5 New Gym Trends to Watch

As the end of the year approaches, gym owners and managers have a few things on their mind. Not only is the end-of-year period one of the busiest for gym owners, it’s also a time of planning and preparation for the new year to come. Gym owners and managers have to balance the double buckets of executing and managing the New Year rush as well as building a strategic plan for 2020.  

To help take the guesswork out of the end-of-the-year and make strategic planning a breeze for busy gym owners, we’ve compiled a list of the top five gym trends heading into 2020.

1: Creative campaigns to attract and retain members. 

If you thought 2019 was a competitive year in the gym and fitness industry, 2020 is poised to be just as bad – or even worse. Between new gyms, boutique workout clubs, and social media fitness phenomenon’s, there are more ways than ever before for people to get their workout fix. So, your gym must be prepared to stand out from the crowd. 

First and foremost, this means creative marketing campaigns to both attract new members and retain your current members. Now is the time to test out new channels, like social media, podcast, and even traditional email advertising, to see what works for your gym and your member audience. 

2: Engaging member experiences across multiple channels.

People join gyms to work out, yes, but they also join looking for a community to engage and explore. The act of actually coming into the gym to work out or go to a class is only part of the experience. In 2020, gyms should make an effort to craft engaging members’ experiences before, during, and after members are ‘working out’. Some ideas include:

• Hosting workout happy hours at your gym.
• Throwing celebration parties at a local restaurant or park. 
• Taking classes outside or into the community. 
• Establishing an active social media presence. 

3: Tailored and personalized member-focused content

If you’re trying to engage members even when they’re not at the gym, you’re probably going to be sharing some sort of content on a regular basis. The key here is to know exactly what your members are looking to learn and then teach them!

Send out surveys asking for feedback, or track your class loads to see which classes are the most popular. Then, use this information to help build and inform your member communications.

Whether you’re building a monthly newsletter or posting motivational quotes on your social media, tailoring your message to your member audience will help your content resonate more.

4: Streamlined payment and collections processes. 

Payments have always been one of the messiest parts of gym operations, and one of your gym goals for 2020 should be to streamline this process and make it a seamless as possible for members and your internal team alike.

Thanks to new technology in the space, it’s now easier than ever to ensure that payments and collections aren’t stuck in the past. 

There are a few ways gyms can deliver a modern payment process to members. Allowing secure online payments or automatic payments is a good first step, followed by a service hotline for help any time of the day. Your entire payment process should be 100% secure and built to give members the peace of mind they’re looking for.

5: Full-scale transparency into gym operations. 

Gyms are finally able to reap the benefits of advanced technology and digital innovation that are often found in other industries, and 2020 is the perfect time to set your gym up for success.

Gyms are first and foremost businesses and they require data-backed decisions to succeed. Until now, gathering the right data and metrics to make informed decisions hasn’t always been easy. With gym-focused dashboards and data, gym owners can have a fully transparent view of their gym operations to see what is going right and what needs a little more work.

Need a hand in strategic 2020 planning? The team at Paramount is on-call to help! Give us a call at 800-316-4444 for more details.