Over 68% of the people who are interested in joining your club will visit your website before they call or visit your club. Every visitor is a prospect and as we all know, prospects are the “lifeblood” of the fitness club industry. We operate in an industry where over 40% of our members do not re-join our clubs. In order to replace them, we need to find prospects and turn these prospects into sales.
An easy and important way to help you get prospects is to develop a website that works for you 24/7. Your website should be a virtual “sales and marketing powerhouse” that you can update on-demand, at little or no cost, to provide faster service and communication.
When a prospect visits your site, you need to not only offer information about your club, but also capture the prospect’s information (email and phone number). This is accomplished in a variety of simple ways and requires simple technology to get the information you want. If you are not capturing each prospect’s information, you are losing hundreds of leads and potential membership sales.
This same technology can be used to create automatic contacts with all of the prospects that visit your site. Remember, they came to your site for information. By contacting them and providing personal, health-specific information, you are giving your prospects what they want and standing out from your competition.
Your website also allows you to promote club programs, group exercise schedules and special events to your members. By driving your existing members to your site to sign-up for classes and by promoting internal programs, like personal training, through your site, you also have the opportunity to market to current and potential members.
By offering special incentives for your members who refer their family and friends, you can capture even more prospects. Generate automated emails to both members and referred prospects and you will have turned your website into a magnificent marketing machine, and your next MVP!
Pat Kell is the President of Susan K Bailey Advertising. He can be contacted at 888.349.4594 Ext. 23. For an online demonstration of this simple technology visit www.fitness.siteapex.com. For more information, please go to www.clubads.com.
