Many independent gym owner we talk to notice the same thing happening as the Summer draws to a close. It is the same thing the whole industry prepares for in January, yet we’ve noticed September rarely gets the same priority.
But the telltale signs are all the same, whether it is an increase in prospects and enquiries, lapsed members showing up after a busy Summer, or increased class attendance. A version of this happens every year, and it represents the potential for significant growth to any independent gym or fitness club that makes the changing of the seasons work for them.
Because these seasonal changes will happen whether a gym does anything or not. Routines reset, school runs restart, evenings draw in, and the people who told themselves Summer ‘wasn’t the right time’ for a Gym membership suddenly lose that excuse.
Seasonal behaviours are worth taking seriously, whether they cause a positive or negative effect for a fitness business. But motivation is one of the most important. Motivation is hard to generate, and easy to lose, and that is why our focus today is how independent gyms and fitness clubs can make the most of the autumn motivation spike.
It is a spike that is easy to miss, and it certainly doesn’t receive the coverage within the industry that January does. But that doesn’t mean it won’t make a significant impact on those revenue and retention margins come the end of the year.
Autumn is one that many gyms overlook, and that makes it perfect for a gym owner looking to gain the advantage over their local competition.
Prospects and Enquiries: Where Did They Come From, Where Do They Go?
Unlike January, September doesn’t have a clear playbook, and that catches a lot of gyms out. It is a time where a channel that’s brought in next to nothing since spring can suddenly start pulling enquiries the moment term restarts.
Like many businesses, gyms settle into habits. If a team knows that one prospect stream does well and another doesn’t, the latter can just fall away entirely. Working off old assumptions can be disastrous at the best of times, but when it means prospects slip through the net, the problem is compounded.
Unlike in January, the enquiries are likely to be more diffuse in Autumn. And it’s worth knowing which ones are actually pulling their weight:
- Website enquiry forms, often filled in during the evening once the initial thought has taken hold.
- Walk-ins, particularly parents dropping children at nearby schools or clubs
- Referrals from existing members who’ve mentioned the gym to a friend or colleague
- Social media ads, which can swing sharply in performance between seasons
- Returning enquiries from people who asked about joining back in the spring and never followed through
Keeping track of all this by memory, or across a few different inboxes and a stack of old messages, is exactly how a promising enquiry ends up forgotten. A prospect management system takes what can quickly become a sprawling list and turns it into something a team can actually work through in order. The ability for anyone to pick-up the task and understand in a few clicks who has enquired, when, through which channel, and whether anyone’s followed up yet, , is invaluable.
It doesn’t make the task disappear entirely, but it stops the task from being abandoned, done poorly or relying on a single employee (and as such, a single point of failure).
The Clock Starts the Moment They Enquire
Once an enquiry lands, the clock is already ticking, and it can tick faster than most gym management teams account for.
There is no guarantee that someone who fills in a form on a Tuesday evening, caught in the moment by the thought of finally getting their act together after a hectic summer, will be in that same headspace come Friday.
Replying promptly, preferably within a 24 hour timeframe, ensures that a gym has the best chance of catching them in roughly the same mindset. But leave it for a week and there’s a good chance that’ll forget they filled out the form entirely.
Speed is only half of the formula for success when it comes to prospects. A generic reply that could have gone out to anyone tells a prospect their enquiry never actually reached a person on the other end.
Members seek out their local independent gyms and fitness clubs because they want an experience that is a cut-above the usual budget-chain, lowest-common-denominator.
People can tell the difference between a template or automated response and someone who’s actually read what they wrote. That doesn’t mean templates are off the table, but it is vital to reference details within their enquiry:
This could be:
– A goal (if the prospect form has a section for goals).
– A particular class that was referenced.
– A specific type of workout equipment they are keen to use.
It doesn’t take much to signal to a prospective member that an independent gym is paying attention. People want to go to these facilities for a more personal, human experience. And the small amount of time it takes on a Customer Relationship Management system to address their enquiry with a semi-bespoke response can make a real difference.
Barriers to Entry: Don't Make Them Work for It
The most efficient and personalised prospect management operation in the world won’t count for much if the barriers to entry are too high.
A prospect who’s ready to commit shouldn’t have to wait for a callback, book a tour they didn’t want in the first place, or walk down to the front desk because the payment portal is down (or doesn’t even exist!).
Online joining should be a given, but even within that remit, we’ve all experienced ‘good’ online joining, and ‘bad’ online joining at some point in our lives.
Even if prospective members want a personal touch from their independent gyms, they still want to have all the home-comforts they’ve come to expect from the big names. Instant joining, flexible membership tiers, mobile apps and elegant access controls. Every extra step between interest, joining and hitting the gym floor is another chance for that motivation to dissipate.
Marketing And Messaging For The Moment
Unsurprisingly, marketing has its place in our Autumn formula for success.
Luckily, this is one of the areas that benefits the most from what we covered in the introduction. Marketing more than anything benefits from the ebb and flow of seasonal behavioural patterns.
It isn’t about predicting what everyone in a gym’s local area is thinking, it is about predicting what the majority of potential gym-goers might be thinking at a certain time.
A message about settling back into a routine, or getting ahead of the darker months is a message more likely to speak directly to what people are already turning over in their heads come September. It doesn’t need to oversell the moment. The moment’s already doing the heavy lifting, and marketing support that helps a gym get its timing and message right is mostly just a case of not getting in the way of something that’s already working in the gym’s favour.
Data: Knowing Whether It Worked
There will be another September after this one, and the team that pools their knowledge and learns from it has a much greater chance of success. Without understanding what worked and what didn’t, our theoretical independent gym risks starting from scratch each September.
There are plenty of data points worth examining, whether it is comparing success rates based on the time it took to response to a member enquiry, the channels that enquiries came through and the retention rates thereafter.
This is the true strength in investing in seasonal procedures. With only a few useful tools, any independent gym can start understanding the ebb and flow of their area, as well as what works and what doesn’t. Every part of the year can be systemised this way, from the January-boom to the Summer lull.
Autumn is a time where gyms can start to make a real post-Summer push. The motivation is already there, and that means that every resource spent on prospect engagement is that much more likely to hit the mark. What decides whether or not a gym really grows their membership base is a combination of their mindset and the systems they have in place.
And here at Ashbourne, we’ve been helping independent gyms make the maximise their revenue across the seasons for nearly thirty years.
So whether it is a prospect management system that allows you to actually pursue your leads, innovative access controls to quite literally reduce the barrier to entry, or sleek BI Dashboards to understand what is working, there are countless ways we can help gym owners to sustain and grow their business.
If you want to see how a company made by and for independent gym owners could help you deliver even more value to your members without losing any control over how your facility is run, don’t hesitate to book a demo with our in-house, UK based team today.
Fair Rates For Fitness
If you are reading this, you’ll forgive us if we assume you are someone who cares about the UK’s fitness industry. If so, there is something we’d like to mention, something important to all of us working and operating within the fitness industry.
Here at Ashbourne Membership Management, we have been proud to work in this dynamic, innovative sector for three decades. At time of writing the UK government has decided to increase business rates as part of the latest budget. While we are always happy to pay our way, we believe that these rates do not acknowledge the incredible benefit that independent gyms and fitness clubs bring to society.
Every party manifesto claims that they want the people of the UK to be healthier, happier, and more active. But when the time comes to match action to rhetoric, our industry is too often left out.
So, if you want to make your voice heard alongside the hundreds who have already acted, follow the link here to Fair Rates for Fitness, a campaign being championed by our partners over at the Gym Owner’s Forum.
