The Covid-19 Gym closure should be your opportunity to shine
You are right to be thinking that this pandemic has had an incredible impact on our industry. Despite all the efforts there will be casualties in this crisis and business owners will lose their clubs. As we know know, the industry is not awash with cash, many clubs are independent operators living month to month and the loss of revenues that this will cause could very well send them under.
However, that does not have to be you and there are ways to ensure you survive and thrive once we are able to re-open. The key is to take a pragmatic view of your business and work out what works for you and then ensure you do this well. I have tried to highlight a few options that you have available:
Should Members continue to pay?
You should be able to answer this question by simply asking whether you are still providing a service? If you are maintaining an online service with at home workouts, online classes, nutrition advice then you are well placed to ask members to continue to pay.
I am not sure you can enforce this contractually though and so should be offering people the option to freeze if they prefer. The best way to ensure that only those paying receive the services you offer is to create a private Facebook group and only allow access to those members continuing to pay.
The point to stress here is, if your services won't live up to expectations then don't deliver them. A poor service, poor deliver will only cause members to leave, if they cancel their Direct Debit getting them back will be very difficult.
Stopping your main source of income is a massive decision for your business and should not be taken lightly. However, if you cant maintain or deliver a service continuing to take money may actually be more detrimental in the long term.
The industry is about to undergo a massive change, with online services taking over, well at least for the next few months, the challenge now is how you manage this short term change so it does not impact you long term
What help is available?
We all know the Government has attempted to put in place options to help businesses. Not all these are working as they should and we hope that in the next few weeks action will be taken to change this. However from what I can establish the following options are there
The following link highlights everything the Chancellor has set out:
Government Guidance
Should you offer online classes?
For obvious reasons almost every clubs is getting their teams to deliver online classes. I have seen some amazing efforts and some that lets say, do not offer the best version of the clubs personality.
The question as to whether you should offer them really comes down to whether what you are delivering is worth while and drives your brand and member retention. The other challe
If what you are offering is not the best reflection of your club, its staff and the clubs personality then surely you would be better to point your members in the direction of online sites that do deliver great online classes. There are plenty out there that would not push your clients into the hands of competitors but would offer a better service for members than possibly you can provide.
This does not mean you don't continue to communicate with members, what it does do though is offer them training tools that allow them to maintain their training
Should you offer online Personal Training?
Absolutely!, there should be no reason why your coaches/trainers can't continue to offer 1-1 services. This may take some practice and planning but every personal trainer should be looking to continue their sessions and services.
Where clients don't like the idea of a zoom session, then home workouts, nutrition planning etc should be the main products.
You may have to review prices and the deliver but I strongly believe that online personal training will see a massive boost by the end of this. Personal trainers should really be looking to jump on board or they will miss a massive opportunity
What communications should I be sending out?
You should be looking to send out some form of communication every week. This can include:
- Newsletters
- Nutrition advise sheets
- Work outs of the week
- Members questionnaires
- Offer free home work out advice
- Ask for positive news stories
Should clubs should look to continue their social media activity
In a world ruled by content, social media and internet marketing this has to be a definite yes. Don't slow down your social media activity, keep posting regularly, keep your business and brand in the face of the consumers. With huge swaiths of the population now stuck at home, social media use is sky rocketing. You need to get out from the norm and try different things
What this closure does do though is allow you to be more creative with your posts
You don't have enough club content anymore to drive your social so look for new idea's
- Positive news stories from round the world - people love to share the
- Member challenges and encourage them to post their own videos
- Great content you have seen from other pages
- Motivational words
- Funny stories/Memes
- Don't forget to sell your club
- Talk about your USP's
- Offer free advice
- Share you members stories
- Encourage people to sign up to your mailing list for insider news and offers
- Run weekly competitions to win t-shirts, online personal training, free class passes, 1 month nutrition advice, protein powder you have left that could go out of date etc etc
- Put out club videos such as club walk throughs, image carrosels
What Marketing should I be doing?
Lets be honest, most clubs are struggling to pay their rent, let alone find money for marketing. There are though plenty of things you can do that will cost nothing:
- Ensure your Google Business, Bing and Apple maps accounts are up to date
- Load your business onto online business directories such as Hot Frog, Free Index etc
- Work on your corporate activities - with people spending more time at home getting people to respond to link in contact requests should be so much easier. A simple message is all it takes. Corporate relationships can take months to establish so now is a great time.
- Local business contacts. As above make connections to other local businesses. Everyone will be open for ways of building relationships when you open back up. Why not start now
- Look at taking this time to create your marketing plan and this should be treated like a pre-sale plan. Give me a shout at ryan@blackraccoon.org if you need support
- Upgrade your website - now is the time to make those much needed tweaks. Especially if you build it yourself and there is no cost associated to it.
- Contact your members and get them to sign up to your newsletter. Offer an incentive for when you open for them to refer friends
- Treat the next 2 - 3 montsh as your clubs pre-sale. You are starting again. what should you do, how should you build up the excitement
What Planning should I be doing to re-open?
You will never get a better opportunity to plan and create the club you have always wanted. You will have been running your club from the trenches. Now you have an opportunity to sit back, survey what is great and what needs changing. Then plan for those changes.
Whilst most clubs will be engrossed in delivering their online classes, not many will be looking 3 months ahead and think...."What do I need to do to be better than I was before I closed"
We will go into this subject further in my next blog but I meet so many clients who tell me "I just don't have time". Now you do, don't waste it!
Strip your business processes, offers, plans, structures etc down to the bone and ask yourself. Is this the best i can do? if its not, then change it
Finally, you should create your sales and marketing activity plan, more on that another time
So What Now?
This is your time to shine. this is new ground for every club in the country and despite what you may feel. Indpendent and smaller clubs really do have an advantage here. Your brand is way more flexible, the owner is often the general manager and so certainly isnt being furloughed. Your business is still live and can make the required changes
No, you may not have the same financial resources but you do have the passion, the on the ground experience and the relationship with your clients that most of the big clubs don't.
So go out there and grab your peice!
If we can support in any way please get in touch
ryancharlesworth@blackraccoon.orgwww.blackraccoon.org07929369658
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