Digital transformation is continuously disrupting every business, and the fitness industry is no exception. A Forbes report revealed a 73% increase in virtual workouts or consulting virtual fitness coaches during the pandemic, which is a far cry from 17% in 2019. Technological advances in fitness industry are expected to grow exponentially, with most fitness centers shutting down due to the pandemic.
Consumers’ demand to know more about their daily workout progress, calorie consumption, and sleep quality primarily drives the impact of technology on fitness industry. As consumer demand intensifies, fitness organizations’ need to embrace digital transformation is crucial in achieving increased revenues, improved productivity, and better overall customer experience. That said, here are several tips for fitness companies to take into account when embracing digital transformation to remain competitive in the always-changing fitness industry.
1. Educate Yourself
Understanding how to take advantage of innovation in the fitness industry can go a long way from fully embracing digital transformation. Technology is no longer about making great products but rather about creating personalized solutions that can completely change how consumers behave.
Knowing how to capitalize on technological innovations allows you to take a strategic look across the value chain to determine your business’s most significant opportunities. With fitness innovation advancing faster than society can handle, getting yourself digitally-educated is vital to understand these advancements and how digital coaching can keep your clients healthy. It can also help you avoid getting caught up in digital transformation, making it easier to embrace change and scale as needed.
2. Ensure Excellent Communication
Getting everyone aligned for digital transformation can be overwhelming, especially without employee and member buy-ins. Therefore, ensuring effective and clear communication between your employees and consumers is essential to optimize the transformation process. One way to ensure a seamless digital transformation is to help everyone understand why change is being implemented.
Without proper communication, embracing digital transformation may take longer than expected and could leave everyone feeling frustrated and confused about the changes. You should be able to communicate digital transformation benefits and goals to concerned parties. This way, you can drive cultural change and collaboration, making the transformation process more seamless and less complicated for everybody.
3. Use Membership Management Software
Your fitness organization’s success will significantly depend on customer satisfaction, proper management of records, and personalized experiences. You can achieve all of these by using a club management software to stay on top of your business. A membership management platform allows you to provide members control over their progress and keep them up-to-date with the latest news, and plan their workouts around their schedules.
Providing your members with this level of control over their fitness journey can result in them feeling more motivated, empowered, and engaged in your business. It can also offer you in-depth member data, which you can use to predict member habits and purchasing behavior. This makes it easier for you to provide personalized experiences to each member, ultimately leading to greater customer loyalty.
If you’re a coach or a gym owner, you can check out Everfit. It’s a personal trainer software where you can build and deliver training programs. It’s available on the web and apps for Android and iOS devices.
4. Have a Digital-Savvy Team
With the fitness industry going virtual, having a team with digital technology experience is essential in increasing the likelihood of successfully transforming. Digital transformation requires superb expertise to lead digitization initiatives and prevent consumer pushback. After all, experiencing a digital transformation is the epitome of discomfort, making consumers feel threatened.
Throughout the entire process, the change will need to be performed and accepted, and this ability to adapt comes from consumers buying into the strategy and vision of your organization. A digital-focused team can empower them and paint them a picture of what they can expect once the transformation has been completed. Thus, alleviating uncertainty and keeping consumers engaged throughout the whole process.
5. Evaluate your Digital Transformation Strategy Regularly
Digital transformation in the fitness industry is an ongoing process, and it’s no surprise, counting how quickly technology and customer needs evolve. Therefore, your digital transformation strategy should be adaptable and flexible to change to ensure your organization stays competitive. An excellent way to achieve such a thing is to perform consistent and frequent evaluations of your strategy to better understand and respond to changing customer behavior.
Understanding and actively responding to changing customer behaviors allows you to mold and veer consumer opinions in your favor. Thus, allowing you to achieve your objectives of more profits, registrations, and sustainable success. It also delivers you with relevant insights that enable you to tailor offers or use wearable technology in the fitness industry to help consumers enhance their workouts.
Transforming the Fitness Industry
Embracing digital transformation initiatives in the fitness industry is a challenging undertaking that could either make or break your business. For this reason, you must see to it that your approach is calculated and fits directly with your entire operations to build a successful digital fitness business in the COVID-19 era. As the world deals with COVID-19, fitness centers need to be versatile enough to cater to their clients, making Everfit a good option for digital transformation.
Everfit is a personal trainer software designed to help coaches and gym owners build and deliver training programs. It allows coaches to message clients, manage training, and program workouts via multiple platforms, including but are not only limited to Android and iOS. Everfit has a lifetime free plan which caters to five clients, but coaches and trainers can upgrade to its paid Pro, Studio, Automation, and Enterprise packages as needed.
