Find The Niche Population That’s Been Hiding In your Gym All Along.
Find The Niche Population That’s Been Hiding In your Gym All Along.
Using the data from your community to address real issues within a niche population.
Using the data from your community to address real issues within a niche population.
If you read Part one you know finding a way to make your box stand out in a growing market top priority, and you have the ability using data from your clients. It’s common to see a box operate using the novelty of Crossfit being new, or different at face value from the other gyms in the area. It’s not a bad starting platform, but Crossfit is no longer new, and people might have already formed an opinion that Crossfit is not for them based off their own exposure and experience with the brand.
Are you thriving in what makes your community different?
We all know that outside of the brand, Crossfit affiliate box’s are not created equally, and restricted by franchising regulations. This makes them all different while allowing them to thrive in their differences under the umbrella brand image produced by CFHQ. Crossfit in itself is it’s own niche population and chances are your current members/clients already fit within that niche(that’s why they are members). It’s in your best interest to find what really makes you, and your community different if you’re truly looking to fill out your facility memberships, and pack your classes. This is where having some data collected about your current members, and the community that surrounds your facility is of great importance.
Use these 3 strategies to take advantage of your loyal box community.You might be a Crossfit branded facility, but you don’t need to fight your neighboring box for the same target market.
1: Use The Data to Address the Real Issues within a population.
Every niche population has an some issue or a problem they are dealing with. Why not use these already popular topics and issues as your platform. People like finding solutions to their problems, show them how you fix it.
Lets use the Geriatric population as an example of the population you want to target. The data you collected from your members shows that your training methods were successful in assisting members ages 65–75 in really improving not only their fitness but, overall health. Sure, we want grandma and grandpa to be fit but, is that the real issue that their population struggles with?
If you track health history of new members then you know if they are on meds, dealing with injuries and pain or are dealing with another medical condition. If you track exercise statistics then you know how strong they have gotten also. Now, pairing this initial data with some routine follow up (conversations and Q&A’s) during their training can give you some great feedback to use with this population. Something like picture this would be a better way to appeal to an older population (and their respected families) as to the benefits your services bring; instead of typing “Crossfit is good for old people” and showing a picture of a older person doing a squat.
Even without targeting a specific age group, if you collected some information from any of your clients who took medication you could easily use something like this to appeal to someone who wants to reduce their dependencies on medication for things like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol because they can be present in many different age ranges.
2: Find a Unique but Repeating Storyline
No 2 boxes are exactly alike, right? If that’s true then the same goes for the people that are members at your box. Remember, outside of your facility everyone of your members is a human being with human emotions, traits and personalities. It’s these human elements that steer us to things we care about.
We know Crossfit is about creating elite fitness individuals, HQ has been promoting that since it became popular but, it’s also about building a community of trusting relationships between vastly different people in a similar struggle. Outside of the box people have struggles of their own and are problem solving to find an answer. What if your box community has a path to that answer? Lets look at another example. There are a lot of single people looking for love in almost every place on earth. What if your box just so happend to produce some really quality relationships. Quality relationships so impactful that it changed the marital status from single to married with some of your lifetime members.If you had that data, wouldn’t that be an interesting way to appeal to an audience who might be more interested in or drawn to the social and community aspect over some of the other Crossfit qualities. They are probably already into their health and fitness in some way and are going out to bars, clubs and other social events to meet people. Why not show them how your facility can bring them both. You don’t even have to use a statistic about marriage or dating. You can use anything, like focus on people who have recently relocated or moved to your city/town and have made tons of friends at your box. Be creative and genuine…it works.
3: Highlight the Communities Within Your Box Community
People love being as part of a group they relate to in some way. They can either love something the same amount, hate something the same amount or just be in a similar situation. Regardless of the reason the group dynamic has a strong emotional response. If you know some information about your current members interests, hobbies and even occupations you can use this to connect with more people who live or work around your facility who don’t see themselves as someone who would join a Crossfit box or don’t want to feel like “they are the new kid in school”.
I love examples, here’s another one.
Imagine you had a stunning 98% of your members as die hard Manchester United fans/Manchester City haters and your facility was in Stretford England. Wouldn’t you want to get that information out there to the community around your box? They may be unsure if they will enjoy your workouts but it would provide an area or interest where they are comfortable and can connect with others. They can’t connect about squat gains yet but, they sure can connect on the slaughter Man United put on Man City yesterday. If they are unsure about joining your box because of a fear of being an outsider; you just solved that for them. You need to remember that your box is located in a specific part of town and some towns have very specific demographics and people like being around people with similar interests. This can work with sports teams, jobs, hobbies and many others because it’s a community within a community.
Stay Tuned:
Part 3: How to Collect Client Data…without being creepy
Part 4: We collected the data . How do we analyze and make sure it works.
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