An Opportunity and a Challenge for Every Business Owner (Not Just in Fitness). How to Organize Them Effectively?
It’s the beginning of the season, and as I scroll through social media, I come across an interesting sponsored post: a fitness center near my home is offering an “Open Day” where I can try all their activities for free.
The first thing that catches my eye is the chance to take classes without paying… as many as I want. So, I click without hesitation on the link that takes me to the instructions. “Maybe I’ll even bring a friend and make a good impression,” I think, as if I’m giving them a gift.
Fantastic, there are various activities: yoga, pilates, indoor cycling, weight loss programs, Zumba, and many others I’ve never even heard of—things like GAG, TRX, body pump… even better, so I can say I’ve tried them.
I may have been doing some of these activities for years, but the idea of doing them for free intrigues me, so I want to participate in as many as I can. Or maybe I’ve never done any of these activities, and even more so, I’m eager to try them all.
On the big day, a crowd arrives at the fitness center to try everything out, but most of these “potential customers” will never return.
How many fitness center managers have seen this scenario play out at least once?
What are the possible pitfalls/mistakes of this promotion?
Let’s take a look at a few together:
- Everything is free = I’m not conveying a sense of real value for my activities.
- I can try everything = one activity is as good as another; the customer isn’t truly focused on the one that best suits their needs/interests and doesn’t research any particular one before trying it.
- If I only have their email addresses (assuming they were collected), the only tool at my disposal to recontact potential customers will be email marketing, which nowadays yields almost zero results.
- If, as the center manager, I’ve been through this experience before, on the day of the Open Day, I might be annoyed by the clear perception of NON-potential customers who are only there to take advantage of the opportunity, risking not giving the necessary attention to those who actually deserve it.
A Suggestion for Managing the Fitness Open Day Differently.
- Would you like to try one or two (at most) of our activities?
- Leave us your name and email address, and we’ll sign you up for free on our class booking app*. Upon registration, we will load X credits onto your profile, which correspond to X euros, allowing you to sign up for one or two classes of your choice.
*It’s important to note that, in the case of BookyWay, it’s not an aggregator. This means that, unlike other apps, the customer who just signed up won’t see ALL the geolocated activities near them with their respective offers, etc., but will only see our activities.
What’s different compared to the previous approach? Essentially, we’re trying to turn leads (people who have shown initial interest in our activities) into actual customers through these actions:
- The classes aren’t free, but they have a value that the customer will also recognize. They can try them because I’m gifting them money to sign up. There will be the satisfaction of receiving credits loaded onto their new profile in exchange for registering, which they can use as they wish.
- I’m encouraging the potential customer to try the app for my activities: they must sign up through the app (starting to become familiar with the tool), and as a result, they’ll also see all my classes with relevant information, prices, offers, etc.
- The customer will stay focused only on the activities that genuinely interest them.
- Once the app is installed, if the customer is interested after the Open Day, they can continue their experience on the app entirely on their own, purchasing and booking activities (or activity packages) that they like best.
- Even if they don’t immediately start attending the center, they will still receive (as long as they don’t uninstall the app) the push notifications I’ll send in the future about my new activities or promotions. Imagine the case of a push notification that informs a potential customer (who previously didn’t find the Open Day interesting) about a new activity that does capture their interest.
- If, when filling out the form, I also collected their phone number (which should be a non-mandatory field), thanks to BookyWay’s sharing tool, I can share information about new classes in the future through WhatsApp broadcast lists, a tool that currently has a significantly higher engagement rate than email marketing and even higher than push notifications… a topic I will delve into in a future post…
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