Online fitness is a highly competitive market. True even pre-lockdown, it’s absolutely the case now: pretty much every fitness business in the world has at least dipped a toe into online waters over recent months.
As with any busy marketplace, the challenge is to find your own niche within it – a need you can meet that other providers can’t – and to make sure your audience is aware of this. You can’t just jump in to the online space and hope people will migrate towards you.
Marketing is of course a key part of this, and you’ll find just some of our online fitness marketing advice here
In this blog, though, we want to talk about the content itself.
We’ve spoken before about good enough being good enough in terms of content quality, but you do still need to be very clear about what you’re producing and why.
The following are four key questions you should be asking yourself:
- What styles of workout do my members want?
What are you already known and respected for? You’ll already be fully aware of your popular in-club classes – the ones that get booked up week after week – and the likelihood is that these will also be popular online. But don’t automatically assume that’s the case, or that other elements of your offering – mindfulness, no-equipment workouts, stretching, shorter workouts – might not rise to the top of the popularity stakes online. It’s important to keep an eye on the usage data for your online classes – an invaluable tool that should be used to continually evolve the online offering in response to actual member behaviours. - Is there anything new we could be exploring?
Survey your members. Dig deep into emerging trends. Talk to your instructors to understand what skillsets, specialities and ideas they have. This information could form the basis of a compelling new line-up of Signature classes, starting online and potentially even working their way back into the live, in-club studio timetable in the future. It’s about creating exciting new workout opportunities that people will actively seek out. - How can we create this online programming in a way that’s unique to us?
What does your brand stand for? If you distilled it down, what’s the essence of your brand? And how can you inject this into your online programming so the digital embodiment of your club is as recognisable as the bricks and mortar? You also need to factor in your instructors here: what superstars work for you and only you, and how can you propel them to the forefront of your online offering to ensure your digital platform is filled with great content that people can only get from you? - How should we package our online content?
Once you’ve done all the above, consider how best to package your digital fitness content. Especially if you want to monetise it, exclusively producing one-off classes might not be the best strategy. Because while selling monthly digital membership is one option, think for a moment about the revenue-generating potential of class collections – unique to you, maximising the value of your in-house expertise, filling specialist niches that you can come to be known for. Not only a USP against the digital competition, a catalogue of distinct and differentiated class collections also gives you an opportunity to sell bundles of content to those – even beyond your member base – who are looking for something specific. This is the power of selling a whole collection, rather than trying to monetise ad hoc workouts.
If you would like to discuss your content strategy with us, please contact us at info@wexer.com