Access FIT

The problem with traditional health, fitness, and wellness marketing

"Here's the problem you have, the problem you have is all the people who already know they need a fitness place have one. So those people have already solved their fitness problem. You're not going to get growth, unseemly growth, fast growth, wonderful growth, unless you figure out how to sell to people who don't know they have a fitness problem. And the challenge you have is most people don't want to listen to you, those people are ignoring you, you've got to figure out how to get their friends to tell them. And the essence if what I came to talk about today, to this industry is, the industry is not good at that, the industry has created an environment with a lot of strangers standing next to each other on machines, as opposed to creating a culture where people want to tell their friends." - Seth Godin IHRSA Conference 2009

YOYO health clubs

We’ve all heard of YOYO dieting (the practice of going on and off diets only to end up fatter with each cycle) but YOYO health clubs can be just as dangerous.

So what’s a YOYO health club? YOYO is an acronym for You’re On Your Own.

Sadly many health clubs are YOYO clubs… whether they realize it or not is another question. One common complaint that new members have is that they are forgotten once they have signed on the dotted line… thanks for your money… You’re On Your Own!

Of course, some members don’t have a problem on their own (some even prefer it)…the challenge for you is to know the difference.

More insights from Michael Scott Scudder

Here’s another insight courtesy of Michael Scott Scudder’s e-mail newsletter FIG Leaves… Change in Advertising/Marketing: Newspaper no longer works; direct mail now gets ¼ of 1% response for most clubs; less walk-ins; percentage of members secured by referrals at a 10 year-low; Facebook and other social media commanding more and more attention from potential consumers.

These insights parallel what I have been saying for a while… traditional media is struggling to deliver on member acquisition for most clubs.

If you want to know what to do about it read The New Rules Of Health, Fitness, And Wellness Marketing: A Scientific Approach To New Member Acquisition, Retention, and Long-Term Loyalty it is available as a free download.

Don't fall victim to fate

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds." - Franklin D Roosevelt 

Has the month-to-month contract been a success or a failure?

Michael Scott Scudder recently wrote in his Fitness Industry Group newsletter that the “value play” of the last decade, open-ended memberships have by far the worst retention of any type (45% or higher)… plus a very short “shelf life” (average 7 months).

When month-to-month contracts first came on the market many industry experts and pundits were heralding them as the saviour of the industry. It made sense of course… remove the long-term commitment and hefty price tag and “cha ching”.

Month-to-month contracts continue to be a popular option with consumers so why the apparently poor performance?

Actually, it makes perfect sense… month-to-month contracts remove some of the risk for consumers (price and long-term commitment)… those consumers most interested in reducing those risks are going to be beginners… and beginners are going to have the highest attrition rates.

The fact is that month-to-month contracts often aren’t a “value play” as Michael describes them as much as they are a “low risk” play (month-to-month contracts are often priced higher per month than term contracts).

What month-to-month contracts don’t do is improve the member experience or improve their chances of success in the club… beginners simply fail a month at a time.

Robert Browning makes a great point...

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp..." - Robert Browning

Core members and non-core members?

In a couple of discussions I’ve had recently owners and managers have referred to “core members”. One owner commented… ”we don’t worry too much about the young male market, they’re not really our core members, we are more of a family club.”

Here’s the problem I have with this attitude… with so much competition in most markets today losing even “non-core” members can hurt you… even ruin you.

Lets say you have a club with 1500 members and your non-core members make up 10-15% of you total membership or 150-225 members… now lets say these non-core members are paying $50 a month for their memberships… that’s $90,000-$135,000 in revenue per annum (not including non-dues revenue, direct referrals, word of mouth etc).

The fact is that those non-core members can represent a significant chunk of your profit margin… sometimes even all of it.

Sure you are entitled to run your club with a particular focus but my recommendation is to treat every member like a core member [note: that doesn’t mean treating everyone the same]… sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Not invented here bias

People tend to fall in love with their own ideas… even dumb people with dumb ideas (especially dumb people with dumb ideas).

Of course, it actually makes sense if you consider that everyone has their own unique worldview and that our ideas will be consistent with our particular worldview. Prominent behavioural economist Dan Ariely refers to this as an idiosyncratic fit.

Basically, our ideas inherently accommodate our own idiosyncrasies and therefore we tend to prefer them over the ideas of others that don’t accommodate our particular idiosyncrasies.

For example, a friend of mine owns a health club in a smallish rural town. He was a previous state bodybuilding champion (about a decade ago) and his wife was also a reasonably successful regional bodybuilder and so, perhaps not too surprisingly, his website has images of himself and his wife in their “bodybuilding” prime.

The problem, for me, is that this is a small town without a big “bodybuilding” population and typical hardcore bodybuilding images can be intimidating to non-bodybuilders. Obviously, the concern is that people visiting the website will see these images and form the view that they aren’t a good fit for the club.

Dr Ariely, in a number of experiments, demonstrated that the Not Invented Here bias actually extends beyond idiosyncratic fit… it turns out that we love our own ideas simply because they are ours.

Of course, no matter how big or successful we are no one (person or company) has a monopoly on good ideas… witness the failure of Microsoft’s Zune, Apple’s Newton, and Tower Records.

It’s natural for owners and managers to want to run their businesses in a way that is consistent with their own worldview… just leave room for the possibility that “your ideas” might be hindering, not helping, your business.

So where are you getting your ideas?