The fitness consumer is changing.
People are becoming more and more discerning about how they choose to spend – cutting out non-essentials, re-focusing their priorities, and asking themselves which expenditures really merit their time and money.
Meanwhile, the fitness industry continues to grow and evolve rapidly, with new competitors emerging daily and massive investment being pumped into the sector. My prediction as we come to the beginning of a new year: those of us who are mediocre will struggle; while those of us who are shit-hot will thrive.
What’s the differentiator? Our ability to deliver undeniable benefits to our members – to maximise our value proposition.
A value proposition is “an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers.” It’s what makes someone look at their bank statement and know that their membership fee falls solidly in their “essential” bucket – not their “nice-to-have” one.
So what drives value? Broadly, we can break this down into three areas:
- Relevancy: How does your product solve customers’ problems or improve their situation?
- Quantified value: Do you deliver specific, tangible, measurable benefits?
- Differentiation: Why should they buy from you and not from the competition?
Getting the right answers to these questions is fairly simple (though not easy).
It starts by getting a handle on the changing consumer profile, which will differ depending on your client demographic. This will become more challenging as people demand more from their fitness and leisure time. There’s a greater focus on overall wellbeing, mental health, community, and in-person connection, and we’ll be competing with a wider range of services for people’s time and money. We need to have the finger on the pulse of what our clients (target and existing) want – and the agility to flex and evolve with changing consumer needs. Independents, smaller businesses, and owner-operated outfits have an advantage in this respect, as our size makes it easier for us to innovate and make change rapidly.
For most of us, our physical spaces will also need an overhaul, or at least a refresh. The focus on community and connectivity means that “chill-out” or social areas are becoming increasingly important. As mainstream gyms re-focus on the client experience and new providers enter the market, our facilities need to be welcoming, social hubs that invite members to spend time in the space.
Our product may need to evolve, too. As gyms capture more market share and a new population of members enter gyms, we’ll have more beginners signing up. In a recent session I coached, I had deconditioned newcomers to fitness training side-by-side with confident longstanding members. To allow our coaches to manage the session flow, safety, results, and overall experience of such a range of abilities, we may need to revisit our programming approach.
Which brings us to our staff: even as the hospitality and leisure sectors are suffering the biggest hiring crisis for decades, we still need the best people on board to maximise our value proposition. In the SGPT model, we’re businesses that live and die by the success of 50-minute training blocks. Without the right people onboard to deliver these sessions to a consistently outstanding standard, members won’t “stick”.
Finally, pointing our team in the direction and hitting “play” won’t be enough in 2023 and beyond. We need to dial down on our objective performance measures (trial sales, conversions, and retention) and align these with clear financial outcomes if we want to track a trajectory to profitability.
As we look back on 2022 and start laying the foundations for a successful next 12 months, we need to be asking ourselves two key questions:
- Am I offering undeniable value?
- Am I indispensable?
Times are likely to get tougher before they get easier. But if we can honestly answer both these questions with a resounding “yes” – we’re on the right track.