We always present our three marketing leaderboards together because you can be world class in one part of the funnel but fail to add clients if you struggle in the other areas.
But if you track metrics for all parts of your funnel, you can spot weak points and take action to fix problems. Then your gym will grow quickly.
In Two-Brain, we break marketing into four stages:
- Leads—the number of people who express an interest in your product or services.
- Set rate—the number of leads who book consultations.
- Show rate—the number of people who show up for their appointments
- Close rate—the number of people who show up and buy.
Lots of gym owners will say, “I need more leads,” but they’ve got lots of leads. Those leads just aren’t booking appointments, or they don’t show up for appointments, or they show up but don’t sign up.
Use metrics to identify your marketing problems. Like this:
Below, I’m going to give you tips from the top marketers in Two-Brain, but first I’ll show you their stats so you have proof. Everybody wants to give you advice on marketing, right? Every gym owner and social-media guru is going to have a tip for you.
How do you know who’s legit? Numbers never lie.
Get this: four gyms made all three leaderboards, and one took the triple crown:
- Mexican gym: 91 appointments-68 shows-54 sales
- U.S. gym: 47-28-22 (two nearby gyms closed down, and this owner stepped in to help—Matt Michaud of EverProven will talk about it on our podcast)
- U.S. gym: 38-32-23
- Canadian gym: 32-30-25 (this funnel leaked only 7 people from appointment to sale)
Big deal: All three-leaderboard gyms are getting at least one appointment booked per day.
The close rates as a percentage of shows for these four gyms demonstrate sales excellence:
- 79 – Mexico
- 79 – U.S.
- 72 – U.S.
- 83 – Canada
Now that you know our leaders are legit, here are the secrets of their success:
Consistency: “This is what we expect of our gym. Now we are going to have a real system for sales. We will grow with our PT and small group—group classes are doing OK.”
Consistency: “This is our norm.”
Consistency: “We expect to continue like this. This is a KPI that we want to attain. We are forecasting and setting KPI goals for our marketing agency.”
Staff Incentives: “We have the right team and reward them: Bonus schemes and opportunities for the team. … We have a team that genuinely cares.”
Metrics Tracking: “We break down the funnel metrics and KPIs—how many get in touch with us then book an intro class, how many show and pay. We have a percentage of who moves from each part of the funnel. If someone takes a class and doesn’t sign up, we are tracking that to see where we can improve.”
Unique Selling Point: “We ensure people know ‘the gym is not for meatheads.’ We target more mature clients, and people bring friends in. … We’re an overnight success 16 years in the making!”
Sales Systems: “We have excellent sales skills—we use a script and people know, like and trust us, as we’ve been here through the years. … We’re perfectionists, and we’re not done improving.”
Sales Skills: “The primary difference is how we were taught to sell right out of the gate, and then we shifted to sales on the phone. We’ve been doing it this way for 5 years.”
Beyond Paid Ads: “We were spending a lot of money on Facebook, and we found the quality wasn’t there. We started doing things organically: business partnerships, giveaways, emails. Most of the leads are word of mouth.”
Niche Excellence: “We are one of the best in town for strength and conditioning. We launched PT in addition to small group and group.”
Lead Nurture: “We create ongoing engagement, using Kilo to automate.”
Sales on Phone: “If we get 100 leads, we try to contact them and get a response from about 50 via text or email. Once we’re in touch, we do a one-call close. Call then consult, offering the price on the phone. … If they don’t sign up, we put them into a long-term drip campaign with emails once or twice per week based around content. We may also bring them in if they don’t convert on the phone.”
Phone NSI: “The way we market ourselves speaks really well to people on social media. When people start following us, we DM them to try to get them on the phone. … We might not be the best at getting them on the phone, but once we do, we have a 20-30 minute conversation. This is a smaller studio, and we connect with them deeply right then. It’s emotional. … We really focused on the sales process for 2 years—that’s why I do the NSI over the phone.”
Paid Trial Plus Sales Process: “We prescribe over the phone and we book them for a $20 first session. This ensures they will show up. On the phone, we explain the memberships, and then after we get off the phone, we share the pricing via text. … They do another intake 15 minutes before the class, and we already know quite a bit about them. It’s really to dig deeper: Did you look over the memberships? Any injuries? … We hand off to the coach and introduce them to someone in class. Then we hand back to the sales team.”
Sweat Intro: “Maybe 3 appointments were true No Sweat Intros—we also did a combo of free class or free PT, but they meet for 15 minutes to get to know us better. We do the interview process before they have any trial service.”
Sweat Intro: “We do a Sweat Intro, and we track the closes by coach and front desk. So if one coach is closing at 60 percent and another is closing at 80 percent … we try to help those who are lagging and help them see what the other teammates are doing. Our head of membership is in charge of this.”
AI and Forward Thinking: “We’re planning a big change this first quarter: We will use AI to analyze the data. We hope this will show us what is not that evident. Each team member involved in the client journey is tasked with finding one project they can outsource to AI.”
As I said earlier, Matt Michaud had two nearby gyms close down, so he adjusted his sales process to accommodate people who had lost their fitness homes:
Extraordinary Circumstances: “Our numbers are inflated because they were driven by the other places shutting down, but we’ve started doing paid ads now, too. If we’re able to convert these people from the other gym and then do Affinity Marketing with those people, plus the paid ads, we should see these results consistently.”
Extraordinary Circumstances NSI Process: “The big thing was being kind and nice and trying to help. Conversations were a little different than a traditional NSI. We led with ‘how are you feeling and how can we help?’ We sat down with the team and strategized for this: ‘It may seem silly, but remember people can be very connected with their gym. … Let’s put ourselves in their shoes and think of how we’d feel if it was us.’ We said, ‘We want to try to fill that void,’ and, ‘Tell us what you liked about your gym that closed. Tell us what you think you know about our gym.’ We focused on the environment—we wanted to make sure our gym was welcoming, not scaring them and making them feel that they had to conform.”
Extraordinary Circumstances Onboarding: “We’ve been trying to schedule it so that newbies get scheduled at the same time as OG members, then we intentionally introduce them. This time, we did that on a big scale: We partnered everyone up with someone they didn’t know, then asked them at the end to share one thing they learned about each other and something nice about them. This makes the OG people know that you appreciate them and trust them to lead the new people.”
Analyze and Improve
If you want to improve your marketing, the first step is tracking your metrics. You can’t do anything without data.
We help clients do this with the Two-Brain Dashboard, and then our mentors connect gym owners to the resources they need to remove the clogs in their marketing funnels. This process solves problems fast and generates incredible gym growth.
Our clients add more members faster than other gyms, they earn more from these members, and they hold them longer. That’s a recipe for great success: Add more high-value members who stay for years.
To hear more about how a mentor can help you do that, too, book a call here.
