How to use AI to overcome rising costs in the fitness industry

In today's rapidly evolving fitness landscape, the importance of identifying, attracting, and retaining loyal, committed customers has never been more important. As the world has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, the fitness industry is experiencing a resurgence in demand. But, this post-pandemic recovery is happening alongside a new challenge: the cost-of-living crisis. The upshot? 2023 is now a crucial year for businesses to adopt new innovative growth strategies and foster a fighting spirit.?

Rising costs have created a financial strain for many people, causing consumers to seriously rethink their spending priorities. With inflation hovering at around 10%, and some predictions suggesting it’ll persist at high levels until 2024 or later, now is the time to prioritise keeping your customers, shouting about your benefits and sharing extra perks, which can also help attract more referrals.

Lately, there’s been a lot of noise around Chat GPT, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Reaching a record-breaking 1 million users within just one week of launching, Open AI’s ChatGPT now has over 100 million individual users.?

AI is no new thing. But with ever-evolving developments in autoregressive language models like Chat GTP, AI chat tools are already being harnessed by forward-thinking fitness operators to safeguard their businesses. Hopefully, this piece will shed light on how to use AI to help overcome the impact of rising costs.

Harnessing high-adherence members

We all know that the people who come to the gym religiously and stick with it for a long time are like gold dust. We’re talking about high-adherence members – the people who help you sleep better at night because you know they're not going anywhere. They come to the gym a lot, use additional services like personal training, and book classes regularly. Plus, they're the ones who bring in their friends along for the ride.?

But figuring out what actions to take as a business, for whom, and precisely when, while also making it personal, takes up a lot of time for mere humans. And it's almost impossible to do it on a large scale without using automation.

So, let’s explore the various strategies and tactics that fitness operators are implementing, with the help of AI, to boost their share of high value sales leads and loyal customers.??

1. Conversational messaging

Compared to other communication channels like email or phone, AI messaging is more accessible, with customers able to initiate conversations at any time and receive real-time responses. Furthermore, AI-powered messaging can provide tailored recommendations and anticipate customers' needs based on previous interactions, creating a more personalised experience that keeps customers engaged and loyal.

2. New customer acquisition

Using AI to gather vital information about potential members - things like fitness goals, interests, and workout preferences - enables businesses to create personalised recommendations to signpost users to the right services.?

This highly-tuned personalisation also helps build trust and a sense of community. Gathering what may be perceived as "luxury information" at the beginning of the member journey can set the tone for a successful relationship from the start, by?facilitating a customer journey that’s geared towards high adherence and commitment.

Collecting data conversationally from prospects can help you automate your marketing processes, avoid subjective guesswork and can drastically improve the conversion rate of your campaigns. For example, Active Leeds Active saw a 500% ROI with personalised chat AI tool, BOB, which delivered personalised messages to nurture leads and encourage users to join their fitness facilities.

Find out more about how AI-powered systems like BOB can help.

3. Reducing customer service costs

Conversational AI offers a personalised, interactive experience that meets customers' expectations for immediate, convenient service. AI-powered messaging can provide real-time responses to customer queries, reducing the need for human intervention. They can be trained to understand the businesses's inventory of prices, classes, even their entire knowledge base, providing personalised recommendations and advice to customers. They can handle multiple queries simultaneously, providing quick and efficient customer service without the need for additional staff. By automating routine queries, businesses can redirect human resources to more complex issues, further optimising customer service and reducing operational costs.

Is it time your fitness business embraced AI?

It’s never too late to harness the power of AI in your business and out-muscle your competition in 2023. Innovative fitness operators have been successfully using these methods for some time. But with escalating costs to contend with, being agile and working smart has never been more important.?

With untapped data at your fingertips, some huge advances in ultra-personalisation and a bunch of successful case-studies to boot, what’s stopping you from embracing the power of fitness AI to improve your sales and retention performance?

Hire BOB

Blending artificial intelligence, operational tools and a unique automations engine, BOB supercharges and streamlines your efforts to attract, retain and re-engage members.?

Speak to one of our friendly team for a preview of how BOB works.