Real strategies for growing your customer base and your bottom line through smarter marketing.
When it comes to making more money for your club, there are basically three not-so-secret ways to drive profit through marketing: Get more members; don’t lose the members you already have; and convince your existing members to spend more money than they’re already spending. It’s not exactly rocket science, but for many club owners with limited budgets and even more limited time, finding efficient, effective ways to achieve those goals can be a real challenge.
Well, it doesn’t have to be. We’ve tracked down the industry’s most successful marketers, from clubs big enough to have an actual marketing budget written into their business plans to vendors who make it their business to help clubs just like you grow their businesses through marketing, and we’ve got insight, strategies and real ideas that you can use to make your club more profitable.
How To: Get more members
Getting more members is usually high on the list of a health club’s priorities, but every health club owner knows that growing membership is no easy task-and in an economy like this one, it’s even harder. Still there are a number of ways to market your club to new members that really do work.
The first step toward growing your club’s membership is taking some time to figure out who that membership actually is.
“Stop looking outside your doors, and look at who is actually inside your club,” says KT Remus, the director of marketing and advertising for Urban Active clubs. “Just because you’re a 55-year-old man doesn’t mean you should be advertising to 55-year-old men. It’s natural to feel like you should be advertising to people who are like you, but what you really want to do is reach out to people who are like your members.”
Remus recommends taking advantage of all that fancy customer management software you’ve purchased and figuring out the demographic information for your club. Look at zip codes, birth dates, gender, attendance peaks, attendance drops-any information you can get your hands on. If you haven’t done this before, get ready to be surprised: Your typical member may be nothing like what you expected.
Once you understand who that member is, get to know them. If it turns out your average member is a 32-year-old mom who comes in before lunchtime twice a week, pick up a parenting magazine and flip through the ads. Notice the words and phrases they use and the concerns they address-is time an issue? Style? Convenience? Elegance? The more you can learn about your members’ mindset, the more effectively you’ll be able to market to prospective members in the same demographic.
Once you’ve narrowed down your demographic, reach out to them. Jim Martin, president of Powerful Promotions, believes that club owners don’t always think through the best way to reach potential members.
“Just selling a discounted membership is not going to be enough to drive membership,” says Martin, whose company provides marketing services for health clubs. “Only 13% of people in this country are health club members right now-the other 87% need to overcome their fears and preconceptions about fitness clubs before they’ll be interested in a membership.”
Martin suggests starting smaller and aiming higher than most clubs ordinarily would, offering trial memberships with personal or supervised training to eliminate the new member fear of not knowing how to use the equipment and/or looking stupid.
Direct mail marketing can certainly be a way to promote these kinds of programs, but Martin suggests thinking outside the box, too.
“One often-effective way to market your club to new members is to team up with a corporation or non-profit organization to offer free short-term or discounted long-term memberships to its employees or supporters,” says Martin. “Non-profit organizations are always looking for ways to thank their supporters. Corporations are always looking for inexpensive ways to offer their employees wellness benefits. This offers them a perfect wellness benefit.”
And don’t discount the wow factor of savvy partnerships, like the one 24 Hour Fitness forged with NBC’s The Biggest Loser reality show. “The partnership we have had with The Biggest Loser for the last five seasons has been very successful,” says Tony Wells, 24 Hour Fitness’ chief marketing officer. “The brand awareness and visibility on a national stage are excellent, but most importantly it’s a perfect fit with our brand. The kinds of challenges and stories that unfold on the show happen every day in our clubs, just on a smaller stage and without the fanfare.”
While nationally broadcast partnerships might be harder to come from for smaller clubs, forging strategic alliances can be a great way to grow your club’s membership. The key is to follow 24 Hour Fitness’ lead and align yourself with groups that represent your key demographic and effectively represent your brand. If your club’s membership consists of mainly 30-something professionals, teaming up with your local AARP?might not get you the results you’re looking for.
Above all, don’t forget the most effective-and least expensive!-marketing tool you have: Your happy members. “Whether you’re a single club operator or a multi-club chain, if you can turn your members into your biggest fans, then you don’t have to worry about anything else,” says Remus.
How To: Retain your current members
Though many clubs focus their marketing efforts solely on recruiting new members, this strategy can backfire in a big way. One thing all our experts agreed on is that ignoring your existing members in your marketing efforts is a sure way to prevent your club from reaching its maximum potential.
That’s the reason Martin presses the importance of marketing campaigns directed specifically at your current membership.
“Keeping members informed is essential to retaining them,” he says. Though some clubs are reluctant to draw an inactive member’s attention to a membership he may be paying for and not using, Martin insists that this mindset is problematic. “In the long run, a club that actively tries to get non-users in the door will be more profitable than one that doesn’t, guaranteed,” he says. Martin believes as much as 30% of a club’s total marketing budget should be spent on current member communication.
Remus agrees that it’s important to keep one eye on retention, even with the recognition that front-door sales are what drive the industry.
“Just because the front door squeaks louder doesn’t mean the back door isn’t open,” she says.
“You will know how much money you should be spending on retention versus acquisition by running a simple report comparing members being signed up to members dropping off. If you sign up 500 new members in a month but you have 600 falling off each month, then your company is in big trouble.”
The key to retaining members is stellar customer service-and that’s not always been an area where the health and fitness industry has excelled. Historically, the industry has been perceived as one with “sneaky” contracts and unfriendly staffers-a perception that’s got sticking power, as a couple of recent consumer satisfaction surveys attest.
Still, the perception that clubs are unfriendly to consumers is one that your club can help shatter simply by providing exemplary customer service. It’s a strategy that’s proving successful in the rapid growth of 24 Hour Fitness.
“Customer service is hugely important,” says Wells. “Our industry hasn’t always been known for the best sales practices. We take a lot of pride in having pioneered month-to-month memberships and in executing the basics-providing members with a clean, inviting and rewarding environment. Fitness is a very personal endeavor, and you have to take an individual approach to connect with members in the right way and help them achieve the results they want. That’s the key to keeping them there for the long term.”
In addition to boosting member retention revenue, keeping your members happy reduces the chances that they’ll gripe about you to their friends-and increases the chances that they’ll sing your praises and refer their pals during your club’s membership drives. “You cannot make everyone happy, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to do it anyway,” says Remus.
Remus believes that the best way to promote a culture of customer service is to make customer satisfaction a priority from the top down. “You can imagine that the high school student you have manning the front desk at your club who’s making minimum wage and dealing with a flood of people all day can be less than motivated to go the extra mile for your members,” Remus says. “And that’s not her fault-it’s yours! As the owner or manager of a club, you need to train, inspire, care for and encourage your staff to always make the member immediately in front of them-whatever minute of the day it is-feel like they are the most important person that staffer has ever met.”
Remus stresses that the way to make this happen is to lead by example. Don’t just talk to your staff about the importance of great customer service: Give them a walking, talking example of the real thing. Spend time on the floor, talk to your members, be friendly and available-be the example you want your members to follow, and you’ll find your staff will be inspired to make excellent customer service a top priority at your club.
How To: Convince your members to spend more money with you
Once you’ve got a solid base of members, your club can reach a saturation point-when you don’t have many new members coming in because your club has already succeeded in recruiting most of your community’s appropriate members, how do you grow your revenues? It’s a luxury problem, sure, but it’s the kind of problem most health clubs are aiming to have. And fortunately, the problem has a clear solution: internal revenue generators.
Clubs can grow their profits by offering members more ways to spend their money-and they should be looking at ways to do that yesterday, according to Martin. “Clubs can no longer rely on just membership sales to stay afloat,” he says. “It’s imperative that they offer additional services.” Martin can rattle them off: Physical training, club gear with or without your club’s logo on it, spa services, concierge services, weight loss planning, nutrition supplements, nutrition counseling services, smoothies and juice bars-the options may be as limitless as your imagination.
But go crazy with new ideas strategically. The key to successfully growing new revenue streams for your club is to make sure the growth is organic. If your club is full of baby boomers, your attempts to sell weekend rock climbing adventures might be less successful than personal training sessions focused on minimizing joint wear and tear. (Though you may be surprised-some seniors are more intrepid than young adults when it comes to charting a course for adventure!) Spending time with your members to determine their needs can help you grow revenue in the ways that really work for your club, instead of on dead-end streams.
In the end, smart marketing isn’t so complicated: It’s simply knowing your members and giving them what they want.
