Whether you are considering offering memberships to clients or have been offering them for years, exploring new member acquisition strategies is critical to ensure strong business growth and sustainable income.
While memberships can be a great way to build consistent revenue, they can be harder to sell than class packs due to the larger commitment and investment required.
But, no fear, this guide will help you with strategies to help you create the best client acquisition marketing plan.
Table of Contents:
Member Acquisition: Your Key to Business Growth
If you’ve run your wellness business for a year or two, you’ve likely noticed that your revenue can fluctuate dramatically depending on many factors, including the time of year and location, which can cause stress.
This is where client memberships can help you sustain and grow your business while fostering a sense of community and increasing word-of-mouth referrals.
- Consistent Revenue: By offering monthly, quarterly, or annual memberships, you can predict your monthly revenue. In addition to helping keep stress at bay, you’ll know where to focus your marketing efforts during slower months.
- Community: With the rise in loneliness worldwide, client memberships promote social connection and a sense of belonging.
- Increased Client Referrals: If someone trusts your wellness business enough to become a member, they’ll likely share their excitement with friends and family.
Laying the Foundation for Success: Customer Research
Before diving into client acquisition strategies, let’s understand who you’re talking to when looking for new members. In addition to understanding audience demographics like age, location, gender, income, etc., it’s also crucial to understand their needs, challenges, and preferences.
Once you’ve identified your audience, you can segment prospective customers into targeted groups to better meet their needs and maximize your communication efforts, including marketing strategies tailored to each segment.
Doing so lets you showcase relevant services and ways to make the most of their membership. This can play a significant role in membership renewals. Below are examples of segments to help get you started:
- Beginners
- Retirees
- Experienced Practitioners
- Long-term Members
4 Proven Client Acquisition Strategies
Acquiring new clients is crucial for the growth and success of any business, especially in the wellness industry. By implementing the right strategies, you’re sure to see membership numbers increase.
Let’s unpack four solid strategies you can use to find new clients.
1. Leverage Helpful, Simple Tools
Tools like scheduling software, email marketing platforms, or client management systems can make it easier for potential clients to engage with your services. For example, a user-friendly online booking system allows new clients to sign up for classes or consultations with just a few clicks, eliminating barriers to entry.
OfferingTree, for instance, provides an all-in-one platform that combines booking, payments, and marketing features, streamlining your business operations so you can focus on cultivating a community existing members love and others want to join. By providing convenience and value through these simple tools, you create a seamless experience that encourages more sign-ups and member retention.
Here are a few ways you can leverage tools to simplify your business:
- Streamline booking and payments: Use an integrated platform to simplify scheduling, allowing clients to book classes or sessions easily while handling payments securely online.
- Automate email marketing: Set up automated email sequences to nurture leads, send personalized follow-ups, and promote special offers, saving time while building relationships with potential clients.
- Offer seamless on-demand content: Use a tool to host and manage on-demand videos or courses, giving clients easy access to content anytime, which increases engagement and flexibility.
2. The Power of Content Marketing
Content marketing is a powerful strategy to attract and engage potential clients by providing valuable, relevant information. For wellness businesses, this can mean creating blog posts, videos, social media content, or even podcasts that educate your audience on topics like wellness tips, self-care practices, or how your services can improve their lives.
By consistently sharing high-quality content, you build trust and establish yourself as an expert in your field, making it more likely that potential clients will choose your business when they need wellness services. Here are some tips to get started:
- Understand your audience’s needs: Create content that directly addresses their challenges, goals, or interests to build trust and authority.
- Distribute content effectively: Use social media, email newsletters, and blogs to share your content and drive traffic to your website or booking system.
- Maintain engagement: Consistently provide valuable content to attract new clients and retain existing ones by keeping them connected with your brand.
3. Incentives and Special Offers
Incentives and special offers are effective tools for attracting new members because they create a sense of urgency and make it easier for potential clients to try out your services.
Whether it’s offering a discount on the first class, a limited-time promotion, or a free consultation, these incentives lower the barrier to entry, encouraging people to take action and experience what your wellness business has to offer. Special offers give prospects a reason to try your services while helping you stand out from competitors.
Offers and incentives you might consider for your own business include:
- Offer a limited-time discount: Provide a special discount for first-time clients or seasonal promotions to encourage immediate sign-ups.
- Run a “bring a friend” promotion: Encourage current clients to refer new members by offering both of them a discount or bonus for participating.
- Create a trial package: Offer a discounted package of classes or services to allow new clients to explore what you offer before committing to a long-term membership.
4. Rewards and Referral Programs
Your current members are likely your biggest fans, probably sharing the goodness of your wellness business with their friends, co-workers, and family members.
Show your appreciation by offering special rewards and/or a referral program, and watch your retention rates increase. Here are some elements for these programs and inspiration to get you started:
- Offer Clear Rewards: Make it simple and easy to understand. For example, you could offer a free month to members if they refer a new member. You could have tiered programs, but that adds more complexity.
- Make It Easy: Offer simple referral links and codes for members to share via email, social media, or even a flyer, depending on your target audience for new member acquisition.
- Getting Started: First, define your goals so you can measure your efforts over time, and from there, you can create your programs and determine how you will manage and promote them.
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Create descriptions that entice prospects to sign up for courses and become loyal members.
Balancing Customer Acquisition and Retention
Customer acquisition is simply the process of converting leads to paying customers, while customer retention is keeping your existing clients – to be successful at both, you’ll want to balance your efforts.
You can attract new members through advertising, promotions, and referral programs. By offering extraordinary customer service, rewards and referral programs, and ongoing communication, you can retain your existing members.
By retaining your current members, you can better predict your revenue, and if you decide to expand your business, high retention rates will be attractive to potential investors.
Tips to Create a Seamless Member Experience
Once a new client joins your membership program, you’ll want to create a seamless member experience so they feel good about their decision from the start.
To welcome them, you can send a personalized welcome email. You can automate that with an all-in-one platform like OfferingTree so you don’t miss a single new member! Below are more tips to help you wow your new members:
- Easy Onboarding & Scheduling: Your members’ attention and time are precious and in high demand. Leveraging an all-in-one platform like OfferingTree will make your operations smooth and seamless; it’s the little things!
- Encourage Feedback: Let your members know how much you want them to be happy with your offerings and that you’d love to hear from them – this will go a long way in creating community and member retention.
- Consistent Communication: Keep your members updated with regular email communication.
Measuring and Optimizing Your Member Acquisition Efforts
After implementing your member acquisition strategies, measuring and optimizing your efforts will be essential to know what is working well and what might need to be adjusted to get better results.
- Conversion Rates: This is the percentage of leads who become paying clients, you can calculate this by dividing converted clients by the total number of leads. A healthy rate for wellness businesses is 5-10%, but various factors can impact this.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total cost of acquiring new customers includes marketing, advertising, and other costs. You can calculate the cost per new customer by dividing the amount you spend during a specific timeframe by the number of new customers.
- Lifetime Value: This measures the amount a single customer will spend during the entire time they are a customer or member of your wellness business. Understanding this metric will help you make budgeting and other decisions while also allowing you to balance the cost of customer acquisition and the value they’ll bring.
Grow Membership & Increase Revenue with OfferingTree
Acquiring new members is essential to the growth and sustainability of your wellness business. Leveraging proven strategies like those we discussed will help you attract and convert new clients into loyal members. Providing a seamless and rewarding experience will help you keep your current members engaged and satisfied, ultimately boosting your revenue and enhancing the sense of community.
Explore OfferingTree to streamline your operations and increase membership. Our all-in-one business management software offers website building and hosting, along with a host of fully integrated tools, including an email management system, client management tools, and so much more, including unlimited memberships and packages.
Try our software free for 7 days and explore our robust demo video library to understand what’s possible!
