Black Friday for fitness studios: Do those four words get your heart racing? Did your head start spinning with images of never-ending to-do lists and clients asking about coupon codes?
Yeah, us too. As consumers AND as a business, Black Friday can be overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. There’s also no denying that Black Friday is an opportunity for your fitness business to bring in a lot of extra money, whether you own a studio, work with clients 1:1, run workshops or a combination of all three!
We recently had our most successful Black Friday of all time (you can see how we promoted it on Instagram here) and we wanted to share what we learned so you can come back to this article anytime you’re planning a big sale!
Your members are the heart of the business - especially members who are on auto-pay. They should be getting the absolute best prices. Yes, a sweet deal on class packs is important, but it should never be better than the membership perks or prices. Clients enrolling in membership is the ultimate goal, so you also don’t want a class pack to become more appealing to those already on a membership.
Also? Autopay memberships reduce the amount of time and money you need to spend on marketing, so keeping your members happy also saves you money in the long run!
We cannot stress this enough: Start in August. Back to school actually means it's pretty much Thanksgiving.
In order to plan for Black Friday, you need to think about:
Again, is your head spinning? If you try to do this in two weeks it might be!
But the further in advance you plan, the more time you give yourself to be proactive and make sure you’re executing on a schedule. Just like we tell people in our Black Friday messaging – DON’T WAIT. Your future self will thank you.
It takes people 7 - 14 interactions with a piece of information to take action on it. Only 10% of your Instagram followers see what you post and the average newsletter open rate is 21%.
All this to say, even if it feels like you’re talking about your sale way too much, it’s extremely unlikely that your people have seen or opened everything you’ve published about it.
So repeat yourself for the people in the back! Crossposting/messaging is helpful since not everyone has FaceBook, Instagram, etc. Mention it multiple times on multiple platforms – spread the news far and wide!
And find different ways to talk about the sale and the products / services that are on sale.
You could …
Lastly, announce the sale after every class! You really don’t want people to miss out.
When you’re planning for Black Friday or any other big sale, you want to keep your profit margins in mind, so you don’t inadvertently end up losing money by running your sale.
For example: all of our studios have a retail space where we sell Free People Movement athletic gear. Let’s say we paid $40 wholesale for a sweatshirt and we’re selling it for $60. If our Black Friday sale is 40% off all retail, that means we’d end up losing money when someone buys that sweatshirt for $36!
So think about the products and services you offer and where you can ADD something that might entice people to buy or where you can discount things without totally wiping out your profits. We have an on-demand video membership that costs us the same amount to host no matter how many people use it. So if we discount that membership by $10 but 100 new people sign up, it’s still a nice profit for us!
(Sidenote: If this sort of business nitty gritty interests you, you’d love our Barre Boss course. It’s for fitness entrepreneurs who want to grow their business + earn more money without burning out, spending $$$$$ on consultants, or paying expensive franchising fees. You can join the waitlist here!)
Our “Black Friday” sale? It started the day before Thanksgiving and lasted for a week. Why? People have plans on Thanksgiving and often on Black Friday.
Giving yourself and your clients flexibility to purchase before and after the actual day of deals is important. People are traveling, might be off of work and not checking their email as much, maybe settling in from their post-Thanksgiving travels, taking a break from family time. There are multiple reasons they may miss actual Black Friday and need a little more time to lock in the deals.
We hope this helps you plan for a lucrative Black Friday next year - or any big sale!
P.S. We spent much of November totally revamping our online 200-hour yoga teacher training program! Now, we’ll have weekly anatomy & philosophy quizzes and weekly lectures on
All this along with weekly 3-hour Zoom calls and weekly office hours! Class starts February 2nd - you can get on the waitlist here
Any questions? We're here to help!
teach@barresoulacademy.com
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