As a fitness business owner, there are certain times of the year when you will experience a dip in memberships. For most fitness businesses, the slow season usually happens during the summer months and the holiday season.
And when this happens, you will experience a considerable dip in revenues and cash flows, as well as profits. But at the same time, you will also find yourself with quite a bit of free time, since you are not busy with clients.
In this article, we will walk you through six effective and actionable strategies for dealing with the slow season in your fitness business. These strategies will help to remain you to remain productive while ensuring your fitness business remains profitable, during the slow season.
1. Focus on Client Retention
As mentioned earlier, most gyms, health clubs and fitness centers experience slowdowns during the summer months. This usually happens because the majority of gym goers have canceled their memberships to enjoy the nice weather outdoors. Fortunately, there are several effective strategies you can implement, to ensure you retain your existing clients, especially during the slow summer months.
1.1 Host Outdoor Workout Classes
First, you should consider hosting outdoor classes. As noted above, of the main reasons why most people cancel their gym memberships during the summer months is that they want to enjoy the nice weather outside. So, to minimize cancellations of memberships during these months, you should take your workout sessions outside.
So, whether you run a weightlifting gym, a Pilates studio, yoga classes, CrossFit or any other type of fitness activity, you should take your sessions to a nearby park, grassy area, or field. Considering that such outdoor workout sessions may not require any equipment, they will provide you with a cost-effective means of keeping your members active and retaining them during the summer.
1.2 Host Special Events
Hosting special events can also help you to retain your gym members, especially during the summer. These special events can be workshops or bootcamps, where you invite renowned trainers to take over your summer workout sessions.
For instance, if there’s a renowned fitness personality who is in your city, you should consider inviting them to your fitness center and give them the opportunity to run your classes. As you may expect, most of your members will not want to miss out on such moments.
1.3 Run Competitions and Challenges
Fitness challenges and competitions provide a fun way of working out. And they can be highly effective when it comes to retaining your clients during the slow seasons. For instance, you can run a challenge where the member who spends the most time working out in your gym will get a reward. The reward can be discounts on their memberships, merchandise or sponsored dinner with friends and family.
Running such a challenge will motivate your members to keep coming to the gym since they know there’s a reward for it. However, make sure the prize you offer is worth their efforts. After all, they had the option of canceling the membership and going on vacation.
1.4 Offer Discounts
Discounts can also help you to retain clients during the slow months. For instance, during the summer, most of your members are trying to weigh whether to cancel their memberships and go on vacations or continue working out in your gym.
By offering them a discount, you will be encouraging them to continue with their memberships. Besides offering discounts, this will be also a great time for “bring-a-friend” workout sessions “two-for-one” personal training sessions.
2. Target New Clients
Just because your business is experiencing a slowdown doesn’t mean you should wait for the situation to improve by itself. Instead, you need to be actively looking for new clients. The new clients that you acquire during the slow season will help to provide your fitness business with the revenue it needs to keep running. Some of the methods that you can use to generate new leads for your fitness business during the slow season include:
2.1 Attend Community Events
Attending community events provides an opportunity of meeting potential clients. Such events may include things like marathons, gardening days, street parties, film screenings, arts and crafts festivals, farmers’ market days, or workshops. During these events, you simply need to introduce yourself and distribute your business cards to the attendees. And you may come out of the event with a couple of leads that may become clients.
2.2 Launch Corporate Fitness Programs
Another method that can help you to acquire more clients for your fitness business during the slow months is launching corporate programs. For corporate programs, you can host an employee workout session at your studio, either during lunchtime or after work, fitness workshops, or corporate fitness challenges. Such programs will expose your fitness center to new potential clients.
2.3 Free Training Days
Running a free training day can help to bring members of your community to your gym to try out your services. Considering that your fitness center is not operating at full capacity during this time, you won’t have to worry about overcrowding.
For this method, you need to ensure that every attendee signs up with their contact information, either through social media or on your website. And if the attendees enjoy these sessions, some may sign up on the spot while others may need slightly more nurturing.
3. Explore Additional Revenue Streams
If you are still finding it hard to land new clients during the slow season, then you should consider adding some revenue streams to your fitness business. For example, you should consider introducing a protein shake or juice bar, a coffee shop, or a snacks bar in the lobby areas.
Such ideas don’t require heavy capital investments. And, they will help you to generate additional revenue from your members. Also, as your members enjoy their coffee, juice or snack, they will be socializing. And this social aspect will keep them coming back to your fitness center, even when their motivation levels are low.
In case you don’t have enough space to offer foods or drinks in your fitness center, you can instead opt for branded merchandise like coffee mugs, water bottles, key holders, headphones, and hoodies, just to name a few. Besides earning you additional income, branded merchandise can also help to boost visibility for your fitness business.
4. Work On Your Business
Most entrepreneurs tend to put some tasks aside when they are busy with clients. And the quiet season provides you with the perfect opportunity of attending to some of the tasks that you have been postponing or neglecting. Here are some of the tasks that you should attend to during the slow season.
4.1 Create a Couple of Blog Posts
The slow season provides the best time to write several blog posts. If you write around two blog posts per day, you will have more than 10 in a week. So, if you do that for two to three weeks, you will be sorted for the next couple of months. After creating them, you simply need to schedule them and you can forget about that work. And by the time clients start returning, you won’t have to worry about splitting your time between attending to them and creating content for your website.
4.2 Refresh Your Social Media Accounts
If you had neglected your social media accounts, now is the time to refresh and update them with visually appealing content, in order to attract the most eyeballs for the longest possible time. So, go through the social media channels you are using and update your bio, links, profile pictures, promo content, banners, and other key details.
4.3 Clean Up Your Email List
You should also take this opportunity to clean up your mailing lists. And this means removing non-existent emails, wrongly registered emails, old emails, or contacts that reported you as spam as well as those who have unsubscribed. You can remove inactive emails, too… unless you know of a way to reengage them. Cleaning up your email lists will help to boost email deliverability, reduce your overall bounce rate, and reduce your email marketing costs.
4.4 Attend to Admin Work
The slow season is also the ideal time to attend to admin work like sorting through unpaid memberships, updating the website, making sure your taxes are in order, removing lapsed memberships from your system, and upgrading your software, workout equipment or undertaking some necessary renovations.
5. Learn a New Skill
Considering that you now have plenty of time on your hands, now would be a great time to learn a new skill. Whether it’s becoming a certified nutritionist or learning how to train special groups, learning a new skill will help you to position yourself as a fitness expert. And by doing so, you will start attracting new clients or charge more rates.
Also, learning a new skill opens up opportunities for offering more services, which will help to generate more revenues for your business in the future. So, by capitalizing on this slow time and investing in yourself, you will be setting your fitness business for future success.
6. Practice Some Self-care
If you’ve been working hard consistently and you’ve been barely getting time for yourself, now would be a good time to take some time off and practice some self-care.
You can utilize this time by going for a massage, reading a book, going on a hike, playing golf, or catching up with friends and family.
Taking some time off will help you to refresh your mind and recharge your batteries. And when normal operations resume, you will find yourself more productive.
7. Wrapping It Up
All fitness businesses suffer quiet periods. But as you can see, you can still manage to be productive while keeping your business profitable. By following the tips we’ve shared in this article, you will be able to make the most out of the slow season and help your fitness business to get through until things stabilize.