Killin’ the Gym Game in 2022
As gym owners and fitness club managers, there can be constant pressure to keep improving the business. Improvements generally equate to more members, less turnover, and more significant revenue.
Making improvements doesn’t have to mean buying the newest equipment or purchasing an infrared sauna (although having an infrared sauna would be very cool and might actually attract some new members).
Making improvements can be as simple as changing your class offerings, working on better member and community connections, or simply switching to an all-in-one business platform such as Plan2Play’s ARC that allows you to streamline more of your day-to-day operations.
Connect Your Community
One of the main reasons people join fitness clubs and gyms is to look for a community. As a manager or owner of a gym, working to create and foster a connected community should be a point of emphasis. Investing in your gym’s community will not only pay off in terms of attracting new members but will also keep your current member retention rate high.
There are many different ways to work on improving a community feel. Plan2Play built the ARC business platform with the CONNECT feature specifically to help with building and growing communities at gyms and fitness clubs. If you aren’t ready to give ARC a try just yet, here are a few easy suggestions to help build a community that will attract and retain members for continual growth.
- Increase communication. Let people know what’s going on around the gym and be up to date on all the happenings. When your gym uses the CONNECT app, it makes it super easy to communicate with everyone all at once. You can post the workouts, updates and even create and share events. You can post for the entire gym to see or use specific channels for individual class communication.
- Create weekly or monthly fitness/fun challenges. Involve members in as much interaction as possible. Be creative and fun. For example, the fastest time to put weights on a barbell, bear crawl races, who can balance the most ab mats on their head, etc. Everyone likes to feel competitive, even if it’s doing something silly. Competition can be a massive boost to community connection.
- Ask for member feedback and make changes accordingly. This shows members you value their opinion. Add a suggestion box and try to make some changes accordingly. When members feel valued, it creates loyalty you can’t buy. If you don’t want to allow for 24/7 feedback from your nitpicky members, you could also just send out a feedback questionnaire every quarter.
Use Better Organizational Tools
Being organized and efficient with your time is crucial for improving the quality of your gym. When you, as the manager or owner can spend less time on business, scheduling, and marketing, you can focus more on what really matters. You can be a better coach, build better workout programs, or focus more on community aspects.
Using ARC as your business platform allows you to save time in many different business areas. From scheduling classes to collaborating with and managing staff, you can do it all from ARC. You can even do all your billing and payments processing while gaining insight into your business with up-to-the-minute data reports. This allows you to bring even better data into your business decisions.
Using more advanced tools to help run your business will save time and allow you to be a better coach. If you feel like you’re wasting time during your workday, switching business platforms can probably change your life for the better.
Changing Your Class Offerings
Everyone likes to believe that the current status quo is working just fine for their gym. Why fix something that isn’t broken? Well, because sometimes change is good. Try evaluating your current offerings from an unbiased perspective and see if any class might be worth replacing with something new.
Work to develop a schedule that drives the value for your business. You need to be able to evolve and adapt to consumer expectations. People like both variety and options.
Try changes like:
- Adding a once-per-week yoga or meditation class.
- Changing one of your strength classes into a cardio/bodyweight-only class.
- Add into every class a designated recovery and stretching time.
- Adding a class with child care available.
- Adding a specific strength program around your regular class offerings (also an easy opportunity for an upsell to your members).
Change One Thing You’re Currently Doing
In order to improve on what you’re already doing, you likely need to make some changes. Or, at the very least, add some new things. Simply placing more focus on your member community can have hugely positive effects on your continual growth.
If you aren’t already using an all-in-one business platform, you can save a ton of time on the mundane administrative stuff and have more time to invest in your people and programming. And remember, trying new things shows your members that you care and are committed to giving them the best member experience possible.
