COVID 19 has stopped the nation in its tracks but you should find a way to continue delivering fitness to your customer, as your future may depend on how well you adapt.
As it stands, your customers aren’t coming to your facility, due to mandatory closures or voluntary quarantines, while companies that are adapting are succeeding and may be eating away at your client base. Don’t let the competition take advantage of the situation and deprive you of your clientele you’ve worked so hard to earn. Whatever stage of lock down you are experiencing, you have valuable customer information, right now, that allows you to still earn revenue by reaching out and providing remote workout sessions, classes, appointments, and coaching.
Unfortunately, our country won’t be the same for a while, be it a week, two weeks, a month, or longer.
Further, different locals are experiencing the ramifications of the COVID 19 pandemic differently. Therefore, there is no advice that can instruct you on how to properly deal with your present circumstance and come out ahead. However, it is safe to presume that shutting down for any period will negatively impact your revenue, diminish your client base, and inhibit the success of the business you’ve built. You shouldn’t take this lying down as there are strategies you can take to keep your clients engaged and even earn some revenue.
Customer engagement is key.
Your clients are at home with a lot of free time – enough free time to read emails and articles, which could be emails and articles written by you. Your customers have come to you in the past for physical training. Now, they need you more than ever. Keeping healthy at home is not an easy task – that’s why they come to a fitness facility. Your coaching and training during the coming months can do more than keep your customers physically fit, it can keep them mentally and emotionally fit too. Whether you end up monetizing this opportunity or donate your time, you will still be engaging your customers making them more likely to come back to your facility after any applicable lock down or quarantine.
Alternatively, other companies are taking advantage of consumers being stuck at home, such as Gold’s Gym, Planet Fitness, Peloton, Snap Fitness, and the YMCA.
All these companies are providing online workout videos and remote training services; some are even doing it for free, regardless of past membership. If your customers cannot obtain coaching, training, or advise from you, they will look elsewhere. If they look elsewhere and get it for free at a big chain, that’s a client you may lose forever, despite your lock down or quarantine passing. However, if you engage your customers now and provide what they need when they need it, you will keep them while building a deeper relationship.
Try new technologies to meet the demand:
open a YouTube channel and post videos for your clients; learn how to use Facebook to stream videos; or try another remote-work solution like Google Hangouts. Every technology is different: YouTube lets you make a video that can be watched at the viewer’s leisure, which is good for workout tutorials; Facebook lets people watch you in live time, which is good for a live class; and Google Hangouts lets you perform a screen share or webcam view of every person connected to the meeting, which is good for an interactive coaching session. These are a few ideas of how you can provide your services to your clients, which means these are methods of earning revenue that you should be considering.
Ultimately, we are all after the goal of protecting the lives of as many people as we can.
That is why we are following the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” guidelines, as well as any federal, state, or local government mandates. However, our companies and our jobs are our livelihoods. For us that are fortunate enough to not suffer from COVID 19 directly, we still must find a way to keep earning a living during any lock down or quarantine and continue doing so afterwards. Where applicable, we hope you take the above advice to heart and engage your customers as soon as possible, so we can all get back to business as usual as soon as possible.
Kurt Schneider, CEO
