Here are 10 irresistible ways to convince your prospects why they should join your fitness club.
1. Sessional Bundles
The price of group classes has never been higher thanks to the rise of the boutique clubs. The price of fitness membership has never been lower.
The solution for clubs is to break out the group exercise programme from membership and market it as available by buying bundles of sessions. Pay as u go in advance and paid for predetermined volumes of classes with an expiry date.
The market for classes is 4 times the size of the club membership market so you are on solid ground and customers relish the chance to try you out with a reasonable level of commitment.
2. Month To Month Flexible Agreements
Flexible non contract memberships offer clubs the chance to elevate their price while appearing to offer a unique customer service benefited ability to stop paying at any time without financial penalty. This is an option that is popular with prospects who are new to exercise, unsure about you, or simply want to benchmark your annual membership price for value.
3. Trial Offers
Term memberships of 14 days upwards to 90 days are effective ways to promote. They provide a level of immediate revenue that helps to fund your marketing costs and allows you to be more aggressive in recruiting without the cash flow issues that sometimes affect membership marketing.
4. Good Better Best Options
Offering a choice of 3 options allows you to advertise a compelling price while still being able to satisfy prospects who need a more intense supported programme. This strategy is being increasingly adopted in clubs at the moment.
5. Money Back Guarantees
Guaranteeing your service does several good things for you.
A) It makes it very easy for customers to take a chance on you.
B) It says something very positive about your club’s quality that you can offer such an apparent risk-free benefit. It allows you to charge more because of it and is a very effective counter to any objection around time, money, facilities, spouse resistance.
6. Transferable Annual Memberships
The main argument put forward by prospects against taking paid in full long-term options is the what happens if objection.
If I get ill.
If I move out of the area.
If I stop using you.
By having a transferable option on your annual memberships, you can generate higher take up on these options which boosts cash flow and reduces your reliance on retention activities.
Clubs charge a nominal administration fee to transfer the membership and that enhances the income generation while appearing to make it easy for members to get the value from a discounted annual option. This works best when juxtaposed against a month to month non contract membership.
7. Transferable Enrolment Fees
Back in the day, clubs were very comfortable charging a joining fee which covered the cost of recruitment and induction of the member. Good clubs can still levy such a fee and making the investment transferable helps to make this a smooth sale. Members can sell on their enrolment fee to anyone they want for whatever they want. The club charges a nominal transfer fee for each transition. The best thing about this promotion is that members replace themselves!
8. Annual Renewal Cash Back Schemes
If a club is levying a reasonable joining fee, one idea that can be used to reduce the pain is to refund the fee upon renewal in year 2 of membership. Essentially this can act like a bonus renewal gift and reflect the ACTUAL VALUE PAID rather than a fixed sum for all, bearing in mind the promotional offers that may be run throughout the year.
9. Non-Usage Insurance
This concept has been covered elsewhere in this issue but essentially the club agrees to behave in a certain manner whenever the member falls inactive for an agreed amount of time and the costs of reactivation are buried in the membership charged or levied as an add on. Clearly people with a history of non-compliance to their fitness programme will see this as a very important benefit and perhaps be the deciding factor in choosing you over other clubs.
10. Long Term 5-Year Or 10-Year Residential Membership Offers
This is a variation on the transferable enrolment or annual membership. It is used when the club wants to do a fund raiser to finance investment in facilities or marketing. How it works is that clubs issue a certificate linking the membership to a fixed address which can be sold on with the house sale. Back in the 90s I used this technique to sell over 200 5-year and 10-year deals that raised over £250.000. Sufficient revenue in the day to build a new club!
Other adoption strategies have been to offer a limited number to existing members to fund promotional campaigns that have generated significant profit. 5 members buying a £1000 5-year option seed finances a powerful campaign that generates over 100 new members raising £40 k in membership revenue.
So, go ahead and work on your strategy, and get your members saying yes!
