Uday Anumalachetty, the divisional vice president of Fitness OnDemand, shares how to engage members in the evolving fitness landscape through livestreaming.
It’s good to have options. For your club members, that means live, in-studio classes when it works for their schedule, on-demand workouts at home accessed from your club content library, and now livestreamed classes from your top instructors to devices and screens wherever members choose to workout. While that’s an explosion of member convenience, it can be a headache for busy club operators. Simple best practices can help any club make the most of every opportunity to engage members in the evolving fitness landscape.
Make it Easy for Members to Stay on Brand Everywhere
Using on-demand classes and content from world-leading fitness brands to augment live workouts in club is now an everyday part of a premium member experience. It’s time for clubs to treat livestreaming the same way. Every time your members fall back on Facebook or Instagram to find a livestreaming class at home is an opportunity lost to keep them locked in to your club’s brand experience. It’s also a chance they’ll find fitness options elsewhere for good. Best practice now means providing a diversity of live classes from instructors that members trust, employing a digital platform that can livestream your club brand and those instructors directly to members on the go, and lastly, on-demand content that supports every other fitness need and goal.
Three Things to Look for in Livestreaming
For livestreaming to be done right, look for and demand three things:
1. Quality and Accessibility. Does your chosen platform stream consistent, broadcast-quality live content to iOS, Android, desktop web browser and smart TVs?
2. Scheduling and Booking. Check that the system allows prescheduling of broadcast events and instantaneous member booking to create demand and exclusive access.
3. Scalability. Are you able to broadcast solely to single members for personalized sessions and additional revenue, as well as to a diverse class of remote participants?
Create Added Value and Special Event Revenue
If your club offers tiered memberships with pricing levels, consider using livestreaming access as a revenue generator. Offer access to higher tier or premium members only and promote to encourage more members to level up. Livestream in-club classes to a wider remote class audience for a one-off fee, or create occasional, special livestream events — for a charge — to all members offering workouts or types of classes unavailable anywhere else in the club.
Stay Flexible for Changing Needs
The fitness landscape and ideas of what club membership means is changing. Whether future change comes from an unexpected event like a pandemic, or more likely, shifting member expectations of the 21st century, virtually-anywhere fitness experiences, we should all be prepared to stay flexible and have the technology platforms and protocols in place to meet evolving member needs when, how and wherever people workout. Livestreaming can’t disaster proof a business, but it does break down the walls of any club and take a near in-club, live experience to every member everywhere.
