With the victories and defeats of 2024 now set in stone, it is time to turn our attention to 2025 as a year. Not just preparing for the New Year Rush as was our focus in November and December, but taking the time to look over strategies for the whole year.
With over twenty five years experience helping our partners collect, analyse and act upon data insights, we know the importance of a year and how much a gym can achieve if the year approached correctly.
If you have come here looking for sage advice on how to deal with January and the New Year rush, take a look through our articles and blogs over the last month or two. Whether it is how to prepare for the New Year rush here or how best to capitalise and utilise seasonal trends here our website has something for everyone at this famously busy and profitable time within the fitness industry.
But in our first blog of the year, we will be pulling back to look at 2025 as a whole. We now know the contents of 2024, but what does 2025 hold? Our first topic will be that all important topic…Growth!
The New Year represents a perfect time for independent gym and fitness club owners and management to separate themselves from the events of 2024 and reflect on the year as a whole. In a business that often operates seven days a week and increasingly 24 hours a day, it can be hard to know when to sit back and focus on the bigger picture.
In order for an independent gym or fitness club to thrive, we know it is vital to have a coherent and active approach to strategy the whole year through. So let’s take a look at some ways that independent gyms can build on the successes of 2024 and maximise growth as we move into 2025.
What will we cover in this article?
(you can also click to skip ahead!)
Market Research
Study the Area, Identify Unique-Selling-Points and Poorly Serviced Interests
For those of you who know us here at Ashbourne, you know we have always advocated a data-driven approach without ever losing sight of the people who constitute that data.
And our first method for growing an independent gym in 2025 encapsulates that perfectly. Understanding the area, the community and the people within it is vital to increasing growth.
One unique advantage independent gyms and fitness clubs enjoy is the ability to truly know and integrate themselves into an area. And this is a never ending process. Areas change, and people change. Moving away, getting older, having children. The market research that you undertook in 2018 might indicate a very different area to the one you will discover in 2025.
This advice is even more pertinent for any independent gym or fitness club that has never taken an extensive market research project into their local area. Understanding what the competition is offering, what markets are catered to and what niches are not being served is absolutely vital to maximising growth.
The goal of this market research is to understand what your club can better cater towards when it comes to your service in general, or how you can best communicate with your members via both your socials and your website. And the good news is that people are often very keen to tell you what they would like to see and every gym should have a list of their offerings on their website.
Collecting and collating this information can give a significant edge when it comes to determining what classes to introduce and expand as an Independent Gym continues through 2025.
Some of the big questions it can raise might be: Is your area significantly lacking functional fitness offerings? Has the most popular spot for High-Intensity Interval Training closed down? Is there more demand for yoga or pilates than there is supply in your area?
The information is out there, it only needs to be gathered and processed into usable data.
And if you’re stuck on ways to collect this data, then why not try any of the following:
- Create a simple form using Google Forms or another free form service, to create a simple location to store all the responses.
- Try sending this out in a short email to your members asking for their feedback.
- You might even pair it with a reward or competition to incentivise people filling it in e.g. everyone who fills in the form gets put into a draw to win a prize or discount.
- Send out this feedback form automatically to any members who cancel. You can also use this as a way to try and get them back by fixing any issues they raise.
- Your personal trainers or staff can ask members who they speak to or provide sessions while on the gym floor.
Your business is all about supply and demand, and while this is a simplified version of it, identifying the demands within the local area and providing the supply can only fuel growth for an independent gym.
Partnership and Collaboration
Securing partners in the local area
Our second growth fuelling method continues our focus on the local operating area. As we said above, these areas represent a unique advantage that independent gyms enjoy over their corporate and chain counterparts.
The ability to partner and collaborate with local businesses is a powerful asset for self-promotion, integration and brand recognition. A positive association or endorsement from a trusted local business can be invaluable in establishing or development the brand and reputation of an independent gym within the area.
Not only that, but partnering with businesses in the area that share your values and operate in adjacent fields such as health, sports, health food or fitness clothing can lead to a significant increase in exposure for an independent gym.
By cooperating and forging meaningful and impactful partnerships in the area, an independent gym can help project their brand well beyond their four walls in a measurable and impactful way.
Tech Refresh
Innovation and Integration in 2025
As we mentioned in the introduction, when an independent gym is operating 7 days a week and often 24 hours a day, there can be a tendency to get complacent once things hit BAU (Business-As-Usual), at least on the tech front.
After all, if the software and hardware is working, why change?
Only much like the local area, hardware and software change and change rapidly. The local area isn’t the only thing that looks very different in 2025 when compared to 2018.
Which is why it is good to use a benchmark such as a New Year as a good time for a tech review. Survey and capture data from members, staff and management to understand what parts of your software and hardware are regarded as positive. What deficits and bugs have just become ‘accepted’ or worked-around.
A lot of staff time and energy can be lost working around inefficient software and outdated hardware. Identifying this can free up a significant amount of capacity at very little cost.
So when embarking on a tech overview, an independent gym should look for a software and hardware provider that streamlines important daily functions such as class bookings, payment and debt collection, membership categories and access controls.
Automated emails save time on having to onboard new members as much in-person. A reliable access control allows your staff to be more comfortable leaving the front desk without the concern that non-members are getting on to the site. More comprehensive business software can cut hours out of your bookkeeping by giving you detailed reports of how many members you have and how much revenue you’re bringing in.
All these things add up and just a few software updates can give you dozens of hours back a month that you can focus on doing other tasks without the need to hire more staff and add more costs to your business.
A new piece of tech is always cheaper than a new member of staff and might be just as effective at helping you run your club.
It is important to fight the feeling that the software and hardware you have is good enough to do the job. In our experience, you would be surprised by how much time outdated software can take up in a team and distract you from working on other projects to grow your business.
No part of your business works in isolation and inefficient, outdated or hard to operate software and hardware can be a key inhibitor of growth for an independent gym. The benefits that a tech review and shake-up could bring might reverberate through 2025 and beyond.
Digital Content Refresh
Review Social Media and Digital Marketing campaigns
Social media has been one of the defining marketing tools of the last decade and as we enter 2025 that trend is showing no sign of abating for independent gyms and fitness clubs. Not only does it remain one of the most cost effective for independent gyms to reach new members, strides in algorithmic and ad-targeting mean that it is even more effective for independent gyms looking to target specific demographics.
As with software and hardware above, it is important to review the campaigns, strategies, brand voice and templates that your gym has been using. The social media landscape changes quickly. It is important to make sure that the approach to your socials is keeping up with the trends of the day, so you can be sure that people are paying attention to what you’re sharing, and not simply yelling into the void!
Not only that, but it is important that the templates, brand voice and content still represent your independent gym as a brand and community. Has a certain aspect of the branding changed? Is there a new section of the facility or a new class offering?
There’s no point in promoting your club as a corporate space, if it’s got a casual edge to it, and vice versa. You need to ensure that you’re always marketing your gym honestly, so it actually attracts a membership who will feel at home on the gym floor.
Custom, Flexible Membership Tiers
Agile pricing for an Agile Generation
The industry has come a long way from its ‘one-size-fits-all’ heyday. The rise in smartphones and digital technology has meant an increased focus on flexibility, modular services and proactive pricing strategies. With tech-savvy ‘Gen Z’ and Millennials making up an ever-larger demographic of the ‘typical’ independent gym and fitness club, it is important that these generational headwinds are acknowledged and catered to.
Increasingly members want to be able to pick and choose what they do. A single membership tier that lumps in all the services is not going to be seen as good value for money, even if it is!
This is where the ability to adjust membership tiers on the fly, respond to popular demand and set up and manage multiple bespoke tiers of membership will be invaluable in making an independent gym or fitness club stand out from their local competitors.
With the right gym membership management tools, these tasks can become as easy as clicking a few buttons. The ability to react to the desires of the membership and the competition in the local area (see point 1) means that members feel like they are getting a cutting-edge and responsive service that wants to cater to their desires. Combine that with discount codes and social media-backed promotions and you have a powerful and versatile engine at the centre of an independent gym to drive growth through 2025.
Events, Open Days and Outreach
In the past we have focused on the importance of getting prospective members through the door of an independent gym or fitness club and the difference it makes. Both surveys and our vast experience has shown that a prospective member that comes through the doors of a functional, clean and welcoming gym or club are significantly more likely to sign-up or recommend others sign-up.
If an independent gym owner or management team believes that the facility they have built is good enough to sell itself then there is no reason not to hold events such as Open Days, community-focused programmes and charity fundraisers.
These events will not only help generate goodwill and engagement across the local community an independent gym is operating within, they will also get more people in for the first time. And they’re also a great excuse to invite over other local businesses to discuss how you can partner up and cross market together.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool when it comes to reaching out to the local community. Imagine the difference between two people talking about an independent gym where neither has been in and two people discussing that same facility when one of them attended a charity fundraiser last month. Not only did they see the facility, they can vouch for the good cause and hopefully the positive condition the facility was in.
Holding events can transform these conversations from people discussing a relative unknown to a fully engaged discussion where the facility comes away with a positive review.
Any independent gym or fitness club that doesn’t engage in these events risks leaving a key engagement and growth avenue underutilised.
Smart Fitness
Equipment, Infrastructure and Choices with Purpose
We have talked about how an independent gym could use their 2025 to refresh their software and hardware, but what about the actual equipment? Another powerful engine that keeps our independent gyms and fitness clubs running, sometimes we have found gyms that have overlooked their equipment for half a decade or more.
Now we all know equipment can be expensive, so we aren’t advocating going on a blind spending spree just because it is 2025. But with a new year ahead of us, it is a good time to take stock of the equipment in your club.
With features like Fitbit and wearable tech integration, digital media players, charging stations and phone interfacing all becoming increasingly popular, it might be worth considering whether some of the equipment on the facility floor is still making the cut for what the modern gym goer expects from their club.
Once again, this is where surveys can be invaluable for getting an idea of what your members want from their club, to see the areas where you should be investing, especially when it comes to your equipment.
And as always, we encourage independent gym owners to consult their staff. While they aren’t paying to be there, they do spend the most time at the facility.
Is there equipment they are always asked about and have to say ‘sorry, we don’t have that’?
Is there a feature that more and more people are asking for?
Is there something they know would enable them to better conduct their classes or engage members?
This information can be the difference between growth and increased retention and dissatisfaction, and it is all available within the walls of every independent gym!
Understanding what members and staff want from their equipment can be a great way for an independent gym to start 2025 strong and drive growth.
Investing in Staff
Training, Development and Encouraged
To expand on the last point, investing in staff is something that every independent gym and fitness club should be doing already. And as the thrust of this blog is to use 2025 as a reason to focus and reinforce areas where growth can be achieved, caring and investing in the staff of an independent gym represents one of the most vital sectors for a gym.
As you might have noticed, much of what we have spoken about already has revolved around staff, whether it is the software and hardware they use, the tools they are given, the events they will be asked to run or the equipment within the facility itself. The staff members of an independent gym represent the beating heart of the facility and go a long way to determine the culture.
If they are well-trained, well-motivated and welcoming, the independent gym will soon develop a reputation for being the same. On the other side of the scale, if they are poorly trained, poorly motivated and abrasive, members will not be keen to recommend the facility.
And that training isn’t necessarily down to their knowledge of the equipment, nutrition, fitness or even the processes of your business. Even the best staff members need to be regularly reminded about the little things which can make all the difference to your club’s atmosphere and perception.
Here are some questions to ask about your current training regime to ensure you’re covering all the bases:
- Are your team being efficient with their time? Are they making the most of their time on the gym floor by checking in with members and offering additional customer service in between their regular tasks?
- Can your staff reliably spot mystery shoppers and ensure your gym is always putting its best foot first to these influencers?
- Do your staff understand the social media channels they’re in charge of? Have you provided any training for staff on these platforms other than the fact they know how to use them? There can be a surprising amount to learn to really master them.
- Are your latest promotions and campaigns being passed on to your whole team effectively? Do they all know your marketing calendar so they can be sure your marketing is being pushed as far as it can?
While no member of staff will stay in one job forever, while they are there, they are a representative of your business, embodying the values and delivering the service that your gym wants to be known for.
As such, it is more than worth investing in a regular training regime to ensure every member of your team is able to deliver quality service, every hour of every day, reinforcing the brand of your gym as they do so.
Growth and Retention
And for our closing point on this list, we are going to go against the grain of the blog to talk about retention rather than growth.
Because while growth is absolutely vital, it should never come at the expense of retention. When, as we talked about earlier, there are new promotions and partnerships designed to bring in new members, it should never engender negative feeling among existing members.
That is why so many of the points on our list have tried to focus on boosting the quality for everyone, prospective members, new members and old members of an independent gym alike.
Chasing growth at the cost of retention can only result in an unstable and unreliable membership base. While 2025 can and should be a year focused on growth, it is important for every independent gym and fitness club not to lose sight of the people that make up their gym. Those members that were there in 2024 and before.
There’s an old rule in business that it costs three times as much to get a new customer, than keep an existing one!
While making some of the changes, refreshes and innovations we detailed above, it is also important to communicate to the existing membership what is being done and how it is to their benefit.
If there are promotions and partnerships, make sure that they focus on improving the experience of the existing membership as well as trying to reach out to new members for the gym.
Collecting opinions through surveys and through staff feedback can be an effective way to understand the opinions and experience of the two main groups on the facility floor. In addition to generating usable, actionable data for an independent gym, surveys also have a powerful psychological benefit for existing members. It signals to them that their opinions are being sought out.
So while 2025 can be a year of growth, there is no reason it shouldn’t also be a year where retention rates improve. An independent gym does not need to sacrifice one to bolster the other.
Conclusion
And if our plans for 2025 have got you motivated to start the year correctly, perhaps you are in the right place. Here at Ashbourne Membership Management we have helped thousands of gyms unlock potential.
Did our section on restrictive software and hardware sound a bit too familiar? With our cutting-edge software and access controls we have freed countless independent gyms from restrictive, costly and growth-negative membership management software.
Our software and hardware has helped independent gym owners and management teams to empower their staff, reshape their member experience and drive growth more effectively through each quarter and year.
And with our powerful BI dashboards and data outputs, they have been able to witness these results firsthand and in real time.
So if you are interested in taking your independent gym or fitness club’s operation to the next level, please don’t hesitate to contact our demo team here today. Within no time at all our staff can help understand what Ashbourne can do to make sure your 2025 will be a year of increased growth, retention and much more!
Get your club in shape.
Want to discover how? Let us show you.
Simply select your preferred timeslot and we’ll be in touch to have a chat about your health club,
the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
Get your club in shape.
Want to discover how? Let us show you.
Simply select your preferred timeslot and we’ll be in touch to have a chat about your health club, the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
Get your club in shape.
Want to discover how? Let us show you.
Simply select your preferred timeslot and we’ll be in touch to have a chat about your health club, the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
