Make it Easy to Leave, and More People Will Stay

For years, the fitness industry has relied on friction to retain members.

Long notice periods. Hidden clauses. Phone-only cancellations.

It worked… on paper.

But that model is now under pressure. Regulation is tightening around “subscription traps,” customer expectations are shifting, and the tolerance for opaque cancellation processes is disappearing fast.

We asked recently: what’s the last subscription you tried to cancel?
The responses weren’t about price or value; they were about frustration.

That’s the real issue.

The problem isn’t that people leave.
It’s how they feel when they do.

The old model: friction as retention

There’s a long-standing industry assumption that if you make cancellation harder, fewer people will cancel.

This is technically true... but commercially short-sighted.

Friction doesn’t create loyalty.
It creates resentment… and that shows up somewhere else:

• Negative word of mouth
• Lower trust at point of sale
• Reduced likelihood of rejoining
• Brand damage that compounds over time

People don’t forget bad exits.
And in fitness, where rejoining is common, that matters more than most sectors. 

Your Retention Problem Isn’t Pricing. It’s Silence.

Recently, an article in The Guardian explored something simple but powerful: we’re losing the art of talking to strangers.

• Banks are digital
• Supermarkets are self-checkout
• Food ordering is app-based
• Even everyday services that once required conversation are now screen-led.

We’ve removed friction from modern life, and in doing so, we’ve removed conversation.

And that matters.

Because for many people, the leisure centre, health club or gym is now one of the last remaining places where real, human interaction still happens.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on pexels

Bigwave Marketing partners with GGFit to develop the HealthSeekers brand and national programmes

Bigwave Marketing has announced a partnership with GGFit to lead the branding and marketing development of HealthSeekers, a coaching-led approach designed to help leisure operators and health clubs engage people who want to live healthier lives but do not identify with traditional gym models.

Initially appointed to support operator-level marketing, Bigwave’s role has evolved to include the creation of the HealthSeekers brand identity, product concepts, and campaign frameworks that can be applied consistently across multiple sites while allowing for local delivery.

photo credit: Halfpoint on iStock

GGFit Launches First National HealthSeekers Accelerator Programme to Redefine Community Health and Wellbeing

-PRESS RELEASE-

GGFit has announced the launch of the HealthSeekers Accelerator Programme, a national early-adopter initiative designed to help leisure operators and health clubs across the UK engage people who want to live healthier lives but do not identify as traditional gym members.

Launching this month [January], the programme represents a shift in how public and independent leisure providers approach community health and wellbeing. Rather than relying on membership-led models, HealthSeekers focuses on coaching-led health services, and uses more inclusive messaging to remove the barriers people associate with gyms.

Health, Data, and Collaboration

The HealthSeekers mission is to unite operators, coaches and local communities in a shared movement for better health. Working alongside leisure operators, local authorities and wellbeing innovators, the programme develops a growing network of community wellbeing hubs that empower people to live healthier, longer lives. At the same time, it will collate data based evidence to build operator confidence and health service ambition.

photo credit: Vitaly Gariev @silverkblack on Unsplash

Inductions for Everybody

How can we be more efficient and offer a standard service when onboarding new members? And how can we deliver more? The standard industry term is still induction, but many clubs are changing to ‘activation’, ‘welcome appointment’, ‘step 1’, ‘getting started’, etc. If we’re shifting mindsets, let’s use new terminology.

“All of our members have an induction” is often the response when we ask about retention strategies, particularly onboarding.

Club operators and owners believe that they really are doing their best to ensure all new members have the maximum chance of sticking around.

But when we dig under the bonnet, either through further discussion, or analysis of club data, it often transpires that fewer than half of new members actually attend some kind of onboarding appointment.

 

We’ve looked at this issue many times, with many clubs; from leisure trusts and councils, private clubs and independent gyms, even low-cost, low-staff gyms, where inductions really aren’t popular at all.

Balancing Retention Efforts and Resources: Making It Work with a Smaller Team

Retention has always been more cost-effective than acquisition, but in today’s climate, it's no longer just a smart strategy, it’s a financial necessity.

With rising operational costs, including increases in employer National Insurance (NI) contributions, many clubs and gyms are facing the hard reality of needing to do more with less. Staffing budgets are tighter. Teams are stretched. Yet the pressure to deliver results, including higher member retention, is greater than ever.

So how can your club maintain or even improve member retention without adding headcount or burning out your existing team? The answer lies in working smarter, not just harder. Here’s how...

How Personal Trainers Can Grow Their Business with HealthSeeker Strategies

Expanding a PT business typically requires higher paying clients or longer working hours. 

Another way is to resonate with a broader audience through HealthSeeker strategies, which focus on engaging the 85% of the population who are not currently members of gyms or health clubs. 

By tailoring your services to meet the needs of these individuals, you can unlock a largely untapped market and establish a thriving, inclusive business model. It also talks to a lot of good PT’s core values of helping people with their long-term health, rather than a quick fix weight loss goal.

This article was originally published in FitPro. Click here to check out their other great resources and education. 

The HealthSeeker Movement

Introduction: A New Focus for the Fitness Industry

With industry bodies pushing to increase engagement in physical activity beyond 20%, the fitness industry must ask itself: Are we focusing on the right strategies to reach the majority? 

While some operator’s memberships are diversifying to include GP services and specialist health checks, these options often come at a premium, leaving many behind. 

If the goal is truly to improve public health, we need a more inclusive approach—one that extends beyond the 15% currently engaged in fitness facilities and reaches the broader population looking to improve their health.

HealthSeekers as a Retention Strategy

Implementing a HealthSeeker project can significantly boost member retention for fitness clubs.

While many gyms focus on upselling or premium memberships, the HealthSeekers model offers a fresh approach, prioritizing long-term engagement over quick gains. By thinking beyond traditional membership structures, fitness operators can discover numerous direct and indirect benefits, from reducing attrition to enhancing the overall member experience.

Why People, Not Technology, Are the Heart of the Fitness Industry

At its core, the fitness industry is, and always will be, a people-driven business. Staff join, develop, and stick around to build relationships, with members and with their colleagues. The personal connections are stronger than most other industries, because of the people.

HealthSeekers Education - Reaching the 85%

One of the most positive shifts during HealthSeeker discussions is the focus on the 85% of the population who do not have a gym or health club membership.
To push this movement forward, we need three tiers of education, along with collaboration and coaching.

Today, let’s talk about education.

Rethinking the Fitness Industry

The fitness industry has traditionally focused on the 15% (now 15.9% according to the latest Leisure DB report) who are already active. The goal has been to help the fit get fitter, competing for the same demographic and often poaching members from other clubs. The low-cost model has exacerbated this, with budget clubs 'stealing' members from incumbents who then try to win them back.

Many see the ‘pivot to health’ as a way to bring ‘the 85%’ into our leisure centres, gyms, and health clubs. However, as Andy King suggests on The Conveners podcast, the term pivot could be replaced with "broaden" or "transform." Most HealthSeekers are not interested in working out, exercising, or ‘doing sport.’ No amount of pivoting, transformation, or special offers will change that.

Choice, Loyalty, and the once-a-month visitor

Some positive fitness industry numbers announced this week in the Leisure DB State of the UK Fitness Industry Report. 

The Headlines... 15.9% penetration, over 7,000 gyms, and 10.7 million members. 

There was lots of positive talk of health and pivots, yet some of the rhetoric around the report was still stuck in the past, particularly with respect to engagement and retention, and AI. We’ll cover the former in this article, leaving the latter to the experts.

People have more choice than ever when it comes to improving their health and fitness, which is both a blessing and a curse. As more clubs open, they compete with each other for the same members, via more channels, creating more churn as members chop and change. 

The Paradox of Choice with Retention Initatives

One of the problems that clubs face (and to be honest, that we retention consultants sometimes create) is that there are so many retention actions and areas to look at, it can be challenging to know where to start, or where to best focus your efforts.

This choice overload becomes harder still when you’re also looking at sales targets or dealing with day-to-day operational issues. Some lucky organisations have a retention manager, but for many it’s only part of their role, or the responsibility is split across several people. So, it’s no wonder that retention rarely comes to the top of the to-do-list. 

Putting it very simply, the key to good retention is talking to people. 

However, the secret to great retention is talking to the right people, in the right way, at the right time. 

Choices & Coaching for Health

“I don’t want to tell people what to do (e.g. join a gym, don’t eat takeaways), but I do want them to be healthier… how do I do it?” asked Kim Leadbeater MP at #ActiveUprising last week.

This was the best question in a whole lot of brilliant speeches, panels, pitches, and discussions at the ukactive annual conference. Kim has a passion for health and fitness, and is a force for change in the work she does. 

We love her “Healthy Britain – A new approach to health and wellbeing policy” paper from March 2023, and also enjoyed listening to her talk at the Why Sports conference last year.

Kim's speech and subsequent panel debate at Active Uprising really talked to the need for more of a coaching approach in health and fitness, rather than the traditional prescription or programming methods we are used to.

Simply put, if people choose their own pathways, they are much more likely to follow them, and succeed, than if they are told what to do.

Motivation, Behaviour Change, and Health Coaching for the Fitness Industry

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation over the holiday season, reading articles and listening to podcasts from inside and outside the fitness industry. Conversations with clients, partners, and trusted advisors feed and reinforce my thoughts on this, so here they are.

I’m talking primarily about motivation to be active, or to be healthier, of course.

It’s worth noting that behaviour change is very difficult, particularly when it comes to being active. It’s becoming more difficult too. Fast food or anything else we need can be delivered on demand to our door, while TV or social media sticks us to our couches, and AI is doing more of our actual thinking of us, while we sleep less. I’m not sure if we’re turning into the human characters in the film WALL-E, being softened up so that we can’t fight the Terminators.

So, behaviour change is difficult… we need more support and more motivation, to combat the evil kangaroos driving us towards an early grave.

Measure your members progress to get them to stick around longer

Progression is key to keeping people engaged in any activity, particularly one that is hard, or part of a choice. Measuring progress through school with assessments, exams, or reports, music exams, colour belt gradings in martial arts, or levels on a computer game keeps us motivated to continue.

So, when fitness industry veterans ask, “remember when we used to measure everyone as they joined”, the response is “why don’t we do it so much anymore?”

This is tip 11 in a series to celebrate GGFit’s 15 years in business. We discussed progression briefly in tip 3, but want to expand on this important topic now. Read all the tips here.

There are so many better ways to measure progress now, without using scales, tape, or callipers. With body composition, we have medical grade devices providing so many stats on people’s health and fitness, and 3D (and 4D!) body scanners to show how people’s body shape has changed as they progress.

Absentees are back!

Dormant memberships were mostly wiped out in the COVID Pandemic. But old habits die hard, and the member absentee problem is back to normal. How do we affect this new normal, in new ways?

This is tip number 8 in a series to celebrate GGFit’s 15 years in business. Stay tuned for more

What is an absent member?

Cut-off times vary from business to business, but the typically accepted benchmark is that if a gym member hasn’t visited for the last 30 days, then they’re an absentee. Setting a cut-off time is important so that you can set KPIs, then measure and try to improve your active member percentage.

The Independent Gym Owners Conference - Doing Things Differently

The biggest and best gathering of independent club owners and operators took place on 1st December 2022. While there were some excellent speakers, and it’s important to have supporting suppliers who help the event to happen, the real value was within the delegates in the room. 

It’s a chance for independent clubs to get together, share their ideas and learn from each other. A lot of sharing happens in the group online, but people connect properly in real life at the event or after-party, forging partnerships, alliances, and friendships.  

The panel debate at the start of the conference encouraged delegates to make the most of the value in the room, talk to each other, be curious, find out about each other’s clubs, and get new ideas or momentum for old ones.

Gym membership pricing and coffee comparisons

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.

WFH, Health, and Health Clubs

This article talks about how health clubs can help improve corporate wellbeing, without selling classic gym memberships.

The effects of the COVID pandemic will be felt for many years after the last positive test result. One of the big business and cultural shifts has been the fast-track evolution of working from home (WFH). While many have been doing this for years, not everyone is benefitting. There are some serious repercussions on health, both physical and mental, as described by this report in HR Magazine, which claims remote working is “as dangerous as smoking”

Clubs losing members who are WFH 

Health clubs and gyms have been hit hard by the changes in working practices, with fewer people in towns and cities for a 5-day working week. On the flip side, some independent clubs have benefitted slightly from people wanting to train closer to home, twinned with the general trend of supporting local, smaller businesses. But the big city gyms are feeling it the hardest at the moment.