After a year in and out of lockdown, normality is finally on the horizon. Your customers are going to be desperate to get back into classes so get ready to help them!
To reinvigorate your current customers and get new ones primed, here are three things you must do in the next few weeks.
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1. Show you’re serious with a website
A website is a statement to the world that you’re ready to offer a high quality, enduring service to your customers.
You may have heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation); a few years ago, this meant optimising your website with layers of text and links to trick the search engines to putting you ahead of others. This is now out of date!
For location based businesses, such as in-person fitness providers, only one thing that (really!) matters.
Location, location, location!
When customers search for ‘yoga’, ‘pilates’ or ‘get fit’, their top matches won’t be for the best yoga websites in the world. Google and other search engines know where the customer lives and know where your business is; so the nearest businesses show up first.
If you want your business to show up on the world’s biggest search engine, Google, you need to register a full postcode, business name and website with their service called ‘Google My Business’. Just search for it and sign up.
If you’ve already got a website, but are still taking bookings by phone or email, skip ahead to the ‘Booking system’ section below.
Getting a new website address
These days, getting a web domain is easy. Just go to somewhere like namecheap.com (GoDaddy, 123, etc. all offer similar services) and find your perfect domain. ‘fitnesswithnick.co.uk’, if available, will cost you about £7 a year.
Makesweat used to be just a booking system like Mindbody; in 2020, we added an exciting new service – hosting websites for our customers, with our established and proven booking system already built in.
We will build a website for you, FOR FREE, using modern best practice and a clean, attractive interface, using your content, in just a few days.
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As long as you’ve got active future classes and customers, we’ll host your website completely for free! *
2. Get in control with a booking system
The days of customers booking by phone, email or whatsapp are over; if you rely on these you’ll already be losing out.
Customers expect to be able to browse classes, book, pay and cancel directly from their phones, whenever they want.
Booking systems used to be complicated and expensive. Since 2015, we’ve has focused on providing an easy to administer, easy to book system with tens of thousands of satisfied customers.
We’ve even had customers leave Mindbody and move to us because we can offer similar functionality for a fraction of the price.
We do everything you’d expect from a premium booking system.
- easy administration & booking on desktop or mobile
- integrated zoom links
- class size limits
- proper waitlists
- email notifications and pre-class reminders
- Zoom integration
- Mailchimp integration
- Classpass integration
- operational dashboards and reports
- class packs & auto-renewing memberships
- extensive rules for customisation
We have two levels of pricing; either 3% of every customer payment through your website, or once you’re earning over £1,700, it’s cheaper to move to our scale-up rate and pay a maximum of £49 ( $59 ) per month.
We helped teachers & instructors with booking systems since 2015, and we have teachers that have moved moved their studios from Mindbody and Zingfit. For the smallest to the largest teacher, we’re here for you! Let’s chat.
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* Fees for website hosting may be required if you do not maintain future classes and have customer payments through our site.
3. Engage your customers
Tell all your existing friends and family networks that your classes are starting again – and tell them about your new exciting website! Ask them to tell their friends or share on Facebook or Instagram.
If you’re an adult teacher, it can be a really good idea to offer fun and free classes for children – think your own local take on Joe Wicks! This is a great way to raise your visibility around families and it’s likely that you’ll get paying customers from it.
Local leaflets remain a cost effective and high impact way to let people know that your studio or classes are starting again. Printing and distribution is very low cost.
Remember, the job of your website it to convert visitors into paying customers. We’re the experts at creating fitness websites with integrated booking, so come and talk to us!
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