In the final part of our 4-part series, iKizmet tackles Visits and how knowing who is coming to your studio helps you project attendance, determine profitability, and provide the right level of support to your clients.
Visits Defined
iKizmet defines visits as your foot traffic or "feet through the door" in your studio. A client could have several visits to your studio in a month, and each time they attend a class this counts as a visit. Knowing these numbers during COVID are important for:
- Projecting attendance numbers for reduced capacity;
- Determining and forecasting profitability; and
- Providing the right level of support to your clients who are paying a premium for your studio.
Understanding what your attendance and visit numbers were prior to COVID can help you factor in what they will look like now.
Projecting Using New vs. Existing
Projecting who will be attending your classes is vital to building a class schedule that is profitable. A simple way to determine who is visiting your studio is by looking at the iKizmet Total Visits chart. The chart gives you a breakdown of how many of your visits each month are made by new clients and by existing. While you may not be able to predict how many new clients attend your classes, you can use the number of existing clients to understand how many may attend. You can also look historically at when you have ran specials or offers and if you saw an increase in new clients at this time. Depending on your current business model, you may not be able to accommodate too many new clients at this time and you may consider running an offer at a later date.
This ratio can be super helpful when you are creating a class schedule that you want to be as full as possible. This is especially important when you are running your classes at a reduced capacity.
Don't have iKizmet? You can still run your total visits per day by pulling your attendance reports from your CRM (MBO, Marianna Tek, ClubReady, zingfit, etc.). You'll need to do this for each day you have classes. iKizmet recommends that you pull one to two months of this data. However, you may want to pull some months prior to COVID for comparison.
Profitability
When determining your class offerings, profitability should be at the forefront. After all, if you are unable to remain profitable, your business will not be able to continue indefinitely. During this time when you are running at a reduced capacity, you may have to consider your pricing. Can you continue offering your memberships or class packs at their current rates? For how long before your business runs out of cash?
One of the charts you can use to help you make this determination this is the Average Number of Visits per Client chart. This chart gives you a breakdown of how many visits your clients are averaging per month. This can help you do some quick math to determine what your cost per class is for class-pack clients as well as for members.
While increasing prices during this time may not be something you want to do, you may have to consider it. Otherwise, you'll need to look at ways to cut costs. However, you'll need to make sure you aren't cutting costs at the expense of your brand's reputation.
Keeping Your Clients at the Forefront
Finally, keeping your members' and clients' wants and needs at forefront of your decision-making is critical. Ultimately, your clients are paying a premium for the boutique fitness experience and the classes that you offer. While keeping profitability in mind, ensure that you are still delivering that premium-price experience. If you are not, take it back to the drawing board. Ensure you can deliver the quality that your clients are used to; if you cannot do this profitably, you may consider other alternatives that make this quality possible again.
For example, if running classes at a reduced capacity inside your studio is too expensive, you may opt for outdoor classes. If outdoor classes don't necessarily go with your brand, then you may need to take a hard look at how your classes are stacked and consider only running classes on certain days and times of the week that are popular enough to warrant the expense.
While it is cliche to say, these are unprecedented times and each decision you make affects your business. Overall, it's more important than ever to use data to support your decision-making. While "going with your gut" is important as a business owner, the uncertainty of the current economic climate is not the time to make decisions without support.
Using data has never been more important to ensuring your business is profitable and healthy. Get data-driven in your business and make smart decision. Set up a demo with iKizmet to learn more!
Want to hear more? Check out a webinar covering the four most critical fitness measurements to ensure that you are truly surviving.
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