trainers get new qualifications is a perk that helps them be confident of a future career as well as keeping your company on track. If you already work in the fitness profession, this is probably so obvious you may not even think about it much. So, if you are just exploring how you can own a business in fitness and [...]
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People Person Persona Are there gym member personas that describe the typical groups of members of your fitness center? In marketing, a persona is a profile of the ideal customer for your products or services. You create them as character sketches of the consumers or businesses most likely to benefit from your fitness center. Well-researched customer personas will also help you grow your membership and profit margin by describing the patrons who are right for your business goals. Professional marketers who specialize in inbound marketing strategy use as many personas as required to define the buyers for their products and [...]
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What Does Mobile Mean For Fitness? The latest trends in mobile apps for fitness and healthcare are heading toward an exciting destination. Mobile devices are everywhere, and it's amazing what you see when you observe at any gathering of human beings these days. Half or more of any group seem more involved with the devices in their hands than the world around them. So, what are the ramifications of this behavior for fitness centers and health clubs? It's About Millennials And What Controls The Lives Of Consumers As a gym business owner, you always need to look to the future [...]
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It's not about having the most technology, but rather the right equipment that is going to help you run your small gym business most efficiently. By running your club resourcefully, you'll get into profit sooner and make the quality of your offerings better. Technology is evolving so rapidly now that you can check in every six months and find new solutions for just about everything. The hazard of occasional check-ins is that you might have missed something in the months in between. The right technology for small gym businesses is that which disappears into the background, allowing you to focus [...]
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How Much Old School Is Too Much? There is a certain romance to the idea of a hardcore backstreet gym where you find the driven athletes and bodybuilders. One that's as run down on the inside as it is on the outside. You can imagine the grisly old owner-slash-coach taking payments in cash and keeping accounts in his head. Only Hollywood writers and Elmore Leonard could get away with this idea of a seedy and decrepit shed. The reality is that the club industry is hyper-competitive and if you want to attract the type of consumers who are committed to [...]
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Crank Down Sale Costs To Maximize Gym Membership Revenues Selling more gym memberships is a good thing in principle, but do you know how much it costs you to get that sale? There are two parts of the expense required to generate revenue in any business, the cost of sale and overhead cost. Those costs you can attribute to making each sale and everything else, which you pay to vendors, but which you cannot assign to a particular transaction. One of the great features of the fitness business is that to bring members on board you do not need to [...]
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Predicting The Unpredictable As we hit mid-year in 2017, I'd like to touch on a few points about where the fitness business is going. You just need to look at the news to wonder if things will be unpredictable. I think we have reached a time in which you must be the certainty. By that I mean it is up to fitness entrepreneurs and gym business owners to have the discipline and do the things that make your world a little more stable. Preparing For The Future That Is Next Year The days when you would set up and open [...]
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New gym memberships make owners and managers feel great, no doubt! But it's even better if you can hold on to the old memberships longer. Reducing your rate of club turnover and increasing the customer lifecycle are critical practices in building successful fitness businesses. Here on the Gym Insight Blog, I have made the point many times before that retention matters as much as sales. But getting these numbers right is so important that it doesn't hurt to dive into retention and selling gym memberships once again. If you structure your sales and onboarding process well, saying "no" at the [...]
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