Managing a gym requires the ability to juggle a host of tasks, which range from purely administrative to requiring you to turn into a marketing expert. The task is made more complicated when you have been an environment where cutthroat competition exists and every now and then a new fitness studio keeps popping up. Thus, whether you’re a fitness studio owner or manager, your fitness studio management plan requires you to be on your toes and constantly wear the thinking cap. So, how do you do efficiently run a fitness studio? Read along to know the top ten tips:
Customer Experience
Your business is successful until such time that your customers continue to patronize your business. Thus, the entire gamut of operations that will run in your fitness studio should be designed and focused to deliver an unparalleled customer experience. Processes, at each touch point, including but not limited to membership management should be designed in such a way that customers never feel too strained to do anything.
Financial Management
Believe it or not but managing the finances of your business is directly linked to your survival. In an industry that is growing leaps and bounds but continues to be a highly competitive space how well you manage your finances directly impacts your existence. Price your services too low and you risk setting not only a bad precedent but also risk not breaking even. Price your services too high and you risk losing potential clients. Therefore, when it comes to generating revenue, wherein you can provide the quality of service expected and desired, you got to make sure that your finances add up. We strongly recommend deploying a gym and fitness studio management software, which can help you keep a track of your revenue, payroll, rent and other important costs while providing you with on demand dynamically evolving picture of your finances.
Team Culture
A wise businessperson knows that businesses must be designed to be both agile and run in continuum. Therefore, they invest in creating a team and building a team culture. Needless to say culture is built over time, and it is responsibility of the management to lead by example. A positive working space will not only allow your employees to be motivated and engage in meaningful interaction with customers and as a result create a gym that is a highly positive space, which delivers superior customer engagement and experience.
Client Engagement & Retention
Clients are your prime source of revenue. While it is important to increase the number of members, it is equally important to engage and retain existing clients. Various studies have indicated that the cost of acquiring a new client is approximately ten times the cost of retaining an existing client. The internet is rife with stories that clients dropped out or refused to renew memberships because they didn’t get the personalized experience. Thus, it lies squarely upon the management and the team to engage with existing clients to allay their concerns, queries and motivate them. Aside from the one-on-one engagement, gym and fitness studios should actively encourage community building and camaraderie. Studies have shown that even if each client has just one or two gym buddies, the chances of a member dropping out reduces by over 50%.
Deploy a Management Software
Considering the number of administrative processes that are required, deploying a gym and fitness club management software is your best bet. From managing members and accepting payments to recording accounting entries and reporting, the software can accomplish it all. There are many well developed products in the market, and some are good at invoicing and POS, and some have robust membership management features. It is imperative to watch for red flags while choosing a fitness management software and choose a software that is best fit for your business model. As a result, determining the best software for your operations requires a thorough understanding of your business processes.
Owners can select the software based on objective evaluation of the features. Some recommended software is Zenoti, Wellyx, MindBody, Perfect Gym and Glofox.
Streamline your management process
When it comes to administrative tasks, you would notice that many tasks are not only repetitive in nature but also have common overlap with other processes. A smart solution would be identifying such tasks and streamline then. A case point example would be to automate inventory reconciliation by taking the input from the invoicing process. No sooner than a product is invoiced, the necessary stock reduction entries should be made in the inventory records.
Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy should be a consistent one and with a long-term view of the operations in the mind. It should communicate your brand’s values, offerings and what sets you apart. In the age of digital marketing, it is equally important to run targeted marketing campaigns and data-based programs. Top fitness studio software run deep data analysis to suggest marketing ideas.
Hire Talent
No brainer here. Your fitness studio is as good as your employees. Given that there are ones who shall be interacting the most with your clients, it is important that you hire well qualified trainers, nutritionist, and front desk staff.
Tracking & Reporting
Businesses generate a lot of data and it in order for management to make an informed decision, it is important that the data is presented in a way that can be easily interpreted. Accurate reports require accurate tracking of each and every transaction. Thankfully, by leveraging technology tracking of transactions is a breeze and generating reports a matter of few clicks. A gym and fitness management software must be equipped with state of art reporting ability, and show be able to provide correct scenario of the business.
Encourage Organic Referrals
While it is great to deploy all modern marketing tools, one shouldn’t underestimate the potential of organic referrals. Encourage your members to spread the word and offer referral bonus to existing members. For any new leads, who come by referrals consider offering a weeklong free trial, during which you and your team can charm the client to take the membership.