The Fit to Grit Cast
Fit to Grit is an audio/video/newsletter hybrid featuring in-depth conversations with leadership within the athletic space. Guests range from top executives within the athletic space to professionals in adjacent industries with a proven track record of success working in the athletic industry.
We explore visionary ideas and practical strategies driving the industry forward, covering areas such as marketing, finance, branding, equipment, product development, biz dev, and more. Join us as we share actionable insights and real-world experiences while embodying the "fit to grit" spirit.
The Fit to Grit Cast
How to Use Client Testimonials to Boost Gym Credibility
What happens when your outstanding results aren't enough to convince potential clients? That's the frustration Zach Coleman faced in his early business days, discovering that without documented testimonials, each new client relationship started at square one—despite a track record of transformative results.
Client testimonials represent far more than vanity metrics for fitness studios. They're powerful credibility engines that directly impact your bottom line. The Health and Fitness Association found studios utilizing testimonials as a key performance indicator experienced a remarkable 40% increase in conversion rates. Yet many studio owners struggle with effectively capturing and leveraging these powerful social proof tools.
Your trainers are your most underutilized asset in gathering authentic reviews. Rather than viewing them solely as class instructors, recognize them as brand ambassadors who can naturally request feedback during class settings. This approach feels genuine rather than transactional. When strategically positioned, these testimonials boost your SEO by containing keywords potential clients search for—like specific class types and location information. When responding to reviews, avoid generic replies. Instead, personalize your responses, strategically incorporate keywords, and even include subtle referral requests to transform passive reviews into active growth drivers.
Ready to revolutionize your studio's marketing? Start viewing testimonials as fundamental building blocks rather than optional extras. Implement a systematic approach to collection, respond thoughtfully to each review, and watch as your digital presence and actual studio experience create a powerful cycle of growth. What testimonial strategy will you implement this week? Leave a comment sharing your approach!
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Please don't listen to this, because 90% of them say this because they wanna make money. Reviews are inconsistent. No, they're not. They're not inconsistent at all, in fact. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the 50 Great Cast.
Speaker 0:I'm your host, zach Coleman, going through the foundational series once again, and today I wanna talk a lot about client testimonials. We've talked a lot about it in the past client testimonials, how beneficial they are for you. A lot about it in the past client testimonials, how beneficial they are for you. But I want to dive deeper into that just that concept here today, and how they can really amplify your credibility and drive your studio's growth as you continue to evolve and grow, and really that should be your main KPI for your marketing. You know foundational series. Let's take a step back here a little bit. With a lot of the clients that we bring on within the studio space, we see a large amount of them not understanding the importance of client reviews. So they have a struggle showcasing the wins. They're afraid that their clients will feel their members will feel attrusion through that, or they just fail to build trust with them. And so you know I want to talk through three. Or they just fail to build trust with them. And so you know, I want to talk through three things. I want to talk to three ways that you can really build compelling reviews and not just help you build more profitability within your studio, but also to help you understand how it can waterfall and build very high KPI for you when you're the trainers that you have on staff.
Speaker 0:As fitness leaders in the industry, I think we all have one goal, which is to give our clients or members great results. Like I know that that's something that is really near and dear to my heart. Believe me, I wouldn't be in this if that wasn't the case. And yet we struggle to continue to showcase those wins to the outside world. We have a weird thing about showcasing that. Or we look at the reviews as just an automated system that is like, oh, get reviews, get reviews, and not really understanding the importance of it within the studio environment and how it can build connection and how it can be utilized for much more than just a star that's on the computer, and without those authentic testimonials, I think we'd all end up not understanding that it's a guided way to build trust, with pre-sale membership opportunities for people that are just driving by and they wanna have an understanding, or just having a quick conversation with a friend and talking to them about the studio. I think a lot of big box studios have found a way to systematize this effectively. Not going to say all of them, because some of them suck at their operations, especially to their owners, but for a lot of them they've kind of understand how important reviews really are.
Speaker 0:And so when I first started my business again creative eight years ago, before we opened the gym mark, you know us that have 2030. Right, so it's a little bit of a different concept, but overall it was still the same. You know, I assumed that the results that I gave alone would be enough. I mean, I still remember. I still remember and this is kind of a wink wink at some of the results that we give, but also it's not. It's really a conversation I've had with my wife plenty of times. We have this one client that we literally helped go from a small space to a bigger space to now having three locations relocation and their pre-sale lead generation is at around a thousand a month. I just say average, do they close all that? Of course not. They probably close about 40%, 40 to 50% of those, but we give great results and we've done it because we worked with them and I always sit there and I always tell my significant other, some of my friends, like it doesn't make any sense to me. I would always say this I'm like we give damn well great results, but it seemed like every new client we bring on, it's like I have to start that trust all over again. I have to try to build trust with them. I show them the results, but they just don't know me and I rarely documented the actual journey with that said client. So now, now, what do we do? You know, now, every time we bring on a client, you know I document the results that we get from them. You know for you that could be said just setting up a good system on on review management, and so that's kind of something that I learned. That was probably the most driving factor in the growth of a business.
Speaker 0:You're going to hear so many people, especially in the digital marketing world. I don't want you to listen to this. Please don't listen to this, because 90 percent of them say this because they want to make money. Reviews are inconsistent. No, they're not. They're not inconsistent at all, in fact, if you already have 50 members. You have a good place to start. So you want to build just build a small system to help get more reviews and to build more advocacy with those said members. So what is an effective way to authentically capture testimonials from your members? If you're looking at reviews, for instance, let's just use reviews, for instance, in your members.
Speaker 0:A good, authentic way to do this is you kind of look at your trainers. Trainers can be utilized for way more than just training every day. In fact, as you continue to grow, I'm going to highly recommend that most of you look at your trainers as your sales reps in your personal brand. I'm sorry, that's just how it is. You're building connection and you're going to want to have your trainers be those personal brands within the studio environment so that you can work on top level stuff and ownership style stuff in the studio environment. So, with that said, your trainers can build a lot of authenticity and review management. So have them.
Speaker 0:In itself, that is an authentic way for review management. Have a class and after each class, just ask them take five minutes or in the middle maybe there's a five minute break within the workout and just have them say, hey, I've been doing the class for you guys with a while. I'd love if all of you can give a review for this particular class. Right, that's just. It's just authentic. People are gonna be willing to give you a review, I promise, and that's authentic. Just get them to ask during or after the class or even before the class starts. It takes two seconds. You have a link. If you're using something like a train allies or a gym management software with the trainer in it, they can hyper focus the people that are in the class and send them all a link at the same time, possibly through text message or through email. So utilize something like that and have them do it and just have it be a KPI that they have to track.
Speaker 0:How do you strategically position testimonials to maximize their efforts? There's multiple ways you can position these. What works for us, especially with our studios, is and I brought this up before when people are looking for a studio, the two things that matter is how close it is to their house and customer service. Those are the two deciding factors, and then you can get into experience. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 0:So I think that there's an opportunity to utilize reviews from an intent standpoint. What do I mean by that when most people are searching online and using organic search, a lot of the times what they're doing is they are searching in their local area on Google Maps and or Google search and they're saying gym near me, yoga class near me, yoga class. Not just yoga, but yoga classes, because that's the intent. Right, if they're looking for yoga, they could be looking for so much more. So yoga classes I'm just going broad here you could have specific types of classes that you can utilize. So the more reviews you get, the more they are going to talk about the positioning of those classes. You have someone come in and you do it during the yoga class, for instance. They are more likely going to leave a review about that yoga class. So, right there, you're strategically positioning on Google when they write that review. We're taking the yoga, we take the yoga class here with this trainer even better and we love it.
Speaker 0:Now, when someone comes in, and I will say from the Health and Fitness Association, they did a study that reportedly says that about 40% increase within the studio environment's conversion rate, based off those studios utilizing client testimonials as a KPI. That's 40% increase in your sales, sale opportunities, because your main focus is reviews. So think about it from this terms. It helps with SEO, seo helps with advocacy and also helps you keep top of mind. If you want to go in a much deeper strategy, which I can talk to you about later for all those people that may not be in a class, or you want to kind of go in and do a bulk kind of review system to try to get some involved, but your rankings can move up quite fast on on organic based off of the way the search algorithm works now. So why don't you take advantage of that?
Speaker 0:We usually just require clients to have a system like that that they can use so that they can get reviews. It could be other gym management softwares which, if you guys don't know this, we are building up. We just built a proprietary plugin that works with all the website builds that we do for studio owners of multiple sizes, from one to whatever they can one help it be more efficient but help build more real estate on Google. That gets rid of those that iframe crap that you see with most of those gym management softwares. They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 0:But yeah, number three, what are some of the common mistakes studios make when they're utilizing testimonials. Here's the biggest mistake I see. They generic replies hey, susan, thanks for being part of our gyms, and then they just say that amongst every single one of their reviews. So that's two mistakes. One is the same message over and over again. Two, it's very generic. What we really highly recommend when you're writing a review reply is you don't need to do it same day. In fact, it's better if it's three or four days later, because they're getting an alert and you stay on top of mind on them four days later, right? We really highly recommend that you go in and you write something about the service.
Speaker 0:Deborah was a great facilitator of this yoga class. Oh, there you go Now. Yoga class could be one of your intent phrases that you know. You're really working to get on high on Google so that you can beat the yoga studio down the street. So that's when you would write back and say we really appreciate you, susan. Say your name, susan for coming to this yoga class, and then just use some keywords in there that really come to coming to our yoga class here. And if you have one location, you could just say the city. Here in Westchester, I'll just use Westchester. I don't know why Westchester, or if you have multiple locations, this is when you would purposely dive in and say this particular location, and so that would be a strategy that I would kind of inhale and you can copy and paste that you can have a set number of these, like three or four different ones, that you can interchange some words out to. So, long story short, some common mistakes that I want you to try to avoid is canned responses, to an extent, repeated canned responses, and I'll be real, I know you all want to AI these responses and you just want to have an automated thing. Do it. But remember the studio is about connection.
Speaker 0:Really, think about how you can leverage that review reply for further opportunity. I mean, dang, imagine this. Imagine if you went in there and this is just off the top of my head and you said Susan, we really do appreciate you leaving this, this review. It really means a lot for us for you to come to our yoga classes You've and personalize it You've, we've really seen you grow a lot over the last two years that you've been at our studio, or last three months, four months, for you personally, if you know, you give us a call. If you give us a call on our next one.
Speaker 0:If you want to bring a friend in, we'd love to. We love to give them a free class because we know if we've helped you, we can help the people that you love and that are parts of your life, or you know something like that. That's kind of deep, but something along those lines. Use a referral type message in your reply. I mean you can, so why not? So long story short, we've talked to three things. You can go back. You can watch them in the chapters If you're watching us on the video form.
Speaker 0:You know we talked about effective ways to authentically capture uh testimonials from your members. Use your trainers possibly do in-class or post-class type requests for those and utilize your trainers for the particular classes. How and where do we start to strategically put them Understand that there's more power to them than just the advocacy. Though a little star, it's an SEO boost and an online search boost in the maps and the way people are finding you. So leverage that to your benefit when you're replying and just don't be canned. Connect with them. I really do appreciate all you guys.
Speaker 0:You know we've been doing the Fit to Group cast. Now We've rebranded it. You know recently, two months ago and we're just starting to get legs up on it, starting to get people in. So you know, I love to hear in the comment section down below if there's anything that you guys would like to hear out of this podcast. If you'd like to me go go a little bit further down into doing some writing and stuff like that, or building little strategic sessions, I'm all for it. I just want to know what people want, what people want to see through these podcasts, and so if you're listening to this right now and not watching it, I highly recommend you go over to our YouTube channel, subscribe, hit the subscribe button and, of course, watch these two videos right here to the left of me oh, my left. Your right Up here to the right of me If you want to hear more about our foundational series. Again, I'm Zach, host of the Fit to Gritcast, and you all have a gritty day.
