The busiest time for the fitness industry is just around the corner, so it’s time to put your marketing into full throttle and rebuild your club after the lockdown losses, to give you a strong start to 2021.
It’s make or break, so the same old marketing tricks simply won’t do the trick. You need to focus on maximising the value from every second of the day and every single one of your members. This is no time to simply offer the lowest prices. You need to start truly competing and offer the best service out of every single gym in your area.
In this podcast, our team of gym owners and digital marketers come together to discuss their plans for growing their club (The Fit Club Redditch) over Christmas and into January 2021.
From improving websites to hosting smarter promos and focusing their social media marketing; the Ashbourne team are here to give you the most complete and honest breakdown for how you can help your club recover in time for the New Year.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Fresh ideas to help you compete with gyms in your area
- Insight into what is actually holding gym members from returning to your club
- Tips on how to drastically improve your customer journey for more sign ups over the holidays
- How you can use the rest of 2020 to maximise your efficiency in your admin and marketing your club
- Help with your social media ads and marketing
Remember to join The Gym Owner’s Forum facebook group for even more support from gym owners across the UK and Ireland.
If you’re interested in more direct help for your club, collecting your direct debits, to handling your marketing, then get in touch with Ashbourne today for a free demo and discussion. You can also find loads of helpful free resources on our site.
Listen To The Gym Owner’s Forum Podcast
You can listen to the podcast here, or find it on your favourite podcast host.
The Podcast Transcript
Grant:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our next episode of the gym owners forum podcast brought to you by Ashbourne Membership Management. I’m Grant Harrison again, and obviously we’ve got a few more topics to talk about this episode. Joining me again is Toby and Harvey. How you doing, Toby?
Toby:
I’m very well, mate. Very well. Glad to be here.
Grant:
Good. Harv, you all right?
Harvey:
I’m very well, Man. It’s good to be back for another episode.
Grant:
The last episode that we’ve recorded got quite a lot of positive comments. So hopefully this one will as well. So what we’re going to talk about in this episode is, after lockdown and coming into January, what marketing ideas you can do just to really drive the club forward, trying to get it in prime position come the new year. So we’ve got quite a lot to cover. Again, we’re going to try and keep the episodes quite short, about 30 minutes. So you can just jump in and jump out. But yeah, so track it on. Let’s get on with it. So Tobe, we’ve obviously put in quite a lot of ideas that we can get into the fit club ready for January. What are we looking at?
Toby:
So to start with, we’re saying to get the jump on your competitors. I think that’s one thing we’re looking at. Obviously, a lot of gyms in the local area. And just to start now with your memberships, with the campaigns for Christmas and January. So, one thing that we’ve started up is the online store where we’re going to be selling membership vouchers as Christmas presents and then also bundling a few products that we have in the shop anyway to make little gift hamper type things. So we’ve already seen memberships for January and for Christmas selling, even though we’re in lockdown, which is obviously brilliant. So we completely beat our competition to it and anyone that was um-ing and ah-ing about what gym, if they hadn’t heard of us, are coming our way.
Grant:
So we’re selling that to our existing members?
Toby:
Existing members for loved ones, yeah. And also done some Facebook ads with Harvey and promoting it to the wider Redditch area.
Harvey:
Literally the whole Redditch area.
Toby:
Yeah, literally the whole Redditch area. And parts of Birmingham with Harvey’s Facebook ads.
Harvey:
People will travel 40 miles for that gym.
Toby:
Absolutely. For that gym.
Grant:
We essentially using our members to do our marketing for us. So with that, obviously those packages are being put together. Our current members can buy the one month and a hat or whatever the package was and to give to their friends, relatives, whatever it is. And then they’re also bringing those members in for us. So that’s working.
Toby:
And it’s a paid in full membership. So when people sign up and come into the gym, we’ll get that email address and we’ll use them as a lead pretty much. They’ll only be entitled to a one month or three month membership. But once we put their emails into our prospect management system, they’ll get an automated program of emails, which will then convince them hopefully to join on a longer term deal and yeah, get the most out of the club.
Harvey:
And the good thing as well is that if you bought a thousand protein flasks…
Toby:
It’s hard to shift them.
Harvey:
Well, exactly. And if you fail to shift them, then it’s always like if you’ve got 500 left, then your next promotion is, let’s give away a flask with each membership because that thing seems really valuable on the face of it, but really, if each one’s… was it about a pound fifty?
Toby:
Yeah, something like that. It is the cross selling, like you say. It’s a good way of getting creative with what you’ve got in stock. Similar with what we were saying last episode about sending stock in bulk via the online store. That’s been a really popular thing where we’ve had all this stuff that’s actually going to go off in the next month, but people have been really pleased to take it off our hands. And everyone’s a winner in that situation.
Grant:
Okay. So we obviously, we’re trying to get the jump on all of our competitors by getting all of our December marketing in place now, rather than waiting for January and doing a January offer, we’re trying to get everything in place now, get people into the club in December when it’s generally a quieter month. I shouldn’t imagine, it will be quite this month after the lockdown. But getting everybody into the club, getting them having a month of using it, the facility, making them feel comfortable. So come January, we are the obvious place that they’re going to stay. They’re not going to then go and try somebody else in January. They’ve been with us for a month and trying to get them all in place. So we’ve also got a few other Christmas campaigns as well, haven’t we? We’ve got the vouchers and the offers. What else have we got?
Toby:
So one that we’re looking at the moment is pay what you like for December. But the trick with that one is, whatever you do pay will be donated to charity for the month. So it was a nice incentive to give something back in the community during what is a pretty rubbish time for a lot of people, and a good way of incentivizing someone to sign up to a 12 month membership. So that’s what we’re looking at in the minute.
Grant:
So you say they can pay whatever they want for December. So they’ve got to join on a 12 month membership and for December they can pay whatever they like.
Toby:
Exactly. And the December payment goes to charity.
Grant:
Perfect. So whatever we raise for that goes to charity. So it puts us in a good light. We were going to give December away for free, but we thought, “You know what, let new members pay what they want, and that will all be donated.” That’s going to work well.
Harvey:
Yeah. The good thing about that as well is, it gives somebody an incentive to come to the gym outside of just wanting to come to the gym. Because somebody might be thinking about maybe starting in January after December’s blown over. So it was just a great way to just get somebody signing up now rather than spending a December of people not coming to the gym and not knowing if there’ll be interest in January, but people will be signing up to be like, “Hey, I get to do a good deed.” And then at least you have a gauge of good next year is going to be.
Toby:
The way we’re tracking it is quite clever as well. We’ve made a voucher code for the charity and people that sign up with that voucher code, we can see each month who’s used it and then we can donate that amount of money to charity. So it’s just really easy and yeah, good marketing before Christmas.
Grant:
The reason we’re doing it this way as well, rather than just saying, “Get December for free” because a lot of clubs are now saying, “Join now, pay nothing until January and you see, you get December free.” The trouble is, what we find at Ashbourne is that the amount of defaulters that come January, because they’ve not paid anything at the start, they don’t feel like it’s theirs. So because they’ve not paid anything, they think they can just stop their direct debit. So come January, doesn’t matter. So we got to start… Where if people pay something at the start of their membership, they’re less likely to default.
Harvey:
It’s also a weird phenomenon about, that often free trials don’t convert as well as promos that are pay a pound.
Toby:
So devaluing it.
Harvey:
Yeah. So it’s a weird phenomenon that you’d expect the cheaper something is, that then people would go for it. But actually if you get them to pay a small amount for the trial period and then they enjoy the full period later, they’re much more likely to stay on. And as you say, Grant, it sieves out the people who are just like, “Well, I’ll just get a free December and then I’ll just ignore the default letters.”
Grant:
Yeah. Well, the thing is, they can pay whatever they like. So they could pay 27 pounds. They could pay 50 pound for the first month. They could pay one pound. All that’s going to go to the charity, which is… So it’s up to them really. We know we’re getting a prospect, which we would have given December away for free, but they’re more, what’s the word, they’re more integrated into the club because they’ve made that initial payment. So that’s what we do with that one.
Toby:
Tested the card. That’s it, isn’t it?
Grant:
Yeah, absolutely.
Toby:
There’s actually currency in the account, which is crucial.
Grant:
Good. So another thing that we’re going to do as well, is use our current members. So I think we’re going to send out a bring your friend in for free for the end of December. So send out a message to all of our members that they can bring in a friend into the club to train for the rest of December for free if they train with their mate. But obviously what we’re going to do there, is get their email address, get their contact details, treat them like any other member, give them an induction, give them a program so they feel invested in the club. And then hopefully when it comes down to the new year and they think, “Right, what club shall I join? Well, I’ve already had three weeks there. I already go with Mary. Let me join the club that I know I’m used to going to.”
Harvey:
Well, I think the lesson to take from all of this is, hopefully most people listening will find the idea of, “Oh, we’ve made an online store” and “Oh, we’re giving money away for charity and now we’re doing an entire month free for guests.” The lesson to take away is, be more creative with your promotions. If you’re thinking that lockdown is over and you can just go in with the usual, “I’ll have a fiver off the month.” Unfortunately, you are going to have to incentivize people to get back to the gym because a lot of people are going to maybe be under the impression that they don’t need the gym after being off for so long. Some people are just not going to want to come back because they might want to continue social distancing. Be more generous than you ever would because at the end of the day, every gym at the moment, there’s been a lot of cancellations and you’ve lost a lot. So it’s time to start being extra generous because in the long run, those members will come back. But you just got to make yourself stand out now.
Toby:
I think just the standard referral competition, I don’t know if you’ve had any experience with them yourself, Grant. But you speak about being generous. Maybe now’s the right time to invest in a real rockstar prize for your referral competition and just scream about it. The one I was thinking about is, is flight vouchers, purely because instead of buying a holiday for them with flight voucher, you can keep posting pictures of different locations, and that’s going to tempt different people for different reasons. You send a picture of the slopes or whatever, beach and yeah. Just try and tempt people into referring as many people as possible.
Harvey:
Also, the great thing about that is, like you say, if you pick a location like Disneyland, you might have a single 40 year old guy who might want to be involved in the competition, but he’s like, “I’m not going to go to Disneyland by myself. That’s going to look a bit weird.”
Grant:
Yeah. A big price is really good. So years ago when I started a referral campaign, I started off with, it was a water bottle with a towel and some flip-flops, that whoever referred the most members would get that. And to be fair, it was a bit shit. Because the price was a bit rubbish, we didn’t get many referrals. When I upped the prize to a TV, a bike, an iPod or whatever it was, something really big and tangible, the amount of referrals went through the roof. We had so many more people referring their friends to come and join. It paid for itself. And also, if you put that prize up for the month, it sits there for the whole month and now you can make a big sign in your gym, “Refer a friend and when this holiday, blah, blah, blah.”
Grant:
Whoever refers the most, gets the prize, but that will sit there for a months advertising. Next month, do it again and again. Some clubs, they just say, “Oh, if you refer a friend, we’ll knock a pound off your membership.” Well, big whoop. If I bring my friend in and I’m going to get a pound off my membership, it’s not going to do anything for me. Yeah, absolutely. Where if I can say, “You know what, I’m going to get three of my friends to join the club and if they join, I might walk away with a 40 inch telly or a holiday.” Great.
Toby:
I think all this talk as well, obviously coming into January, it’s very easy just to focus on the new members and forget about the old ones a little bit. It’s the age old thing, isn’t it? So keeping an eye on your attention is obviously crucial. I was going to say that contacting any canceled EDs that you’ve had and getting them to reinstate is now the priority in the next few weeks ahead of December and then January, because there has been a few and they’ve been trickling in. So yeah, I think that’s one for the gym manager. Get them called and get them reinstated before the gym opens.
Harvey:
Well yeah, because as soon as your retention rate falls off, that’s where the value is. And if you lose your old customers to your competitors in the area, because people are going to be super competitive now. Everyone’s on a mad dash to get as many members as possible. Be very wary of what other gyms in the area are doing because if you don’t, your old members have been supporting you through all this time. If you start pretending like you don’t care about them, they will go to your competitors.
Grant:
And also, because we’ve lost members, we’ve lost an income, to just keep reducing our prices is going to devalue our product. We don’t want to compete against pure gym on price and it’s pointless. We can’t do it. All their other clubs can sustain a failing one. So what we have to do is say, “No, you know what, we’re not going to go with 16 pound a month and just compete purely on price. We’re going to give more value.” So all these ideas that we’re going to get and bring people in, we’ll say, “Right, we’re going to give you an induction. We’re going to give you a program. We’re going to do follow-ups. We’re going to check your progress. We’re going to create the Facebook group and talk to you and be the independent club.” Don’t come try and compete against them purely on price. So just find a different angle.
Grant (continued):
Obviously pricing does come down to it if you’re in a 90 pound a month gym. But for the sake of being 20 or 25, people will pay that extra five or six, seven pound a month if they know they’re going to get proper service. People don’t really want to join the budget clubs but if they know that they can for a little bit more, they can get a lot more service and feel part of that community at somewhere else. Okay, so we’ve come up with a few marketing ideas there. We’ve got obviously, the main thing there is to get that jump on your competitors. Start your January marketing now, get things in place, ready to go. Don’t wait until the 2nd of January and then say, “Right, let’s now compete against everybody else.”
Grant (continued):
So we’ve got the campaign for Christmas. We’ve got the free training, bring a friend in for the remainder of the month, pay what you like for December and that obviously goes to charity. So it makes your club look like an important and a caring place. The referrals and the things like that as well. Okay, so moving away from the marketing ideas, obviously it’s also about getting the club ready for that increased footfall. And obviously, we’re expecting a huge influx of people into the club December after lockdown and January as well. So if we do nothing, the club is going to be very, very busy. So we’ve done a few things to try and spread the load out if you like.
Grant (continued):
So not everybody is coming in at 5:30 because we will just be packed and the club will be inundated with people and overwhelmed, and that will have a negative effect. So what we’ve done is, one of our promotions is bring in an off-peak membership, haven’t we? So the the off-peak membership means when the club is quieter, people are coming in and obviously the turnstiles will manage all that for us as well. So it’s not a case of somebody having to sit there, “Oh, no, you’re a gold member, you’re an off-peak, you can’t come in.” The turnstile will simply just manage it all for us. We’ve essentially got to take the pressure off ourselves in terms of-
Toby:
And another thing as well with the big influx of people, is making sure the equipment is up to scratch. Yeah, it’s obviously an absolute staple of the club and the treadmills were one thing that we’ve recently just had to repair four of them. And yeah, they’re going to be the most used thing in January. So you’ve got to have it all spick and span, oiled up, ready to go. And that’s what we’re doing at the moment. So just getting it all ready. Because I remember last year, just not… Oh, sorry. Earlier this year, not being able to get on one. Treadmills, cross trainers, all of the cardio stuff completely used.
Grant:
I think he’s the least that people expect, isn’t it? You’ve been locked down, when they come back, the least they… And obviously, we talk in independent clubs here. Obviously all the big chains and the budget clubs will probably have an onsite repair person. We’re independent, it’s down to the owner. But the least that people can expect is that everything works when they come back.
Harvey:
As well as, outside of even just being able to handle the influx physically in the gym, be ready to handle the influx even with the signup process. If your website-
Grant:
And let’s hope that is an influx.
Harvey:
Exactly. But this is the issue. If you have suddenly people who are wanting to sign up on your promotions, make sure that it can be done online through the website. Don’t have it through contact forms or people trying to ring the gym. Because if you make it too complicated for people to sign up, they will not sign up. They will get bored after three steps.
Toby:
Yeah. Even though that is the case, absolutely, we’re still going to need more extra staff in there on those busy times because you get people coming in that can’t work out how to put in their bank details into an online form and stuff like that.
Harvey:
We’ve made sure that the fit club website is just extremely simple to just click a button and go straight through. And then they use the Ashbourne join online system with a coupon that when they enter the coupon, it literally gets rid of all the other things that the coupon doesn’t relate to. It’s the most simple, basic thing. So we could have a thousand people sign up. I hope that happens, but we’ll see. We could have a thousand people sign up and if they do, we actually don’t have to deal with any of them. We don’t have to be there answering the phones going, “Oh yeah, let me get your details down.” Messing that up.
Toby:
Customer journey is what you’re talking about. And it’s absolutely essential at this time, making sure it’s as easy for them as possible. We spoke earlier briefly about the prospect management system and how it automates emails when people sign up. So, they’re going to get an email straight away with the app. They’re going to get an email straight away with the booking software and how they’ve registered their classes. And it’s just going to hold their hand the whole way through the process and make sure they have to ask us as few questions as possible.
Grant:
Well, that’s it. We’re asking a lot of our staff and our manager in the club, to keep on top of everything, keep managing it. So that’s why the automated lead management and everything like that, all the automated emails and texts that go out are scheduled. So it doesn’t matter when somebody submits a contact us form or a join now, they automatically get the emails in the same sequence. Because obviously we’re asking our manager and all our staff to contact all these people and deal with all our current customers as well. So if we can take contacting all the prospects away and just automate that process, that it means they can spend more time on the rest of it. And that’s really important because yes, we want those new members, but if we neglect our current ones, they’re going to drop off on the other end.
Grant (continued):
So this prospect management module, so you can do it all yourself. We’re not here to say you must buy the Ashbourne prospect management module. You can do it all yourself. You can send the email, you can send the text, you can do the follow-up. But it’s a time consuming process. Where if you get this prospect management thing, it does it all for you. It will just send that email out. Somebody will completely the contact us form or I’d like a code or whatever. And it would send out the text, send out, they’ll do the follow-up. If they don’t join it, sends them another follow-up and so on and so on. It’s basically removed a member of staff for us. So it’s really useful.
Harvey:
Yeah, you see some people conducting all of their prospect management from a Gmail account, just replying in these endless chains. I do think people don’t realize how much time they can save in their business. I would often say if you’re running a business and there were certain tasks that you dread to do, then maybe think about how you can automate them. Don’t just be constantly catching up at three in the morning. Actually review everything. This is the time to do it. Review everything and make sure where you’re not automating things. And if you don’t know about ways to automate things, then type it into Google, go and look, there’s so many ways to automate things. We haven’t touched on this much, but for social media, for instance, there’s platforms like Hootsuite is one, Canva-
Grant:
What’s Hootsuite?
Harvey:
Hootsuite and Later, is another one. All of these, they’re basically just online platforms where you connect up all your social media and then you can schedule things ahead of time. So we know that Facebook has a scheduling system. But for instance, Twitter doesn’t, Instagram doesn’t, LinkedIn doesn’t. These things link to all of your social media and allow you to schedule ahead of time. So once again-
Grant:
Ah, perfect. So now for instance, while we’re not doing anything, we can schedule all of our next three, four weeks posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all from one thing.
Harvey:
Exactly. We are not going to be touching the social media unless something extreme happens, like an asteroid hits the club, and we have to update people about something. Like, a national lockdown maybe.
Grant:
Don’t do that, come on.
Harvey:
We’re not going to touch social media in December. It’s already done. So look into these things.
Toby:
The other one as well, that I asked you about earlier was, you can schedule your Facebook ads to start at certain times, can’t you? So we want to really crank them up.
Grant:
You told me you were going to actually physically ramp them up manually yourself. You only got to just sit there and schedule them. So come Boxing Day, you’re not going to be moving. You’ve done it already, aren’t you?
Toby:
Grant, I do all of my work in January. I do nothing for the rest of the year.
Grant:
You’ve had a whole month off now. Awesome.
Toby:
Yeah. So I guess one area we haven’t really touched on, I guess it is obvious because everyone should know their gym inside out, is knowing your unique selling points. Who are you targeting? If you’re like us, we cover a range of interests at the club. So, we’re trying to reach out to a lot of different demographics. But potentially, if you’re trying to appeal to older people or younger people, anyone, bodybuilders, the like, you need to be targeting them in certain ways. I think it’s fair to say Instagram is more of a youthful platform, maybe a bit of a generalization. But I think on the whole, if you’re targeting that age group, Instagram would be a good place to do it.
Harvey:
All of the young people have left Facebook.
Toby:
Replaced by their parents.
Harvey:
Exactly.
Grant:
I’m on Facebook.
Toby:
That’s awkward.
Harvey:
It’s very true, if you’re hitting social media channels, be aware of who’s using them and also don’t be afraid to start going into ones that you might dismiss as new. Tik Tok, for instance. This might not be as relevant for gyms, but it’s one of those things where the number of people who run businesses are probably in their thirties, all say, “Oh, what the hell is Tik Tok?” But Tik Tok is one of the most popular things with 18 to 24 year olds. And if you were advertising on there and had a presence on there, you would be hitting 18 to 24 year olds. So don’t be posting to your Facebook and going, “Where’s our 18 to 24 year olds” because they stopped using Facebook a long time ago. Some of them don’t even know Facebook really exists because they were born after Facebook existed. It’s been around a long time.
Toby:
I think that’s a really good idea. If you’ve got characters in the gym, get them on Tik TOK because it will appeal to a group of people, isn’t it?
Harvey:
Exactly.
Toby:
Okay, yeah. I like that. I’ve written down here as well, if you’re trying to hit an older demographic, how would you do it? And I’ve written, Grant, what would appeal to you?
Grant:
I’m not that old.
Toby:
You getting on.
Grant:
Well, the thing is as well, one of our clubs, they realized that most of their members were 45 plus. So what they did is, they changed all of their marketing. They marketed just the same as any other club, put pictures out of people in the gym. But when they literally looked down into all of their data, they found that most people were older because of their price point and the type of club. They were an older type club. So what they did, they changed all of their marketing, all their images of people in the gym, to reflect that. So what was the point of having an 18 year old on the treadmill when they’re aiming for 45, 50 year old people? So they changed all of their marketing.
Grant:
All of their photos became more relevant. So as you say, know what you after. If you’re a bodybuilders gym, have pictures of bodybuilding champions and things like that and how you’ll your success. Just have pictures that are more relevant to you. Obviously, it almost goes without saying, but you’d be surprised of how many standard type health clubs then put a picture of a bodybuilder on. That actually, that’s going to intimidate people. I don’t want to join that one. So know what your market is. And as you say, get the right images.
Harvey:
Well, this is all part of the review process. It’s hard to talk on this about the entire UK because different parts of the UK are in different lockdown periods and some are just functioning as normal and don’t have the time to review these things. But go back to basics and really review everything you can, because this is going to be a make or break for a lot of businesses. And all of the things that you could ride off like, “Oh, we had a bit of a slow website or we don’t have an online signup.” These things are really going to make the difference in the long run of how quickly you can recover.
Grant:
If you don’t have an online sign up in January, obviously, unless you’re at quite high price point and you need to do a proper sales tool, then that way you’d obviously bring people in and do the tour, then sign them up. But if you’re a standard price point and you running an offer, you need to get people to sign up straight away. So just get them on your website and get them signed up. But speaking of on the website and things like that, I think another thing that we’re going to do as well, is just give away a free ebook or a checklist for how to get through the Christmas period. So basically, don’t eat too much. So we’re going to send that to all of our members that share our posts, tag somebody in it. So we’re not asking them to do anything particular, but if you tag a friend in our posts, if you share our posts, we will send you for free, our how to survive Christmas without putting on the pounds checklist.
Toby:
Really good one. If you’ve got a local partner that you think might be interested in working with you, say on Instagram, if you want to get a load more Instagram followers, do a joint competition and say that for each entry is when you take a friend in the comments. And you’ll get people tagging 50 people if the prize is half decent and you can double your Instagram following overnight. And that resource just becomes more and more powerful.
Harvey:
Well, you could advertise back to all of them on your Facebook ads and Instagram ads. Feel free to check out the Ashbourne site. We’ve got an entire free ebook on that stuff. We’ve got loads of free resources. But if there was the time to learn new skills, this would be it. So just become smarter in the way you’re marketing yourself and start outreaching more because this is not the time to rest on your laurels. I think that’s really the lesson of the day.
Toby:
Absolutely. We’ll be sharing all this stuff on the gym owners forum Facebook page. That’s the best place to access it on a pretty much daily basis.
Grant:
No. Good. Okay. Well, thanks guys. I think we’re coming up to our time now. So essentially, the key to it is, do it now, get the jump on your competitors so that you can hit January running and you’re already the place that people associate with joining a gym rather than, “Which one shall I join?” As I say, we’re going to have plenty more episodes to come with just more ways to get more members and things like that. But this was just a bit of a taster of how to get into January. So thanks to Toby and Harvey for joining me today. As I say, we don’t have a, and this is an Ashbourne sales thing, but if you would like more information on how Ashbourne can help your club, then just drop us a line or go onto the website and we’ll help you out as much as we can.