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
Turning New Members Into Advocates, Boost Your Gym With Reviews
Unlock the hidden marketing potential sitting right in your fitness studio! In this illuminating episode of the Fitcher Grit Cast, host Zach Coleman reveals how your existing members can become your most powerful marketing asset through strategic post-sale engagement.
Did you know that fitness studios with just 50 quality reviews can experience a staggering 266% increase in new member inquiries? The data doesn't lie - member advocacy drives growth more effectively than almost any traditional marketing approach. Zach breaks down a revolutionary "give and take" method that transforms ordinary review requests into a three-pronged growth strategy that simultaneously improves your search rankings, strengthens member retention, and generates qualified leads through referrals.
The episode explores practical, actionable strategies including how to leverage your trainers' personal connections with members to generate authentic reviews, how to automate review requests at meaningful milestones in the member journey, and how public recognition creates a community that naturally attracts new members. You'll learn why demographically similar referrals from existing members tend to become your highest-value, longest-lasting clients.
Whether you're a new studio owner or an established fitness brand looking to accelerate growth, this episode provides the blueprint for building a self-sustaining marketing engine powered by the people who already love what you do. Subscribe, comment, and share your experiences with review-based marketing - and don't forget to check out our YouTube channel for even more free content to help your fitness business thrive!
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your newest and existing members can really be your studio's best marketing team and how you can start growing your studio. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fitcher Grit Cast. I am your host, zach Coleman. Today we're going back into it. The last and two previous videos on our advanced series we talked a lot about pre-sale engagement. We talked a lot about the 15 touch points, external leads. But today I want to kind of get into the post sale and how your newest and existing members can really be your studio's best marketing team and how you can start growing your studio the right way. There was a study done by Bright Local that says that 80% or higher it's really about 87% 80% of consumers and online reviews for local businesses, especially fitness related, especially when they have 50 or so more reviews, we'll see upwards of 266% in inquiries that's right New external leads coming from existing members. So that's what we're going to dive in today. We're going to dive into post-sale engagement how you can really leverage reviews and advocacy to really start building up that momentum, not just from the retention and lower churn rate perspective, but how you can really utilize them to bring in new members around your existing values of your studio. And we're going to kind of go off of this spectrum here. So about a year ago, I had a studio come in pretty new studio that, even though they started to bring in some loyal members into their studio environment with their classes and their group training, they actually launched this post sale review campaign where they weren't just having AI go in and write thank you for joining our jam, kind of crap. They were actually utilizing the review system as a campaign to bring in new members. Within 60 days they tripled their Google reviews, which in turn, didn't just raise their search visibility to bring in new business, but it also brought in a surge of leads from their existing members. I mean, it's a win-win right. So if you wanna learn more about review management and all that fun stuff, we did create a video you can see up here to the right the three proven ways to leverage your online reviews for fitness success. It is a podcast. Enjoy it.
Speaker 1:But today we're gonna cover four main things how you can really start to ask for reviews and utilize it as a way of excitement to bring in new members. Really the importance of reviews in general. How it can really help you bring in more business. And how you can really automate that review request doesn't just seem like a canned response, and how you can really start publicly thanking your members who participate. Let's start off by asking for reviews that bring in more excitement. You know, on our last video we talked a lot about review management and a review campaign. So this is really what we're going to dive into here.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing Most studio owners and teams really lack the understanding of the importance of reviews. If you're able to go in and you're able to leverage your existing team to build that advocacy, especially your trainers, is one of the most beneficial things you can do. A lot of studios really have a hesitancy to leverage their trainers because a trainer may leave, a trainer may have a bad situation. But here's the thing Most brands in today's environment, local or corporate, their team is an extension of their brand. Your operations is an extension of your brand. How good you provide your classes is an extension of your brand. So you want to leverage that. So you want to utilize reviews in a way that can bring more excitement.
Speaker 1:So, before you got to go in and just say, hey, I'm going to go and start doing a canned response, start submitting a request after one month of them being a member, I would take a step back. I would use the review process as a much more give and take type sales process, and so what you really want to do here is you want to leverage your reviews in a way that can really help out, build that excitement. So what do I mean by give and take? Well, first and foremost, I want you to sit down and I want you to list out all of your members, from the ones that have been around the longest to the ones that have been around the least, and I want you to start sending review requests, and you can set it up a campaign automatically. If you're using something like LoyalSnap, if you're using a gym management software Based off of the time that they've been a member, you can kind of go in and you can set up this campaign. Now, when we talk about the sponsor of this video, that can come into play too, but we'll get into that a little bit later, but for now, I want you to kind of sit down and write these people out and then, every day, every week, I want you to go down and start to send out five to 10 review requests.
Speaker 1:You may only have 30 members. That's okay. This is a slow burn. If that's the case, I would really start out with just you doing it. I wouldn't hire a marketing team. If you only have 30 members, you're probably not at a place where you need a marketing agency yet need to see it.
Speaker 1:But if you do it this way and you do the kind of give and take method, so what is the give and take method? Well, the give and take method for reviews. It's a sales tactic where when someone asks you for something, you minus something in return. Right, you give and take. So instead of just going, hey, we'd love a review from you, can you please give us a review? Do something with excitement, be like because you've been with us for three to six months, we'd really love for you to give a review on how you felt, feel about this place. You must love it here and then say and if you are able to give us a review, a referral that you bring in, we can give them a free session or a free class or a free trial. Use your existing trials for this, but utilize it in a way where they feel like, oh, give and take, the review isn't necessarily what they're getting out of it. What they're getting out of it is they're able to either get a free trial for a friend or they're able to get something free themselves, right. So ask them that and say, hey, if you're able to do this first, you're. So now the review seems like the least entry to barrier. Now they're going to give a review and they're going to refer a friend, and so it's really a three-prong approach here. Right, where you ask for a review here and this is ranking Rank You're going to get member, new member, advocacy.
Speaker 1:So let's kind of look at all three of those to build excitement. Right, you have advocacy. First and foremost, you're building excitement. That existing member, right away, is going to start remembering the reason they go to your studio to begin with. They're going to remember it, they're going to feel excited about it and it brings up that nostalgia of, oh yeah, I'd love to give them a review. So it keeps them longer. They're getting a free trial out of it or a new member.
Speaker 1:That new member is going to match value. So people usually tend to hang out with people that match similar values of them, same price points and what they make, same area, et cetera, et cetera. So they're going to bring a new member that's already going to have a similar demo and psychological counterpart as them. Females hang out with females, males hang out with males. It's not 100% accurate, but it's pretty close. And so you're going to start bringing in a new member. Oh, they're going to give a review, it's going to remind them and then it's going to force them to bring a friend along. That friend is going to look at their review and the rest of their reviews, and so now you have the ability to build trust tenfold with that new prospect before they even get on a phone call or drive into the door with you. So you already have the free trial or the free class on their mind. You're building that trust before the class even starts. You're building the advocacy with the existing member here. They're now able to have a friend, they can come in and join them at the studio, and then you also have the ability to rank.
Speaker 1:As I said earlier, you're building excitement. This is a review campaign. This isn't a promo. This is a challenge. This is the ability to allow someone to come partake into a class for free. It has nothing to do with the challenge. It's all about the trust building perspective, google and the way they look at reviews is it's an authority and brand signal that raises that authority of said keyword in your positioning.
Speaker 1:So let's say this let's say you do personal training or semi-personal training, group training, whatever it is. They will. This person won't just review the keywords of what they do in the class. We love the personal training classes, this is what we do keyword. But they're also allowing you to respond with we're excited to have you in the class personal training here in our California location, whatever it may be. That's a ranking factor as well. So you're getting trifecta here and so I don't want to get too involved, lost in this excitement side.
Speaker 1:But what this does is it helps you build the advocacy and existing members. And now if you start a routine of this and you do this every three months, then those people that just started three months later you're going to get in a routine of where you're going to start having new members doing this constantly. You're going to start bringing in members that value your studio and your pricing, your services, your amenities, more so than those who don't. And the funny thing is is this is kind of untrackable. You know you may get a friend that comes in and you're probably looking like well, we want to look at data. Well, yeah, data is important, but advocacy in the studio environment is utmost important. So this is how you're going to start utilizing reviews as a post-sale engagement perspective. I highly recommend that you don't do this with no members. This isn't a pre-sale situation, this is a definitely a post-sale situation, and so I highly recommend you do that.
Speaker 1:So let's get into the second point here, providing direct links to review sites, and so Google will give you a link, and we highly recommend you stick with Google. Stick with one. You can also use Facebook if you like, but I always recommend you just stick with Google. They have a link that you can provide. You can put it into your automated system and then just make sure that your emails that you're sending out are due to that advocacy. What you can also do is you can provide a one, a three and a five day kind of follow-up campaign. Hey, have you given that review yet? If you have, please reply, let us know so that we can give your friend that free trial, and so you'll start knowing that it pushes them. Oh yeah, I forgot. So you can kind of go through a three-prong approach here. I wouldn't do anything longer than that, and if they don't end up giving a review, the good ones will, by the way, really just have to ask. I'll be honest, you just have to ask, but you can provide a direct link within your automated platform.
Speaker 1:And this is a great spot for our sponsorship of this video. We have partnered with Edge, which is a leading review management platform for internal employees. So why is this important? Well, we have started to embed it in all of our SEO campaigns to help our clients get more reviews. The importance of this is it allows you to bring trainers on to push the review process to your trainers. They're the personal brands of your studio. You can start adding incentives to each one Score cards. Whoever gets the most reviews in a month period of time can get a free gift card, get a free something or other, and this is all automated. You can kind of put it in there and they can start.
Speaker 1:So if you have multiple locations, you can separate out the teams and you can utilize review campaigns for each location. Right, if you have one location, then you can do the same thing, but it also allows not just for that advocacy on in the ranking factor for that, but it also allows your trainers and leveraging their personal brand, their advocacy for said studio. We worked out with John. John is great. John's going to be the one that asks for the review, right? So you're going to start getting advocacy and that's going to build even higher signals to help you rank faster. It's not just about asking, giving a canned response people, it's about giving your teammates props, it's about getting that review and it's about building advocacy, not just for you but your internal team and the trainers. And that's what branding really is, especially as you're building a community out.
Speaker 1:Right now. Edge is part of our system, so if you come on as one of our clients, you will get a discount on said platform for all of your locations, much more than you would just going straight to the platform itself. So come to us now. We can talk you through, we can kind of go through a demo with you on how that looks and how that platform looks, and the beauty thing is is they will set it all up for you, integrated straight into your gym management software, so you don't have to worry about the extra cost to that point.
Speaker 1:Number four here automate review requests after milestones right? This leads to the previous sponsor. If you want to automate your review process after milestones, you can use a system like LoyalSnap or you can use a system like Edge to be integrated into your CRM so that when members hit certain cycles, you can actually then request a review. Hey, we'd like to give you props. You know you can do the three month thing. Or you can do they hit a certain milestone. Let's just say they, they climbed their first mountain, they ran their first mile, they hit a 10 minute mile, they able to get their movement back on their legs.
Speaker 1:Whatever it may be, you're able to give them a certain milestone and then you'll be able to give a shout out to them and say hey, we really loved your accomplishment today. I'd really love to shout out that to the rest of our community and everything. Would you be willing to give us a review so we can give you a shout out on that accomplishment today? It's a little bit more or less canned and you can use the method, the review method, the give and take method, if you want. But more importantly here is this is allowing you to build much more sense of community with your members, and so you can put it in your system. Most of these systems already have milestone kind of objectives you can put in. Again, I've already mentioned LoyalSnap we have a whole system around that and how we can integrate it into your software. So reach out to us if you want to know more about that. But besides the point, that's what you want to do there.
Speaker 1:Lastly, getting out of the review process and a little less about statistics, just publicly thanking members who participate within your studio these kinds of things go a long way. We live in an environment these days where the studio environment is people's community. I want you all to remember that it is where people go to build their communities. You may be afraid of online. Some people tend to like to go online. In fact, some people do both and you may have an integration and a hybrid approach, but people love to be a part of people. They know the values. And so back to the new members and the values. We'll talk about values in a later episode. I have a presentation on value. So if you want to learn more about that and how we can integrate values into your system, great. But that's really it for today's cast.
Speaker 1:I'm Zach with another episode of the Fitch Grid cast. If you're watching this on the podcast. I really do appreciate you and hope that you tuned into the YouTube version. And again, we're trying to raise our subscribers, we're trying to raise our likes, comments. So if you have any comments or questions about the review process, go ahead and write that down below. Have you ever done reviews? Has it ever helped you out? And if not, just subscribe, go in there. Hit that subscribe button for us. It really helps the algorithm with these comments and these reviews to help push our channel. I try to give all this content out for free and I'm just trying to build a community of like-minded individuals that we can help Other student members, help people like myself. So again, comment, subscribe. But again, zach, with Fit to Grit Cast and I hope you all stay gritty.
