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Increasing your fitness club attendance is about more than just increasing your income. It's about welcoming fresh faces to class and helping people achieve their goals. Regularly inviting new members to your business helps to build your community, which can lead to higher retention of clients. They'll build a rapport with each other as well as their instructors and keep coming back to chase their fitness goals together.
This guide will show some easy-to-implement ideas to make it simple for people to join your fitness club as well as guide you on how to promote your business to help increase attendance.
Make signing up easy
Lengthy and complicated sign-up forms create a barrier for your potential clients, and it'll only serve to put people off. There are simple things you can do to make signing up easy for new clients. Here's how to get them to the "Complete sign up" button faster.
Make your call to action simple and clear
The call to action (CTA) is the most important part of your sign-up page. A call to action doesn't need to be complicated. Something as simple as "Sign up today" is clear in its purpose. Making sure it stands out is key. Don't let it blend into the background. Make that CTA pop by using a different colour to the rest of the text on your page so it stands out.
Keep your sign-up form easy to follow and quick to complete
Long sign-up forms are a turn-off. Endless questions, a sea of boxes to tick, it's off-putting for anyone signing up for a service. The easiest sign-up forms to fill out only ask for the bare minimum. At this early stage, ask your clients for the basic details. Name, email, address, and the minimum amount of information your payment provider asks for. You'll also want your new clients to fill out waivers, health questionnaires, or other personal information, but letting them get through the sign-up process first is key. Once they've digitally signed on the dotted line, you can then get your new clients to fill out any necessary forms.
Make sure you hire well-qualified and experienced instructors
But also make sure they are the right fit for your business. The most qualified person in the room isn't always the right person for the job. Investing in the right talent is as valuable, if not more, than hiring the most experienced person. It's important to hire the right person to build a good rapport with your clients. The relationship with their coach is a big part of why people keep coming back to class. It's also important that whoever you hire buys into your values and is the right fit with the rest of your team. Finding a balance by hiring someone who is experienced, has a good relationship with coaching, and will be a good influence on your clients is the right way to go.
Advertise your fitness classes
The goal when marketing your business is to entice people into wanting to find out more about it. You can advertise your fitness classes very simply by focusing your marketing on your target clientele. Tap into their interests and make the most of the places they're most likely to search for fitness classes like yours. Using several easy to implement strategies will help you promote and grow your business.
Make your website appealing
Building your website so that potential customers can easily find it is the foundation of creating an online presence. Your website is the perfect place to advertise yourself. New clients can learn about you, your business, and your instructors. It gives them all the information they need to know about your fitness club, including your schedule, availability, and pricing. It's home to your booking page as well as your creative content, a vital part of your online marketing strategy. With all of this information in one place, alongside your sign-up page, your clients can do everything they need simply, and efficiently.
Keep reading to find out how to use blogs and social media to market your fitness club
Create engaging content to market your fitness club
The easiest way to get Google to give your website a better position in its search results pages is by writing blogs and articles. Writing a blog that's relevant to your business once a week or every other week keeps your website current and reminds Google that you're still there. Taking the time to explore keywords to do with your business will help you create interesting blogs about trends in your area of fitness, workouts and equipment for your members to try out, and it's also a great way to introduce yourself. Including a post about your own journey into fitness makes your sport or activity relatable to both current and potential members.
Use social media to promote your business
Social media is an important string to add to your marketing strategy bow. It's easy to put in place, and importantly, it's cheap. Using social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter are useful for you to keep your current clients engaged. It also gives an insight into your business. Your social media posts are a window for potential clients to look through and get an idea of what your classes and sessions are like. Use good-quality photos of your happy customers to highlight how great your fitness club is.
Creating interesting posts and stories about your classes with relevant hashtags is easy to do and they help raise your profile. Facebook is still the most widely used social media platform. With Facebook ads, you can create adverts that you are able to direct specifically towards your target demographic. They're simple to make and cost-effective.
Market your fitness classes locally
This can be done in several ways. Hosting competitions and events related to your fitness club will give participants in your discipline the chance to see what you're business is all about. They can see the space you use and witness you and your staff in action. For any newcomers to the activity, it offers them the chance to try it out and you the opportunity to get them wanting to come back for more. Reaching out to local businesses to build a network is a way to reach a broader client base. Offering their customers a discount for signing up and advertising on their premises is a great incentive and could lead to further collaboration down the line.
Offer discounts and promotions for returning members
It's not unusual for clients and members to slip away from time to time. Whether they haven't had the time to focus on their fitness goals recently or if they were away during the summer but want to return in September, welcoming returning members like an old friend and with a discount is the perfect way to say, "welcome back!". You don't have to offer a large or extended discount. Something as simple as a small price reduction on signing up again is a big incentive for consumers. It will also make clients feel that you want them to come back, and it encourages client loyalty in the long term.
Get your clients to spread the word about your fitness club with a referral program
Consider a refer a friend incentive
Creating a referral program hands over marketing duties to your current and loyal members. Word of mouth is a tried and tested way to increase attendance for businesses. Your members have been coming back to classes and sessions for a reason, and they're great ambassadors for your business. They know which of their friends and family will have the most interest in what you offer, and a referral program is a great motivation.
You can take this further by encouraging your staff and instructors to promote your business. They know the type of people who would enjoy your classes, from former clients to their own circle of friends and family. Your staff will have a strong network of people they can approach and recommend your fitness club to.
Be consistent with sessions and timings
People like consistency in their fitness regimes, especially with a structured work schedule and a busy home life. Once your clients have their preferred class time, they'll want to keep returning at the same time each week. Similarly, you want to try and make sure that the same instructors lead the same sessions.
We spoke earlier about the importance of the rapport they build with your clients. They know what customers respond best to in classes and they know where each person is on their personal fitness journey. Once your members are comfortable working with a specific instructor, they will want to maintain that working relationship.
Offer open gym hours
Sometimes you might have members who want to be able to come to your facility, but not necessarily a class. Offering services such as open gym and 24/7 facility club access is made easy when you have systems such as access control smart security that can make it safe and simple for members to enter your gym at any time. Using your reports you can monitor which of your members are taking advantage of this service and how often they visit or spend time at your gym.
Make sessions accessible to everyone
Another benefit of having a visible schedule and timetable is for new clients to see what you have available to them. Offering kids classes as an after-school activity increase the chances of parents signing their children up. This time slot isn't going to be as popular with adults working the traditional nine to five. By opening up this time slot to children, you can increase attendance quite substantially. By the time early evening comes and adults are leaving work, the kids are on their way home and you can get ready for your adult clients to come and enjoy their evening activity.
Final thoughts
By following a few simple steps, you'll see new people coming through the doors to find out more about your business and clicking on the sign-up button on your website. Remember, keep the sign-up process simple to make it more appealing for new clients. Implement a structured but simple marketing strategy to get your business noticed online. Ensure your staff are the right fit for both your clients and your business to keep members coming back and waxing lyrical about your fitness club to their friends and family.
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