Post-pandemic there’s been a lot to deal with – changed customer habits, rampant inflation and the resultant cost of living pressures. For many, it’s been firefighting, but now nearing the New Year it’s a great time to look forward, and reassess your plans, processes and business model to ensure you’re set up for a banner year.
In this blog, we explore how Gymcatch can help – whether you’ve an existing booking system or not.
Save money
Our sector is different. At the end of the month, what’s left in the bank is invariably our business owner’s salary, so costs matter in a way they don’t for many decision-makers in other industries.
At Gymcatch we’re on a mission to provide industry-specific software at a price that everyone can afford. We are proud to be the best value offering on the market. As you review your costs, we suggest:
- If you have a booking system, check out our pricing page to see how we compare and ask us any questions to see if we can save you money.
- If you don’t have a system, jot down how much time you spend a week on managing your bookings / chasing payments as well as estimating how much you might lose from missing payments, no shows or refunds (which can all be automated!). Even without the saved lost revenue, if you assign even minimum wage to your time, we’re confident Gymcatch will more than pay for itself.
Review your business model
It’s a great time to review your business model, and think about whether it’s meeting your customers’ needs, maximising your revenue opportunity and, indeed, if your booking system can grow with you.
A few well-known ideas would include:
- Offering class packs to improve cash flow.
- Adding courses/blocks to generate new sources of revenue.
- Add memberships to smooth cash flow and improve retention.
Lesser known, but an increasingly popular trend is to differentiate client packages by providing priority session access. As with live streaming or adding on-demand resources, gating who can see what and when can be a great way to add chargeable value without having to work harder or increase your costs.
Reviewing who and what permissions you give to any team members can also be a super way to save time and delegate some of your day-to-day.
Improve conversions and reduce lost revenue
We know that a good percentage of the industry still operate manually, using email/text and pen and paper (or spreadsheets), so it’s worth repeating a long held rationale for going digital – if a customer can’t book immediately, or has to wait for a reply, you’re dramatically increasing the chances that they lose the buying intent to commit or arrange something else for the scheduled time.
By adding digital bookings that can be booked at any time of the day and anywhere you increase you can notably increase your conversion rates. Similarly, it’s important customers can do that easily, but also in the format they’re used to. If customers are used to running their life through apps on their phone, they expect to have the ability to do that with their fitness provider.
Automating wait lists and credit backs in line with your cancellation policy are other ways a quality booking system can help you improve booking conversions and avoid unnecessarily lost revenue.
Make referrals easy
If you’re like us here at Gymcatch, most of your customers come from referrals. Making it easy for customers to share details about a session and the link to book on makes good business sense – if you don’t have a digital presence, you’re adding extra steps and hassle to a potential referrer.
We’re focused on helping business owners to streamline their workflows, save time and grow their business. Please get in touch via our live chat (icon bottom right) or book a free consultation if you’d like to talk through how we can help.
I am a marketing and business development professional with experience in delivering successful marketing strategies for client acquisition and retention. I have a passion for building engaged communities across different channels working with partners to amplify messaging. Ene’s focus at Gymcatch is on growing and maximising strategic partnerships through business collaboration.
