Referral Marketing Strategy: 5 Crucial Mistakes Fitness Studios Must Avoid

Do you tend to base your purchasing decisions on recommendations from loved ones? You’re not alone. According to recent studies, around 65% of people have been influenced to purchase goods or services by friends and family members, while consumers are 90% more likely to trust brands recommended by loved ones. So, how can you leverage the power of friendship to boost business growth? This is where a referral marketing strategy comes in.

Referral marketing involves offering clients incentives for recommending goods and services to their friends and contacts. Referral programs are especially popular in the fitness industry, with gyms offering everything from free workout sessions to insider perks and special offers.

Wondering why referrals are so important? While referral programs may sound costly, referred clients are 37% more likely to stay subscribed to your services and spend around 13% more than the average client. Fitness fanatics tend to socialize in groups, while friendship groups often embark on new fitness regimes together. When carefully planned, therefore, referral programs can help attract enthusiastic new clients, transforming your brand and securing long-term growth.

Before you rush to generate innovative referral strategy ideas, however, it’s worth assessing what makes a good referral program. From confusing referral systems to poor promotional efforts, many fitness studio owners sabotage their profits through avoidable mistakes. In this handy guide, we’ll list some of the most common referral marketing mistakes and how to create a referral program your clients will love.

Mistake #1: Offering minimal rewards or a confusing referral program

It can be tempting to offer minimal rewards when setting up your referral program, especially if you’re working with a tight budget. However, failure to offer attractive incentives could harm your brand image and reduce the number of people you convince to sign up for your services.

So, what do fitness clients want? According to recent stats, 88% of Americans would like an incentive such as money, loyalty points, or goodies for spreading the word about a brand via email or social media—a figure that jumps to 95% for people aged between 18 and 34. Given the choice, 77% would opt for money over physical gifts. While you may feel reluctant to offer generous rewards for referrals, setting aside a substantial budget for your referral marketing program could reap significant rewards in the long term.

As well as offering attractive gifts that deliver genuine value to your clients, you should ensure your rewards program is easy to understand. Too many fitness brands discourage clients from making the most of referral programs by implementing complicated systems for redeeming rewards. While this may save money in the short term, it could erode trust among your customer base and encourage high turnover rates.

If you’re looking for a simple referral program strategy, provide clients with reward points whenever they successfully refer a friend. Then, the client can opt for a reward of their choice, such as class discounts, additional services, or branded merchandise. For maximum impact, offer the referred client an introductory gift, too.

Mistake #2: Not having a clear process for clients to refer their friends

Clients don’t want to spend hours filling out referral forms and conducting admin on your behalf. So, you should make the referral process as smooth and intuitive as possible. One of the best ways to encourage referrals is to automatically enroll new clients into your referral program, eliminating the need for sign-ups.

The best solution is to set up your website so clients can log into their account and instantly refer friends with the click of a button. It’s also a great idea to share a special referral QR code with current clients that they can easily share with friends and family members. To make things even easier, you should allow clients to refer friends through their preferred channels. Research suggests that 67% of people are more likely to invest in goods or services if they’ve been shared by friends or family members via social media or email messaging.

Another mistake many fitness businesses make is to restrict their referral programs to current clients. Why not open your offer up to social influencers who have used your services in the past? After all, around 33% of Gen Z-ers have purchased goods based on influencer recommendations, helping brands capture younger audiences. You may also wish to pair up with brand partners such as other fitness studios and health food stores to spread the word with relevant audiences. Feel free to get creative and look for new audience pools throughout the year.

Mistake #3: No feedback loop

Failure to track how your referrals are signing up for your business is a rookie error that could cost you time, effort, and money. By setting up surveys for new referrals, you can assess where your referrals are coming from and how to improve the program structure. This strategy creates a feedback loop, helping you to continue enhancing your marketing referral ideas.

If you’re wondering how to collect the most valuable referral information, consider asking questions such as:

• How did you hear about us?
• What do you love about our business?
• Is there anything we can do to improve our services and encourage you to recommend our business to friends and family members?
• What rewards do you prefer to see in our referral program? Are there any you would like to see added?
• Have you switched to us from another fitness studio? Why?

Mistake #4: Minimal promotion of your referral program

While you may believe the benefits of your referral program speak for themselves, clients won’t refer friends and family members if they’re unaware your program exists. With this in mind, how can you ensure your referral marketing campaigns garner the attention they deserve? Here are a few tips:

• Create a dedicated page for your referral program on your website, ensuring it is easy to find via the navigation bar.
• Raise awareness of the program through dedicated newsletters, SMS messages, push notifications, social media posts, paid advertisements, and more. In short, don’t be afraid to push your referral campaign via as many channels as possible.
• Hang physical posters about your referral program in your fitness studio, including a prominent QR code that clients can scan to immediately refer their friends. You can also consider adding this code to receipts, invoices, and letters to clients.

Mistake #5: Failing to track your referral metrics

Metrics represent the bedrock of any successful marketing strategy. Almost 90% of leading marketers use metrics to measure the success of their campaigns and improve business revenue and market share over time. By measuring what you’re doing well (and getting wrong), you can ensure your referral strategies continue to improve and meet client needs.

By sharing QR codes and surveys with your clients, you can easily track where most of your referrals are coming from. You can then use this information to see which clients attract the highest number of referrals, ensuring your marketing strategies target their demographic. As well as tracking how many referrals you get from certain clients, you should track which emails and social posts about your referral program garner the most interest. Once you have this information, you can analyze what sorts of tactics seem to work best and reproduce them in future communications.

Of course, you should also use metrics to learn from past mistakes. If a strategy appears less successful than others, try to ascertain why. An effective way to identify mistakes is to ask clients what aspects of the program they dislike via an online survey. A/B testing—in which you send out two communications or offer two different rewards and compare the results—is also an effective strategy.

Remember to track the results of your referral program over several months and even years. As well as helping identify any issues, such statistics are super motivating!

Grow your business while pampering your valued clients

A strong referral marketing strategy is a fantastic way to grow your business while giving something back to your valued clients. However, crafting the perfect referral program is easier said than done, so you must be careful to avoid the pitfalls mentioned above. Remember—data is key to honing your strategy and keeping clients on board.

If you need a little help with your referral marketing strategy, WellnessLiving is here to help. Our platform features premium referral marketing tools, including an automated marketing suite and a built-in rewards system that handles all the tricky logistics of a referral program. What’s more, our customer review feature will encourage referrals and help build brand awareness in the fitness industry.

Keen to know more and ensure your referral marketing strategy hits all the right notes? Book a free, no-commitment demo today to find out more!