Tag: Sales & Marketing

Gym Barbell Blog

Piecing Together the Ideal Marketing Plan

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We’d like to give some helpful tips in rounding out your marketing plan for 2019 and making all the components come together in a way that is beneficial to your business. It’s not one particular method or tactic that will make your marketing plan successful, but using every channel available to you. Below is a list of marketing ideas that go above and beyond:

1. Business Appreciation

Work with other local businesses; you promote their businesses and they promote yours.

2. VIP Passes 

Create a no nonsense business card inviting people to a free trial class or week. Feel free to send staff out to nearby supermarkets and hand out the VIP passes to drive more traffic to your gym or facility.

3. Week Free Passes 

Hand out this pass to all new members to give to friends. This then leads us to a referral program…

4. Referral Program

Create a referral program where your current members get rewarded for referring others to your club or facility.

5. Two, Four, Six, Eight, and 10-week Calls 

Follow-up with people who have tried out your facility. A reminder of their time spent there will lead to a lot more conversion and give potential customers a sense that you already care about them.

6. Buddy Weeks 

Begin a “bring a buddy” program where your members are encouraged to bring a friend to try out your club or facility. This will also offer great support for your referral program.

7. Any Kind of Community Marketing 

Exhibit and attend local fairs, events, and tournaments. You’ll find a diverse market of people you can expose your business to while supporting other local businesses.

8. Anyone Who Asks You to Advertise or Donate 

If a local organization is doing a fundraiser, instead of taking an ad out in the local journal, give them passes to distribute at their event. Your cost will be minimal and the activity is guaranteed to get someone through the doors to experience your gym or facility.

9. Meet with Larger Businesses 

Offer to give businesses with many employees a free membership of your choice (whether it’s one month or three months). Let management know the value of the free memberships and let the owner sell it. The owner will be giving the memberships as a gift from him or herself. The owner benefits from the employees’ good will and you benefit from new leads.

10. Quality Control 

The goal must always be to create unbelievable motivation about your business. A happy client is someone who will continually stay with you, spend money, and be a raving fan. Given the opportunity, a happy client will talk about you continuously. That client will refer you every chance he or she gets. See “The Building Blocks of Customer Loyalty” post on how to keep your customers happy.

Seamlessly combining these elements into your marketing plan is the most important thing you can do in order to maximize marketing efforts. One of these components alone will not work without the others. It’s a good idea to spend some time thinking about how to use the marketing channels and resources you have at your disposal and how they will help grow your business.

Making the Most of Referrals

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Take advantage of the good service you deliver to your customers and as a result, the referrals they can provide to you in return. If you have a solid product or service, then making the most out of it should be simple. Referrals are the most promising source for leads, especially coming from a satisfied existing member.

A few tips to making the “Buddy Referral” system work:

  • Create an enticing incentive for current members to bring friends into your facility
    • Giving a reward, such as one month free membership in return for getting a friend to sign up – is money wisely spent. This should be simple to do with your membership software, and the return on investment will be higher versus money spent somewhere else.
  • Ensure that the offer for the guest is special and worthwhile
    • Offering a complimentary week to experience your club or facility will allow guests to determine whether it’s a good fit for their lifestyle and needs. Sending emails utilizing your management software should make following-up with prospective members easy, and allow you to keep track of all guests / prospects coming through your doors.
  • Produce appropriate marketing materials to bring awareness of the promotion.
    • In addition to sending follow-up emails to prospective members, making sure that current members are aware of the offer is vital. To bring awareness, send emails to all current members (again, this should be simple to accomplish with your management software) letting them know of the offers or perks, and be sure to have plenty of signage throughout your gym with details.

Here at EZFacility we’re big fans of being efficient. One of the best ways to make the most of our efforts is to let our customers do some of the marketing for us – by referring EZFacility to other people in the industry. We know that the best way to accomplish this is to keep our level of customer satisfaction extremely high, and we encourage our customers to do the same. Don’t be afraid to let your club or facility speak for itself.

That’s all for now but check back soon for more ideas and news.

How to Turn Leads Into Customers

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One of the greatest qualities of successful business owners is knowing how to turn leads into customers. Characteristics like dedication, perseverance, and drive that apply to a star in sports can also be utilized for growing your business, and are necessary in order to build your customer base.

Part of what determines success, is having the right tools in order to reach the right people and market. It’s crucial to be persistent when following up with leads, as they have already expressed an interest in your company and therefore, half the battle has been won. A multi-functional software system is essential and makes delivering your message simpler; because it is nearly impossible to determine when your lead will be ready to become a part of your club or facility, it’s important to stay in front of them until the time is right for them. Keeping leads posted on club updates and promotions will be made effortless with software that has the ability to do perform this task. When thinking about growing your business, keep in mind not only the day-to-day functions, but also the bigger picture; have a long-term goal in mind.

Tips for converting leads into customers:

  • Send updates on your club or facility regularly to leads. Software that keeps a database of these leads makes things easier. Set up a schedule in order to be consistently in front of your leads.

  • Keep track of all communication as remaining organized is vital. Again, software that does this for you will ease the amount of time and work spent on lead follow up.

  • Log developments for all leads. Maintaining a structured system showing progress on each lead will make sure none are being neglected.

  • Be ready to provide additional information on your company should a lead become more interested. The ability to send off information quickly will elevate their perception of your company.

The key to being able to do all of this is having software that takes the brunt of the work off your shoulders. Time can instead be spent getting leads and fostering a good relationship with current customers.

Come back soon for more tips and ideas for growing your business.

Customer Success Story: Gold’s Gym of Regina

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Skye Kaiss, owner of two Gold’s Gym locations in Regina, Saskatchewan and an EZFacility customer, spoke with EZFacility about the success he has had using EZFacility management software to streamline his personal training program, increase client & staff retention while generating savings of over $8OK/year.
Over the last few years, Gold’s Gym in Regina has been actively selling $200,000 of personal training between its two locations on a monthly basis. Members could choose to pay for the personal training in full, or take advantage of a multi-level financing plan offered by the club. With plan lengths of three, six and twelve months, members were provided with purchase flexibility while taking steps towards achieving better health.
Of the $2.4 million in annual personal training sales, 75% were purchased using one of the available financing packages. Of these financed annual sales, 15% were never used and the payments were subsequently defaulted on by the member. Since Gold’s Gym paid out commissions on these sales in the payroll period immediately following the sale, they were experiencing an overall loss of revenue due to the fact that commissions were paid in-full on these sales once completed. Initially, Gold’s attempted to institute a policy of taking back commissions on defaulted sales, but this was not a popular policy with the sales staff in the least.

Solution

Although not using the full power of EZFacility, the Regina Gold’s Gym locations did implement EZFacility to manage the Personal Training program in both locations from a scheduling and session-management stand-point. Utilizing the feature-rich EZFacility architecture, Skye was able to institute a policy where salesperson and trainer commissions would be paid out as each session was conducted and completed. As each session was logged as completed in the software, both the salesperson and the personal trainer would receive a commission for that session. If the personal trainer was also the salesperson then they would receive two commissions.

Benefits

Initially, the most noticeable benefit is a savings of 10% in payroll expenditures on a monthly basis due to linking the payment of commissions directly to session’s completion. And while this did not immediately eliminate the fact that 10-15% of sessions get paid for but never used (which usually results in those members not renewing their membership or referring family, friends or colleagues to the gym), it did offer a significant customer service benefit. As a result of the salesperson and personal trainer only receiving commissions based on sessions completed, both began to maintain contact with the members to provide support and encouragement to keep the member committed to the training plan. Additionally, as the salespeople were accumulating a bank of as yet unused sessions, the attrition rate of sales staff was also reduced as the unused sessions represented unrealized commissions that kept them tied to the club for a longer period.
Combining all three benefits, Skye Kaiss and his Gold’s Gym facilities realized an estimated savings of $70-80K annually between both clubs, based on an estimated $1 million annual operational revenue from personal training services.

Listen to the full interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvB6lg4bLgQ&list=PLsgguQXyZyxwbx_CFNLeZ538Vp9dgqqd8&index=3