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When you prioritize the individuals who choose your business, it becomes easier to retain customers in the long term by maintaining relationships. Putting all your effort into marketing to get new customers puts you at risk of losing commitments after only a few months.
Giving attention to building bonds with your existing clients will pay off. Providing individual value to each customer builds trust. There are a variety of ways in which you can connect to your clients. Here are our top 5 tips for customer retention.
Focus on Customer Interaction
The impact you have on your clients plays a huge role in customer retention. Customer service is not as easy as implementing a one-size-fits-all strategy. You have to do the deep work of connecting individually with your clients to build bonds.
Giving customers the best experience possible every time they work out with you will have a lasting impact. Train yourself and your employees to show empathy, kindness, and friendship to everyone who walks through the doors.
When people feel vulnerable about their health and appearance, they can be very sensitive to judgment. Feeling unwelcome in a gym environment can send people running. Connecting with these people and showing them the benefits of training in your accepting environment is important.
Host Local Events
One of the most important things you can do is to bridge the gap between gym-goers and outsiders. By reaching outside your current client base, you make yourself more approachable to people who might be intimidated by gym culture.
If you regularly sponsor local events for your gym you will become a part of the community. People will stop associating you with exercise and more with what you bring to the community. Gym newbies will feel more welcome in your gym if they go there often for events.
Getting involved with charity organizations is always a good place to start. Find out what your community cares about and see how you can contribute your time and resources to a good cause. Invite members and newbies to participate in raffles for prizes and gym discounts.
Create a Community
Building relationships within your community is a great way to retain customers. Hosting fun workshops and interesting classes helps people make friends within the gym. When people have workout buddies, they are a lot less likely to quit because they have more than one reason to hit the gym.
Group classes also foster a sense of community by bringing in people who usually only weightlift, and putting them in a room with the treadmill runners. This builds bonds between different groups and makes the gym a fun, appealing place to be, which makes clients stay committed.
Be Adaptable
There is a myriad of reasons for a lapsed gym membership. One of these reasons is money. If you offer no alternatives for clients with money issues, they may leave permanently. On the other hand, providing alternative solutions shows kindness and empathy, which fosters loyalty from those individuals.
Offering solutions such as reduced rates for once-a-week workouts can help you keep clients that would have had to cancel their contracts. However, treating every customer with the same blanket policies will cause you to lose some clients because each customer has different needs.
Emphasize Health
While many do head to the gym to focus on weight loss, it’s critical to remind your clients of the other benefits of exercise. Mental health, strength, longevity, organ health, and more are all reasons to stick to an exercise routine.
It’s easy to lose sight of your exercise habit if your only reason for working out is your appearance. However, many other valuable reasons for sticking to an exercise routine exist. Remind your clients of these reasons to help them stay consistent with exercise.
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