Strategic Points of Distinction for Your Gym
Contents
What makes your fitness facility great? This is not a rhetorical question. This question is the whole point of distinguishing your gym from the sea of others in your local area – or even the world. Remember, the question is not “What is your fitness facility good at?” The question focuses on what makes your gym great.
If you are left scratching your head as to the answer, do not fret; just keep reading along. On this page, we will cover the following topics around making your fitness facility distinct:
How to Build a Gym Around a Niche or Specialty
When it comes to distinguishing your gym from all the other franchised cookie-cutter facilities out there, you need to know a few things about your business first, like your gym’s business goals, your studio’s target audience, and your fitness facility’s budgeted financial projections.
If you were under the impression that brand was going to be the first step, then you might want to re-think your approach. While having a dream brand in mind can be a nice driving force for motivation, it can also be a blinding focal point that makes you miss some foundational details early on, leaving long-term business success more at risk. When you start with setting some preliminary goals for your gym (or future gym) you begin to set realistic expectations for growth; and when goals are paired with a target audience in mind, it forces you to consider if your target audience is a match and sustainable to meet your goals. Finally, when you add in any financial projections based on budgets, you start to test what the realistic numbers need to be to meet your goals with your audience in mind.
Now, sometimes this practice can give you promising information, or it can give you some harsh realities you might not want to hear – but regardless of the outcome, this is a great way to start testing your niche down process.
Where to Focus – Value, Features, Price, Equipment, Access, Specialty, Community?
After you begin to know where your gym is going with your goals, audience, and finances, you can start to look at the variables that go into making a splash in the market that will ultimately help differentiate you from the rest. What that difference is can be extremely variable, and our list is by no means exhaustive, but here are some common points of interest to consider when trying to figure out how to go about your unique flavor of fitness:
Value
The primary driver of value-based segmentation is typically the target audience. If you are trying to capture a large segment of traditionalist clients who are bottom-line driven and are more focused on features to dollars ratio than years of experience with staff, specialty certifications, or unique applications for equipment. In that case, this is a good point of focus.
When building a gym around this point, keep in mind the return on investment (ROI) of equipment and space because overhead will be a considerable constraint when trying to keep membership costs as aggressive as possible. Additionally, you will need to constantly monitor pricing to keep up with competition (which can sometimes be a race to the bottom in some markets depending on how aggressive larger franchises want to get), and membership turnover will more likely be higher due to less brand loyalty typically seen since this audience type is budget driven.
Features
Similar to value in that these can become add-on items for people to consider when looking at the bottom line, features can also be their own factor for many when looking into fitness facilities. Things like child-care, snack bars, TVs, massage chairs, tanning, free wifi, locker rooms with showers, or even 24/7 access can all be considered features when looking at the overall gym offering.
When building a gym around features, ensure that the options you select resonate with your target audience’s needs. Take special care in choosing these features and craft them to personify the gym into a space that answers all your ideal client’s needs.
Price
This point is about as barebones as it gets. Bottom line driven, you will be doing everything possible to keep your membership numbers high and your cost per membership low. There will probably be minimal frills involved with your business, and you will need to be aggressive when it comes to competition.
When building a gym around this point, your finances will be the primary driver for almost all decisions being made – location, equipment, facility size, access, etc. You will want to look ahead and factor in capital depreciation, ROI, and membership turnover rates since these will all give you some insights into your business’s short- and long-term health.
Equipment
Depending on your gym’s focus, equipment might be a leading focal point due to specialization. Things like rehabilitation-focused machines, unique strongman pieces, or even calibrated plates can all be considered specialized equipment. Additionally, the number of items can also be considered a distinction point, such as a significant amount of squat racks, benches, or rowing machines, which could be a differentiator in certain markets.
When building a gym around this point, understanding the physical needs of your target audience is crucial since the equipment pieces themselves tend to be costly and can take up a significant amount of space in your facility. Take time to make sure that the pieces you purchase fit a need within your facility and your niche.
Access
Physical access to your facility and hours of operation are going to depend heavily on how your business is structured. For some, 24/7 access is not an option, but for others, making the security and automation changes to support anytime access makes sense from a business perspective based on their audience’s needs.
When building a gym around this point, ensure gym access is streamlined efficiently through automation with your gym management system to reduce headaches and troubleshooting. Additionally, investing in high-quality security systems and double-checking your legal forms and insurance policies match this business structure is critical to help reduce theft, minimize legal burdens, and keep your business operating safely.
Specialty
Similar to specialized equipment, specialty gyms typically focus on a niche portion of the fitness world and hyper-focus on that point. Facilities like powerlifting gyms, CrossFit boxes, or even power pilates studios will all utilize wildly different equipment that are specialized to their niche.
When building a gym around this point, confirm that you have the proper equipment and quantities to support your core niche needs that will also fulfill your target audience’s needs. Investment and growth are the parts to be smart about. Growing too fast with capital not supported by memberships can be tricky, but growing memberships without enough equipment or space can also hinder customer experience.
Community
Probably the hardest one to harness and continuously cultivate – and typically one that is not the 100% focus of your gym. However, community is an aspect of a gym that, when nurtured properly, can enhance client retention, boost word-of-mouth marketing or referrals, and ultimately lead to organic positive reviews on your reviews.
When building a gym around the idea of community, you must focus on building that community foundation into the core of your business. Unfortunately, this aspect is many times over-promoted and under-delivered as making the organizational sacrifices to support this point is difficult. But when done right, gyms with a strong community have a fantastic energy, organic pull, and overall experience that is extremely hard to replicate elsewhere.
Remember, your fitness facility can also fall into more than one category listed above. The main point here is to keep these categories in mind when looking at the feasibility of your business based on your local market, demand, and financials to support it. Having a strong idea of what makes your gym unique will become a driving force when it comes to audience mindspace, marketing, and advertising.
Testing and Optimizing Your Gym’s Distinction Points
If you already have your gym up and running and think you have your unique distinction points nailed down, test it! One way to test it is by creating a survey for your current clients that asks very straightforward questions about your points. For example, if you’re a specialty gym, you can easily send a 5 question survey to clients asking similar types of questions:
- Are you enjoying your experience overall with the < specialty> gym?
- Does the gym meet all of your < specialty> needs?
- Do you feel the gym is a local leader in < specialty>?
- Would you recommend this gym to anyone who is interested in < specialty>?
- Do you have any critiques or recommendations that would help enhance the experience of our < specialty> gym?
As you go on, you may find that you are continuously getting better (if you weren’t already crushing it). Still, the whole idea of surveys and testing is to find pain points with your target audience and smooth them out repeatedly in an effort to keep fine-tuning your gym’s business engine. Additionally, just listening to members and focusing on customer experience enhancements can help you drive smaller changes less formally and quantitatively, which can help fill the feedback gap periods between surveys.
Remember, the market is constantly changing, and so are customer expectations. Keeping a close eye on the market, trends within your niche, and a pulse on your clients’ experience will help you stay ahead of the curve and put your best foot forward with being a leader within your market segment.
Making a Splash
Knowing the points of distinction with your gym that make it unique to your market is critical for business development, smart investing, management, and marketing. Taking the time to establish your niche category and who your target audience is will help play a vital role in your fitness business’s short- and long-term success. Finally, continuously testing, verifying, optimizing, and fortifying your position in the market, and with your audience, will help you stay ahead of the curve as the market and trends continuously evolve.