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
Boost Memberships Before Opening Your Gym — Here’s How
Ready to launch your fitness studio with a packed roster of paying members on day one? The secret lies in your pre-sale strategy.
Most fitness entrepreneurs make the critical mistake of waiting until their doors open to start selling memberships. The data tells a different story: studios that implement effective pre-sale campaigns sign up 30-50% more first-year members before they even open. This episode breaks down exactly how to create this momentum, starting 8-12 weeks before your launch date.
We dive deep into creating a systematic lead nurture sequence that respects the modern fitness consumer's journey. Today's prospects need approximately seven touchpoints before making a purchasing decision, especially in the noisy fitness market. You'll learn how to structure these touchpoints through a carefully designed funnel incorporating email, SMS, social media, and in-person engagement. The key is shifting from transactional interactions to relationship-building communications that showcase your studio's vision, progress, and unique value proposition.
The episode also covers practical strategies for creating genuine urgency through limited founding member spots, early-bird pricing, and exclusive pre-launch perks. You'll discover how to leverage community partnerships, local events, and behind-the-scenes content to build emotional investment in your brand before opening day. Whether you're launching your first location or expanding to your tenth, this systematized approach can be adapted for new openings, relaunches, or rebrands to maximize revenue from day one.
Don't miss our special offer from episode sponsor LoyalSnap, a fitness studio CRM automation system that integrates with major gym management platforms and offers $40 off monthly subscriptions for our listeners. Connect with us to learn more about implementing these automation sequences for your pre-sale campaign.
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If you're a studio, you're just starting out, this video is for you. If you're not, then you're kind of behind. The most successful studios actually start to try to bring memberships in before they even open those doors. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fitcher BrickCast. I'm your host, zap Coleman. If you're watching this through our audio version, I highly recommend you click the video link down below and watch the video side. We do have some stuff here we're going to be showing up on the screen that can kind of help you digest some of this information. But today we're really going to talk about pre-sale launch campaigns, how you can start building buzz before you even start opening the doors for your fitness location. So if you're a studio, you're just starting out, or you're looking to relaunch your studio, kind of, you know, tailor that audience a little bit and kind of make it to the next level. This video is for you. If you're not, then you're kind of behind. The most successful studios actually start to try to bring memberships in before they even open those doors. According to the HFA, their reports show that studios that actually build an effective pre-sale campaign sign up to 30 to 50% more of their first year members before they even open the doors and let people come in. I really remember when I first started working with studios we worked a lot with that pre-sale engagement. We do a lot of marketing for studios and I highly remember when we started going into that process of understanding how their membership psyche works, we started to understand that we need to start building some pre sale type campaigns for them. And as we started to build these campaigns for not just pre launch of one location but understanding how to systematize that for either relaunch or if they're starting to expand and open multiple new locations, and how they can do that from a systematic approach, to start bringing people in the door and start making that money before they even open the doors. Right, we started to introduce this pre-sale type campaign where you can start letting the community understand the brand, letting them understand the excitement of building the brand, building the location, the offers, and it starts to build urgency in the mind of people in your general area within a 20, 30 mile radius that can actually come in and be like, oh, we wanna get in before they raise their prices or before they hit capacity and they start to have to raise their prices. So throughout this video. We're gonna kind of talk about campaign that you can start utilizing that first eight to 12 week period before you launch, how you can even take that campaign and how you can systematize it for after open some little early bird type specials or perks that help you create urgency for said members. We're going to talk a little bit about vision and brand, how you can really start leveraging that for said campaign and how you can start capturing leads for events, social media and partnerships.
Speaker 1:As I said, we do a lot of marketing for our clients, for these studios, and the biggest thing that we see is they bring a lead. The lead doesn't answer. They text them once done. It's much more of a transactional instead of a relational type community. So how do you switch that around and make it more relational, right? So let's dive into the very beginning.
Speaker 1:But before we get started, I do want to talk about one of our sponsors today, loyalsnap. Loyalsnap is a fitness studio CRM automation system for emails. We have partnered with LoyalSnap. Loyalsnap will allow you to have all sorts of automations, especially the ones that we have created for you, and they will allow you to integrate with any of the major gym management platforms so that you can get all of these automations at hand and it can turn on in a blink of an eye. So if you want to know more about that Loyal Snap partnership and that offer, sign up with me, have a call with me and we will integrate that into your onboarding process and you get about $40 off a month with your subscription with LoyalSnap. So again, reach out to me for more information on that.
Speaker 1:Now let's get started. So, first and foremost, let's talk about the main goal of where we are at in the industry right now. Where we're at in the industry right now is we're going through a drought. There's about we need about a seven point contact for any sort of lead to come into the door and make a sale, especially in the fitness community, where all of the information they're getting they're getting so bombarded from all these other studios. When a lead comes in the door, you have a conversation with them or you call and text message them. You think that they're lost. You may put them in your newsletter, but you need to start about eight to 12 weeks before you launch or before you relaunch, and you can even put this system within your own environment. When it comes to after launch, you change a little verbiage and you let people know hey, this is about us, blah, blah, blah blah. So you're going to want to start about eight to 12 weeks in advance.
Speaker 1:So, first and foremost, if we talk about the pre-sale launch campaign, this is going to be what we their pre-sale launch campaign. So how many touch points do we need to have? Seven, seven or eight, right? So I want you to create a funnel. You're going to create a funnel that talks a lot about when the ad is created. They're created through your system, through a form, through a phone call and also a text message. You're going to hit them at certain touch points and you're going to do a follow-up campaign where we really follow up one day, two days, three days, five days, seven days, and then you're going to move that to months. So you're going to follow up the first seven days after they submit an inquiry with you and you're going to allow that to be kind of your lead nurture system. And then, a month later, you're going to follow up again and then that's going to go month to month for about a year. What that allows you to do is it allows you to have seven. What's that? Eight plus another. We'll just say about 15 to 16 touch points within a year. If, after a year, this person doesn't sign up, then I would delete them from your system, move them from your system, and this is a great way for you to start building advocacy for your studio right away when you're starting to bring people in.
Speaker 1:Now, if we're going to have 15 touch points, this could be automatically set up and within those touch points, you're going to want to talk about certain things. You're going to want to talk about, you know, the building of the location. You're going to want to talk about where you're at with the location, especially if it's pre-sale and you can't necessarily sell them yet, or you are and you don't really have any urgency built in. You just kind of want to give them insights into the progress of the brand and the vision. This could be anything from creating the brand, the types of other people that are going to be associated with the studio, all the way down to what the look and feel is going to be like, what the internal is going to be like, the different types of amenities and offerings that you're going to have.
Speaker 1:So you're going to want to start about eight to 12 weeks beforehand and then when you launch, you're going to take that and you're just going to change the verbiage around said campaign. And so you have eight to 12 weeks beforehand. And this is particularly very similar to if you're going to build a relaunch campaign. You're going to do a rebrand, you're going in and you're doing some changes. You're moving location. You want to have a pre-sale type campaign for said location. You just need to flip the wordage out just a little bit for that pre-sale type campaign. Now I get it. This is all when somebody comes into the door.
Speaker 1:What about when to build that urgency to get them to actually sign up early? Well, you want to have some urgency type strategy aligned with this. You can either do a limited spot kind of situation, an early bird spot type situation, and or you can have some sort of offer deal. For instance, for your first year, we're going to offer you your membership at half the cost. We're trying to get people in the door type urgency. This is our what we do and this is how we do it.
Speaker 1:And so you're going to do this very similar to if you're launching a studio, if you're building a new location, or you're trying to have a pre-sale type engagement method and luckily, if you're utilizing organic or paid advertisement, you're allowed to showcase a location that far in advance. The thing is about three months in advance and so you could still have your phone number on there, you can still have your leave form and your website ready. I highly recommend you have that up about three months before you launch. If it's a second location and you're building a different location into your already existing website, you can build that location. They will allow you to build that location. Google will verify it, so will Facebook ads and targeting said location. So I would say this is a safe bet, say, eight to 12 weeks beforehand, and then you're going to want to create some urgency. If you have offers already, you're creating kind of an early bird type spot special. Hey, for the next 10 members we're doing it at half cost.
Speaker 1:We're trying to get you excited about the relaunch of what we're doing or the launch of what we're doing, and this is just for pre-sale. This is not for post-sale, already existing members If you already have a location and you're revamping. I will save that discussion for one of our next videos where we talk about post-sale type relaunching campaigns and how you can kind of leverage, the post-sale type environment. But you're going to want to do that and I say you're going to have about 15 touch points, 15 emails, and you're going to want to do that, and I say you're going to have about 15 touch points, 15 emails, and you're going to talk a lot about the launch, the launch I'm doing this sideways and you're also going to want to talk about the brand itself, which gets us to our next point Show behind the scenes of said studio vision.
Speaker 1:What are you creating? People love DIY type stuff. They love understanding how business works. And why is because it shows that you are building something that has structure. You're building something for them. It brings them value. So you want to start to talk about your studio's vision. Where were we looking to go with our studio? So, within this campaign and you're reaching back out via these touch points talk about the new vision of the location Say, hey, you know, over the years we worked here and we did this.
Speaker 1:I was a personal trainer or I did this and we started to build this vision about seeing. Tell your story. Tell your story as a business owner. This is where we're at in our development. We're about two weeks in. This is what it looks like.
Speaker 1:Showcase the brand development as well. This is what we're looking at. Our new name is Studio Hardcore. Just using that as an example. This as an example. This is the kind of experience we're looking to provide for you with the vision that we're trying to do. We're not just another big brick and mortar.
Speaker 1:We're here to do this and then start showcasing your offers slightly within that early bird special. You know 50% off for the first 10 members that sign up to this location and utilize that not a touch point one, but a touch point like two, three, four or 5 within that first week, because what that does is that starts to create urgency early and then you're more than willing to change that offer in that touch point down the road once you hit membership. So anyone that's in the funnel will be able to. You'll be able to shift your pricing and your budget accordingly to that. Now how do you kind of leverage this in other aspects? We talked about organic and you know we talk a lot about website pricing and how to really showcase that website pricing on your website. Take a look up at the video up here to my left and you'll be able to see all about. You know the secrets to boost your studio's growth through website pricing and how you can showcase that visually and message wise.
Speaker 1:Now what other ways can you really push these early bird specials right? If you have a brand, if you've developed your brand development, your website that early, you should have consistent visuals and written communication to really start a campaign. So you set aside some budget and my biggest go to especially if you're doing a pre sale into your first location is community events. You really want to look for community events in your area. You want to build possible social media campaigns. I want to put too much budget into social media.
Speaker 1:As of yet You're not there. But start building those partnerships. Start going around your location, find non-vertical competitors Could be daycares, could be nutrition shops, could be healthy food places, depending on your vibe and your vision and your niche within the industry. You want to try to find partnerships that you could start building beforehand, that you can start leaving flyers, ways that they can contact you and if your website's already up and your information's already there, you can have a link to a location to put them into this funnel right here. I think at the end of the day, the biggest key here is you wanna just set up that urgency early and by launch day you're opening with that committed community that you're already trying to build, and building that sequence out to build trust amongst those touch points will get you ready through just those curious overlookers that you're not necessarily are selling. You know, again, I'm your host, zach Coleman. I hope this was a good one for all of you and I will talk to you all next week.
