A year ago I opened a 30 minute personal training studio and business is booming. We were cash flow positive the first week we opened our doors. And in less than a year we needed to expand the space. So we added a second floor to the studio, but now the challenge is how to double our existing clientele base of 200 members to 400 members. I know this will take some new techniques and I would love some expert advice on this area. Thanks - Jesse
Your situation is unique and I don't know all the details, so I'll give you some basic strategies that have worked for other businesses like yours.
- Optimize what works. You've been doing something right to get to 200 members already. Write down and analyze your existing sales systems, plug the leaks, and dial up the things that are working.
- Create referral systems. Incentivize your existing clients to refer their friends, and reward them (with free training sessions, nutritional supplements, gift certificates for a juice bar, etc.) for bringing you new clients.
- Partnerships / joint-ventures: What do your existing clients (or the kind of clients you want to attract) have in common? What other businesses do they patronize? Can you partner with those businesses to get them to refer people to you?
For example, I've lived in several apartment communities that had on-site gyms. The building, in partnership with a local personal trainer, offered a free training session to every new resident.
- Market education: Offer free online or in-person seminars on exercise, nutrition, fat loss, muscle gain, healthy living, whatever your clients are really interested in. Teach people something they didn't know, and position yourself / your company as experts. You can do these for free, or even charge for them. At the end, make a special offer to the attendees to sign up for training.
- Public relations: Do a free "boot camp" series in a local public park. Get the word out in local publications and online.
- Advertising: Build a landing page optimized to get visitors to sign up for training/consultation/free education. Run banner ads or AdWords targeted at your local market and drive traffic to that page.
- SEO / social media: Publish content online that's interesting to people in your market. Use it to drive traffic to specific offers that get people into your sales funnel.
I'm going to do a sales optimization case study soon ... get in touch and I'll be happy to get some more details about your particular business and talk about all this with you in more depth.
Answered 11 years ago
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