In case you missed it, January’s season of goal setting and “new year, new me” is still going strong, even if some of the most well-meaning folks slipped up.
And for gyms and clubs like yours, January was probably a month where new faces came walking through the door, each with their own reason for upping the ante on their fitness regime. Aligning your club's goals with your members’ goals can actually help you improve your retention rates and overall engagement between your club and your members.
Here’s how you can get started today.
We often focus on what we think our members want instead of actually asking them for their feedback and motivations behind coming into our clubs. When we do this, we’re leaving an incredibly important resource on the table: our members' reasons for coming back to us.
By asking your members what they are looking to gain from their relationship with your club – whether it’s mental or physical wellbeing, a specific fitness goal, or even a new look – you’re showing them that you’re invested in helping them reach their goals. With this “we’re all in this together” mentality, your members are more likely to continue coming into your gym, even if it’s less convenient than other options, simply because they know that you’re interested in their health and lives.
Send out a survey asking your members what they like about your club, what they’d like to see changed, and if there’s anything in particular that really drives them to visit you. When you know what these goals are, you can tweak not only your marketing and services, but also your larger business goals, to match with theirs.
For example, if a majority of your members are coming into your business for a one-and-done goal, you can focus more of your efforts on getting them to refer their friends or in bringing new prospects in. On the other hand, if your members are looking to make long-term changes through repeat visits, then your focus should move to emphasizing retention so your members can reach their goals, as well as highlighting their successes.
Now that you’ve figured out what your members want from their relationship with your club, it’s time to help them achieve that. More often than not, goals are oriented around developing habits, which means coming into your club more often. Lucky for you, the more your members come into your business, the more they contribute to your bottom line. That said, it often helps to add your own motivational tools to your club to help your members get closer and closer to their goals.
For example, if you have a loyalty program, you can incentivize your members to come in more often through points and rewards. Customer reward programs are built just for that, and by tailoring yours to your members’ goals, you can further increase your ability to retain them.
A great way to help your members reach their goals is to implement a frequency bonus into your current rewards program, or as its own stand-alone component of your business. With a frequency bonus, you can offer points, rewards, discounts, and more to those members of yours that come in a certain number of times a week or a month. This not only helps them make working out at your club a habit (and therefore reach their goals even more quickly), but it also acts as a built-in retention tool. Once your members hit a bonus, they’re going to want to continue to receive those extra points or that discount every month, meaning that they continue to stick with you over the competition.
Another way to help your members reach your goals is to offer incentives or specials during specific hours of the day. Say that one of your members’ goals is to get to the gym at lunchtime. By giving them a little something back (in the form of rewards program points or other prizes) for getting out of the office and showing up, they’re much more likely to continue working toward their goal. The best part for you? Getting your members in the door at hours that you might need more foot traffic.
Retaining your members doesn’t have to be a game of tug of war. By aligning your goals with those of your members, you can reach your retention numbers while your members continue to see results and grow happier with your club.
