In this episode of Industry Change Richard talk with Justin Tamsett, founder of Active Management, and part of the industry for over 30 years. He was also one of the first business coaches in the industry. With Active Management, JT travels the world presenting and teaching clubs and business owners how to run their businesses more successfully and retain their members.
For years gyms have been signing up members and quite content for those members to just be ‘sleeping dogs’ and not use their membership. And up until now that’s been standard thinking in the industry. But JT, talks with Richard about the shift that gyms and health clubs need to make to get those people back into the gym.
You see, there’s a proven formula for reducing the marketing spend of your gym. When clients actually come into the gym to train, they start to see results, when they see results they begin to tell their friends, and when they tell their friends, their friends start to attend the gym. BOOM! An actual reduction in the money you need to spend on marketing.
On the other hand, if Gym owners and managers are content for people just to own membership cards and never go on to achieve results, there’s an opposite effect that happens. People joke with their friends that they have this gym membership they never use, their friends never join the gym and in fact see it as a joke as well. And now you’re increasing your spending on marketing.
So, how do you turn around sleeping dogs and get people to actually come into the gym? It’s down to a couple of things that JT chats to Richard about.
Onboarding. The process that people go through when they first sign up to the gym is critical. A good onboarding process that combines a bit of online + face to face time with the client can make all the difference in locking that member in for the long term.
Community. This goes hand in hand with onboarding. But here’s the basic fact – people come to your gym to train, but they stay for the community. People want to belong to something, they want it to be fun, competitive – that’s why crossfit works so well – not just because people wanted a more intense workout – but because their trainer will pick them up for training if their tyre is flat one day.
Grow Up. It’s time to move your business from the kitchen table into the board room. It’s no longer enough to just run your little hobby personal training business. There are people coming into the industry now who are not just passionate about fitness, but have business acumen.
Create Experiences. Most trainers in Australia when training clients or teaching classes focus most on correcting form and technique (& nothing wrong with good technique!). But to really get your clients seeing results, coming back for more, you need to focus on engaging with them in classes – high fiving them, creating a real experience that they just want to keep coming back for (and bring their friends).
Over to you :point_right: Are you struggling with an ever increasing marketing budget in your gym?
For more info on Justin Tamsett you can go to his website Active Management.
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