The fitness industry is evolving. As a gym owner, personal trainer, or yoga instructor, you need to keep up with these trends to stay fit and ensure success for years to come.
Whether you agree with training regimens or not, you can take a page from the CrossFit playbook when it comes to promoting your services and increasing your income.
What is the secret? To develop a sense of community.
90% of CrossFit participants say their fitness community is one of the main reasons they participate, and 80% of members say they are more likely to stick with their routine because of the community aspect. This fitness trend has been incredibly successful, and the CrossFit market continues to grow at a CAGR of 12.1% between now and 2032.
Regardless of the specific services you offer, you can emulate this strategy and use the power of social media to scale your fitness business.
Make Your Community More Accessible
The first thing you need to do is lower the barrier to entry for new members. Make it as easy as possible for them to join your fitness community and create a welcoming environment.
Gyms can be intimidating. A recent survey found that 50% of people who don’t go to the gym say they are afraid to go. This sentiment extends to existing members as well—90% of people worry about being seen by their peers at the gym.
You need to overcome this negative environment if you want to bring in new members and really build a sense of community.
They say, “The hardest part about going to the gym is walking through the door.” However, what if you removed that door completely?
Deliver digital workouts through a mobile app. Newbies can join your community without stepping foot on your physical property and have full access to fitness programs in the palm of their hands.
Another study found that 58% of people say they prefer to exercise at home anyway. So going digital appeals to this group, and increased accessibility should lead to more signups.
Find Creative Ways to Motivate Members
For the average person, motivating yourself to exercise is easier said than done.
A study from Statista found that lack of motivation was the second biggest challenge to fitness engagement in the US.
One of the best parts about having a community to lean on is the encouragement.
According to the National Institute of Health, people who exercise with others are 32% more likely to achieve adequate levels of physical activity compared to those who exercise alone.
There are many ways you can model this type of communication and encourage people to stay active:
- Send them workout reminders via app notification.
- Share an inspirational quote of the day to get people fired up.
- Have members contact a “buddy” to hold them accountable.
- Show progress photos and testimonials as proof of concept to the community.
This is why having an action plan is so important to the success of your fitness community.
It gives you a direct line of communication to their devices to keep them engaged, and just the fact that your app is always just one click away can be very motivating.
Create Community Challenges to Improve Member Engagement
One of my favorite features of Buildfire’s robust app builder is the Leaderboard plugin.
It’s a way for users to track their training progress directly through the app, and everyone can see the top “leaders” for a particular category or challenge.
Examples include:
- Consecutive days with in-program workouts completed.
- Most miles run in 30 days.
- Weight loss challenges.
- More calories burned per week.
- Consecutive days drinking 64 oz. of water.
- A competition to “get into” the gym.
Members can open the app and watch their ranks rise as they complete these challenges.
Friendly competition that kills two birds with one stone—encouraging people to exercise while driving engagement with other members.
This can be the foundation of your fitness community.
Remove Physical Boundaries So Your Community Can Grow Without Limits
The average walk to the gym is 3.7 miles. Even if we can expand this to five or six miles, it will still limit how many people can join your community.
You can use quick numbers to see how many people live within five miles of your gym and determine what percentage of them are potential customers. That’s the maximum number of community members you can have at each location—and it doesn’t even include competing gyms and how many of those people you can actually join (the actual number is much lower).
But when you become an online personal trainer, it opens doors to people all over the world.
Having your own mobile fitness app instantly breaks any physical limitations you are currently bound by. You can live in Texas while providing training materials to your community in California and New York—even London to Tokyo.
Reduce Costs and Pass Those Savings on to Your Customers
Running a gym can obviously be expensive. Between the cost of equipment, labor, and rent, not to mention keeping the lights on, the list of expenses seems endless.
So it should come as no surprise to learn that the average cost to open a gym ranges from $245,000 to $400,000. Some of you may spend more—and this doesn’t even include ongoing monthly expenses.
Being digital costs less. You can create your own mobile app for less than $500 per month and break even after just a few subscriptions. The rest is pure profit.
High costs are the number one reason people cancel their gym memberships.
But if you’re not paying tens of thousands of dollars in monthly fees just to use your site, you can offer cheaper membership options to your community.
You can even set up a tiered access membership with different benefits at each level.
For example, you can set your price to something like:
- Pro Members – $15 per month: Access to community message boards and one 30-day workout plan.
- Premium Members – $25 per month: Pro benefits, plus access to community challenges and access to all workout plans (30 days, 60 days, 90 days).
- Elite Members – $40 per month: Premium benefits, plus unlimited access to all on-demand video workouts.
You get the idea. This can be organized in any way you see fit to increase membership and grow your community.
Best of all, these packages can be cheaper than traditional gym memberships. Although your revenue per member will be lower, your profit margins should be much higher—and you have a greater chance of onboarding people from anywhere.
Consider an Integrated Approach to Your Fitness Business
Much of what we’ve covered so far has focused on digital ways to build an engaged and active fitness community. But that doesn’t mean you need to neglect your existing members and customers.
Some of you may already have well-established gyms, multiple locations, and a wide range of services. I’m not suggesting you throw these things away (as long as they’re still beneficial).
You can still improve the experience in person with the mobile app. Here is the way.
46% of men and 43% of women already use their smartphones in the gym for training resources. If they’re not getting those resources from you, then they’re getting them from someone else (and you’re probably paying for them).
Fitness programs for your existing members can be an easy value-added sale.
You can also run a gym or fitness community that specializes in group classes. If things come up and people can’t attend a class they like, they may feel like they’re missing out or they’re falling behind others in the group.
The solution here is simple. Record those classes and upload them to your app so members can access them when needed.
This will not only appeal to people who missed a particular class, but those who attended can go back and do the class again on their own time. This increases the value of your coaches, as one 60-minute class can be rescheduled and sold indefinitely.
Make Meaningful Member Connections That Extend Beyond Performance
Whether your members train in person or online, actual workout time is about 30-60 minutes a day at most. It is difficult to establish a sense of community in such a short period of time.
One key benefit of providing a mobile app to your fitness community is their ability to connect and interact 24/7.
You can set up community message boards where members can discuss experiences, offer tips, share favorite recipes, and encourage each other. This can even extend to social media-like experiences where members post photos and discuss other topics—like what they’re watching on TV and fun trips they’re planning to take.
It gives people an excuse to keep opening the app multiple times a day, even when they’re not working.
Not only does this help keep your fitness community more engaged, but it reduces the chances of people canceling their membership and keeps the door open to more money making opportunities.
Final Thoughts: Think Mobile-First
The key to building an active and engaged fitness community is a different kind of movement—the digital kind.
Place-based communities are not what they used to be. When groups of people are together, they are all looking at their phones. Rather than trying to fight this reality, you can use it and take advantage of it.
Mobile apps are ideal for fitness communities because they provide training materials on the go from anywhere and allow people to connect even when they are not working.
A low-cost investment for gym owners and fitness instructors, with high income potential that doesn’t end up in the country.
Sign up for Buildfire today to start building your fitness app without writing a single line of code. Your first 30 days are free—no credit card required.
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