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Nov 14
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How to price your fitness services

By Fitness business management archives and news, Fitness industry archives and news, Fitness marketing and social archives and news

How to price your fitness services.  What are your customers willing to pay for your services?  How long and what are they prepared to commit to?

Between now and the end of the year we’re going to take a look at 5 areas to help you Get 2023 ready.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or Twitter to be sure you don’t miss our follow-up posts.

In our first blog post in the series, we thought about how to define your target customer and how that should inform the services you offer.  In this post, we build on that topic to consider the evergreen topic of pricing. Here we focus on your pricing strategy, and in a follow-up post, we’ll get deeper into specific promotional tactics. 

Be aware of bias

Before we think about your business, it’s worth raising a couple of important human characteristics that invariably influence pricing.  The first is a psychological bias known as ‘loss aversion’.  This bias can unconsciously lead you to under-price your services.  The bias entails that we fear loss more than valuing potential gains, so as applied to pricing, it entails that it’s natural to take what you’ve charged to date, or what the competition charge, as a reference point, fear the worse with regards customers’ propensity to not pay or switch services, and undershoot what you could charge.  i.e. you fear the worse when considering a price change rather than accurately weighing that as against the potential upside.

Secondly, there’s an emotional element to pricing for many. One likely strength of your business is its sense of community and your relationships with your customers.  Many may be considered friends who you socialise with.  This can naturally lead to a desire to please/aversion to confrontation and impact your confidence in making price changes, especially in a scenario where you feel funds are tight.

Of course, both of these natural tendencies exist for a reason, they serve us well in many situations, and ultimately you won’t (nor should you) try to ignore them completely but being aware of them can help in driving a more objective assessment of your businesses’ pricing strategy.

Keeping those tendencies in mind, we move to assess two important inputs to your pricing strategy; your business and your customers.

Your business

As you think about pricing your fitness services, you need to start by ensuring you understand the costs that need to be met by the output of your strategy – i.e. to understand your breakeven point.

Your monthly breakeven point should include your desired base income and all venue and marketing costs.  If you know you’ll be quieter in certain months of the year (and have required outgoings for those months) you should factor this into your thinking for busier periods.  A good exercise during this time is to assess your costs for any efficiencies that can be made. This will help you identify the common costs you can reduce (insert link). This is to say, you’d increase your income target in the busier months to make up for the quieter ones.

A second business-level consideration is cash flow. This is really about the timings for incoming and outgoing cash to your business and ensuring that they are aligned.  Generally, there’s a trade-off between offering longer-term (e.g. monthly memberships, courses/blocks) and shorter-term (e.g. pay as you go, class packs) commitment-based products. 

The former strategy gives greater visibility of revenue but the latter, as it’s normally priced at a premium, would be, all things equal, revenue maximising.  The extent to which you want to smooth cash flow versus relying on regular repetitive purchases feeds into how you price the different products you offer.  Of course, what your customers are able and willing to commit also feeds into this.  Quite often the right answer is a blend, but every business is different and should think through the value to them of each.

Your customers

With your breakeven point and cash flow needs to be established, we’d recommend experimenting with different pricing and customer purchasing numbers on paper or a basic spreadsheet.  From this, you can begin to get a feel for what range of pricing and demand meets your breakeven point and generate some ideas from which to evolve your thinking.

You can now look at your pricing ideas from your customers’ (and target customers’) perspective.  Assessing willingness to pay is difficult but using your customer profile from our first post in the series and reviewing, if applicable, how customer retention changed after a previous price change will all feed into your overall conclusion.  Trying to place them (generalised) on a 1-10 sensitivity scale may help.  If you think they are highly sensitive then you may also want to consider what the local competition is doing and pay some attention to that. This is not to say you match or undercut, more just be sure that the value you offer can be clearly communicated in comparison.

Once you’ve formed a view on price sensitivity you can overlay that against your range of high-low pricing and product commitment (long v short-term options) models to conclude what makes sense for your business.

Track and review

As you launch your new strategy, be sure to regularly review how it’s performing and consider whether the assumptions you’ve made throughout this process are holding true.

Having followed a logical process, you should feel confident in the strategy and launch.  That said, as the above has revealed, determining a sound pricing structure requires you to make reasonable assumptions across often inferred preferences, so ultimately you can’t be 100% certain on how a new offering or changes will land.  As such, how you communicate price changes is also important – our 5th blog post in this series will come back to the subject of messaging.  So, as you launch, stay close to your customers as you launch it and watch for feedback. 

‘Watch’ is the right word, because stated versus revealed preferences can be very different here.  For example, I might indicate that I’m upset about a price rise, but if I still pay/keep coming there’s perhaps a reality that I can’t be that upset about it.  Indeed, it may be that you’d weigh that type of feedback from customers more than others.

With your base pricing strategy now established, we’ll build on these considerations in our next post and look at how you can evolve your pricing tactics to add incentives for current and target customers.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or Twitter to see when it drops in the coming week!

Ollie is the founder of Gymcatch, a booking and customer management software company. Visit gymcatch.com/pricing for pricing information.

For more information on Gymcatch personal training booking software and how it can help your business get in touch to book a demo or start a free trial.

Nov 07
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How to define your target customer

By Fitness business management archives and news, Gym and studios, HIIT and group, Pilates, Yoga

Who are you targeting as new customers? What do they want from their fitness provider?

Between now and the end of the year we’re going to take a look at 5 areas to help you Get 2023 ready.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or Twitter to be sure you don’t miss our follow-up posts.

In the first post of our series, we look at why it’s important to define your target customer and how to do it.

As you plan for 2023 it’s a good idea to take a step back and think about your perfect customer.  Your customer profile informs everything at your business; what products/packages you offer, your pricing and marketing strategy.  We’ll explore those wider theme’s later in this series, but let’s first think about how to build that profile.

The best place to start is by interviewing, or at least thinking about, a selection of your customers that you’d consider ‘ideal’. How you conduct your research is up to you, you could use a free online survey tool, paper questionnaires or even just write down based on your personal knowledge (we know many instructors know their customer base very well!).

Below we explain the four most important factors to consider when building your ideal customer profile.

  1. Demographics

These are personal pieces of information that describe who we are as individuals and include age range, sex, income range, education, and family status. 

  1. Attitudes

These are lifestyle considerations and focus on what habits they follow, and what goals and pain points they have.  What values and interests do they have?

  1. Actions

This is about behaviour.  Consider how, when and what products those customers buy and potentially ask what they’d like to see added.

  1. Location

With the shift towards working from home, this consideration is particularly relevant.  Consider where your perfect customer is based at different times of the day.

With those questions answered, you can build something like this below (not that it needs to be made pretty!)

From here you can do two things:

  • Review your service and product offering in light of attitudes and location
  • Think about where to find new customers

Reviewing your service offering

Whilst there’s every chance that your current services meet your target customers’ attitudes and location you should take the opportunity to review this regularly. Asking yourself a few simple questions can help:

  • Do all of the services you’ve offered in the past still make sense?
  • Do the buying habits (what’s bought and when) reveal anything about what you should increase or decrease?
  • Do your services accurately map to what your customers state they want?
  • Are there any additions that would better fit or complement their revealed preferences?
  • Do the times of day you offer your services fit their routines?
  • Is there a better or additional location you could use that would better fit their routines?

Think about where to find new customers

With your customer profile built you can now begin to think about marketing tactics:

  • Who would they trust for health/fitness advice or recommendations?
  • Where (digitally / in-person) do they hang out?
  • How best to leverage customer referrals?
  • Are there any local/corporate business opportunities to access them?

This may take some time, and some further research so begins to build that understanding in the next couple of weeks as we review the other building blocks of your business. Making notes on your phone, or having a pad with you to jot ideas down as they come to you is also a good idea.

With your ideal customer profile built and service offering reviewed in our second blog post we’ll move on to consider pricing.  Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or Twitter to see when it drops in the coming week!

Nov 01
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5 key considerations for managing block bookings or courses

By Dance, Fitness business management archives and news, Fitness industry archives and news, Gym and studios, Pilates, Yoga

In this blog, we consider when to sell sessions in courses or blocks, how best to maximise their operational efficiency, and block-to-block customer retention.

Are courses or blocks right for your customer?

A common theme in our business management content is to start with your customer.  We make no apologies for this, when thinking about your business model you should always start with an assessment of your customer or target customer.

When reviewing whether a course/block of sessions is right for your customers it helps to consider a few headline questions:

  • Do you assess your client’s progress frequently or set short-term milestones?
  • Is there a scheduling reason that courses/blocks may suit your customer better than other models (i.e. pay-as-you-go/memberships)? For example, are you targeting parents that have more availability during school term time?  Or kids where it’s often vice versa?
  • Can your customers afford larger one-offs, or twice over-term payments?
  • Would a perceived lack of flexibility in scheduling put them off?
  • What, if any, service would customers want when you’re not running courses?

When considering these questions, it is perhaps not surprising that many of our business customers who operate this model do so because:

  • They focus on parents as a demographic, effectively dove-tailing with school terms
  • The structure is particularly popular with Pilates and yoga modalities
  • Other programs where clear end results over a period are a focus often use them, with many personal trainers offering either 1-2-1 or small group training courses/blocks.

Your decision-making process can, of course, also be supported by considering whether alternative business models would work better:

  • In instances where courses/blocks make the most sense, it’s often the case that a membership model might be perceived by your customers as too long-term, or a waste of money (as regular commitments mean it wouldn’t get used for much of the year)
  • Whilst pay-as-you-go can supplement course income, running that by itself may also be seen as lacking a desired certainty of attendance for customers and, indeed, income for you as the business owner.  

How to think about retention

A reason we often hear for using memberships over courses is that the former encourages greater retention, as it doesn’t require a regular review / re-purchase. With this, it’s assumed that by surfacing the buying decision regularly you can increase the chances for the customer to cancel/not re-buy.

In our experience, and based on the data we see, this is not a valid assumption, and we believe it rests on some antiquated thinking.  Whilst memberships are absolutely a great model for many businesses, having a recurring, ongoing, payment does not in itself increase customer retention.  Customers are now, perhaps more so than ever, very aware of their outgoings and rights with regards to cancellation.  Just because a payment is automated does not mean that it is unknown or unnoticed.

In our experience, when businesses build a course-centric customer base the ongoing requirement to commit to the next course/block serves to increase retention.  This is because it introduces a ‘fear of missing out’.  This is to say that customers can be made aware that spaces are limited, the course is popular, and if they don’t recommit then they may lose their space with no guarantee they’ll get it back.  This in turn increases their propensity to turn up to sessions and make use of their allocated space.  It therefore actually serves to have a positive impact on accountability, far more so than with a membership where the available sessions are entirely optional/bookable.

In addition, you can increase the ‘fear of missing out’ by layering extra privileges on buyers of your past course/blocks.  For instance, you could offer a priority purchasing window for your next course/block that’s only accessible to those that bought the previous one.  This adds immediacy to the buying decision and, again, drives repeated attendance and accountability which will assist in retention (our industry-leading Priority Access feature can help here).

How to handle swaps and drop-ins?

One understandable gripe we repeatedly hear on our consults is the time it takes many to administer week-to-week swaps when courses/blocks are running.  Illness, transport, childcare, and holidays are common themes that can cause customers to miss scheduled sessions and want to swap into different courses/blocks’ weekly sessions.

Whatever you decide to set for your cancellation policy for sessions, if you’re offering a swap/credit, the process needs to be easy and manageable.  Ensure you find a system (e.g. Gymcatch) that can handle the customer canceling and rebooking of their spot (where there’s availability) across courses/blocks without having to contact you.

With regards to drop-ins, these can be a nice way to both enable swaps, but also boost income if your course isn’t full.  The main thing here is to ensure that you’re not opening up too many spots too early (i.e. too far before their start time).  It’s important to remember that for every drop-in you sell, that reduces your total course capacity (until that session is complete) by one.  So drop-ins at premium pricing are really best used either when they’re made available close to the start date of the session, or if there’s considerable excess capacity in the course.

What to do outside of course term time?

Where courses/blocks are run across school terms, we see two approaches to non-term time.  One approach is to leave the calendar clear.  This can give customers a break, and the flexibility to manage childcare without feeling like they’re missing out or, guilt for non-attendance.  This can also give the business owner some valuable time to refocus on pre-marketing the next courses/blocks and general admin that’s difficult to do during the period of delivery.  If you hire space and variable business costs, it can also mean that you don’t necessarily continue to incur in-term overheads.

The second option we see deployed successfully is for a more flexible set-up over the period.  This might be where you allow only pay as you go, or class pack / bundle-bought sessions.  This can be a great way to boost non-term time income and gives those that want to maintain their routine the ability to do so, all without in any way prejudicing those that can’t.

How to launch or migrate to a new booking system?

If your booking system doesn’t allow for all of the above, then there’s potentially a decision to be made to migrate to one that does.

If you are moving from pen and paper, then planning a launch in between courses/blocks is no doubt a good strategy and can ensure everything kicks off with minimum disruption.  If you’re not digitally confident look for 1-2-1 onboarding as part of the offer.  At Gymcatch, we pride ourselves on ensuring that all customers receive the onboarding support they need.

If you are migrating from a system that doesn’t provide these solutions, or that you’re over-paying for, then thinking about the following can be helpful:

  • When are you going to switch?  Again, in between courses/blocks can make a lot of sense, but equally the system may be able to import/add customers to existing courses/blocks, which may make for a gradual switchover while you’re still seeing customers regularly face-to-face to smooth the inevitable (if hopefully infrequent) questions that come up.
  • Can you import customer data and create their accounts for them?
  • Is it easy for customers to claim their accounts?

We hope you found the post useful.  If you would like to speak about the above and discuss your online booking software and your fitness bootcamp booking software needs, please book a free consultation here or if you’d like to give Gymcatch a go for free for 1 month, please get started here.

Sep 28
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ASFA® and Gymcatch announce strategic partnership

By Fitness business management archives and news, Fitness industry archives and news

The American Sports and Fitness Association® is pleased to announce its new partnership with Gymcatch. By providing great value gym booking software and customer management software for fitness and wellness businesses, ASFA® recognizes Gymcatch’s commitment to making participation easier for all.

As a leading Personal Trainer & Fitness Certification provider, ASFA® recognizes and appreciates the need for companies like Gymcatch who create easy-to-use, affordable tools that help our customers manage their businesses, enabling them to do more of what they do best: bring exercise to their community.  We are delighted to offer our community 20% off their first 12 months on the service with code ASFA20. You can find out more about the service and register here.

Additionally, we are excited to proudly display Gymcatch’s logo on ASFA’s Partner Page with other leaders in the industry such as MyCPR NOW™ – the leading online CPR and First Aid Certification provider, Human Kinetics – the leader in fitness texts and manuals provider, Berxi – a Berkshire Hathaway company and more than 100 gym chains and fitness institutions.

For more information on Gymcatch fitness and wellness booking software and how it can help your business get in touch to book a demo or start a free month.

 

Jun 30
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Image for Referrals blog post

How to create a referral programme

By Dance, Fitness marketing and social archives and news, Gym and studios, HIIT and group, Pilates, Yoga

A referral programme is a very cost-effective and low risk way to reward your loyal customers for recommending new ones. It’s a very powerful marketing tactic to get existing customers to talk about you and help you acquire new ones.

According to a Nielsen report 83% of people trust their friends’ opinions. Although an old cliché, people buy from people, and that’s because there is immediate confidence and credibility to their testimonial. Led by trust, these future customers have the potential to quickly convert.

In summary, these are the key benefits to a referral programme:

  • Turns customers into loyal ones
  • Helps you build on your testimonials
  • Expands your reach and awareness
  • Converts leads into customers faster

If you are now ready to set up your referral programme and are looking for ideas, this blog is for you, and to make it easy we’ve broken it down into a 4 step guide with inspirational ideas you may want to consider.

  1. Set the goal you want to achieve with your referral programme

    Before you get started, decide on what you want to achieve with your programme. You want this to be clear and measurable. Acquiring new customers may not be your goal or what you want by the end of it. Some businesses will be looking at increasing sales or loyalty to get more advocates and improve on retention. Once you have decided on your goal, think about how you will be measuring progress and what are your referral sources.

  2. Decide on your incentive or reward

    The most successful way to get this right is to encourage insight from your customers to determine what incentive or reward will motivate them. Non-cash incentives such as in-store credits or priority access boost customer retention and sales. You don’t want to spend endless hours tracking and calculating incentives manually. Instead automate as much of this work as possible to save yourself valuable time. Choosing a conversion event, for example, the reward is applicable once the customer has booked a class or session with you and made full payment. This will eliminate any doubts and set the boundaries for when claiming a reward.

  3. Decide on your advocates

    The most critical part of the programme is choosing customers that are as passionate as you are about what you do and know your brand. Share your mission with them and draw some parameters. Work out the tags or hashtags and key messages you want them sharing.Consider the following:
    Who do you want to target?
    What do you need them to do?
    How can they achieve this?

  4. Promote your referral programme

    Tell your customers about your programme, chances are they aren’t aware and/or need reminding. Your most loyal customers should be your first place to get started. These are people that love your classes or sessions and have probably already advocated your business more than once before. However, make it easy for your customers to share your services and get rewarded. Social media has become a popular channel to share information and get the word out, but it has to be a simple process for both the referrer and referee, or they will lose interest.

A referral programme creates a win-win situation for all. Your existing clients get rewarded, feel valued, and you get quality leads for new customers. The more customers you get to tell their friends about your classes or appointments the more opportunity for new business you create.

Need inspiration?
Take a look at what some brands are doing!

Uber
Uber’s referral programme has 2 parts. Uber gives drivers and riders a unique referral code to share with friends interested in creating a driver or rider account. When a referral is successful a payment reward is made.
In parallel, they run a user referral programme too that works very similarly. When a user shares their code with a friend and that friend signs up they both get their next trip for free.

Dropbox
Dropbox allows you to earn extra free storage space when you invite friends to try it out. Basic accounts get 500 MB per referral and can earn up to 16GB. Plus accounts get 1 GB and earn up to 32 GB per referral.

How do referrals work on Gymcatch?
There are many ways to use Gymcatch’s features to run a successful referral programme and reward your customers. Our Discount Codes bolt-on, for example, allows customers to invite their friends and family at a fixed amount or percentage off. This is great when wanting to encourage loyalty and improve retention.

You can also use bundles and make them available for purchase for a limited time and remove it from sale at the end of the offer period. These are included as part of the base plan and although mean a little more planning are very easy to set up.

Our own referral programme means customers get rewarded with 2 free months and receive a cash reward when referring a new business. The referred business gets an extra free month directly into their account when registering with us.

For more information on Gymcatch and how it can help your yoga, pilates, dance or personal training business. Get in contact to book a demo or start a free month.

Jun 13
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Why is the right insurance policy essential?

By Uncategorised

Fitness Professionals Ltd (FitPro) gives us the lowdown on choosing insurance that’s right for you.

You have a brilliant booking system, cool client management software and the tools to save you time, increase your revenue and grow your community through Gymcatch. You’re on to a winner. But what happens if the old phrase ‘break a leg’ comes to fruition in one of your classes?

Insurance is an essential string to your bow as a fitness industry professional. It gives you peace of mind. It’s the reassurance that, if the worst were to happen, it is there to assist you and enable you to continue to deliver your classes and sessions.

It’s vitally important to select a highly reliable insurance policy that provides the depth of cover needed to enable you to deliver a range of activities and adapt to the changing demands of the fitness industry. You need to check that the insurance includes cover for the relevant fitness-related activities you’re undertaking, includes worldwide cover if you’re teaching overseas, and is through a reputable insurer.

At FitPro, we’ve been offering instructor public liability insurance protection for over 30 years. We’re continually reviewing our products to ensure they are in line with the needs of fitness industry professionals and the burgeoning industry trends.

Whether you are live-streaming from home, training clients via Zoom, delivering pre-programmed video content, working in gyms, studios and community facilities, working outdoors in parks, gardens and beaches, or mixing it up depending on the weather, the FitPro insurance scheme has you covered. We share tips, advice and information via our social media channels and blogs on an ongoing basis to keep our members up to date with new developments.

The FitPro Instructor Public and Teacher Liability insurance is designed for qualified fitness industry professionals who hold a supporting qualification in their area of instruction, and also for students who are working towards gaining an instructor qualification.

Teaching online

Since 2020, online training has been really big business and, at FitPro, we’re ready to support you with comprehensive insurance.

To be covered for online training, you must:

  • work within your area of knowledge and expertise, supported by a nationally accredited instructor qualification
  • pre-screen participants before each session
  • include a disclaimer
  • follow the appropriate health and safety guidelines
  • ensure that any children/minors participating are supervised throughout the online fitness session by an adult.

You can find out more about FitPro’s cover for online training here.

Suppose the worst happens?

Our customers know that, as long as they are insured with us, we are there to support them. FitPro is committed to providing the most comprehensive cover there is out there. Underwritten by Aviva, the FitPro insurance scheme gives you piece of mind – knowing that one of the UK’s largest insurers stands behind us.

Are you looking for insurance to work in the fitness industry?

See FitPro’s range of insurance schemes available here.

Alternatively, to find out more about FitPro’s insurance policies, speak to a member of our insurance team on 020 8586 8635 or via info@fitpro.com

For information on our fitness bootcamp booking software and how Gymcatch can help visit our business page.

 

 

 

Feb 02
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Thinking of scaling up your fitness business online?

By Fitness industry archives and news

Launching an online fitness business is a super effective way to scale up your operation quickly and reach out to more clients. However, this can be a daunting prospect for most as they can feel a little overwhelmed trying to catch up with this ever more popular online revenue stream.

Many fitness professionals are still attached to costly group-ex format licence fees that do not allow them to invest in their own online booking software. Others may lack the know-how or confidence to run online fitness classes as an effective business proposition. And many don’t have the flexibility to choose how or where they teach as their current programme’s limitations.

Technology today means you can download an app to help you structure your classes and deliver a killer workout from anywhere in the world, whether that is live, virtually or on-demand.

“Creating premium digital content takes time and can be very expensive. We are on mission at SH1FT to make digital first solutions for fitness instructors looking to launch or expand their business online. SH1FT instructors are fully supported to create their digital presence and teach where, when and how they want,” says Will Brereton, Founder of SH1FT.

 

How to use tech to improve your fitness services

With the environment now stabilizing, fitness instructors are breathing a welcomed sigh of relief as they have had to adapt to so many changes fast in the past few years. There is a number, however, perhaps the most engaged online or who have been running that online experience for longer, who are now looking at how they can use tech to access data to improve their services and take their business to the next level. 

In his latest podcast, Will says “your customers expect to be able to use your products your services in a variety of ways, both offline and digital. So we know that digital fitness is here to stay, and that it will form part of what your consumers are looking for.”

However, if you’re one of the many instructors that’s found maintaining momentum with your digital teaching difficult, you are in good company.

SH1FT is working with Gymcatch to provide group instructors with the tools they need to take bookings, payments and manage their business in the most cost-effective way.

What is SH1FT?

SH1FT is the brainchild of Will Brereton who wanted to build a global community of Group Fitness Instructors that strive to create ‘fitness for life’ so that their class goers can feel great at any age, with anybody. SH1FT is founded on three main values:

TRAIN SMARTER, NOT HARDER: Hard work doesn’t have to be hard on your body. We use smart, safe and simple progressions to ensure that all levels of fitness can be catered for in a single group.
FITNESS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR SUMMER: We believe fitness is about feeling great in your own skin…for the long term!
FOR ANYBODY, WITH ANY BODY: We create workouts that are non-intimidating, simple and inclusive (not to mention fun!).

SH1FT has created a collection of Group Fitness formats that Instructors use to teach live, online, and blended classes. Each workout is taught using their own market-leading App which automates the boring stuff (saving huge amounts of time and money) and gives Instructors an easy and fast way to customise workouts that are unique to them. Instructors are empowered to deliver engaging, personalised fitness classes where, when, and how they want – with zero restrictions.

Jan 10
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6 fitness business ideas to consider in the New Year

By Fitness business management archives and news

If you are a fitness or wellness professional looking for new business ideas to kick-start the New Year, we have highlighted below the key takeaways from our most recent Facebook Live with Anna Martin, owner of AMF World; and Elle Linton, fitness professional, influencer and blogger.

1. Flex to impress

Flexibility has become part of the norm for businesses operating in periods of disruption. With the help of technology, our businesses are better prepared to adapt to the changing circumstances and needs of our customers, allowing us to go from face-to-face to virtual classes seamlessly.

“It’s important to get to know the ebbs and flows of your customers. Get to know them and understand how things are impacting them,” says Elle Linton.

Taking your fitness business online seems like an obvious choice when it comes to preparing for the future and planning to reach out to a wider audience. Virtual classes are a great way to add extra flexibility to your services and promoting them through your social channels is a natural strategy to consider. Your customers are your ambassadors and will help with sharing the work you do, if they are online, they will amplify your message and give you a big boost.

“Referrals through word of mouth are what keeps us going. You want to be so good that your customers talk about you at the dinner party,” says Anna Martin.

2. Making the hybrid model work

The new post-Covid19 customer is spoilt for choice; with some looking for the convenience virtual classes bring whilst others favour 1-2-1 or small group sessions, or a mixture of all.

Allowing for both can help retain customers and attract new ones.

Virtual fitness classes or sessions are a faster revenue channel too as running costs are lower and you can reach out to more people. Monetising from your workout videos and online content is a great way to increase revenue streams and enhance the services you offer.

“Make use of the quieter times to pre-record as much content as possible. Set aside a couple of days to record and edit your videos,” says Anna Martin.

3. Packaging and pricing your fitness services

Structure your packages in a way that is simple and manageable, for both you and your clients. Offering a membership is a great way to build recurrent revenue and get your clients to stick for longer.

“Don’t give your clients endless choice. They want to be told what they need to do, the easier you present this to them the more engaged they will be,” says Elle Linton. 

If you are considering raising your prices next year, think of the extra value you can add and make this proposition a very attractive one. Undersell your services and you can quickly be missing out in generating income that could have already been there.

4. Find ways to diversify your income

There are many ways to diversify your income as a fitness professional. Affiliations, referrals, merchandise, advertising, content etc are all great ways to generate more income.

“If the pandemic has taught us one thing is not to have all your eggs in one basket, just in case one fails,” says Elle Linton.

Look for opportunities that may enhance your work.

5. Retaining clients is cheaper than acquiring new ones

Focusing your efforts in getting new clients can be taxing and expensive. Instead, why not focus on your existing clients?

‘It’s more financial beneficial to get existing clients to spend more with you,” says Elle Linton.

Returning customers are crucial to a business’ growth. Make them feel special and they are more likely to spend more with you. For example, add rewards to your customer engagement plan to celebrate milestones. These don’t have to be expensive, a social media shoutout is a great low-cost way to do this.

“Create a community online and offline and get them talking. Returning customers are more likely too to bring you new customers,” says Anna Martin.

6. How to share your story

One of the many benefits of social media is that everything is visible. You can now see what the competition are up to in a couple of clicks. It is a great space to have a snoop around and gain ideas for your own business.

“Once you have figured out your voice use social media to amplify it. Use other tech sources too such as Pinterest to get inspiration and figure out how you want to come across” says Elle Linton.

For more information on Gymcatch fitness bootcamp booking software and how it can help your yoga, pilates, dance or personal training business. Get in contact to book a demo or start a free month,

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