How Gyms and Fitness Businesses can Create Brand Loyalty

Creating brand loyalty is about offering the target audience the services and products they want and need – and this applies to gyms and personal training brands too. But how do you keep the attention of your customers on your gym?

Do what you do so well that they’ll want to see it again – and bring their friends is the mantra by which Walt Disney is said to have built his studio. The same applies to all brands. Building customer satisfaction, however, is not the same as building customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty goes one step further. It is where a customer decided to commit to making a sustained investment in your gym or personal training brand. This ongoing relationship is influenced by a number of behaviours. Research has shown that customer loyalty is the primary driver of business growth.

Dissatisfied customers will walk away. If they are very dissatisfied, they may leave negative reviews or tell people what an awful experience they’ve had. The damage to brand reputation can take some time (and energy!) to correct.

Essentially, to prevent this from happening, you must provide exceptional customer service. To increase customer loyalty, you need to answer two questions: what is currently dissatisfying to your customers and secondly, what will help customer loyalty grow?

What is driving dissatisfaction amongst your customer base?

Listening to your customers is key, but are you really hearing what they are saying? If you’re not, you are missing the key clues as to what is driving customers away or stopping them from committing further to your gym or personal training business.

Customer loyalty is a mix of behaviours that can be categorised into two broad areas: touchpoints and attributes.

  • Touchpoint - this is where the customer interacts with the gym or personal training business, such as the gym itself, its location, boot camps on the beach or in the park and so on.
  • Attribute – defined as the qualities and characteristics of your business, such as cleanliness or even staff wearing branded PT clothing.

Both touchpoints and attributes create customer attitude and emotion, which in turn drives consumer loyalty. Research suggests that there are three types of touchpoints and attributes that encourage and hinder customer loyalty: barriers, delighters and key drivers.

Barriers

A barrier is a minimal expectation that a customer has when they join and partake in gym sessions, whether these are small group sessions or one-to-one fitness sessions. The problem with barriers is that they can dissatisfy customers leading them to complain but, when they are performed well, they don’t make any difference to customer loyalty!

These are the things that customers expect you to get right – they are a ‘given’ such as clean changing areas and showers, hot water, hairdryer points etc. Just because you keep the gym changing areas and work out areas hygienically clean all the time doesn’t mean that your customers will become loyal to you.

In other words, the basics of what you do need to be right. You may think that staff dressed in their own clothes or branded PT kit is not a deal-breaker. But if your customers can’t differentiate between other gym-goers and a member of staff, it could be.

Delighters

These are the unexpected wow factors. If they are present, the customer loves them and improves customer loyalty. But if they aren’t, they don’t adversely affect your brand reputation.

Delighters make your brand stand out from the others. These unexpected ‘treats’ lead to people talking about what you do, how you do it and what they offer.

They don’t have to be expensive or attention-grabbing delighters. A free class for women to mark International Women’s Day, for example, would be a ‘delighter’ as too would be a free boot camp session for people who have turned up for all 6 am session over the winter.

A free giveaway from flowers to branded kit such as towels or water bottles is also small delighters that make a difference.

Key drivers

Drivers are effectively about performance. If performed well, customer loyalty increases; if not, customer satisfaction can plummet.

Consider the quality of an exercise class, for example. If the instruction is poor and the class boring, customers will not enjoy the experience. But with a high-energy instructor delivering a multi-level session that challenges and is enjoyable, the experience is incredible – and your customers are likely to tell other people.

Customer satisfaction is about people’s emotions and how they feel when they use your facilities. This is why it is important that you decided on the style and format of your gym and physical training business and who your customers are. Boot camps appeal to a particular type of person but are another’s worst nightmare.

With key drivers, your performance needs to be on-target with customer expectations. And with delighters, you should aim higher than customer expectations to get the wow factor. Barriers are the minimum expectations that people have when they join your gym. Make sure you get the basics right, and customer satisfaction is relatively high.

What helps customer loyalty to grow?

In essence, you need to understand what your customer wants. You can rely on broad research results, some of which we touch on here, or you could carry out your research with your current customer base.

  • Common barriers

For many gyms and physical training venues, barriers were often identified as the premises being too small, crowded and cramped or too expensive and not good-value-for-money.

For class-based physical training venues, as well as boutique gyms, issues were raised around time – classes that were late starting proved to be a significant issue for gym users. They also found the limited availability an issue, along with inflexible timetables.

For larger gyms, the barriers appear very much environment-related. Poor airflow through the gym was a common gripe. But some barriers mentioned in relation to larger gyms didn’t figure for small gyms and PT businesses - namely issues with direct debits and payments, as well as poor communication.

Knowing the barriers that people may feel your small gym or physical training business has, you can use in marketing and promotional material to highlight this isn’t the case.

  • Delighters

In terms of delighters or wow factors, there were common elements again that surfaced across the range of gyms and physical training facilities, including:

  • Friendliness – this wasn’t just about friendly staff but an overall welcoming and positive atmosphere to the venue.
  • Staff – the professionalism, knowledge and skills of gym staff who were seen to go ‘above and beyond’ were key delighters for many gym users. Professionalism in their appearance was also considered key.
  • Programmes – the variety of classes on offer were also a key delighter for gym users. Services from yoga to children’s programmes and sessions for teens and classes that were not overcrowded were also considered top for customer satisfaction.
  • Facilities – it seems from research that the bigger the gym facility, the bigger customer expectations are of the premises itself. Large health clubs are held to a might higher standard of facilities. It seems that if the health club attached to a large hotel chain is looking ‘tired’, customers leave to find a better venue.

For small gyms, if they offer excellent training and class-based sessions AND great facilities, the impact on customer loyalty is much greater.

  • Key drivers

Two key drivers came up time and again in feedback from gym-goers across a range of gyms facilities. And they come as no surprise:

  • Trainers, instructors, coaches, and gym staff – their professionalism is key, including qualifications.
  • Lesson, classes and workouts – the quality and variety of lessons and workouts on offer are essential for customer loyalty.

Implementing these in your gym and physical training business

For a gym or physical training business, when you reach customers and they join or take part in your sessions, you want to keep them.

But you need to know what it takes to keep hold of them. In terms of your premises or location for boot camps, there need to be the facilities that people would expect. Indoor gyms need to be clean, with a regular and effective cleaning regime.

Basic facilities must be in place but don’t expect any prizes for having hot running water in the changing rooms.

What you do need is a varied programme of activities and classes which is updated from time to time. You need professional, qualified, and personable staff who align with the values of your brand. They need to look the part too with branded uniforms.

Staff must also provide excellent customer service, whether they are answering the phone or leading a high-impact class.

Occasional ‘delighters’ can also improve customer loyalty too by giving them the wow factor. Keep these in line with your brand and industry – giving away sugar-laden snacks or vouchers for fast food restaurants is not aligned with what your business does.

Customer loyalty is one step on from customer satisfaction. But when your users are satisfied, and their expectations are met and exceeded, loyalty will often follow.

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