You’ve opened your gym in the last year or 3 years ago, got some members and now… you’re stuck.
You just can’t seem to break through some invisible member mark (20, 40, 100) and you don’t know what to do.
If you haven’t already, try out some of these tips to get your membership train back on track:
- Beginners Welcome! – This should be front and center on all of your websites, FB, and any kind of marketing. Remove that intimidation factor associated with CrossFit as often as you can. Post pics of just normal people doing CrossFit.
- Use Facebook – If you are on The Hub and haven’t already watched social media expert Josh Sturgeon’s videos about Facebook marketing, stop what you’re doing and do this now! It will unlock the mysteries of an effective ad campaign on Facebook and focus your ads (and money) on the audience you want. Priceless!
- Create a Facebook Private Group for your Members – Make sure you are friends on Facebook with all of your members and they’re in this private group that you create. This is a great alternative way (besides newsletter, email, etc.) to spread info about upcoming events, deals and just general info. It also allows your community to converse with each other and share successes. Be sure to make this community reflected of the culture that you’re wanting to see in your gym.
- Tag Away and Post on Timelines – Once you are friends with your members on Facebook, try and get some good pics of your members and then put them on their Facebook timelines. Don’t spend every class being a photographer but just take a few seconds to snap some pics. Pick the best ones, post the pics on their timeline, make sure you mark the location as your box and say “Good Job!” or just something positive. This is FREE marketing to all of their friends and will likely start a lot of discussions about them doing CrossFit and loving your box. It’s a GREAT way to get others interested in your box.
- Capture info – Make sure you have a visitors log at your box (paper or digital) which will allow you to populate your member management system (Zen, FrontDesk, Wodify, etc) with new contacts. Also, you can have a contact form on your front website page which leads to a landing page for a free ebook on fitness or nutrition (321Go has a ton of these). You can capture names and emails this way as well.
- Get the word out – Take all those contacts you now have and make sure they’re on the distribution for a monthly newsletter or general emails with pics from past events, news about upcoming programs and your intro program or nutrition or personal training. Get the word out on anything you want to promote. This will make sure you get in front of them again at least a few times a month with news about the awesome things your box is doing.
- Reviews – This can set you apart from the competition. Would you be more willing to try a box with 3 good Google reviews or one with 20 good Google reviews? Pick people inside your box who love it. Ask them to do a quick Google, Yelp or Facebook review (send them the link to the reviews to make it easy) on your box because you think they’re awesome and you want others just like them to fill the place. They’ll dig the fact that you think highly of them and will usually be more than willing to rave about you in a review.
It’s all about Momentum… Give these tips a try, stay consistent and then watch as you breakthrough that sticky member mark!
If we can help in anyway, we’d love to have a conversation with you. Schedule a free call with us here.
Don Moss is the Founder and former Owner of CrossFit Apogee and a 321GoProject Business Coach. He has been interviewed and featured in The Box Magazine, Box Pro Magazine, on 321GoProject and Box Pro podcasts and on CrossFit.com. He is a true lover of people and the community mentality of CrossFit. His goal is to help owners make smart decisions, see their businesses succeed and their dreams come true. For questions or to talk about 1-on-1 consulting, reach out to him at Don@321GoProject.com.