As we approach September, the second busiest month for fitness memberships in the UK, thoughts turn to membership sales, strategies, and price models.
It’s clear that lots of leisure pricing is stuck in the past. Whether we’re talking about joining fees, memberships, or selling the monthly payment as “less than a cup of coffee per visit”, revolution is needed in many organisations.
Many studio and ‘boutique club’ operators have shaken up the model with pre-purchase packs of sessions. With more agile systems, this can be very successful, particularly if you can get your members to burn through classes or PT sessions quickly to get to the next sale. Sure, it requires more work, but if you put in the additional effort, you’ll get more return. It also creates more sales cycles to focus on as packs come to expiry, which if managed right, can improve retention or renewal.
"Less than a coffee"
The biggest frustration I hear is to anchor the monthly DD price to a number of visits (typically 3 per week), and then explain that a gym visit is less than a coffee. This is wrong on so many levels. For starters, the average member makes 1-1.5 visits per week, so that’s some expensive coffee. Secondly, why even anchor it to visits? Netflix doesn’t tell you how many movies or boxsets you’re going to watch, Spotify doesn’t say how many songs or podcasts you’ll listen to, and Amazon doesn’t talk about the number of books you’re going to order (or airpods, zinc supplements, and everything else from A-Z).
By talking about the number of visits and price in the same sentence, you’re setting up many to not join in the first place, and many more to leave when they don’t visit ‘enough’. Of course, it’s important to monitor members’ visits and to encourage them to make more, but common reasons for leaving are that members aren’t visiting enough, don’t have time, or aren’t getting value. So don’t start them thinking like this before they even join!
Subscription Models
One of the reasons we’ve been thinking and talking about this a lot lately is the health seeker subscription model, where a member pays a fee for a 30-minute measure and coaching session. Sometimes this fee approaches or exceeds the monthly gym membership, which is perceived as a problem or sales barrier for some staff. Why would they pay the same or more when they can have a gym membership which includes a health check?
But people are willing to pay for a monthly health check if they get value (education, motivation, and accountability) from their coach. They only have to visit the site once each month, but get all of their value from that one visit. Support emails, calls, and other benefits (e.g., app tracking) are all a bonus on top.
Meanwhile, for gym, leisure centre, or health club memberships, you need to sell more of the benefits and address your prospect’s short- and long-term goals such as health and longevity. If your leisure management system is fixed to DD payments, you might not be able to sell session packs or transformation plans. Nevertheless, a monthly subscription needs to compete with other essential lifestyle services as budgets are squeezed more and more. Welcome sessions, body scans, programme reviews, and challenges all help with both membership sales and retention.
Think also about how else you support your members outside the club, and sell these services, if the prospect seems keen to use them. Services such as online workouts, nutrition support, activity monitoring, and club apps are typically undersold, or members are un-educated about the benefits.
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