Some business owners make the mistake of dismissing the value of market research—but the truth is, no matter what industry you’re in, there’s a real need for collecting information for market research purposes. This is especially true within the fitness industry, where gyms and health clubs rely upon a steady stream of memberships to stay in business—and, therefore, ensuring customer satisfaction is a must.
Whether you’re opening a new fitness center location, launching a new fitness class or personal trainer service, or just looking for ways to improve overall user experience, surveys and questionnaires are valuable tools that provide critical insight used to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Here are a few ways market research surveys can benefit your business:
- Member Knowledge: Learning about your gym members will help you understand more about them, as well as what you can do to improve user experience and customer satisfaction.
- Competitive Advantage: Survey questions can help you uncover if your new gym members previously belonged to another fitness center, as well as their reasons for leaving. Collecting information of this nature will help you identify what your facility can focus on to gain competitive advantage.
- Business Growth: Member surveys will help you identify what it is your members really want, and therefore also help you to recognise new opportunities to expand your offerings or services to meet their demands.
Now that we’ve discussed a few ways market research provides valuable information, let’s talk about some common types of surveys and questionnaires you can implement to get the information you need to make more informed business decisions.
1. New Member Survey
A new member survey is filled out when someone first joins your gym. Use this opportunity to ask new gym members why they joined in the first place—was it based on a referral, proximity, cost, or something else?
This type of survey provides you with rich demographic data and helps you understand the types of people that use your facility. Not only will this help you understand how to tailor your offerings to improve customer experience, collecting information like this also helps build targeted email lists for marketing campaigns.
2. General Feedback/Customer Satisfaction Survey
A general feedback/customer satisfaction survey is a way for you to check in with your members from time to time to show you still value their input. While many businesses invest a lot of time and resources in attracting new business, don’t forget about your loyal customer base. Ask gym members for feedback on what you’re doing well, in addition to areas for improvement.
3. Fitness Class/Personal Trainer Evaluation
Personal trainer services and group fitness classes are a big draw for many gyms, health clubs and fitness centers. Because instructors and trainers can have such a huge impact on members, it’s important to survey participants for feedback about how your staff is performing.
4. Membership Cancellation Survey
Unfortunately, all fitness facilities will encounter membership cancellations at some point. It’s just the nature of the business. But rather than focusing on the negative, think of this as an opportunity to find out why and utilise the information to your future advantage. Figuring out why members are leaving gives you the chance to implement changes to reduce future churn.
Before you start writing out your survey questions it’s important to decide on the goal in mind and what type of data you want to collect as this will determine how you phrase your questions. Keep in mind that closed questions will provide a lot of quantitative data, while open questions will elicit qualitative responses.
The good news is, it’s easy to conduct market research online by sending surveys and questionnaires to members via email—and utilising an all-in-one software solution makes it even easier. To learn how we can help you manage all aspects of your fitness business from one intuitive gym management system, click here.