Monthly viewpoint: Re-imagining marketing

Were I to do a pop survey of operators right now, as lockdown 3.0 continues, I predict their answers around the key challenge our sector faces would be pretty consistent. Repeated lockdowns have inevitably led to an increase in membership cancellations and fewer members = a need for operators to reduce costs, in a bid to ‘plug the gap’ commercially until some semblance of normality resumes.

Often one of the first costs to be cut is marketing budgets, and while this will indeed reduce expenditure, it doesn’t help operators with the other key challenge they’ll have in common post lockdown – the need to recover members in order to rebuild revenue.

One option to embrace, perhaps now more than ever, is using alternative marketing channels to aid in regrowing member bases. With the industry in a state of flux, with digital offers ever evolving and here to stay, and potential members reconsidering how they access fitness, it’s vital to think beyond traditional marketing strategies. Now is the time to move past what you have always done and consider working alongside third-party marketing partners to facilitate post-lockdown member recovery.

Working alongside third-party marketing partners affords operators access to news sales channels with no impact on constrained marketing budgets. The Hussle platform offers a powerful reach to customers via big-brand marketing and commercial partnerships with the likes of Premier Inn and Vodafone. It also connects operators, at no extra cost, with the corporate market via big-name employers such as CBRE, Facebook and the NHS providing fitness-as-a-benefit to staff. This sort of marketing reach is difficult to achieve on your own.

And Hussle’s new Membership Conversion Service means we proactively encourage users to directly join clubs they attend regularly. In fact, in the last 18 months Hussle has facilitated more than 30,000 try-before-you-buy customers into direct club members.

Embracing a marketing partner also opens up new member options. The key Hussle audience, for example, is 20-35 – the next generation of gym members, who are typically younger than most operators’ core 40-plus audience.

In addition, a marketing partner can offer a way to generate revenue from the COVID-created work-from-home market, which represents a whole new membership opportunity. Accessing fitness via the Hussle platform enables consumers to try different gyms in their home area, giving operators the chance to impress.

Now is the time to move past what you have always done and consider working alongside third-party marketing partners to facilitate post-lockdown member recovery.