In this Marketing Muscle‑Up podcast episode, host [Speaker A] and fitness‑business strategist Richard Toutounji break down three practical levers for boosting client retention in boutique fitness studios. First, they outline a lightweight awards system – consistency, best‑results, juggle‑of‑the‑month, goal‑setting, and community‑impact awards – and a weekly “Friday Wins” Facebook post that surfaces member goals and achievements. They also introduce a simple colour‑coded client health tracker (green/orange/red) to focus outreach on at‑risk members. Second, they reframe referral programs away from generic free‑week giveaways toward experience‑based or “feeling‑based” rewards, quantifying a client’s lifetime value (e.g., $45/week ≈ $2,300/year) to justify higher‑value incentives such as massages, wine, or a $1,000 service credit, plus a personal “random act of kindness” like a single‑stem rose. Third, they critique the common “unlimited sessions” intro offer, arguing that busy avatars need a customized, limited‑class commitment (e.g., pick three classes per week) to create immediate structure, reduce decision‑fatigue, and improve attendance. The episode ends with a call‑to‑action for listeners to review the show.
Chapters
Welcome to today's Marketing Muscle-Up podcast show. Today we're back with another behind the scenes of a recent Ninja Strategy session. Now these sessions are 2-hour intensive sessions where Richard dives deep into a fitness business and pulls out some really quick opportunities for the business owner to be able to achieve success in a really short amount of time. So today you're gonna hear 3 different snippets. Firstly, about a unique way to use awards for retention. Then a better referral system that clients will actually want to refer as a result of. And lastly, why you should rethink offering unlimited classes in your intro offers. So let's dive in with part 1 around how to use awards for retention.
At the end of the week, what I want you to do is I want you to give a client winner of the month. Let's work on not singling people out, but let's work on some awards that you can give out to make people feel amazing what they've done. So one of the suggestions would be I would say, um, the kind of the, the person that's turned up to the most sessions, right? So they've been the best adherent person. So the best person that's been regular training, and that's really hard to do, right? Especially when you've got a mum, kids, and that kind of stuff. So I would say somebody that's had— that's like been consistent. So call it the consistency award. Someone that's been consistent. Each week. So it means that over the month, they've averaged out 3 or 2 or 4 sessions. So it doesn't mean they have to do the most, it's the most consistent of what they've asked to come to. So it's 3, they've been consistent that. If it's 2, they've been consistent that. So it's not the most, it's the consistency. Okay, that's not singling anybody out. Now the reason why these are important is because this is where we need to get stories and retention in the studio as well and a feel-good feeling. So So consistency award. The next one would be, you know, I would say I would love to have like a best results award, like who's got the best results based on what they wanted to achieve. Let's get back to basics. We've got to figure out who's got the best results. Arms look better, they can fit into a dress, they can fit into their blouse. The juggler of the month award. So that's for any mom who's had to juggle shitloads for the month. Their kids changed schools, they've been sick, they've just had a shit month, right? And you want to recognize that because that's your personality. That's the people coming to your place, is that they're going to know that it's not about sometimes the best awards. They've tried to juggle everything they can. Give them recognition for that. Like, you can't tell me that someone's eyes are going to roll when you acknowledge somebody that they've been really— they've juggled a lot in the month. People like to be acknowledged for the work they've done or haven't done. Simple. So the consistency award, the best results award. Now you don't have to put that in, up to you, but there's got to be some kind of anybody who planned something at the start of the month and they won or they got the results they want. So it could be like their, the best result based on their goal. So the best, so the goal setting award of the month. So you write, just let's change the goal setting award of the month. So set the goal at the start of the month and whoever achieved that, you know what I mean? Instead of the best results award. And then I would call it the community impact award. Community impact award. That's for anybody who's really helped out somebody in the studio to motivate them, to get them there. They've talked in the Facebook group. They've really shown, you know, they've really shown a lot. They've given a lot in the month. This is going to be great to change the attitude of the studio and to also, you know, you showing your vulnerable side. The other thing I want to do for retention, I want you to do a Friday wins post on Friday in your Facebook group, and I want you to do, uh, let's plan a best week post. Now, when you tell something someone specific, like, uh, write down one win that you've had for the week, just one, they'll put one. If you ask 3, they'll put 3. And change that up every, say, 4 months possibly. I want your members to feel good. And then on the Sunday, whenever the post you do, that's fine. Hey guys, here's a reminder, book your classes in. What's your goal of the week? What's one goal you have for the week? That information is going to help you with awards. So when someone says my goal is to get there to 2 sessions, okay, great, you can help the person get 2 sessions. And what we're also doing too, I want to decrease the time that you're spending one-on-one with those clients. Over the phone. Also, if it helps, put, put your clients in green, orange, and red. So for you to know that if they're green, that means they're booked in. If they're red, it means you haven't seen them maybe for a week. If they're orange, they're on and off. And so you can then focus orange and green. So one day you might say, I'm going to hit the oranges and the greens, just so in your head, you know, like the goal is to get less and less people in the red zone. And And that's when we know if all this retention stuff's working, right? Because you do that post on a Friday and Sunday, your plan is to get them to post. So we know, okay, yep, they're plugged into somewhere. Okay.
In this next snippet, Richard is talking about a better way to run client referral programs. So it's about thinking beyond just giving out free weeks of training and more about thinking about what a client is really worth to you. Let's take a listen.
So, in that training, it talks about a few different types of people. It talks about people that want to have experiences, people that want connection, and that people— and a lot of them, some don't. Sometimes they just don't care about things, just don't care about money. They care about having a feeling. So, in this recommendation, we talk about— we talk about Giving them the experience. So allowing kind of— you could have 3 options of prizes. So it might be a massage experience, it might be a bottle of wine, it might be just recognizing, hey, thanks for sharing, instead of just the freebie. Because a lot of your clients might not want free things. They don't see value in it, but they would see value if they got a bunch of flowers. And the concept is, what is a client worth? So if a client for you is paying, what, $45 a week, something like that, that's worth $2,300. So the scenario, if you take 10% off that, you should be willing to pay $234 for that client. Well, the theory is this, is that when somebody brings their friend in and they literally plant them in front of you, and they're like a 90% close, all you're giving them is $45. If I said to you, I've got 2 amazing clients right here, they're pretty much signed up, like, you're giving me $45? They're going to be banked $5,000. So the question is, give them something of value. It doesn't have to be $230, by the way, but give them something of value that makes them either feel something that makes them want to keep referring and that continues to note to them how, you know, how amazing you are. If a client refers to us, this is what we do, just so you know as well. First of all, we'll give a random act of kindness. So we will order a rose by Roses Only to be sent to you, and it's a single stem rose. And so when we send that out, it makes people feel something. And we also give you a $1,000 credit to use in our comm services. And where we got that from is that we realized how much a client costs— take, sometimes realize how much a client costs to get. So we said instead of paying Facebook and Google, we would rather give that credit to somebody that actually believed in us and referred to us. And it's not the money credit that makes the difference, it's the feeling credit for most, but everybody's different.
Now we threw in this last snippet to get you thinking about why you are offering unlimited sessions, especially if your avatar are busy and can't find the time to get to unlimited sessions at the gym. You might actually be turning them off rather than enticing them.
So when you say unlimited sessions, I'd say a customized training schedule for you because their biggest problem is fitting into their time. Unlimited sessions, that means that they're going to come to everything. What I want you to do Is I actually want you to tell them what, what class they can commit to. Now, when you ask somebody, guess what they're going to say? Well, I think I can do Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Is that enough? I say, perfect, you need to come. Can you choose 3 out of these 20 classes, please? Because what we're trying to do here is that we want to make them feel that they're achieving straight away. Because generally, when you give the option to come whenever, they don't come. So it's kind of like an induction process, like really get your induction process nice and tight and just say, listen, what day is going to come? Great. I'll look out for you on those days. And it's almost like they feel like that's customized and that's flexible. A lot of time they're just in their head. They don't know what to do. They don't know where to start.
Well, thanks for listening to this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up Show. We hope that it was super valuable to see this behind. The-scenes sneak peek into one of the strategy sessions that we do every day at ComMarketing. So if you liked this episode, make sure that you head on over to iTunes and you give us a 5-star review and send it to one of your friends who you think might also benefit.
