The fitness industry is evolving. As a gym owner, personal trainer, or yoga instructor, you need to keep pace with these trends to stay relevant and ensure success in the coming years.
Whether you agree with the training regimens or not, you can take a page from the CrossFit playbook when it comes to promoting your services and increasing your revenue.
What’s the secret? Fostering a sense of community.
90% of CrossFit participants say that their fitness community is one of the main reasons for participating, and 80% of members say they’re more likely to stick with their routines because of the community aspect. This approach to fitness has been incredibly successful, and the CrossFit market is continuing to grow at a CAGR of 12.1% between now and 2032.
Regardless of the specific services you’re offering, you can mirror this strategy and use the power of community to scale your fitness business.
Make Your Community More Accessible
The first thing you need to do is lower the barrier to entry for new members. Make it as easy as possible for them to join your fitness community and create a welcoming environment.
Gyms can be intimidating. A recent survey found that 50% of non-gym goers say they’re scared to go. This sentiment also extends to existing members—with 90% of people concerned about how they’re perceived by their peers at the gym.
You need to overcome this negative environment if you want to onboard new members and truly build a sense of community.
They say, “The hardest part about going to the gym is walking through the door.” Well, what if you eliminated that door altogether?
Offer digital workouts through a mobile app. Newcomers can join your community without ever stepping foot in your physical space and have full access to workout programs from the palms of their hands.
One study found that 58% of people say they prefer to work out at home anyway. So going digital appeals to this group as well, and increasing accessibility should lead to more signups.
Find Creative Ways to Motivate Members
For the average person, self-motivating yourself to exercise is much easier said than done.
A study from Statista found that lack of motivation was the second-biggest challenge for engaging in fitness in the US.
One of the best parts about having a community to lean on is the motivational element.
According to the National Institute of Health, people who exercise with others are 32% more likely to reach sufficient physical activity levels compared to those who work out alone.
There are plenty of ways you can emulate this type of connection and motivate people to stay active:
- Send them workout reminders via push notification.
- Share a motivational quote of the day to get people fired up.
- Let members connect with a “buddy” to hold them accountable.
- Showcase progress photos and testimonials as social proof of concept.
That’s why having an app is so crucial to the success of your fitness community.
It gives you a direct line of communication to their devices to keep them engaged, and just the fact that your app is always one click away can be highly motivating.
Create Community Challenges to Boost Member Participation
One of my favorite features of Buildfire’s fitness app builder is the Leaderboard plugin.
It’s a way for users to track their training progress directly through the app, and everyone can see the top “leaders” for a particular category or challenge.
Examples include:
- Consecutive days with an in-app workout completed.
- Most miles run in 30 days.
- Weight loss challenges.
- Most calories burned in a week.
- Consecutive days drinking 64 oz. of water.
- Gym “check-ins” competition.
Members can open the app and watch their rankings climb as they complete these challenges.
It’s a friendly competition that kills two birds with one stone—motivates people to work out while simultaneously driving engagement with other members.
This can be a cornerstone of your fitness community.
Eliminate Physical Borders So Your Community Can Grow Without Limits
The average gym commute is 3.7 miles. Even if we extend this to five or six miles, it still limits yourself to how many people can join your community.
You can run some quick numbers to see how many people live within five miles of your gym and then determine what percentage of them are potential clients. That’s the maximum number of community members you could possibly have at each location—and it doesn’t even factor in competing gyms and how many of those people you can actually get to join (the real number is much lower).
But if you become an online personal trainer, it opens the doors to people all over the world.
Having your own fitness mobile app instantly breaks down any physical border restrictions that you’re currently bound by. You can live in Texas while providing training materials to your community in California and New York—even London to Tokyo.
Cut Costs and Pass Those Savings to Your Clients
Running a gym can obviously be expensive. Between equipment costs, staffing, and rent, not to mention keeping the lights on, the list of expenses is seemingly never-ending.
So it should come as no surprise to hear that the average cost to open a gym ranges from $245,000 to $400,000. Some of you may spend more—and this doesn’t even factor in the ongoing monthly costs.
Going digital is far less expensive. You can create your own mobile app for less than $500 per month and easily break even after a handful of subscriptions. The rest is pure profit.
High cost is the number one reason why people cancel their gym memberships.
But if you’re not paying tens of thousands of dollars in monthly expenses just to operate your facility, you can offer cheaper membership options to your community.
You can even set up tiered access memberships with different benefits at each level.
For example, you can structure your pricing something like this:
- Pro Members – $15 per month: Access to community message boards and a single 30-day workout program.
- Premium Members – $25 per month: Pro benefits, plus access to community challenges and access to all workout programs (30-day, 60-day, 90-day).
- Elite Members – $40 per month: Premium benefits, plus unlimited access to all on-demand video workouts.
You get the idea. This can be structured any way you see fit to maximize member enrollment and grow your community.
Above all, these packages can be cheaper than a traditional gym membership. While your revenue per member will be lower, your profit margins should be significantly higher—and you have a greater opportunity to onboard people from anywhere.
Consider a Hybrid Approach to Your Fitness Business
Lots of what we’ve covered so far has focused on digital ways to build an engaging and active fitness community. But that doesn’t mean you need to neglect your existing members and clients.
Some of you may already have well-established gyms, multiple locations, and a wide range of services. I’m not suggesting that you abandon this stuff (as long as it’s still profitable).
You can still enhance the in-person experience with a mobile app. Here’s how.
46% of men and 43% of women are already using their smartphones at the gym for training resources. If they’re not getting those materials from you, it means they’re getting them from someone else (and potentially paying for it).
Workout plans for your existing members can be an easy value-added upsell.
You might also run a gym or fitness community centered on group classes. If things come up and people can’t attend their favorite class, they may feel like they’ve missed out or they’re falling behind others in the group.
The solution here is simple. Record those classes and upload them to your app so members can access them on-demand.
Not only will this appeal to people who missed a particular class, but attendees can also go back and do the class again on their own time. This maximizes the value of your trainers, as a single 60-minute class can essentially be repurposed and sold forever.
Facilitate Meaningful Member Connections That Extend Beyond Workouts
Whether your members are training in-person or online, the actual workout time is likely just 30-60 minutes per day at most. It’s tough to establish a sense of community in such a short period of time.
One key benefit of offering a mobile app to your fitness community is the ability for them to connect and engage 24/7.
You can set up community message boards where members can chat about their experiences, offer tips, share favorite recipes, and motivate each other. This can even extend into a social-media-like experience where members post photos and discuss other topics—like what they’re watching on TV and fun trips they’re planning to take.
It gives people an excuse to keep opening the app multiple times per day, even when they’re not actually working out.
Not only does this help make your fitness community more engaging, but it decreases the chances that people will cancel their membership and it keeps the door open for additional monetization opportunities.
Final Thoughts: Think Mobile-First
The key to building an active and engaged fitness community is a different kind of mobility—the digital kind.
Location-based communities just aren’t what they used to be. When groups of people get together, they’re all just looking at their phones. Rather than trying to fight this reality, you can leverage it and capitalize on the opportunity.
Mobile apps are perfect for fitness communities because they provide on-the-go training materials from anywhere and allow people to connect even when they’re not working out.
It’s a low-cost investment for gym owners and fitness instructors, with sky-high revenue potential that’s not limited to a geographical area.
Sign up for Buildfire today to start building your own fitness app without writing a single line of code. Your first 30 days are free—no credit card required.