With the wellness and fitness growing leaps and bounds, increasing number of gyms and fitness clubs keep opening up every now and then. In such a cutthroat competitive scenario it is imperative that the business owners, and managers keep a sharp focus on not only retaining existing clients but also on-board new members. While both the processes have to run simultaneously, they do need slightly varied approach. In this blog, we will discuss five top tips that are simple to execute and will ensure that your gyms see a growth in the enrollments. 

Offer a free trial

People often believe in getting a first-hand experience before choosing a service or a membership. Many studies have indicated that often potential clients fence sit in their decision-making process because of being in two minds about whether they would actually use the gym membership or are they selecting the right gym. One of the best ways to eliminate this doubt is to offer potential clients a free trial that is valid for one week. During this week, not only will the clients get a clear picture about the gym but you and your team gets an opportunity to delight them by your expertise and services. 

Keep in touch with potential leads

Although this sounds daunting, but it is important to keep in touch with prospective clients. Believe it or not, but atleast 50% of your new members often come from the group that is your prospective clients. We understand that it is hard to maintain a list of prospective clients and constantly follow up with each of them, and this is why we strongly recommend using the help of technology. Most successful operations are now managed by a gym and fitness studio management software. Some of the top fitness studio software have advanced features and create a common customer data base with complete contact details. The database can be easily segregated into members and potential leads to enable to you follow up with prospects. The cost of acquiring new members through follow ups is far less as compared to the cost of advertising. 

Target Diverse Clients

Often when it comes to gyms, we think that these are places for young folks. However, this is far from reality. Many senior citizens, with expendable income, are increasingly look at gyms as a way to stay healthy or keep their mobility intact. While the young folks would be actively looking at high intensity workouts, the old bunch would be looking at yoga, pilates, zumba to keep their mobility intact. With a little market research, and some clever class scheduling you can target both set of customers. Have your staff engage with clients from all age groups to allay their concerns and reap benefits. An alternative way to increase diversity is to sign up with corporates to promote health and fitness programs. You may consider tie ups with corporates to offer bulk membership discounts and change a sedentary lifestyle to a fit one. 

Deploy Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a great tool to deploy and engage both existing clients and prospects. A gym and fitness studio management software can assist you in your digital marketing game. Whether it comes to sending a fortnightly or a weekly (non-sales) newsletter to clients or suggesting ideas for promotional campaigns the software can easily accomplish it all. By using data analysis to ascertain member preferences, the software can suggest ideas to run targeted marketing campaigns. With complete analysis of each and every campaign, you can effectively understand what marketing technique is working or not working for your business. 

While actively looking for features, it is also important to do a detailed analysis to avoid choosing a wrong gym management software for your business model. As a result, determining the best software for your operations requires a thorough understanding of your business processes.

Certain top fitness studio software such as the one from Zenoti, with its best-in-class reporting feature can help you understand the popularity of the classes or the instructor and suggest whether to increase or decrease frequency. 

Build a community

Using technology to run your business is one technique, but it should not undermine the value of human interaction. As a gym owner or a manager, the responsibility of building a community and fostering relationships lies solely on your shoulders. Multiple studies have indicated that often existing clients do not come back because they don’t find the gym engaging enough. Therefore, managers and owners must be trained to routinely engage with the clients either to discuss their fitness journey or help them find complementing workout partner in the gym. When friendships are forged, the clients are less likely to drop out because there is always external motivation or support available. 

Deploying these five prime techniques have helped many gyms and fitness studios in significantly improving their enrollment count. Aside from increasing the head count, techniques such as building a community has helped retain memberships and also brought in new clients by word of mouth.