Instruction

Ravshana Kurkova, actress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIL5muTBof8&feature=youtu.be

About the X-Fit Network

X-Fit is the largest federal network of international fitness clubs in the premium and business class segment in Russia. It is one of the top three leaders in the domestic fitness services industry.
The history of X-Fit began in 1991, when one of the first private tennis clubs in Russia was opened in Lianozovo Park in Moscow. It was a unique project for its time, based on the old English traditions of elite club recreation. The tennis club quickly became popular among people who appreciate the atmosphere of coziness and comfort, who understand the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
Five years later, the first fitness studio appeared next to the tennis club, which became the base for the future full-fledged, ultra-modern fitness club with an X-Fit pool in Altufyevo. Further development of the network was rapid: in 2005, five clubs, including one regional one, already operated under the X-Fit brand, and in 2010, 19 fitness centers in the capital and major Russian cities. Today, the federal network includes more than 60 fitness clubs in Moscow, Kazan, Voronezh, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm and other cities.
The company operates on the market under two brands: customers can choose full-format X-Fit clubs with an area of ​​more than 2,500 m2 or clubs of a democratic Fit-Studio format. Currently, over 350,000 people are members of X-Fit fitness clubs across the country.
In 2015, the network patented the Smart Fitness system of proven methods developed by the company's experts (“Smart Fitness”), which underlies all X-Fit training programs. In September 2017, the system was updated and restarted - Smart Fitness vol. 2.0 is valid in all fitness clubs of the network. The company has established and operates the X-Fit PRO faculty, which includes dozens of educational programs for fitness industry professionals and a wide audience.
X-Fit has more than fifty prestigious prizes, awards, diplomas and certificates of honor. Among them: in 2017, the network of fitness clubs became the winner of the Sports and Russia award in the field of sports and healthy lifestyle support in the nomination “Best Innovative Fitness Club”; business award of public activity "Best in Russia/Best.ru" - according to the results of 2015, the X-Fit network was recognized as the best in the category "Network of sports clubs"; "Moscow entrepreneur - 2016" and "Moscow entrepreneur - 2015" in the category "The best network of fitness clubs in Moscow"; "Moscow Entrepreneur - 2014" in the nomination "Services in the field of sports"; "Person of the Year - 2011" in the nomination "For the creation of the largest network of fitness clubs" according to RBC; "Entrepreneur of the Year - 2010" in the nomination "Services" according to Ernst diploma from the government of Moscow "Moscow Entrepreneur" in the nomination "Medicine, leisure, sports and health services"; the first Russian award in the field of beauty and health "Grace"; Grand Prix "Best Network Fitness Center" and many others.

Discuss with current customers their goals and needs. Make sure your sports program delivers measurable results and keeps your attendees happy. Otherwise, expand it or eliminate the excess. Also find out what number of sessions per week clients consider optimal.

Improve and expand the list of services offered. If you feel that the club's clients have begun to lose interest in sports training and even stop attending them, urgently come up with something new. Increase the coaching staff, open new sections, upgrade strength training equipment. The environment should be conducive to intense and interesting activities.

But the preparation of large projects is not a quick and resource-intensive business (it takes time and people)

Today I want to give you a very easy to implement idea, a kind of mini-project for the New Year holidays (I hope your club does not rest with the whole country until January 10?! :))

The idea is very simple: organize a full-fledged leisure time for your customers throughout the holidays. Let something interesting happen in your club every day!

(To be honest, I'm not that smart, I heard this idea at an online conference "Fitness season. Winter 2012-2013" in a speech by one of the speakers. Once again, a deep bow to the organizer of the conference, Marina Knyazeva: every time I come to the conference as a trainer, I “pull out” a bunch of useful “chips” for implementation!)

All clubs (well, almost all) do sales, some kind of "discount" promotions, Open Days, etc. This is no surprise to anyone...

One way or another, most events revolve around fitness. But our clients, in addition to fitness, are also interested in a lot of things in life: why not turn your club into a party of people with a variety of interests and for a variety of reasons?

Let something interesting and unusual happen in your club every day! And people should know about it!

Here's what our New Year's Marathon of events looks like:

I hope you already have your own ideas on how to make your fitness club a “magnet” for clients (and not only for them, but simply for everyone who is interested!). Or you can take our list of events as a model and implement it in your home with slight adjustments to your capabilities, of course!

Yes, of course, all these events are FREE, both for clients and for "casual visitors" - after all, this is a great reason for you to increase the incoming flow and drag people into your club who may not have heard of you before. (The only paid event for members is the photo shoot, for which you hire professional photographers and makeup artists… but options are possible here too)

To make this work better, STRONGLY remind clients that they can bring their friends and acquaintances to the club for these events!
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Good luck Colleagues! … and have a great New Year!

Yours sincerely,



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that the special price of 2900 rubles is valid only until 11.59 this evening Moscow time.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 14, you will be able to purchase participation in the seminar at full price. Links to bad weather, the absence of ATMs within a radius of 100 km and a suddenly seriously ill cat are not accepted. That is, I will sympathize with you, of course, but you will have to pay 4900 for participation.

And one more thing: you can pay in ANY way. Can't get through the bank? please - Yandex-money, RBC - Money, replenishment of the account to the card number through the terminal, payment systems Migom, Zolotaya Korona, Unistream ... there are a lot of ways. There would be a desire.

After the launch of the fitness business, the main task for a long time to come is to attract the maximum number of new customers to the club. This is achieved through a well-thought-out promotion strategy and allows you to promote a fitness club.

It's no secret that a marketing campaign requires careful planning and is a time-consuming process that you, as the owner, will have to deal with. But with the right approach, you actually get an automated fitness marketing system.

Firstly, it should be understood that all successful fitness clubs operate with the same goals and concepts in their marketing campaigns. Based on these components, a system is built that, in the future, attracts customers to the fitness club already “on the machine”.

When developing a strategy for promoting a sports club, remember that there is a huge variety of gyms and sports centers. Your task is to provide a potential consumer USP(Unique Selling Point) - a strong offer that will make it clear that your club stands out from the crowd, that you can provide it with something that your competitors do not have. This message is formed on the basis of several considerations that relate not only to marketing, but also to the organization of the club as a whole.

Read about the new concept of fitness marketing in the article:

1. Choose a Niche

The first step is to determine the niche in which your club will operate. Being an expert in a certain area is much better than trying to squeeze in among other large halls. In addition, do not expect that they will give you their customers just like that.

By choosing your niche, you can also present your product to the audience in a better and more targeted way.

For a more accurate hit in the right segment, ask yourself 4 questions:

1. Are the basic selection criteria covered by your competitors (for example, availability of the right equipment, swimming pool, certified coaching staff, etc.)?
2. Are the secondary selection criteria covered by your competitors (eg specific equipment, counter current pool, coach with an international diploma, etc.)?
3. Are your competitors using fitness innovations?
4. Are there competitors in the market that use “pull” positioning? (for example, specialized fitness studios)

For an existing fitness business, the following questions will be relevant:

1. What services do competitors already provide and what can your club do better?
2. Which audience lives or works within walking distance of your fitness club?
3. What services are unique for the local market provided by your specialists? (perhaps you can quickly train/hire such specialists?)
4. What promotional tools can you use more effectively than your competitors?

The answers to these questions will help us not only determine what we will convey to the audience, but will also automatically distinguish our fitness business from the stream of competitors.

2. Analyzing Competitors

Also, do not be afraid to analyze the work of competitors. Sometimes other fitness clubs come up with great ideas that can be implemented in your fitness business. We are not talking about plagiarism, but about the implementation of ideas.

With the help of the appropriate software, you can easily analyze the performance of competitors ( www. similar web.com)

Today, the realities are such that the Western fitness business market has stepped far ahead of ours, so this is just a huge treasure trove of knowledge that can and should be applied here.

Foreign fitness entrepreneurs were able to destroy one of the main stereotypes, namely: opening a fitness club in the center or in a residential area - good, opening on the outskirts - bad. Of course, location is of the utmost importance for a fitness business, but how do you ensure that customers are motivated to visit your fitness center, no matter how far it is from their home or what the weather is like?

Very simple – give them a unique user experience.

Does everyone provide a free guest visit? - And you provide a potential client at the first training many times more. Let it be a workout with a personal trainer after which you treat him to a protein shake.

3. Automate the Work

The next step is the introduction of systems for automating the work of the Club, namely:

• Sales management system;
• Customer service system;
• Personnel management system.

Journals and notepads are the last century. The fitness room loses a huge number of regular and potential customers when the administrator is simply unable to find the necessary information in the mountains of waste paper.

The use of software not only simplifies the management of a fitness business, but also allows you to work with potential clients with the highest quality.

4. Working Through Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a very powerful lead generation method that doesn't cost much.

True, most fitness clubs attract referrals only by offering discount services for existing customers. For example: "25% discount on the purchase of a Subscription for Friends of Our Loyal Customers."

Try to create a product or service that does not require additional incentives for existing customers to talk about it. Then your main task will only be to provide a convenient mechanism for the dissemination of positive information about you. Now it is most convenient to do this via the Internet.

Always consider each of your clients as 10 new ones - with the right strategy, the members of your club will unwittingly start selling your fitness services to their acquaintances, friends, employees.

Read more about methods for expanding the client flow of the club in the article:

5. We work with the Affiliate Program

How to promote a fitness club through an affiliate program with other business entrepreneurs? Let's say you know that your club is predominantly female. You can offer owners of local hairdressers or spa salons, provide their clients with a 10-20% discount on a subscription to a fitness room, or pure barter: You advertise a spa salon in your club, the spa owner does the same in his studios.

6. Generating Leads Through Direct Marketing

Flyer mailing is a very popular marketing trend in the West and it really works. In our case, you can mail out to commercial enterprises, through affiliate programs with other business entrepreneurs, and distribute flyers directly to your hands.

In addition to the informative part, the flyer should contain some creative idea. Posting information about a club or a promotion is easy. We need to "hook" a potential client. Remember the last time you had an unpretentious advertising melody or phrase in your head - viral advertising can work no worse than any other and its great advantage is that it allows you to interest even an indifferent layman.

An example of a creative approach in fitness marketing

In practice, the option works well when you send out not an ordinary selling flyer, but a personal letter from a fitness trainer or fitness business owner. At the moment, there is a serious trend associated with personification! This fully applies to offers that you send to your potential customers by mail.

7. Move on the Web

The first thing to start with is to create fitness club website. But for it to work, it's not enough just to create a site and mark it as "done" in the task list. You have to work with him all the time. Your website is like a shop window. It should be of high quality and optimized for specific tasks, namely, attracting new customers.

You can often see a picture when a visitor gets to a fitness resource and does not understand where he got to - downloaded pictures from the “search” instead of live photos of the gym, lack of reviews and stereotyped phrases that already initially cut the ear. In fact, instead of answering the question “Which gym should I go to,” the client receives tons of useless information.

Stop investing your time and money in this kind of work. Provide potential customers with only high-quality visual and informational content.

Instead of sending emails to clients individually, send emails using software (GetResponse is recommended).

Constant communication with visitors via e-mail will allow you to build trusting relationships already at the initial stages of attracting customers to the club.

Third, targeted fitness advertising in social networks. Social networks are direct access to the target audience. The coverage for the advertising campaign is simply colossal. However, you should be prepared to invest a certain amount of resources and most likely hire a specialist to advance in this area. Anyone can simply “post” pictures on social networks. Attract real customers who buy fitness services - units.

+1. Focusing on What We Can Do

Delegate your powers. You don't have to know everything. If you need a quality website or flyer, hire a qualified specialist to perform these tasks. It's much more productive than taking the time to learn everything on your own. Focus on your strengths and hire people who are experts in areas where you are not so strong. As a result, you get a powerful team of specialists to develop your fitness business.

Outcome. We work on automatic

The embodiment of the above ideas for promoting a fitness club in practice provides you with an automated one. No need to sit and rack your brains about how to attract new customers - the mechanism has already been launched and is working "on the machine".

Click right now to get a 17-page guide to setting up a Fitness Marketing System in your club.

How to Promote a Fitness Club or Gym and Forget About the Problem of Attracting New Clients Forever

4.5 (89.09%) 22 votes

A healthy lifestyle is a trend that is gaining momentum every year. A very useful fashion is to give up bad habits and start good ones, do fitness and infect others with this movement. Everything that is in trend is necessarily reflected in business. We went to marketing analyst Maria Polyakova, who promotes several projects, including representatives of the fitness industry in Tyumen, and also leads an active sports lifestyle herself.

Masha, tell us about your main project.

One of my clients now is a fitness club, which is located in the city center in an elite development: in a residential complex, but in a separate building. The total area is about 2 thousand square meters, more than 2,000 visitors. I have been working on this project since January of this year.

This is a fairly large and, at the same time, a young fitness club (it is three years old). Now he has a period of transition to a new level in everything: in marketing, in finance, in general consistency, in regulations, in a promotion strategy, in building a clearer positioning.

Now the management already knows who their audience is, and understands what list of services they can provide - basic and additional. All this, which has been empirically worked out within the company, now needs to be fixed and look at distant horizons.

Do you work with them as a marketer?

Yes. My partner Alexandra Samoilovich and I have a joint Marketing & Finance project, where we work in a tight connection between marketing and finance. These are two inseparable things, but the vast majority of companies do not yet understand that these two areas do not live in isolation.

Why did you choose the fitness industry?

I'm basically interested in the fitness industry. In addition, I do fitness myself, although training is closer to me not in the gym, but in the open air. My profile is climbing, mountaineering and running.

My company has been engaged in research marketing since 2011. It has always been mostly sociological, marketing research. Gradually, sociology faded away, analytics, consulting were added, then promotion appeared.

There are mainly two types of clients who apply for research: those who expand into the regions, and those with whom something went wrong. Companies of the second type come, as if to a doctor: “We have such a problem ... Something happened ... Why is this happening?” When we find out the reasons, the question arises of what to do with it, we find a solution.

This is how the service of strategic planning, promotion and strategic marketing was born. When you have a lot of experience in the market, then starting to conduct research, you inevitably immerse yourself in the specifics of the area under study. Friends are often surprised: “How do you know everything? We are talking about heavy equipment - you skillfully pick up the conversation, we are talking about the agricultural complex - you are talking about herbicides and combines, we touch on the building material market - you are in the subject there too! Often just a head boils from an excess of information.

If we talk about the fitness industry, then in the current rather difficult market conditions, this area is developing quite well. With a general drop in income in many areas of the economy, income in the fitness industry is growing. Growth has slowed but not stopped. There are several reasons for this: the fitness industry market in Russia is growing, it is quite young, and the degree of its penetration is low, especially in the regions. And one more reason: when the vast majority of people are in a state of instability, at the slightest opportunity they begin to improve themselves as a product. With the general trend of a healthy lifestyle, which was set by our president, with a high loyalty of the labor market to a younger and more active population, whether you want it or not, but keeping in shape becomes one of life's priorities.

Therefore, the fitness industry market is growing, it is attractive, it scales well. I am interested to see how he offers more and more new services and almost all of them are perceived with a bang.

Since you are actively involved in fitness, you didn’t have to dive too much? You are the representative of the target audience.

Yes, in this case, I immediately know what is valuable, useful and important to me as an internal client. When you see the picture both from the outside and from the inside, it becomes more complete.

Athlete, climber and simply beautiful Masha!

What are the features of promotion in the fitness industry? What should you pay attention to?

This is a service business. This is work with a client, with a person, but not with his primary desires and needs, but with his dream, intention.

It is both simple and complex business at the same time. I help a person realize his dream. A person associates a lot in life with his appearance, health, and inner state of mind. The fitness industry interacts with all of this. It leads to the understanding that in order to achieve a dream, you need to work hard, take gradual systemic steps. We can always “tear off the sleeves from the vest”, but this is of no use. I'm talking about those who buy the most expensive annual card, the most expensive fitness outfit, work out three workouts and end there, they say, that's it, muscles hurt - "this is not for me."

Or people want very fast results. But, as my grandmother used to say, "only cats will be born quickly."

There are many other nuances in this area.

Yes, fitness is dream work. But it is also fashionable, almost everyone wants to do it. But not the fact that they are doing it. And here fitness needs to maintain a balance between, on the one hand, inaccessibility in terms of beauty, the end product (athletic physique: well-groomed girls and stately male athletes are demigods for us who descended from Olympus), on the other hand, full accessibility and openness in order to a person had a desire to come to the gym, start exercising, trust the coach. It is in this contradictory combination that there must be a balance.

Is it necessary to encourage those who have just started to train? And how does it work in the fitness business?

Previously, fitness managers thought that the main motivation was an element of additional sales within the club. Now people are more and more aware that the key to success is a personal trainer. I would love to be a personal trainer myself. It's interesting! So you set a task for a person: “So, Vasya, you need to run out of here before lunch!” Vasya ran, ran - and fell, his strength ran out. You think: “Hmm, I wonder how it turned out… Apparently, it’s a bit too much to start with, we need to reduce the load” (laughs). Joke, of course. This is a very difficult and responsible job.

At the same time, a personal trainer does not allow you to sit still, he endlessly motivates, keeps you within strict limits. This is exactly what many adults dream of today, realizing that without a competent mentor, results cannot be achieved. There are very few people who achieve goals on their own. The rest are ready to pay money and spend time so that someone “finishes” them to the result.

Scientifically documented is the fact that it takes 21 regular repetitions to develop a habit - roughly speaking, 21 days. This is true, but as soon as, having stepped over the three-week milestone, you stop repeating, you quickly return to the starting point. And 21 days of non-repetition also fixes the habit. The habit of doing nothing.

How does the fitness club you promote position itself?

This is a family fitness club. A new model that has long been launched in America, Australia, Europe. In Russia, it is just beginning to take root - mainly in megacities - and is represented by federal networks.

In small towns, it is difficult, since this format requires that all family members receive the services they need. For example, my client has a children's developmental club, which is located in the same building, it provides both children's fitness services (certified trainers work) and developmental ones. I come as a mother with two children, I work out for 2–2.5 hours in the gym, and during this time the children jumped, jumped, and sat, thought, painted.

Now, just a playroom for children is no longer in demand, where you leave your child to self-employment under minimal supervision. Now parents want to make the most efficient use of not only their time, but also the time of the child. My client offers just such a convenient model.

Do you think that a fitness club should have a narrow niche?

In any case, you need to segment.

If we are talking about a premium class club, then for a certain price it provides a list of services that suits its target audience. If these are low-cost clubs, which are usually located in shopping centers, in the adjacent territory of residential areas, where there is no reception, fitness bar, massage, fitness testing and other goodies, where there is only a shower, then there is its own target audience, and one TA will be uncomfortable in the club of another.

I am opposed to discount promotions - when the ruble voting among competitors begins and the client is dragged. This is complete nonsense, because at the level of a growing market, you need to win new customers, and not pull ready-made ones from each other. Unfortunately, not everyone understands this. The premium class club lowers prices, blurring the target audience, and those who do not appreciate either the level of comfort, or the qualifications of coaches, or the interior come to it. Rather, he will appreciate it, but he will chronically not understand why you have to pay for it. Gradually, the primary target audience is squeezed out: a bank manager will not want to run on a nearby treadmill with his teller - such is the Russian mentality. And when the club returns prices - after all, comfort must be maintained - newly attracted customers begin to resent. In the end, they also leave. Unjustified discounts are the way to nowhere.

Playing with the target audience is like walking through a minefield.

Geolocation is also important, especially when it comes to million-plus cities. The target audience is ranked depending on where you are located. If in the lake, then it is clear that there are roach and crucian carp. If in the sea, then there are bigger fish.

What promotion channels work especially well in fitness clubs?

It depends on what stage of appearance and development the club is in.

If the club has just appeared, then for promotion you need to use all channels to notify the audience. Next, we look at which channels the target audience directly uses, and pay tribute to social networks.

There is a fitness club in Tyumen, which was segmented exclusively for a young audience - from 18 to 30 years old - and is promoted only through the VKontakte and Instagram communities. They are not advertised anywhere else. But they rocked their group so well, they use all its capabilities so cool that they don’t need other channels today.

How to organize a sales funnel in a newly opened fitness club? Where to begin?

We sell a dream to a client and the understanding that we can bring him closer to this dream is the main task. Fitness is not a professional sport. Fitness is when you achieve something and you are praised. And you achieve if you treat your body as carefully as possible, without setting any records. Professional sport is a test of the strength of the resources inherent in a person, his unique properties, and fitness is keeping the body in good shape without harm to health. This is the main value that should be a red line in the sales of any fitness center.

To begin with, the client should be accepted the way he first came: usually not in the best shape, with embarrassment in front of the mirror and others. And only then he needs to show what he can become, and convince him that on the way to his dream he will be accompanied, supported, encouraged, that the coach will be a watchful eye.

And this is more about psychology than about physiology. Often, oddly enough, people come to a fitness club for psychological support. If only you knew how much and in what detail clients tell their trainers! I guess coaches need to pay extra for psychoanalysis! :)

Not every coach is capable of this!

Those who are not capable leave quickly. Every fitness trainer is, first of all, a good psychologist, a good person - in principle, there can be no bad people there.

Well, here the coach loves his client, works with him, improves. But it also has a follow-up function. Or should an administrator, a manager, deal with this?

It is the coach who offers a lot of intra-club services to the client. And he must be taught intellectual sales so that he offers his client exactly what he sees fit. It is necessary to feel the fine line between the situation when the client trusts you, and when the client understands that sales are being organized on his trust. It is very easy to step over this line and lose a client.

An individual approach and adequately selected loads for the client is the main task of a personal trainer

Now there should be much more humanity and subtle mental connection in the relationship with the client than it was before.

Does the new generation of coaches understand this?

Specialists in any field undergo natural selection. If a young trainer has decided that his calling is to make other people more beautiful, better and stronger, and starts working without trying to learn something extra (at least the same interaction with a client), his road in the fitness industry is short. It will quickly cease to be of interest to customers, which means that the fitness club will not need it either.

A coach must constantly learn, develop, be in trend, know new tricks that the fitness industry is producing quite dynamically. The coach should offer his client to know more about new trends than other people, offer to be in this very trend.

The state of expertise in a person is always relevant.

Speaking of promotion, we are not going anywhere from Internet marketing. What to bet on in fitness: on social networks, a website, a fitness blog?

If we are talking about the promotion of a personal trainer and he has something to write about, then this must be done.

If we are talking about promoting a fitness club, then its presentation on the social network should be as interesting as possible. Let these be videos, announcements of events and subsequent reports about them, “bomb” photos, news that appeal directly to the representative of the target audience. It is necessary to conduct a dialogue personally with each user.

In my feed there is a representative of the fitness direction "workout" Frank Medrano (Frank Medrano), he has developed a huge network of fitness clubs that are attended by the disabled. Frank shows a video in which 180-kilogram people come to training, and shows how they work out, how hard it is for them, how they do not give up. Or how a wheelchair user is doing push-ups on the bars with a multi-kilogram chain around his neck. Along with a stroller. There is no glamor in all this, you see the real, alive and very cool. Or the famous CT Fletcher "Plush Beard" - just the kind of motivating with a sharp word and kicking coach, whose YouTube videos break records in terms of the number of views. You get into it right away. You are no longer constrained by embarrassment in front of the fitness room, you understand that the same living people who strive for their dreams will come there.

Fitness promotion should be based on the positive, on broadcasting the energy of burning eyes. Fitness is always a lot of energy. Even static yoga is energetic, it's just that there is a charge inside.

A person comes to acquiring an annual card through emotions, this is an irrational purchase. And the website of the fitness center must be a sales tool, the client must enter it with an already made decision to buy the services of the club. There should be the most convenient navigation so that the client can quickly purchase a card, sign up for an excursion to the club, create a map constructor from conditions that are interesting to him, calculate the body mass index - you need to provide for all these chips. The client's contact with the club through applications and instant messengers should be as short and simple as possible.

Tell us more about the tricks that a fitness club can use to attract and retain customers.

For example, gamification in a club, when points are awarded to a client. Only I am for it to be based on the results of the client, on additional services. And the fitness club should go beyond the club with its client, travel.

Let's say I live in Tyumen, I visit a certain fitness club. And so I arrived in Moscow - and I will stay at the hotel where my fitness club has a discount. Or my club recommends me hotels with an excellent gym and a cool pool.

The fitness club builds the infrastructure of its client's being. He is a friend.

It is necessary to develop an affiliate network, to carefully select partners for your target audience - this is very cool both for the club's marketing and for the partners themselves. Different areas, for example, HoReCa and fitness, are in contact, which means that a common client will certainly be at the point of contact. The same goes for vacations and shopping.

Let's talk about small fitness projects: small centers or studios. What are their features of functioning and promotion?

Now this is a new trend - boutique fitness clubs.

In Tyumen, for example, we have a cycle club. This is the micro-business that needs marketing micro-formats. Their implementation is even easier. There are not too many clients there and it is easier to make a person's stay in the club as comfortable as possible, to provide the very infrastructure of being.

I think that there will be more such formats, since the vast majority of clients do not really need a huge fitness center with its prohibitive number of services. In small studios, a special microclimate is formed, you can arrange master classes, attract healthy food, natural cosmetics, sportswear lines of the local market - all this is not put on an industrial footing, and at this level you can put together a good affiliate program.

You are planning new projects in Sochi. Are they related to fitness? And why exactly Sochi?

I am planning to move to Sochi.

Today, the Krasnodar Territory, in particular, the Black Sea coast, has a steep infrastructure and serious resources in terms of the resort business, organizing offsite business events, but there is no saturation as such. A very pronounced seasonality today should be eroded by such events, and now this area is gaining momentum. A very dense network of large-scale events: Formula 1, the football championship, the International Youth Festival is planned for the autumn, which will be attended by a large number of world-class personalities, including Elon Musk. In this regard, Sochi is developing very coolly, but it is necessary to attract Russians, and not only to a banal resort holiday, but also to other activities.

I will be organizing business events using the resources of the Black Sea coast and Krasnaya Polyana, organizing educational and fitness tours. This is all that I want and know how to do, which brings me untold pleasure. I think that we will sound in unison with Sochi.

Do you have any technology for implementing plans?

Of course, there is a production technology. I really like the way Natalia Frankel and Dmitry Rumyantsev work in this direction, and I have my own experience in organizing events.

Is there any specifics in the promotion of the fitness direction in Sochi?

The specificity lies in the fact that the Olympic legacy inherited by the resort town is a very big responsibility. Now the city has a huge Olympic park, amazing infrastructure, and Sochi residents simply have to immerse themselves in a sports-active state, stay in it and set an example for the rest of the country. The bar has been set high, and the mentality of local residents must be brought up to it.

According to the mayor of Sochi, over the past two or three years, about two hundred thousand people have moved to the Black Sea coast for permanent residence, and the urban population has almost doubled. Now this population needs to be healed, brought into a state of love for an active lifestyle, sports, and here there is absolutely everything for a healthy lifestyle to spread by leaps and bounds. Therefore, the fitness industry should hold the maximum number of events here, both local and large-scale, and invite as many active people as possible.

Thank you, Maria, for a cheerful interview, interesting cases and advice. Are there fitness project managers among our subscribers? Share the features of your business, tell us how you are doing with promotion.

Interviewed by Nadezhda Merkusheva

In Russian cities with a population of over one million there are a huge number of people who want to do fitness. Almost everyone has an Internet connection at home or at work, which they use to find the right club. For example, for Moscow, the statistics for 2016 looks like this:

The website of the fitness center should regularly bring new customers.. Work like outdoor advertising and even better. If the fitness center provides quality services, then most of the new customers can become regular customers, so do not underestimate the importance of Internet advertising, at the same time, all costs should be economically justified: you need to pay only for the result.

If we refine the problem, then the site is required to give out as many customer contacts as possible, no matter in what form: a completed form ("call me back" or "find out the price") is the minimum task, a direct incoming call is the maximum task. With the right approach to online advertising of a fitness club you must control the cost of each such communication. In Moscow, contacting a fitness club client with a phone, email and full name can cost 200-300 rubles. It is clear that a contact is not yet a sale - but here the ability of your managers to process incoming calls already plays a role, someone manages to make 10% of calls to customers, someone has 30%, and someone has 50%.

There are some non-trivial nuances and common mistakes that a business owner and administrator should be aware of.

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Effective and inexpensive promotion of the club.

To advertise a fitness club, it makes sense to use only low-frequency territorial queries (which will include the name of the nearest metro, or the street on which the club is located). The idea behind a proper fitness center advertising campaign is that customers will not come to you from afar, so it makes sense to focus only on nearby areas and streets. And here it is necessary to try to occupy the first places in the search results. It must be understood that being in the top ten search results for low-frequency territorial queries is a weak result, the effect of which will be hardly noticeable.

Search query example:

• Fitness center + street name
• Fitness club + nearest metro station.
• Gym + Street Name
• Yoga + Nearest metro station
• Fitness + District

These are “cheap” requests, the promotion of which even the most modest sports institution can afford. Monthly promotion budgets can be reduced, and the site can be maintained in good positions for reasonable money with a high effectiveness of an advertising campaign on the Internet.

There is an opinion that the effectiveness of search engine promotion (SEO) has decreased utterly, but this is not the case in fitness for you: it is weakly competitive, there will not be even 10 clubs around your metro, which means that they can all be placed on the first page - the question is who will hang higher. And already if you got to 1-2 places in the search, then there are plenty of opportunities to stand out: far fewer access rules are applied to search headlines than in the same contextual advertising, which allows you to catch up with it in terms of clickability and efficiency, even if the search is lower context. Play with numbers, capital letters, like this:

Recently, in addition to neighbors' fitness clubs that will compete with you for search positions, stupid sites like zoon.ru, spravker.ru and others like that have also come into play. Yandex ranks them high for a number of reasons, but if you are not too lazy to make high-quality content for yourself, then it is quite possible to overcome them.

Options for increasing fitness club attendance and their cost

Creation of a fitness center website.

Since only a small stream of local visitors is expected to the site of the fitness club, you cannot underestimate the few who will still come to visit you. Each of them can call and become your regular customer. Or maybe not call. At the stage of creating a site, it is better not to save and invest "to the fullest" - this is done on average once every five years. The site must have a nice design, a detailed description of all services, programs and activities taking place in the club, a detailed map of “how to get there”, an up-to-date schedule of group programs, it is better to add pages of trainers and specialists conducting individual classes in your club. The description of services should be optimized (diluted with territorial queries) in order to rank normally in search results, but you should not get carried away with optimization: first of all, all descriptions should answer the frequently asked questions of your customers. Many customers save on the description of services, but you need to understand that if you don’t have a page about the pool on the club’s website, then you won’t get to the first position for the query “swimming pool in Khimki”, and it would bring you many customers.

Since 2014, the creation of an adaptive design for a fitness club website has become very relevant - the share of mobile traffic in this topic is constantly growing, in 2016 it is almost 50%

It would be nice if you order a website from a company that also specializes in website promotion - at the creation stage, many of the technical details necessary for further efficiency and cheaper promotion will be laid down. Although it is search engine optimization that can be stuck at any time, it is not so difficult and expensive, but what exactly should be laid down at the creation stage is the presence and thoughtful arrangement of all components.

Difficult and interesting question to post or not to post prices on the fitness club website? On the one hand, by placing prices, you will lose some of your customer contacts and possible communications. This is of course bad. On the other hand, on the website of the fitness club you want to have fitness card purchase module online. This task itself is implemented very simply, through any payment system of an intermediary such as Yandex.Cash, or directly through your bank - this is a little more complicated, but there is no commission + a few more advantages. The main point is to try to make an online card store in such a way as not to lose possible customer requests. For your particular case and proposal, the site manufacturer, or the company responsible for the Internet advertising of your fitness club, should offer a good solution, as a rule this is possible.

Categorically it is impossible to be limited to a "business card site"- this will definitely not work for the promotion and search promotion of a fitness club: the site must answer all the questions that real customers ask the club administrator or trainers. As a rule, site programmers cannot know either the questions or the answers to them, so here the business owner is simply obliged to take the necessary part, or to oblige the administrator to do so. It is very welcome when trainers who conduct group or individual classes also write a description of their sections for the site.

The situation when a business lives separately from the site negatively affects both the first and the second. This moment is usually underestimated by everyone and in vain.

Another interesting question what is better for advertising a fitness club - the so-called landing pages (landing pages) or a full-fledged website? Landing pages are quickly assembled from designers by companies specializing in contextual advertising. However! According to some studies, the conversion on such pages is no higher than the conversion on a site of average quality. All sorts of counters "have time to buy at a discount, 2 hours left" and other elements have become boring and have ceased to be an effective tool for extracting client communications. Those. having made a beautiful "landing page" for a fitness club website, you will have the opportunity to use it only for contextual advertising; if you make a good website, you will be able to get customers from both contextual advertising and search engine promotion. Do not believe if you are told that the conversion will be higher on the "landing page", this is no longer the case.

What is not worth overpaying for when creating?

The cost of creating a fitness club website greatly depends on whether you have one club, or there is already a network of fitness clubs. Moreover, if you are planning to open a second club in the near future - order the site initially with the expectation of a network: let it be more expensive, but reworking an already finished one is an even worse option.

Large networks can afford to order an individual design and an engine-system on which the site will work, made in modern programming languages. It is difficult to say how justified this is. If you look at the figures of the final conversions, then a site made on a free and common engine such as wordpress or joomla will work not much worse than an individually executed monster. It will also look normal, all the necessary modules will be present, including adaptive design (mobile version), but the cost may be 50 tr. against 500 tr.

"Template design" is not always a bad thing. Russian business, unfortunately, has become accustomed to the fact that this is something wretched, provided by the most budgetary Runet developers. However, there is an alternative -. Believe me, in many cases, the theme of a fitness club website purchased from a professional will be better and more thoughtful than what a local Russian expert will make to order. We are unequivocally sure that this is the best option in terms of price / quality ratio, and certainly the only right option for starting online advertising for a single fitness club or a small growing network. You do not need to beg a lot of money from the founders, and at the end you will get a more than high-quality product.

Promotion of a fitness club: important stages.

Make sure that your website is top notch: beautiful adaptive design, employee pages, service pages, news, reviews, ideally video, photo gallery, location map, price request forms, "call you back" tool - bypass the sites of top networks, see for yourself what should be: almost all fitness club chains in recent years, they have pulled up their sites to a very good level.

Contextual advertising - must have. For territorial requests, it is cheap and effective. Fitness club requests - on the club page, service requests - on the service pages. YAN mode and Yandex Direct special placement. Do not forget to count the cost of a call/contact of a client, at least periodically.

Search promotion - with proper use, it can bring as many more customers as contextual advertising brings. But do not try to promote more requests than the site can - do not take "not your" metro stations, even if clients sometimes come from them. The specificity of search algorithms is such that there will be no sense from this, but you will spend money. Do not take many requests - only your services, your geography. Search promotion of a fitness club should not cost much - this is a weakly competitive topic.

How trite it sounds - develop your site, demand additional improvements from the company leading your advertising, at least once a quarter something should be done. If you already have enough visitors (hundreds), experiment: change banners, blocks, slogans on the site - look at the statistics of the result. A/B testing is here to help.

There are a few more points that will provide the site with the necessary flow of visitors, and its owner with new customers:

Registration in thematic portals, they can be found on request "fitness clubs in Moscow". When registering, you must specify as much information as possible, be sure not to forget to put a link to the site. Such portals also have a regional division (usually by metro stations) and can work for you as additional search results for the required queries. Also, links from major portals will increase the site's ranking in the search results for queries, and even directly from them, customers who find a description of your club will call you. Thematic directories and portals are both free and paid. If the budget for the promotion of an Internet representative office is limited, it is recommended to stretch the registration in time: transfer its registration to the next month, i.e. monthly register in 1-2 large thematic portals. For those who plan to stay in this business for a long time, these actions are sure to pay off. Needless to say: in all free directories and portals the club must be registered without fail. This should not be delayed, it is better to register immediately after the creation of the site - the sooner it starts to bring you new customers, the better.

Place, place and again place!

Most likely, before opening your club, you carefully chose the place, focusing on the cost of renting the area and the presence of potential clients working or living nearby.

Surprisingly, similar processes are taking place on the Internet: clubs located close to the metro or in the center of the microdistrict are “in sight”, receiving bonuses for visitors, while those who are located further away will have a harder time with them.

Nevertheless, for all fitness sites, a very important point is registration in Yandex.cards: it is free and gives only a positive effect. If your club is located in close proximity to the metro, you will automatically be included in the issuance of cards for the corresponding query "fitness club + metro". As practice shows, cards eat up half of the traffic from the search results for clubs and do not contribute to increasing sales from your club's website. People find fitness clubs right on the map at the top of the search results and don’t look at anything below. If your site is among the lucky ones, it will already provide itself with a certain constant influx of visitors and customers. The list of fitness clubs on the map is formed according to the principle - whoever is closer is higher, who is too far from the requested place - he is not displayed at all. In this case, it will be difficult, because. Most of the customers from the area will be distributed to other clubs, while yours is only to fight for good places in the search results, as well as get the most from portals and directories.

The specifics of the fitness club website.

In the Yandex search results, some sites have the ability to add a special kind of “snippets” descriptions to themselves, containing a short list of their services and programs. Fitness clubs are just given the opportunity to add a short list of services and the cost of a subscription.

What is the best thing to add here? It is better to add your competitive advantages (if any) either unique services or the most common ones - in this case, you will get a small bonus when ranking your site in search results.

Network of fitness clubs.

Networked fitness centers benefit greatly compared to a single salon, because. the final budget for Internet advertising will be less with the same efficiency. This is due to the fact that the efforts spent on the promotion of one of the addresses of the network are partially credited to others, promoting their requests. If a club can dream of a targeted territorial traffic of 50-100 people per day, with expenses in the region of 4-8 thousand rubles per month. That is, a network of 10 salons at a cost of 50-100 thousand rubles for website promotion can receive 3000-8000 visitors per day (the numbers are not invented, but taken from real life). The flow of live clients will increase proportionately, each of which costs the network significantly less than a single club. Moreover, it increases the likelihood that visitors who have come to the site for general requests that are not tied to any metro or street will pick up a club that is acceptable in terms of location. And the very promotion of requests such as "yoga", "pool", "children's fitness", "shaping", "cycling", "fitness club", etc. similar becomes possible for the network, thanks to the promotion of similar territorial. And even if you do not even promote these “general” requests, but simply put them on a promoted site, the materials themselves will begin to work with some effect. For this, when creating or upgrading a site, it is better not to limit yourself to a table of contents and structure created on a territorial basis: everyone does this now. It is worth duplicating the structure by creating sections on the services and programs of your club and with their detailed description.

All materials and sections of the fitness club chain must be on the same domain name. In this case, the effect of promotion will be multiplied, bringing a maximum of customers.

In other words, with an increase in the number of network addresses, the effect of promotion at the same costs can be an order of magnitude higher than that of the club's personal site. Needless to say, all major chains of fitness clubs monitor their sites very well - they have long understood the benefits.

Whom to entrust your website to?

Is it worth it to trust someone? Maybe it's better to do all of the above yourself?

Is quite real! Websites are promoted not by gods, but by the same people. You just have to come to terms with the fact that it will take a LOT of time, since you will be trying to promote the site for the first time. If your level of computer proficiency is high enough, you are an advanced Internet user, then having a great desire, you can figure out the problem and do everything in a month or two of continuous work. It's unlikely to be faster. But then you can do a similar operation on the second site even better and in less time - this is called experience. In this case, useless, because. you have one website.

There is an alternative method: entrust the promotion of the site to your "computer"(system administrator) if any. If a young man is talented by nature, he has every chance to figure it out and make a cool fitness club website for you using. You are on a horse - the savings are huge. You run the risk of not knowing how many customers the Internet can actually give. But here you should not be very upset: 80% of sites are created in a similar way and do not work at full capacity - you will not be alone.

Third option: shift the promotion to the shoulders of professionals. Undoubtedly, large companies will not be interested in promoting your site with a contract amount of about 8000-10000 rubles (and it will be unprofitable for the owner of the salon to pay more), however, medium and small companies may well be engaged in the promotion of such a project. There is a return on the classic promotion on the search queries of the club's website, but do not lose control over the process! Demand reports on the effectiveness of advertising: the cost of communication with the client. Don't pay money for air. It will be great if the contractor of your Internet advertising will also periodically improve your site, offer new modules: online payment, automatic call, etc. - if you have found such a company, you are lucky!

How to choose a company? In fact, it is very difficult and fun at the same time: you can try to look the manager in the eye and ask: "how will the promotion of my site go?". If the manager, without blinking an eye, describes at least 2/3 of all of the above, you can sign the contract.