Last week I wrote a blog about attracting new clients to your fitness business in it I promised to break down different marketing programs to an implementation level. I have several conversations with a wide variety of fitness business owners and the one topic that keeps coming up is how to acquire new clients or members. The problem wasn’t  knowing what to do, since there are several people with top 20 lists for fitness business marketing, but how to implement the marketing programs. A recent topic that came up was the “Bring a Friend” program, so if you have been considering it here is the how to.

How to Run the “Bring a Friend” program in your Fitness Business

Fitness Business | How to Implement

1. Determine the service you want to focus the offer for, if you do personal training and bootcamps you will need to decide which one the promotion is for. It is not recommended to do both but instead use the one service to fill the other. An example would be to offer all your PT clients a free bootcamp for them and a friend if they come together. Bonus is both may like the bootcamp and you get two new campers.

2. Next once you determined the service decide on what the promotion will be. Again this is just a matter for you to decide what you are comfortable with and may be budget driven.

a.    If you have zero budget then offer the session for free to one of the people. Avoid large give a ways like month long memberships keep to short or even bring 3 friends get a free class. You still need to make money so do not giveaway too much.
b.    If you have a budget then I recommend swag over free services because everyone loves a gift plus these gifts should have your logo on them; t-shirt, water bottles or a gear bag are all cool and logo ready product. Once you have people paying you for a service there is no need to offer them it for free, instead give them the swag for x number of friends and the friends a free session to try you out.
c.    Last option here is to use your network of affiliates. If you followed my last blog you may have a few already so grab some free trial, discount coupons or other goods from them and offer it out to the people who bring in the most friends in a month. The friend is still free and your network provides the gifts so there is minimal cost to you.

3. You have the service, you have the promotion, now you need to know when and for how long you run it. Some businesses will run it every new session or even everyday any day. This works for some but your existing clients or members will feel saturated with it and eventually stop the process. Best to offer it quarterly so once every 3-4 months you will run a “Bring a Friend” special. On the other months you have different specials or events to promote your fitness business.

4. Track the results of each program or special you offer. If you do not have software get it so you can know you busy times and when your fitness business may need new bodies in the class. Schedule everyone; you need this data to develop effective marketing programs and to know where people have come from.

Now you are good to go; you have the service, the program and the software to track the results so now you just need to implement it and start getting those new fitness maniacs into your business.  

Want to learn more about a software to help you organize all your new leads?