According to this poll, about 40% of Americans make a New Year’s resolution. Of those, 30% vow to improve their health, eat better or exercise more in the new year.
This means roughly 12% of the population is actively devoted to seeking out what you offer. That is about 40 million people. Now, we have to take into account COVID, but the best strategy is to do everything we can to be successful, no matter what the external circumstances.
So, despite all that is going on, this is still an incredible opportunity. As a business owner, this type of opportunity is rare and one you can’t afford to miss out on -- especially now.
Here are some ideas to help ensure you maximize what this opportunity can provide and make whatever business gains are possible from the single best time of year for our industry.
1. Give it the focus it deserves. The holidays are an extremely busy time of year. We are usually inundated with more time sucking (yet fun and important) activities related to presents, cooking, traveling and family time. In addition, it’s part of our culture to take time off for the holidays.
Just how important is the act of making a plan to better your business in the new year? Does it compare? That’s up to you, but common sense says that the first step to maximizing opportunity this time of year is to make an active effort to focus on it and take steps. A huge percentage of gyms will do nothing different in the time of massive opportunity. Many of you reading this now will do nothing too. Maybe that’s because you’ve made an active choice to prioritize other things, which is great! But if you believe this is important to you and your business: TAKE ACTION.
2. Write a marketing plan specific to the New Year. If you have been a gym owner for a while you are probably aware of marketing strategies for your gym. You’ve already put thought into it and you probably have an idea how to best market in your specific region and your ideal target audience. So, putting a plan together you can execute will keep you on the path to maximizing New Year’s opportunity. A couple of thoughts to keep in mind while doing so:
Your message should speak to the mindset of the New Year’s resolution. Right now they are full of ambition and thinking: “I’m going to take steps to get in better shape this year and become better me”. So your message should speak directly to helping with that exact objective.
There is no better way to get that message to the ideal target than through your happy existing members. Encourage and even incentivize your current members to help you with this. It weeds out competition and significantly raises the volume and impact of the message (through social proof).
3. Set goals with your members (new and existing). Everyone knows that the vast majority of resolutions are dropped early in the year. To an extent, this is inevitable, but steps can be taken to minimize this and make the impact of this opportunity span for years to come. Take the New Year mental approach within your members and use it to create and engage new goals. For a new member, this could mean they stick around for a long time. For an existing one maybe it means they make an upgrade to their membership, or start a new supplement you offer, or just remain a happy and validated customer.
When setting these goals with your members make them have attainable metrics of success to show progress early on. Nothing encourages a continued walk down the path of completing a goal than the taste of progress and success along the way. Level method inherently creates countless opportunities to taste that motivating victory and makes your job of finding and defining goals much easier.
These are simple, high-level concepts that you likely have already thought about at some point but often get lost in the shuffle of the holidays. If your New Year’s resolution has to do with touching more lives and expanding your business, hopefully, this helps. Happy New Year!
