In the fitness industry, multi-week challenges are popular ways to gain customer loyalty and sell more classes. If you’re new to the fitness industry or are just opening up your own spin studio, you may not be familiar with the multi-week challenge model. Instead of focusing on selling single classes or weekly and monthly passes, fitness studios get creative. They begin to sell packages of classes that span for weeks at a time. The commitment is longer, but the reward can be higher.Multi-week challenges are like workshops where you focus on a theme or idea for several weeks (usually 2-4) and have a goal at the end of it. Some challenges center around a particular themed month, “March Madness” and others are based on more philosophical ideas like “Mindful Spinning” or “Find Motivation in Spinning and Your Life.” Whatever the theme or idea behind the multi-week challenge is, the goal is to get members engaged in a long-term commitment and drive retention. Below are a few ways you can start using multi-week challenges to sell packages at your spin studio.
Understand Your Members’ Goals
In order to create effective multi-week challenges that sell, you need to understand your members’ goals. Some fitness classes simply focus on losing weight. Some outline the importance of toning up, finding mindfulness, releasing anger. In the spinning world, it’s usually a combination of all of these. As a studio, you need to find your particular angle and turn that into the goal of your classes.Are you going to be focused more on the emotional aspect of spinning, releasing your anger, fighting through your problems on the bike? The toning aspect of it, creating a stronger and slimmer body that is healthy? Or the philosophical aspect of it, finding mindfulness and a clear head through spinning? If you’re having trouble pinpointing a goal, try asking your members via an anonymous survey and see what the most popular answer is. Figuring out your studio and your members’ goal is a great first step in creating packages that sell.
Figure Out What Motivates Your Members
Most people are motivated by short-term goals that they can easily check off to see progress. When creating your multi-week challenge incorporate a way where members can see their progress as they continue through the challenge. This could be an online system or portal, or a calendar tracking method. You can also incorporate a journal into your multi-week challenge where members can not only track their progress but write down their thoughts and feelings as they go through the process. Make sure you and your staff offer support to members taking the challenge that can help motivate them or adjust the challenge to fit their needs.How can OneFitStop help your boutique fitness studio? Request a Demo to learn more.
Get Creative
Making unique and desirable challenge packages is going to involve some creativity. Consider getting your staff and instructors together to brainstorm some ideas for challenges. It may also be beneficial to ask your members (the ones who are going to be taking the challenges) if there are any ideas or themes they would like to see a challenge centered around.Holidays and seasons are great places to start if you’re stuck on ideas. Also think about focusing on emotional ideas like getting rid of stress, spinning through bad habits, addictions, or grief. Offering spinning as a therapeutic device draws in people who may not have thought about spinning before. Think of unique ways to market a multi-week challenge, like performance benchmarking. If you can engage members to beat past goals through multi-week challenges, they'll know that because of your studio they were able to meet a specific goal. Now that's a customer testimonial just waiting to happen.
Keep Members Engaged
Promoting your multi-week challenge with things like t-shirts, journals, water bottles, and medals is a great way to keep members engaged. Hype up the challenge by starting promotion early on. This helps members have something to really look forward to and have the opportunity to get friends and family involved. Don’t forget the power of marketing when it comes to getting the word out about events happening in your studio. Set up your challenge not only as an event but as a way to build community. The greatest feeling as a spin studio owner is creating lasting friendships through otherwise strangers. These people that connect with you will bring everyone's mood up upon entering. Multi-week challenges are a great way to encourage your members to purchase long-term packages. Plus, you'll witness clients become excited about something other than their regular spin class routine. Keeping your members engaged, focusing on what motivates them, and creating compelling and fun challenges will help your studio succeed and drive retention.How can OneFitStop help your boutique fitness studio? Request a Demo to learn more.