Why Your Gym Needs a Sales Funnel
Contents
Assuming you would like more clients into your gym or a similar goal in relation to growth, the sales funnel can be a very helpful design tool to conceptualize multiple avenues that leads come in from, especially if you are implementing marketing campaigns for your gym. As a lead interacts with your business and materials, the funnel should help drive them to your end goal as effectively and efficiently as possible. While this may not be an overnight game-changing action, it can be an extremely helpful instrument in developing or maintaining your gym’s website, utilizing your online presence, removing “dead ends,” and even improving your customer experience for your existing clients and visitors.
Throughout this page, we will discuss the various aspects of a sales funnel and how to implement them through the following topics:
What Is the Sales Funnel?
To begin, the sales funnel is essentially the process that a potential client goes through from initial contact to final purchase (or drop-out point). It can be viewed as multiple layers or steps that drive visitors from multiple entry points to one similar goal or point. While the funnel’s steps can be broken down into great detail or simplified by a fundamental overview, some common key points, outlined in the illustration below, summarize the ideal flow of a visitor’s experience. We will discuss each section of the funnel and how it can relate to increasing your gym’s lead conversion to clients. Additionally, we will discuss how the funnel can become a cyclical event in regard to client retention and could even serve as a marketing resource.
Simplifying the Sales Funnel to Get Started
Sales funnels can be broken down endlessly with more and more details based on customer types, decision trees, and even marketing materials for each phase. For gym owners just getting started, this process might feel overwhelming. To help keep it simple, we will break a sales funnel for your gym down to a basic three-level design:
We’ll focus on this simple structure to help get you started, but you can easily add in more phases or detailed information over time as you get more comfortable with this method.
Top-of-Funnel
When thinking about a physical funnel, the top is going to be the biggest part. So, comparing this design to our theoretical sales funnel, this portion is going to be the most generic (from a content perspective) as it is what will be casting your awareness lines into the sea of consumers. While all these lines going out might not be exactly tied to your specific business/product, they should still share the same mind space or industry that your target audience occupies in order to capture them.
Literature, ads, and marketing pieces in this chunk of the funnel really shouldn’t be hard sales pieces. Keeping the content interesting, easy to access, and enticing enough to draw them in further for more information, assuming they are the target audience, is the goal of these content pieces. Additionally, when gathering data from your top-of-funnel leads, you should aim to keep forms to a minimum (i.e., first name, last name, and phone number or email).
Mid-Funnel
This portion of the funnel is where information will go from generic in nature to having a little more meat to content. Resources may dive deeper into a specific topic or focus on some aspects of your gym. Product and service information related to your business may start to get peppered into the content by connecting it to the topic being discussed; however, it may still not be designed to hard-sell people just yet.
The idea is that someone from your target audience is looking for more information based on the initial marketing line you hooked them with. Information and marketing pieces offered at this stage of the funnel should still be offering useful information; however, parallels should start to be drawn to your gym and its services as a solution to their needs. Additionally, giving people easy links or ways to get more information about your fitness facility and its services is valuable, as well as having a sign-up option available in case they are ready to become a customer fast.
Bottom-of-Funnel
Similar to an actual funnel, the bottom is going to be the smallest portion; however, things can move quickly here. This is the point of the process where very specific and targeted information is passed to the customer based on their specific questions and requirements. The pieces offered here should answer the questions that brought them to this level very clearly and concisely. They should leave your lead with a final remaining question: “Where do I sign up?”.
Ideally, you don’t just let this lead make it all the way to this point and leave it up to hope that they actually decide to give you their payment information. Once someone makes it all the way to the bottom of your funnel, you are essentially left with a hot lead. Offering them direct links to your membership and service pages where they can purchase directly is the ideal final step.
This is also the funnel point that may warrant (and justify) human interaction to drive home the sale. Following up with them after strategic time periods if they have not purchased already is critical to ensure they don’t fizzle out. Having direct calls or offering opportunities to trial the facility can also help drive the conversion to customer status. Ultimately, you don’t want to lose an opportunity that made it this far due to a perceived roadblock or hesitation on their end.
Primary Functions of Each Stage In Your Gym’s Sales Funnel
Similar to the simple three-level design we discussed above regarding the sales funnel, each section has a function that the development stage of a lead can categorize by. For this purpose, we will break these down by category below:
Prospecting
Prospecting the entry point for many potential clients in a typical sales funnel. This step is basically how a customer hears about your gym or finds your website/marketing content. Some of these ways can include printed literature, advertisements, social media pages/posts, physically finding your gym, or even word of mouth. Of course, these are just a few of the many ways someone can discover your gym, landing at the first step of your sales funnel. The mentality here is to cast a large net to help increase your chances of finding a lead that fits your gym’s niche and is within your target audience.
One way to imagine this step is to think of an airport entrance. Although everyone there has a similar goal to get onto an airplane, each person will be working with their own variables of circumstances. Although we generally know that these end-goal passengers need to make their way toward a plane, there will be steps and processes between that some people may need to take while others may not depending on their entry point circumstances. For example, someone entering the airport with no ticket may have a completely different initial experience getting to their plane than someone who entered with a pre-booked first-class flight.
So, going back to your gym’s prospecting step of the sales funnel, a lead that has just found your gym on Google may have significantly more questions, concerns, and needs initially when compared to someone who heard word-of-mouth praises of your gym from a current member. Because of these different needs based on the entry point, unique routes can be designed into the funnel processes that help navigate leads more effectively. These structured routes can be highly beneficial to your gym since they not only help your leads find the information they need to move forward faster and more organically, but they also help remove roadblocks and drop-off points, which can ultimately promote the increase in end-goal clients or even retention rates. This idea of cultivating the lead will be covered in the next phase of the funnel: lead generation.
Lead Generation
Let’s say you’ve caught an interested person – we’ll use an online ad for this example – and the person lands on your website. Realistically, a 1-3 second twitch response will run through the person’s mind that asks, “is this something I am interested in?” If, in that time, they say “no,” it might not be something you did/didn’t do because it just doesn’t line up with their needs; however, if they say “yes,” you want your resources to be there guiding them to any information they may need. These “yes” people are the earliest sign of a warm lead you will have on your website. Although they may not have their credit card in hand ready to buy, they are, at the very least, interested in something about your gym or services.
The biggest hurdle you will probably have going forward is capturing information. Whether the information is the person’s name, email, etc., or even what caught their eye about your gym/website, you may have to get creative to get this data. One common method typically used is to create a landing page for your website that you can direct new traffic to. These pages are typically designed to be sales pieces and have relevant information for people visiting the site for the first time.
Landing pages can also allow you to put a form that encourages visitors to sign up for the gym’s mailing list, receive a piece of collateral, or even “ask a specific question” button that allows the visitors to reach out to you easily. Features like this help visitors feel comfortable asking for direction and not feeling directly pressured to sign up through a sales pitch. It also reduces frustrations and possible drop-off points if they don’t find what they are looking for fast enough. But most importantly, these forms give you a contact method and a potential action point for follow-up.
Drop-out data is another insight that is especially hard to capture. Sure, you can see drop-out numbers on your website’s analytics, but that doesn’t always point to the exact reason someone left the site/funnel without acquiring more information. Maybe it wasn’t a good fit, or possibly your website loads poorly on a cell phone; digging into these questions manually can help you attack any current or potential future problems and hopefully reduce drop-outs and increase your overall conversion rate and profitability.
Additional information about monitoring your gym’s marketing campaign health through analytics can be accessed on our Performing Health Checks and Analytics Tracking for Your Gym page.
Positioning
At this point in the funnel, your lead should be, at the very least, interested in joining your gym or using your services; however, this could be a point where many fitness facilities need to improve in terms of lead conversion. During this phase, leads may require more attention, specific information, and details about your gym. They might be comparing your rates to a competitor, looking for hours that work with their schedules, or questioning your equipment’s specific capabilities. No matter their needs or questions, the key is to figure out how to get your leads to the information they need in the most efficient and effective manner.
Efficiency and effectiveness are always important factors to consider when dealing with new visitors to your website due to the fact that people can and will leave your site if they cannot easily navigate to the relevant information they are looking for.
An example of this stage could be someone visiting your website after picking up a flier at a local coffee shop. They liked your gym’s look and style and decided to dig into your business more. Let’s say they are curious about your hours and rates. This is the point where your website or Google Business Profile can make or break you. So let’s say you have all the billing information laid out, and the lead is still interested; however, when they look into your class hours, they see no “open gym” information times between class hours. Although you, as the owner, may assume it is easily implied, from a potential customer’s viewpoint, if it’s not on the site, it doesn’t exist. Sure, they could call you or message you to clarify; however, these days, this is a seldomly seen response unless you are dealing with a dedicated lead who is willing to put a little extra effort into learning more (you should not be settling for this, though).
What could make this situation better? Running through various types of these scenarios in your head or even taking a survey of your website’s usability and user experience are good starting points to find initial bumps in your funnel. So, looking back at the example user experience above, the situation could have been easily fixed with a responsive hours/events calendar with information on-screen, a “schedule me” button that synchronizes the event to their calendar, and cost information also conveniently available.
Another point to consider is the sales and marketing aspects of each piece that your lead is experiencing. While answering questions or concerns should be a primary focus, examine other things that may be relevant to help guide your leads down the funnel, such as positive testimonials on the page, options to sign up, more information options readily available throughout the website, or even points of why your gym is the best in your niche market that your target audience would find appealing.
Conversion
Once you’ve run your lead through the funnel, it’s time to seal the deal and convert them to a full-on customer. Although this stop should be as elementary as having the option to collect the lead’s payment, you would be surprised how easy, and often, this step is neglected. So, first off, let’s look at your gym’s website. If your payment collection method isn’t set up to be handled online, preferably on the same website domain as all your other information, you have created a massive hurdle at the end of your lead’s journey. This final bump could make even the hottest lead have cold feet and bail on signing up for your gym. Making sure that you can accept multiple forms of payment online easily and safely can be vital in closing the deal for an online lead.
Always remember to be transparent with pricing structures, contracts, fees, etc., and have the option to print or email receipts – these things make your gym’s lead conversion look and feel smooth, like any other regular transaction – and why shouldn’t it?! Again, the online sales funnel needs to focus on the facilitation of your audience’s needs, and where they are digging for information can be a big indicator of what their needs and expectations are.
Retention
Once you’ve converted a lead, you now have a shiny new customer. The funny thing about customers is that they can disappear as fast as they appear, which is where customer retention comes into play. The goal is to keep your customers happy, involved, and ultimately coming back to your studio for more. Building up the interest of your gym’s community can be very beneficial to your customer retention success. Things like weekly review/recap email blasts, events, daily social media posts/conversations, blog posts, and even home workouts can help drive interest and recuring traffic. They could even be leveraged in marketing campaigns to help promote new leads as well.
Consider focusing on your client experience to help promote retention and engagement. Doing things like adding a welcome email to your new sign-ups that outlines all the cool things your gym does or supplying newsletters with gym update information or even deals that they may find beneficial throughout their membership lifespan can all help build your satisfaction and retention rates. One of the worst things that can happen here is that a lead goes through the funnel, becomes a customer, and drops off before you can extend a contract. Sure, there is a lot of turnover in this industry; however, consider the amount of marketing dollars, time cultivating the lead, and even the potential word-of-mouth image that just walked out of the door. Making sure your customers are satisfied, engaged, and feel like part of the community is always smart business in more ways than one.
Why Your Gym Needs a Sales Funnel
First, membership turnover is very real, and marketing can get expensive (and exhausting) if done inefficiently. However, understanding how, where, and why clients are finding your gym can give you an initial idea of areas that are currently working. Focusing on these areas and maybe including 1 or 2 additional strategic growth areas can be a great starting point when developing your sales funnel.
By mapping out the stages and flow progression, you can look at your sales and marketing processes and figure out if they are appropriate or if something could be better – or you may realize you have content gaps that need to be filled to help smooth out the information progression and stage transition.
Finally, knowing when to utilize ads, marketing automation, and personalized phone calls or emails is imperative from a time utilization standpoint. Saving those time-consuming tasks for hot leads rather than random people responding to a generic top-of-funnel industry blog will probably yield higher conversion rates while keeping your cost per lead low.
Making a Splash
When implemented properly in your fitness facility, the sales funnel can be a powerful tool. Taking time to set your business goals and systems up to cohesively work together to efficiently and effectively transition leads from stage to stage in the most automated way possible is the end goal. By reducing the amount of human involvement with leads in their earlier stages, you open up more opportunities to spend your (and your staff’s) valuable time more productively to grow your business.