Guest Blog: Demand for Weight Loss a Game Changer for Fitness Clubs?

Do you want to grow your membership numbers and are you open-minded about new ways to do it?

Most fitness sales people and personal trainers will tell you that ‘weight loss’ is the most common goal of new members and clients. Hopefully, most of these prospective members sign up regardless of whether the club offers any weight loss programming or not.

This means that your business is a weight loss provider already. However, the big market is NOT selling weight loss programs to your existing members. That’s tough. The big market is from using a weight loss program to attract a new untapped membership market segment.

The Untapped Membership Market

For every person enquiring or joining with ‘weight loss’ as a goal, there are many more who are thinking about losing weight but NOT contemplating joining a fitness centre. This is a huge untapped market for new members.

Here’s three numbers in Australia that suggest this is true:

1. 2/3rds of adults – 16.5 million are overweight or obese and this number is growing.
2. Let’s assume only half these are contemplating losing weight. That’s 8.25 million adults.
3. At best just 4 million are active fitness club members, shared between all competitors.

So, there may be up to 4.25 million adults in Australia who are overweight and are looking for a weight loss solution during any 12 months.

Go ahead and replace these numbers or localise them as you see fit, but it will still show that there are a lot of extra people in your area thinking about losing weight but not enquiring at their local fitness centre – or your centre.

Why your centre might be missing out

There may be many reasons, some that you can do nothing about, but two you can:

1. Your club might not yet have a scalable (no expert required), affordable weight loss program.
2. Your club doesn’t have a cost-effective way to promote a weight loss program or ‘weight loss membership’ to those locals who are thinking about losing weight.

If your business had these two things in place you’d have a new and constant stream of extra enquiries and members, every month. (As I write this on the 15 Jan we’ve had clubs get dozens of new weight loss membership leads so far this year.)

When we help clubs set up an automated marketing campaign to promote a weight loss membership in their area they quickly discover the size of the market they have been missing out on. The reason we automate everything is because most club managers and their teams are too busy to take on extra work. We even automate the appointment setting, so that the only thing their sales staff need to deal with are extra membership appointments.

What business are you in? Really? It’s good to learn from corporate history.

• Kodak use to believe they were in the “film business”. The company was the 5th biggest in the world and worth $31 billion. They even invented digital technology. Today they are gone, and replaced by companies who realise that they are in the “memories business”.
• Blockbuster (once worth $5 billion) used to believe they were in the video-hire business. They even had a chance to buy Netflix. Is there a video store in your area anymore?

Are you in the “fitness business”, the “fitness experiences” business, or the “transformation business”, or perhaps all three?

Mindset Check

Is your membership sales potential limited by any rules or a fixed mindset about your business, that prevents you adapting to new markets?

The most common concern about promoting weight loss memberships is “We don’t have a nutrition expert on the team.” Actually, if you relied on a nutrition expert, you don’t have a scalable weight loss program, defined as being “ not expert-dependent”. We used to have an expert (a dietitian) run our weight loss program. We never made any money from it, and we were vulnerable to the expert leaving, which she did.

The clubs who are growing rapidly in the weight loss space use “expert weight loss programs” that can be delivered by existing team members or delivered online and bundled with a “weight loss membership”. The programs provide the healthy weight loss eating information and the team members simply coach people on the program, and hold them accountable. This makes a big difference.

3 branded weight loss solutions for fitness clubs

1. Centre within a Centre

Increasingly operators are re-evaluating every space to ensure maximum utilisation or revenue per square metre. If a centre has 120 – 150 sq metres, they could install a franchised Healthy Inspirations centre. So far, the top fitness centre who does this has direct membership revenue approaching $350k per year.

2. Coaching Program Bundled with Membership

If you have a quiet private consulting space and one or two team members who are happy to earn extra money coaching people, you could install the dietflex coaching and marketing system. Within weeks you could be generating new weight loss membership leads for your business. Typical weight loss membership fees are $35 pw on DD and a coach can look after 4 members per hour.

3. Online Program Bundled with Membership

If you have neither a consulting space nor the team members you can easily bundle an online program like Keto Fitness to create a weight loss membership. But it’s not just having the program, but having the marketing funnel to promote it, to get the enquiries. We provide all that.

Do It Yourself?

There’s a natural inclination to allocate months of your time doing courses and developing your own programs. The question is whether your time is too valuable, or scarce and if this is a wise use of your time, and for any benefit to the business. Then there’s the opportunity cost of the thousands of dollars of gross value lost in missed sales until you get it going. With at least $99 upfront and at least $35 pw with 12 months min term, each new weight loss membership has a gross value over $1,900 (dietflex example). We suggest you take advantage of off-the-shelf programming and marketing which we can get going for you within 72 hours. Decide later if you want to re-invent the wheel.

Using Your Own Brand?

Some clubs who added their own functional training programs learned that this can be a trap. If it’s your brand, there’s the risk members perceive it should be included in their existing membership. One fitness club has branded his own weight loss centre and uses our branded programs.

Is It Worth the Effort?

A modest marketing program should yield at least 10 extra full-priced, full-term memberships every month. Example: $99 upfront with $20 DD pw x 52 wks = $1,139 minimum gross x 10 memberships = $11,390 per month x 12 months = $136,680 in extra annual revenue. (Replace the example with your DD numbers). Some centres are selling 20 to 30 weight loss memberships and at $29.95 DD pw (Healthy Inspirations example).

Seize the Opportunity – Discover More

If you are open-minded to new ways of growing your business and attracting more members, why not book in a chat to see if there is an opportunity for your business with any of our 3 weight loss programs and marketing systems?

 

Contact
Jamie Hayes
0418 281 126
[email protected]

To book a chat click HERE

 

What others say…

Gavin Marshall

Owner Jenkins Gym and in which he has a Healthy Inspirations franchised centre

“The thing I like about working with Jamie and Ellen Hayes is their commitment to being on the cutting edge of what really works in weight loss (our members have lost over 11,000 kilos on their programs). What really works is their marketing to attract the overweight de-conditioned into our centre. 

They have helped me and my team build an active weight loss business within my fitness business, and this has led to many previously sedentary overweight members becoming fitness members for life. 

Without the marketing that they provide, most of these people would never have become gym members.”

Tony Brunton

Owner First Place Fitness & Weight Loss Waikato Waikato NZ

“For every one person joining a gym wanting to lose weight there are many more who want to lose weight and don’t even consider a fitness centre. We wanted a program and the marketing to attract them, too.

I’m glad we discovered dietflex. We’re attracting more members and PT clients as a result. Their results have been spectacular.”

David Jordan

Manager WIRAC YMCA Warwick Qld

“Thanks, Jamie and team, for the outstanding Keto Fitness program.  The marketing, landing page and sales funnel strategy you provide made all the difference to getting the word out there, and our social media marketing went through the roof. 

We’re looking after our new members’ fitness needs while Keto Fitness looks after their weight loss needs. It’s a win:win, with no extra work or expertise for us.”