Fitness Business School – Using Challenges to Get Referrals

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about how to use challenges to get more referrals. Let’s get started.

Welcome to the fitness business school podcast. The show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their end impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen to the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

In my opinion, one of the truly overlooked opportunities in our industry to generate referrals is the, the use of the challenges that we run, whether you’re talking about a 28 day challenge or six week challenge, but we’ve got clients, and if you think about a challenge, kind of the way that I do, and I don’t know that most people do, but I think of it as a way to kind of rally the troops for your current clients, not just as this marketing thing to bring in new people.

Well, if you’re crafting a challenge for current clients, then you can use this as a way for them to share it with the other people in their lives. And there are a couple different ways to do this. The first is, is you’re gonna market this in a front facing way as well. You know, maybe you are gifting it to your clients,
maybe they’re paying a small fee to participate, whatever else. But you can, you know, market this to the public and maybe you’re selling it for 99 or 1 99, or whatever you are going rate is in your respective market. But there are a couple different ways that you can allow clients to gift a full challenge, you
know, six weeks of something to the other people in their lives. Now, the first one is giving them just a golden ticket type of thing, saying, Hey, you, you’ve probably noticed that we, you know, for new people, the challenge is $199.

Well, as a thank you for the, you know, for being a client and for being the type of person we want in the gym, here’s a golden ticket where you can invite a guest of your choice to participate in the challenge and we’ll waive that whole $199 fee. So there’s that option, right? If the challenge is included for your client, then they have the opportunity to gift a challenge to somebody else. You’re basically giving them currency to gift to somebody to use for the challenge. And because this is being sold to the general public for 1 99, it’s got a really high perceived value. So that’s the first way that we can use a challenge to get new people in the door. The second way would be if we were to ask our clients to you know, if we are gonna ask our clients to basically pay a nominal fee, maybe it’s $49 or whatever else, make that included in what, what they’re paying.

Say, Hey, by the way, when you enroll for $49 for the challenge, we also give you this golden ticket that you can gift to somebody else, that they can join you in the challenge. So if you’ve got a spouse, a neighbor, a coworker, that you would like to participate with you for the $49, not only are you enrolled,
but you get to enroll a guest. So that’s the second way that we can use a challenge. The third way, and this is something that my friend Matt Weaver has really dialed in, is a partner challenge where, you know, your clients are gonna enroll in the challenge and, you know, they pay a fee, but it’s a partner challenge. The only way they can enroll is if they bring a guest to participate with them, and that guest cannot be a gym member. So it’s basically, you know, let’s say that the challenge is $99.

It’s kind of either they’re paying the $99 and gifting it to somebody to participate with them, or they’re kind of splitting the 99 with somebody else. And so in that partner challenge, they have this kind of, you know, all all those things that we see, like with, with things like point of sale referrals, where they’re
onboarding together, they’re spending time you know, kind of supporting one another. So it’s making, being successful in the challenge easier. They’re holding each, you know, not only holding each other accountable, but there’s some, some support in onboarding that new person. They’re getting them
involved and helping them stay compliant. So those, those challenges that we’ve always kind of traditionally thought of is the way that we all used to do them was, Hey, I’m gonna charge people a fee, or some people did the deposit or whatever else, and I’m just gonna run a bunch of Facebook ads to this
thing, get people in the door, and hopefully some of ’em stay well.

This other twist on a challenge where you focus largely on your current clients and then let them bring in people who would be a good fit man, they keep your ad costs down, they allow people to invite guests in and give them something truly valuable. This isn’t just, Hey, come for a day, this is no, you’re
getting a full six weeks. So imagine the, the experience that person’s gonna have, that first impression they’re gonna have with your business. So if you’ve not thought about weaving this into your challenges, this is a great way to turn your challenges into referral machines.

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