You might have opened your gym because of your love of fitness and you wanted to promote healthy living. Maybe you saw an opportunity in your community that wasn’t previously available. Perhaps you have big aspirations for growing your gym into a global chain.
Whatever the reason, chances are that one thing remained the same: you wanted to follow an entrepreneurial lifestyle and earn a living doing something you love.
It’s one thing to have the best facilities, offer cutting-edge rates, and provide members with exceptional customer service. But what do you do if you’re not seeing an uptick in membership sales? Is your sales model not working the way you expected it to? Do you need to overhaul your processes and start from scratch?
Not necessarily.
But gym membership sales are a critical component for getting where you want to go. When you put certain strategies in place to improve gym membership sales, you can do it in an effective way that also provides added benefits to the members you currently have.
To help, we have put together a complete guide on how to improve your gym sales. We’ll cover 12 gym sales strategy to use, from streamlining your joining process to leveraging social media and everything in between.
You’ll be able to see actual improvement all while serving your members, both current and new, with a professional and exceptional experience.
12 Strategies to Improve Your Gym Membership Sales
Marketing might not be where you shine the brightest, but that’s okay. Generating more leads and appealing to a new audience can be done by understanding the market you’re in. Use the passion and experience you have to implement some of this gym sales strategy to see your gym membership reach the next level.
1. Use an AI Chatbot to Generate More Leads from your Website
99% of your website visitors leave the website, never to return. 1% of them who do fill out forms on your website are ready to buy. The rest aren’t. A good way to capture the 99% is to provide an easy way for them to ask questions. When they are still evaluating and shopping around, they are likely to engage with you with questions they have.
But having a web chat widget where you aren’t getting back to them within a few mins, will do you no good. In fact that provides a negative experience in today’s world of instant gratification. A perfect alternative is to use an AI Chatbot such as Gleantap. With advancement in AI and models like GPT-4o, your AI agent can have human-like conversations with your website visitors, answer questions, and book appointments easily. And all of that happens with <1 min response times which provides a stellar experience to your prospects. Also, speed to lead is so important that if you are able to engage your leads within the first 5 mins, they are 9 times more likely to close.
2. Make It Easy for New Members to Join
Since everyone is busy in one way or another, making your sign-up process as efficient as possible is important. The easier it is for potential members to join your gym, the more likely they will.
There’s nothing that can deter a potential member more than having to book an appointment or sit down for an extended period of time for you to take all their information. They want it done as quickly as possible so they can do what they came for.
And you want that, too.
An online sign-up form can be a good place to start. You can even include the rest of the paperwork, like having them sign the contract, in an email or another digital format. By making the process straightforward and clear it will save everyone time in the long run.
Basically, remove any pain points and make the entire sign-up process simple.
3. Use the Power of Social Media (Instagram & TikTok)
Other than searching for websites and reading through online reviews, social media is going to be one of the most common places to get in front of a new audience. Plus, it’s an incredible opportunity to establish a following and an active community.
Leverage your social media channels to enhance the brand experience and have it leave a positive first impression. You can even have current members leave positive reviews so potential members know that your gym is worth signing up for.
The social media algorithm favors users who post regularly. Start by consistently creating content – this could be photos of your facilities, amenities, happy customers or just motivational quotes. You can also create quick and easy videos yourself at the gym using your phone or make it a fun competition among your employees to generate more videos. The more consistently you post, the more you get picked up by the algorithm and you start to more drive organic traffic to your page.
4. Improve SEO with Better Google Reviews
Use a Review Management Software to automatically collect reviews from your customers. You can automate that using a trigger such as a check-in, or a class completion. So first time a customer checks in or completes a class, they get asked to review.
Its an easy way to drive a ton of positive reviews to your google listing automatically which helps you rank better on Google. With better ranking on Google, you’ll drive a lot more organic traffic and leads.
You can also leverage AI SEO softwares such as Ranklytics to publish better content and reverse engineer what it takes to rank for certain keywords.
5. Identify Your Gym’s Target Market
Knowing who you want to attract as a new member will help you narrow your focus on how to attract them. It can be a huge challenge to stand out and compete with all the other gyms in your area. So how are you going to set yourself apart?
Think about the reasons why new members should consider joining your gym and the services you offer that they won’t find anywhere else.
It could be the classes you offer with fully licensed personal trainers, your state-of-the-art facility, or even the sense of community you have built with your current members.
Whatever it is, understanding your gym’s niche is important.
6. Make Sure Your Employees are Trained Properly
A receptionist or someone that works at the front desk is often going to be the first point of contact with new and existing members. Ensuring they’re well-trained with the information they need is crucial. They can easily and helpfully answer any potential questions when needed.
And this should translate to all the other members of your team. Making sure that employees know how to sell is important to help improve sales and it’s a big part of gym membership strategies.
You might have to hold a few training sessions on upselling or cross-selling, but the benefits of properly training your employees can’t be underestimated. It can be to sell a new membership to someone or it can even be to upsell a current member to a new membership level.
7. Understand Your Competition
You’re not just going to copy what your competitors are doing because what you offer is unique and you want to stand out. However, understanding your competition will allow you to recognize all the ways your fitness center is different.
This is important information to know so you can highlight your strengths and leverage them to attract new members. Do you offer the best fitness classes with a range of options for members to choose from? Maybe you have the best equipment or the most experienced trainers.
Put some thought into what sets your gym apart. From here, you will have a better idea as to why your gym is different from your competition. These are good gym sales strategies and they give clients an actionable reason to join your gym.
8. Understand the Needs of Your Prospects
While some of the most common reasons someone might join a gym are to build muscle, get in shape or lose some weight, there can often be other reasons for someone to join.
Exercising regularly has been proven to provide both physical and mental benefits. So even if some people want to get ripped, others might want to improve their overall health without having to regularly lift weights.
Take some time and try to implement a few ways to understand members, both potential and current, to understand what they need. You’ll not only be able to provide what matters to them most, but you’ll also be able to have a real connection which will help build a loyal community.
9. Include Personalization as Part of the Selling Experience
Since the gym and fitness landscape is incredibly competitive, brands have started to offer more of a personalized approach to attract new members. Previously, it was a single fitness membership fee that customers would pay.
But now, there are even more ways for you to stand out and appeal to the specific reason someone might want to join your fitness center.
Not everyone wants to run on the treadmill or lift weights. So if you offer other services such as personal training or fitness classes, then this can be a great way to personalize the entire selling experience.
10. Track Your Sales
If you don’t know where your business currently stands in regards to sales, how are you supposed to know if you need to make changes? By understanding current sales figures you can adjust as you move forward to address any needs.
Tracking your sales can also be a good way to identify where leads are in the sales funnel.
11. Show Off Your Strengths
What makes your gym stand out from the rest? Why should people sign up for a fitness membership? What value are they going to receive and what are the benefits they’ll get in return?
It could be that you have the best personal trainers in the area or you offer extra services, like spa treatments, hot tubs, saunas, and massage therapists.
Maybe your gym has a sense of community that can’t be found at other gyms or that you’re always offering the best fitness programs and classes.
Whatever it is, highlighting and showing off the strengths of your gym will let you stand out from the rest of the competition. And there’s no limit to how you can do this, either. You can promote new services or hold giveaway contests on social media. You could even hold pop-up events in the community where people can stop by and ask questions.
12. Use a Referral Program
Referral programs are powerful gym sales strategies. It’s a win-win for everyone that’s involved.
Think about it like this: other than checking out online reviews and looking through social media, how are people hearing about a gym that can provide them with what they want?
They’re speaking with friends and family.
Implement a referral program that rewards current members for enticing someone new to sign up for a membership at your gym. It’s an incentive-based way to not only increase sales but showcase the value and benefits that someone new can receive.
You can offer free clothing or workout gear, free fitness classes, or even a discounted membership rate for current members who get someone new to sign up through the referral program – lowering gym membership cost for them. You can even take it a step further by offering new members a discounted rate on their first month if they commit to a longer-term membership.
Additional Important Strategies to Improve Your Gym Membership Sales
Now that you have our 12 gym sales strategies, here are a few more that may help take your fitness center sales to the next level:
Implement Paid Advertising
Increase your fitness membership sales by implementing paid advertising. The great thing about paid ads is that you can use them across multiple platforms, but the big ones are social media and Google ads.
Paid ads should always be set up with relevant fitness center-related keywords. They should also be location-based. This way, you will target people looking specifically for gyms in your area – making the lead higher quality.
Use Email Marketing
If you have a marketing strategy, you should have email marketing in it. It’s a great way to get personal with members and build retention and loyalty. Your email marketing plan doesn’t have to be complex – it just has to keep members engaged.
A simple encouragement to join a new fitness class or use a promo code for new merchandise will suffice. Communication can justify gym membership costs for members.
Track Leads and Sales Records
Keeping track of leads and sales during the sales process is vital. Why? When you start increasing your fitness membership sales, you will want to know where each sale came from to know which marketing efforts were most effective for you.
Although tracking can be a tedious process, the process is streamlined with the right gym management software.
Simplify Your Registration & Payment Process
To acquire more gym members – you’ll need to make the registration and payment process as simple as possible. People shy away from complicated forms – so ensure enrolment is straightforward.
Keep your sign-up form short, and don’t ask for too many details. People should be able to sign up in minutes.
Key Takeaways
Relying on current gym membership sales is only going to take your business so far. At some point, some members are going to leave or cancel their memberships for any number of reasons. This is why knowing how to improve your gym membership sales is critical for long-term business success.
Even if you opened your gym because you have a passion for fitness and living a healthy lifestyle, you still want to earn a profit along the way. And it’s not just to make money, either.
When you increase membership sales you have more opportunities to provide extra services and amenities that further the entire customer experience.
This adds value to your members and gives them additional reasons to continue to renew their memberships for months and years to come.
The good news? You now have 12 new gym sales strategy that you can start to incorporate. One of the first things you should put together is a good marketing strategy. From here, having a website that’s easy to use, leveraging the power of social media, and making the sign-up process as efficient as possible are all good places to start.
Plus, understanding your competition and recognizing the needs of your prospects can give powerful information for you to use. You’ll have a better sense of where you stand in the market and have useful insights for other ways to grow membership sales.
Did you enjoy reading this guide? Are you looking for more ways to scale your fitness journey from start to finish? Gleantap helps to simplify everything from your marketing to your sales and everything in between. We make engagement seamless and have the tools to deliver an automated and personalized customer experience.
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