5 Challenges Your Fitness Studio Should Try in the New Year

Health clubs and fitness studios often run challenges to engage their clients. Since the new year is just around the corner, many folks are making their resolution to be healthier is 2020.

Do you know what that means?

It’s the perfect time to create some friendly competition to help your clients reach their fitness goals. Creating challenges for your clients offers a fun in-studio experience, encourages a sense of community, and can offer a healthy boost to your client retention rates.

Here are some examples of challenges you may want to try at your fitness business.  

1. The 30-day challenge

The 30-day challenge is a common type of yoga challenge where participants try to achieve 30 classes in 30 days. But you can fine-tune it to fit your studio’s and clients’ needs—which is precisely what The Hot Yoga Factory did.

They hosted a 30-day challenge where the goal was 15 classes in 30 days. This made the challenge obtainable for all. Participants who achieved 15 classes were entered into a grand prize draw. For every class attended, over 15 participants received an additional ballot form to enter into the draw. Attendance skyrocketed during the 30 days and many achieved “success” as 15 classes was an achievable number for even busy folks.

Additional “fun” elements of the challenge included double point classes or days and a flow of text messages and emails throughout the 30 days to provide motivation. And guess how successful this tactic was? The Hot Yoga Factory saw a 43% increase in year-over-year attendance as a result. 

2. Bingo challenge

A bingo challenge is a fun way to increase attendance during a given period.  The challenge often runs for 30 days and clients can earn prizes for lines covered and/or a blackout. The bingo can specify which classes to attend such as different days, times, instructors and/or styles of class to encourage variety in attendance. This can be paired with fun activities such as wear crazy socks to class or dress 80’s style. 

3. Give back challenge

Mighty Yoga took on a new type of challenge.  Attendance was tracked the week of Thanksgiving and for every visit, the business will donate $1 to charity. The more visits, the more money raised for a charitable cause. Clients could contribute by attending more or even bringing friends.

4. Referral challenge

A Christmas tree was the secret sauce for this referral campaign. Refer one friend and add an ornament to the tree. Refer another friend and move your ornament up a branch. It became a race to the top of the tree in a six week period. Clients could see their progress and the progress of others which provided some friendly competition. First to the top received a prize and all were entered into a draw for every “level” of the tree they completed.

5. Social share challenge

Create a social media share campaign. This was very successful at Double Shift Conditioning. Facebook posts were part of a Share campaign and for every share, your name was entered for a draw. This allowed the reach on Facebook to expand and a mix of fun, educational and intro offer sales posts were used.

The beauty of challenges is that you can get creative and design something that aligns with your brand and mission. They can be about giving back, connecting with the community and creating new relationships.  And they are a great tactic for helping you retain customers. 

This post was sponsored by Perkville who is releasing a new challenge feature in Q1 2020.  It was authored by Crystal Zakaluzny who is a Mindbody Certified Business and Software Consultant with numerous years of hands-on experience in the fitness industry.