The start of a new year is always a hectic time, so we’ve put together a New Year’s resolution checklist to help ensure you stick to all your great intentions.
Kick 2018 off to a killer start with the checklist below! This could be your best year yet.
1. Business Plan
Have you made the assumption that passion and optimism alone is enough to build a successful gym or fitness studio business? Unfortunately, running a business without a business plan can prove extremely time-consuming in the long run. It’s important to take the time to sit down, research and develop a plan in full before launching. Your ability to transition from a trainer/teacher to a business owner mindset will play a crucial role in the planning process.
Start by setting:
☐ Business Goals: These should encompass what you want your business to achieve in a specific time frame. This will include the mission and vision of your business and goals to accomplish.
☐ Industry Placement: Do you want to be referred to as an affordable open gym with community at the heart of everything it does, or a high end yoga business? The industry placement you choose should be reflected throughout your fitness business; from the name of your business and the look and feel of your studio, right up to your communication style with clients.
☐ Budget: Breakdown the anticipated costs for the year ahead such as marketing, equipment fees and monthly expenses. Following this, analyse your projected income for the short and long term. This should include financial goals and a defined strategy for achieving those goals. If you use a gym management software such as Glofox, you can use the reporting tool to collect valuable insight on your sales data from the previous week, month or even year.
Need a helping hand with your financials? Check out the 4 steps to get your business financially ready for January
2. Marketing Plan
In your business plan, you should consider setting out a marketing plan with realistic objectives that you can follow throughout the business year. Firstly, you should try to gain an understanding of your target market so that you can create an offering that will grab their attention.
Get your creative juices flowing with these three questions:
The Customer
Engagement Playbook
for Your Fitness
Business
Discover more - Who is my ideal customer?
- How will my service resonate with my ideal customer?
- How will I reach my ideal customer?
☐ Social Media Marketing: Identify the most popular social media channels where your target market hangs out and interact and engage new and existing members. Tag your clients in posts on Facebook in appreciation for their loyalty. Even reach out to their friends who have interacted on your page and invite them to a free workout!
☐ Mobile Marketing: Push notifications sent through your gym management software are a great way of maintaining member engagement outside of classes. Glofox clients who see the best results in terms of customer retention, send customised messages to inactive members.
3. Customer Retention Strategy
A hallmark of the fitness industry is the upsurge in new fitness regimes come January; it’s hard to miss. As those of you who read our last blog post will know, this is the time when most businesses should try to maximise revenue and retain business for the rest of the year. However, research has shown that approximately one third of those who take up a new routine in January will quit before the month is out. Utilising a subscription based membership as part of your strategy can reduce those losses for the remainder of the year.
This leaves fitness business owners back where they started, reviewing monthly attendance reports while contemplating what they could have done differently. It makes sense to develop a ‘new year, new you’ member retention strategy for your fitness business now that you can implement in January.
For the details, check out our recent blog post to help you on your way to retaining clients post January rush!
4. Customer Acquisition Strategy
Each and every fitness business should have defined fitness marketing performance indicators in an attempt to guide client acquisition activity.
Uhuru Network recommend quantifying the following performance indicators:
☐ Leads: How many people are you reaching who fall into your target market? Once this number has been defined, set a goal and work towards it with targeted lead generation techniques such as blogging.
☐ Conversion Rate: For example, if you offer a free class as part of your acquisition strategy, you should be monitoring how many leads actually take up the offer. Following this you can identify how many of these people continue to become long term clients and how many drop off. This will help you to figure out what offers are working for your business and which are not providing bang for your buck.
☐ Retention Rate: Do your members rejoin your gym or studio when their current membership expires? At what rate? It costs five times more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one. This stat should puts it all into perspective. Should you focus on working harder to keep members as opposed to running around trying to acquire more? ☐ Member Lifetime Value: This is the amount a member is worth the period of time they spend at your gym or studio. This measure can be obtained by summing up an average of all payments a member will make to your business over their entire membership.
2018 is approaching fast! Why not bring your New Year in with a bang with Glofox gym management software? You can book your free consultation before the rush is here.
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