How reliant is your gym or fitness centre on membership dues? Diversification of your fitness revenue streams not only allows you to maximise profitability at your gym, but also leaves you less susceptible to market volatility.
If around 60 per cent of your revenue comes from membership fees – well, that’s pretty much average for the fitness industry. Yet as the pandemic has shown, relying heavily on one source of revenue is unwise.
But how do you go about this? Here, we share 14 suggestions – but with a word of advice: don’t try and implement them all at once. Don’t overwhelm your customers with change. Don’t over-burden your staff with new tasks. Pick one or two ideas that feel ‘best fit’ for your business and introduce them on a trial basis, asking your customers for feedback before you commit to making them permanent.
Be absolutely sure you’re approaching all this with the right mindset. Adding new fitness revenue streams shouldn’t be about squeezing every last buck from your members, nor about pushing your business into areas that don’t fit your brand. Your focus should be on creating fantastic, customer-centric experiences and products that meet actual member needs and add real value to their relationship with you. By creating more opportunities for them to engage with you while being true to your brand, customers are happy to engage in more genuine ways rather than a blatant money-spinner.
Check out these tips for fitness centres to generate new fitness revenue streams.
14 WAYS TO GENERATE NEW FITNESS REVENUE STREAMS
1. SELL ON-DEMAND CONTENT
With the rise of online fitness, many gyms are wisely offering virtual fitness training and classes that can be accessed remotely. Some choose to offer it as a complimentary value-add-on because they see it as a retention tool. Others are successfully generating significant additional revenue by selling it as a distinctly separate product, including to non-members within and beyond the gym’s geographical area.
Wexer can help your gym do this cost-effectively, with a range of market-leading mobile solutions that channel the revenue-generating power of on-demand virtual fitness training into your business.
2. RESTRUCTURE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TIERS
There are also ways to expand fitness revenue streams within membership sales, by creating new premium tiers of membership.
Certainly this benefits local customers who can attend the club physically, as this can often be the best way to sell on-demand content by packaging it into a hybrid membership. You can package it alongside other valued benefits, rather than trying to sell it as a standalone add-on that can be easily dropped.
We can help, because Wexer’s platform can be password-protected and can accommodate single sign-on, all of which means you can choose which of your members to grant this premium access to (and which not).
3. PARTNER WITH LOCAL BUSINESSES
If your gym or fitness centre isn’t yet partnering with local businesses, now is the time to consider tapping this potential.
For example, with mental wellbeing in the spotlight these days, a growing number of employers are looking to offer employee wellness programmes. What businesses within your catchment area might be interested in such an offering, what might it look like and how can you deliver it? Can you do more than simply selling corporate gym memberships, adding new fitness revenue streams by offering in-house fitness classes, for example, or running special educational events?
4. MOVE INTO ECOMMERCE
Selling fitness-related products – supplements, apparel, small pieces of equipment – has long been gyms’ go-to for secondary revenue. In some cases, where signature apparel lines have been created, it’s also proved a powerful way to spread the word of the brand.
Yet in terms of the sales themselves, many fitness centres limit themselves to selling to existing members, ignoring the far larger market that exists online. Is it time for your gym to explore the potential of ecommerce – not least selling small pieces of equipment to your members who, armed with your virtual fitness training content, are now exercising at home as well as at the gym?
5. RENT OUT YOUR SPACE
With wellness being today’s buzzword, your members are now looking for more than just fitness. We’re talking massage, physiotherapy, chiropody, meditation, acupuncture, life coaching… All the things that complement their wellness journey with you while not necessarily being something your gym specialises in.
If it’s available in your club, the time is now to rent out space to reputable local practitioners. This will allow you to introduce the complementary services your members actively want – a big tick in the box for customer satisfaction – while also bringing in rent as a valuable source of income alongside your more traditional fitness revenue streams.
You might consider opening these services up to non-members, too, as well as having an option for people to buy gift vouchers.
6. REFRESH YOUR PERSONAL TRAINING OFFERING
Personal training can often be a high-margin service, so maximise its revenue-earning potential by injecting a bit of creativity. Alongside the more standard offering of one-to-one or two-to-one training, harness the buzz around small group training by creating signature, paid-for small group sessions in visible spaces within the club to drive awareness and interest.
If you have an exclusive space available, you might also consider offering VIP personal training, assuming you have the right member profile. Make sure you do it properly, giving it the full red carpet treatment a concierge level of service in a genuinely special space with exclusive tools and top personal trainers.
7. HOST SPECIAL EVENTS
Special events – fitness competitions, for example, or one-off mass participation classes – can be an eye-catching way to build your brand locally. You can attract new customers (especially if they’re allowed to participate) and drive new revenues. You might even consider live streaming your event across multiple locations. Wexer’s technology can help you do this. How about tapping into the younger generations’ interest in brands that care, by making these charity events where a percentage of your revenues are donated to good causes?
8. MIX IT UP IN YOUR SAMPLE AND GUEST SESSIONS
Selling day or buddy passes is a good way to enhance your fitness revenue streams, both complementing and potentially building your membership revenues. As part of this, even if you already give members a guess pass or two each month, you might consider selling additional bring-a-friend passes. For example, how about creating limited edition, ticketed fitness-plus-social activities once a month where friends and family can – and are eager to – come along?
9. CALORIES IN AS WELL AS CALORIES OUT
As part of a rising interest in wellness, people’s focus on healthy eating is stronger then ever. Cue juicing, plant-based diets, an interest in local produce…
Of course, a food and beverage offering doesn’t have to be vegan or vegetarian, but a carefully considered café or juice bar can be a valuable addition to a fitness centre’s offering – and its revenue streams. Either go it alone or team up with a local third-party, and make it street-facing so it draws in passing traffic as well as members.
10. SELL ADSPACE
From the integrated screens on your gym equipment and the big screen of your virtual fitness studio to good old-fashioned posters on your walls, your gym is an advertising vehicle. Your members are a captive demographic audience that by definition is interested in a field many brands are now looking to enter: wellness.
This gives you a valuable product to sell, provided you price it realistically based on member numbers, member profile and likely exposure to the ads.
As an independent operator, you’re best advised to pitch advertising opportunities to local businesses. As a national chain, you can set your sights on bigger brands. Just be careful who you sell your adspace to as you categorically do not want any ads to pop up that undermine the values of your brand.
11. UNDERSTAND WHO WANTS WHAT
Integrating AI (artificial intelligence) into your operation is a great way to build your fitness revenue streams. How so? You already have data being collected by your CRM and with the Wexer digital fitness offerings, you’ll know what people are using.
Industry expert Keepme.ai: “By automatically gathering and collating every conceivable data point on every member, AI can tell you exactly what each individual wants and needs. You can then present exactly the right product at exactly the right time, in a way that genuinely resonates with people.”
We’re talking upsell and cross-sell campaigns that are so well-targeted members don’t even realise they’re being sold to. They have a need. You meet it. They’re in. What was once a sale becomes a curated, personalised, relevant recommendation that they can’t refuse – and so your yield per member grows in a truly customer-centric way.
12. CREATE SPECIALIST COURSES
Once you really understand what your members want, you might also consider creating specialist, paid-for courses to meet specific member needs: a pilates back care course, a nutrition workshop or a weight-loss bootcamp series, for example.
Create something with enough value-add that even high-end clubs – where members naturally expect certain extras to be offered for free – will be able to launch these as revenue-generating, opt-in specials.
If you have the expertise in-house, you might even develop courses and programmes for those with special medical conditions, creating an additional fitness revenue stream by providing local healthcare organisations with a new way to support their patients.
13. LAUNCH A TRAINING ACADEMY
Are you particularly strong when it comes to instructor training? Does your reputation precede you in this field? If so, you might consider creating an academy for external as well as internal trainers. You certainly wouldn’t be the first, and the potential revenue you can generate makes it well worth getting yourself certified by the relevant qualification bodies and quality controllers.
14. MARKET AND GET SERIOUSLY SOCIAL
Finally, whichever of these new fitness revenue streams you choose to launch or trial at your gym or fitness centre, make sure you’re marketing your services by spreading the word far and wide. Many of the above are innovations that will appeal beyond your existing customer base, so get out there and shout about them on social media!
We can help you maximise the fitness revenue streams at your gym or fitness centre. Get in touch now: info@wexer.com