Weight loss competitions are nothing new in our industry. Challenging members to shed a few extra pounds by offering fabulous cash and prizes is a great way to keep people in your club, while rewarding them for their efforts. At Snap Fitness, we just wrapped up our $25,000 weight loss challenge, with thousands of members participating from all across North America. The program proved successful overall, but that’s not to say that there weren’t lessons to be learned along the way. Before you start inviting your members to become big losers, keep in mind these three things:
1) Motivation has a shelf life. When we sat down to create our challenge, the first thing we needed to decide was how long it should last. Your first thought might be to stretch it out to as much as 60, or even 90 days, in order to give people plenty of time to achieve noticeable results. In theory, that’s a great idea. However, keeping your members motivated and engaged by the idea of a finish line can be tricky.
We ultimately decided to run our challenge for six weeks, giving members enough time to get started on a program and see noticeable results (our grand prize winner dropped 80 pounds), but short enough where they could stay committed until the end. It’s a lot easier to convince someone to run a mile than a marathon, and you’ll likely get much better participation.
2) Cut down the hurdles. In addition to being a great engagement tool, weight loss challenges present an opportunity to increase sales inside your club. Personal training, vitamins, meal plans, these are all great value-added products and services that can be introduced during your challenge. However, once you start making certain criteria mandatory for participation, you’re probably going to see members’ enthusiasm start to wean.
If your goal of holding a weight loss challenge is to increase personal training or supplement sales, then requiring people to purchase a specific package in order to participate in your challenge makes sense. But if you’re just looking to engage as many of your members as possible, the key is to keep it simple and easy for anyone to get involved.
3) It’s not just about losing. The criteria to win a weight loss challenge is usually pretty simple — whoever loses the most weight, wins. But, what about those members who didn’t have an extra 50 or 100 pounds to lose? What do you do to keep them engaged?
With our challenge, we based the winners off of the highest percentage of body weight lost. That way, a 300-pound man and a 180-pound woman both had the same chance to win. If you’re looking to expand beyond losing weight, you can also offer prizes for things like most muscle gain, or create a competition where each day is a new challenge, and completing the challenge qualifies the member for a random drawing.
Lastly, don’t worry about the prize. Whether you’re giving away thousands of dollars, or a gift certificate to a local sandwich shop, most members are more motivated by the competition than what they might win in the end. Every loser is a winner in a weight loss challenge!
By Patrick Strait, communications manager for Snap Fitness
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
What about measuring % of body-fat. (body-composition).
Anyone can lose weight by restricting caloric intake. Are we sending the right message when measuring success by pounds on the scale…?