Strategies to Get Your Gymnastics Business Ready For a Slow Season
It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when your business is slow. You may feel like you’re not doing enough for your members or that your membership status has reached an all-time low. Despite how frustrating it is, downtimes are an opportunity to make your gym stronger for when the busy season returns. Here are a few strategies that will help you get your gymnastics business ready for the next boom.
Plan for the Year Ahead:
When a slow season begins to roll around, this is one of the best times for you to slow down too. Take advantage of the bigger dips to put your gymnastics business on a course for smooth sailing for the next year. When you plan your 2023 Marketing and Communication strategy in advance, you prevent last-minute fires from arising when you are too busy to distinguish them properly.
Some things you should include in your Marketing and Communications strategy include:
- Competition dates and public relations opportunities
- Upcoming holidays
- Your social media/podcast schedule
- Routine Business Updates
- PTA/other community meetings
The easiest way to anticipate and course-correct your MarCom schedule is to gather and analyze all your previous year’s metrics. Evaluate what you need to consider for any financial increases and decreases. See what campaigns performed really well so you can use them as a jumping point when working on future campaigns.
Take this time to really get organized and have these items ready at your fingertips for any other last-minute planning or longer strategy sessions.
Emphasize Gymnastics Club Member Retention:
Your existing gymnastics members should be a priority during a slow season. When there aren’t many new members coming in, getting new leads is an uphill battle with little reward. Slow seasons are a great way to offer new opportunities or classes for your existing club members to help with reengagement and retention.
You might consider the following ideas:
- Including fun themes in classes
- Sponsoring causes your members are passionate about
- Offering exclusive discounts or add ons
- Hosting rewards/recognitions for active members to boost morale and engagement
Experiment With New Gymnastics Marketing Strategies:
With a slow season, don’t expect high-budget strategies to perform as well as they would when you have high membership conversions. When membership participation and status are low, experiment with new marketing strategies. If your new ideas work, include them in your upcoming MarCom strategy to try during the busy seasons.
Think about implementing:
- New social media strategies
- New mailing list campaigns
- New flyers, mailers, or other graphic ads ready for upcoming months
- Running new promos to existing members, like a family & friend discount or a trial period
- A trial period for larger groups, like field trips or birthdays.
Catch Your Gymnastics Business Up On Other Essential Tasks:
Take any downtime you have so you can catch up on various administrative tasks to set you up for the future. When you are running behind, so does the rest of your gymnastics business.
Some tasks that tend to get pushed to the back-burner include:
- Updating gymnastics management software
- Removing old member profiles
- Deep cleaning office and other facility spaces that may get overlooked in daily activities
- Follow up on members that may have stopped coming
- Inventory Organization (apparel, office supplies, cleaning supplies, etc)
- Updating staff sales techniques and overall check-ins with staff that may have gotten pushed back
Learning to take advantage of your slow season instead of viewing it as an obstacle can put your gymnastics business miles ahead of your competitors and make things a little smoother as the year goes on. The most important thing to keeping a slow season from affecting you negatively is staying ahead of the game when your business is booming. Don’t take your foot off of the gas pedal; just watch it when the tides begin to turn and learn how to use the free time at your disposal wisely. That way, when your gymnastics business does start picking up again, you’ll be ready!
