Have you heard? Funnels have become a buzzword in fitness businesses over the last few years, but they’ve existed since the very beginning of the industry itself. Their increase in popularity has come with an unfortunate increase in complexity though.
However, this complexity is often a sales tactic, an attempt to persuade the potential buyer that they don’t know enough about funnels and need to purchase the latest-and-greatest in funnel software or training courses. In reality, the concept of a funnel is very simple. Keep reading to know more about the funnel technique in sales.
Creating a sales funnel from scratch
It exists to describe and measure steps in a buyer’s journey to becoming your customer. A key characteristic of a funnel is that it is always wider on top than it is at the bottom.
This helps to visualize the truth about all marketing and sales - the top of the funnel (i.e. how many people learn about your business) will always be bigger than the bottom of the funnel (i.e. how many people buy sign up to your service.)
Below you can see an example of what a funnel might look like for a new gym member. How hard is it to get from Online Search to the final Sign up? Find out here.
In more practical terms, do you know what your customer journey looks like?
- People first find out about the gym online
- They visit the website to learn a little more
- Perhaps they even check Yelp!, Google My Business or some other review site to see what members say
- They then actually visit the facility to see the amenities available
- And finally sign up
The sales funnel visually describes the process from initial contact to final sale. The stages of the funnel show a potential customer’s degree of readiness to commit to your deal: the lower the sales opportunity in the funnel, the harder is to close the deal. Why you need a sales funnel?
The funnel is so important to your business because it helps you to improve; it allows you to measure how many people from one stage have moved into the next stage. For example, if 100 people see your advert online and 40 of them visit your website your conversion from step 1 (ad) to step 2 (website) is 40% (40 / 100.) Likewise, if 8 people come to walk through the facility and 2 sign up your conversion from walkthrough to purchase is 25% (2 / 8.)
These percentages, called conversions, are key to understanding how effective your gym sales funnel is. Your overall funnel conversion measures the very first step until the very last step (generally when they sign up.) In our examples above, 100 people saw the ads and 2 people signed up. The total funnel conversion is then 2% (2 / 100.). Since each stage of the funnel involves different strategies, you can rethink your business plan and make it even more efficient.
The problem with gym sales funnels
You may already have the feeling that working with funnels is going to be a lot of work. How do you actually measure all of this information? What software do you need? How much is it all going to cost? These are all valid questions, and the answer is not normally a positive one.
The funnel described above would need a number of different software all configured to speak to each other, and all costing money to operate. At the very least you’d need to have:
- A marketing tool to run ads, like Facebook or Google
- A website that speaks back to Facebook / Google (which requires at least a developer and hosting service)
- An active (and often paid subscription) account on a review site
- A scheduling software (unless you pay your developer to build or install one)
And then you have to manage all of these software yourself if you don’t have a team to do it for you. This also creates problems for potential clients. Imagine how many clients you’ll lose by having them jump through so many hoops, having to use so many different software. It’s not ideal to say the least.
How can Virtuagym help you?
Each new stage in a funnel can be expected to lose between 10%-30% of potential client conversions. Even in a simple registration form the difference between having two fields for name (First and Last) and just one field (Complete Name) can be 14%!
We will help you simplify the fitness sales funnel down to just two software - your Ad software (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.) and Virtuagym. By doing it this way you’ll not only save yourself headaches and money, but also save your potential clients the hassle in becoming clients.
If you want to know more on sales funnels and read about Value First Funnel approach read our article on How Creating Client Value Will Grow Your Fitness Business
