One-time clients aren’t going to help you continually grow your boot camp or personal training business. Sure it’s nice to see someone get results, but it’s not so nice when they leave to try and maintain their new-found results on their own. You’ve worked hard to get these clients into your program, but when they end up being one-timer- you’re left to fill the hole with a new client and that means hunting down a new one.

Knowing your client retention rate goes hand in hand with your marketing because if you aren’t keeping track of how long a client stays with you then you won’t be able to maximize your personal trainer marketing plan and its budget. Although there are lots of resources out there for free and low cost marketing strategies, but it’s still time consuming and requires some investment.

Losing a few clients here and there is only natural, especially if it’s because someone is moving out of the area or some type of emergency occurs. But if some of your members aren’t showing up on a consistent basis or they disappear altogether, then you’ve got to figure out why.

Get to Know Your Members

You may feel like this has nothing to do with marketing, but getting to know your members is a great way to build up your word of mouth reputation- and there’s not much advertising that can beat that.

From the very first client you sign on to the 100th client, you (and any staff that you hire) should be concentrating on building a solid relationship with them. By taking the time to get to know your members and showing an interest in them, they’re more likely to be upfront with you if they’re having any issues instead of just dropping off the face of the earth and avoiding your calls. If you’re noticing that a big percentage of your members aren’t renewing their agreement, then something is wrong and you need to know- and fast.

Start by constructing a short, but well-written questionnaire that includes a limited time coupon in a friendly email and send it to past clients who didn’t renew with you. Be sure to leave a space for them to leave comments and pay close attention to the answers you receive. This is where you can take major action, especially if their making the same complaint.

Listen to what they’re saying and offer what you can to get them back. Offer nutritional support if they’re not seeing the results they want, or change up the exercises if they’re finding them boring. Up the energy of the place if that’s what it takes. By giving members what they want increasing your client retention rate- you’ll build up your “word of mouth” and save tons on traditional fitness marketing.

Show Them Love

Be generous with your members, show them that you appreciate their business by incentivising their hard work from time to time. Host a silly costume contest or hold a theme day at your boot camp or gym and get everyone to dress up. It’s a lot of fun and it’s a great way to bring everyone together. Give the best dressed a gift card to their favorite restaurant or half off their monthly rate to show that it pays to participate.

There are tons of little things you can do to show your appreciation. Keep up with your members’ birthdays and send them a handwritten birthday card. Better yet, make an effort to remember other things they may have going on in their lives like graduations, work promotions, marriage proposals- celebrate any one of their milestones and you’ll keep them as clients for a lot longer.

You can also do things like host a party or a barbeque, invite them over to your house or have one right there in your facility. Hire a DJ and go all out every once in a while, you’re members will have a great time and will more than likely be raving about your business to their friends and family.

Reward them when they lose a significant amount of weight or when they reach their fitness goal and be sure to show them off in front of other clients as well. Make them feel proud of themselves so they’ll be motivated to keep their progress going.

Create an Awesome Experience

Working out with you should be unlike working with any other personal trainer in your area. That’s how you’ve got to treat your services and it’s what will make the biggest difference in client retention.

Clients won’t leave if they’re having an awesome time getting in shape. Plain and simple. They will leave, however, if they’re not having a good time or it’s a complete and total drag working out with you.

The point here is to create an awesome fitness experience that inspires your members to stay- and for the long haul. Most people don’t enjoy exercise, so it’s your duty to make sure that they start to love it. Get them the results they want, but make sure you’re doing it with as much enthusiasm as you can. Bring the energy to each and every session, and keep your workouts fresh as well. No one likes doing the same thing over and over so keep that in mind when you’re creating your workouts.

The bottom line is to keep your clients on for as long as you can, and you’ll maximize your personal trainer marketing budget. Check back often for more how-to’s on growing your fitness business.

This entry was posted on February 4, 2014 at 11:45 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Business, Boot Camp Marketing, Fitness Business, Fitness Marketing by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet