(editor’s disclosure: Nudge and InBody have entered into a formal partnership, the details of which are posted here)

Have you ever downloaded a fitness app only to fiddle with it for a day or two and then never open it again?

Don’t freak out, I’m not watching you. A growing body of survey data suggests I wasn’t exactly going out on a limb with that question.

In fact, a recent survey suggests that nearly 60% of all smartphone owners have downloaded at least one fitness app.

Wearables are probably more mainstream than you’d think as well. Here’s a fun experiment for you:  Walk into any group of people and ask them to raise their hand if they own a wearable. Odds are (at least) 20% of your little cohort will reach for the sky.

The market has spoken. American consumers believe that health tracking apps and wearables can be useful tools for helping them manage and improve their health and wellness. But for now, the jury is still out on just how impactful these technologies will be overall population health.

The good news is that wearable technology has evolved beyond nascency to become more advanced, refined, and user-friendly: thus more valuable. Case-in-point, the InBody BAND and its ability to measure body composition from the wrist – an incredibly useful outcome measurement – to have along with the more traditional lifestyle metrics like activity and sleep.

And the not-so-good-news: for all too many of the people who really need to make a change in their lives to improve their health, a wearable alone may not be enough.

Why Apps And Wearables Aren’t Always Enough

It is wonderful news that we are flocking in record numbers to fitness apps and wearables, but that isn’t the whole story.

According to a national survey conducted by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center in the US, of the 58% of all smartphone owners who have downloaded a fitness app, just over half have continued using them for a meaningful amount of time. And perhaps even more telling is the fact that 42% of those same respondents reported that they have downloaded and tried out five or more fitness apps.

Isn’t that an amazing number? To me, this makes it pretty clear that a significant number of us strongly believe that mobile health technologies – like fitness apps and wearables – can be useful tools that give us a better chance to meet our personal health goals.

The only problem is, I think these numbers also hint at the fact that technology alone isn’t always enough to get us through the trickiest barriers that life throws at us when we’re trying to make a change in our lives for good. In other words, mobile health technologies have an attrition problem.

But is there any strategy we can point to that has shown it WILL help us move the needle over the longer term?

The Impact of a Connected Health Professional

The user-base of the Nudge Health Tracking app – an app for iOS and Android that lets you sync up data from a number of leading health tracking technologies (like the InBody BAND) and connects you with a health professional who can monitor your data and provide ongoing feedback to you through the app (NOTE: health professionals can manage their clients on Nudge using this platform) – provides us with a unique opportunity to take a closer look at aggregate data on mobile health users, and see what happens when we add just one more piece to the mobile health puzzle – a connection with a health professional.

Would a simple connection with a health professional looking at our health tracking data have an impact on our attrition problem?

To find out, we were able to compare the usage and engagement of two separate groups of Nudge app users over their first 120 days (4 months) using the app:

(1) those who are using mobile health alone (either syncing data from apps and wearables or simply manually tracking lifestyle habits in Nudge), versus

(2) those who are using mobile health and are connected with a health professional via the app.

The results were promising to say the least. We found that after 4 months of using the app, those who connected with a health professional were not some small percentage more likely to still be actively engaged in tracking their lifestyle, but in fact were 3.3 times more likely to still be actively engaged in mobile health.

Not only did the attrition problem go away, but so did the weight. Users working with a health professional actually lost an average of 4.5 times more weight over the 120 days than those using mobile health alone.

The more data we looked at, the more our simple hypothesis was confirmed … using mobile health with the guidance of a health professional is a way to significantly increase your chances of success.

Advice To Help You Succeed (And Keep Your Sanity)

People sometimes say “it’s better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all.” I certainly believe in that statement, but it’s always bugged me that it feels so final, even a little defeatist. Where is the next step?

If you’ve told yourself this over and over again, let me suggest an alternative motto to tell yourself (that I’ve mostly borrowed from Theodore Roosevelt):

“Do what you can with what you have. And with the rest, ask for help.”

Don’t be so hard on yourself when you aren’t sure how to get to your goals. Instead, know that reaching your goals always feels good, whether or not you get there entirely on your own.

Pat yourself on the back for taking little steps in the right direction like packing a healthy lunch, or for getting your heart rate up. Know that you will have days that don’t go so well, and don’t let that cause you to fall off track, or to forget your big picture goals.

Sometimes, it takes a little extra guidance from an expert. Sometimes you simply need an accountability partner to keep you motivated.

Either way,  if you aren’t quite sure how you will be able to meet your goals, don’t be too proud to find a health or fitness professional who can help you get there. The statistics I’ve shared with you today suggest that you’ll be glad you did.

If you are a health or fitness professional, there’s something in this information for you too. Consider how you could be leveraging great apps and wearables to help your clients take a more active role in working towards their goals, even when they can’t be with you in-person.

With the right guidance (your guidance) health tracking technologies become much more than cool gadgets, they become valuable tools that empower your clients to continue to take action toward their goals, even when you can’t there in-person to cheer them on.

. . .

Phil Beene is Co-Founder and President at Nudge, a company dedicated to making mobile health data more accessible and usable for health professionals, and more impactful for consumers. Learn more about Nudge’s professional platform at nudgecoach.com, or check out the free Nudge Health Tracking app available in the App Store and Google Play.

Here’s a little story about growing a business in the good old days:

Once upon a time, if a customer wanted to buy a product, they went to a store near them that carried the product and bought it.  The customer was happy: they got what they needed; the store was happy: they made a sale. The happy customer returned again, the store made more sales, the business grew, and everyone was happy.

A warm and fuzzy fiction, isn’t it?  Sadly, in the ultra-competitive, marketplace of the 21st century, that’s all this story amounts to.

That’s because in the 21st century, online shopping, driven by the explosive growth of smartphone and app technology, has made shopping from home incredibly easy. Online shopping, or e-commerce, affects every type of industry and retailer across the board. That includes the nutrition industry.

At first glance, the nutrition/health store industry seems stable: according to market research conducted by IBIS World, the annual growth rate for physical, brick-and-mortar health stores in the US grew by 3.4% from 2010-2015.

However, in the same period, online sales for the same products grew too – and not just a little.  According to IBIS World, online vitamin and supplement sales grew by 12.3%; more than triple the growth of physical stores. With bigtime vendors such as Amazon, Bodybuilding.com, and Iherb.com weighing in on the market, it’s hard to be surprised. That marginal growth isn’t going to last forever, especially in a world where Amazon is promising aerial drone deliveries direct to your doorstop in 30 minutes or less.

Why get in the car when you can get exactly what you want from your couch, anytime you want, delivered via air in less time than it takes to drive to your store, shop, and drive back?

Simple: because at your store, you can offer something that no faceless website or mechanical drone can ever hope to provide.

Superior customer service from a real person who is an expert on nutrition, offering personalized counseling, advice, and service that your customers will never be able to get online.

Even with the internet, your customers still crave that face-to-face interaction and expertise, if you can provide it. A study by NICE Enterprise Group recently demonstrated that in terms of customer satisfaction, people strongly favored either speaking to a real person at their location (44%) or on the phone (60%) over many digital channels, including website (39%), social media (1%), smartphone apps (6%), and email (9%).

Still, even if you are the most well-respected expert on nutrition in your local community, you can’t provide superior customer service without something driving traffic through your door.

You still need a reason to get people off their couches to come talk to you.  What can be that traffic driver?

Offer body composition analysis tests at your nutrition store.

The Key to Customer Service

What is body composition analysis?  What does that have anything to do with customer service?

Body composition analysis is a method of determining what makes up your weight: muscle, fat, bone, and water.  And whether your customers realize it or not, they’re already coming to your store to optimize their body composition. Most of them want to change their body composition by gaining muscle or losing fat (and probably both). Now, by looking at their body composition results, you can guide them to exactly the right product on your shelf to help them reach their goals quicker.

What this amounts to is this: you’re providing each customer personalized 1:1 attention and offering them solutions so that they can meet their individualized goals.

That’s superior customer service.

How can you test for body composition?  Although there are many ways to test body composition, there is only one practical method for in-store testing that’s accurate, reliable, and gives you enough information to make the right recommendations. That’s body composition testing using bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) technology.

For nutrition stores, it’s the ideal choice. These devices are small and can be easily set up in a retail store.  They also perform tests automatically, typically under a minute or less.  Best of all, they don’t require any pinching or poking of your customer, like what happens when you use skinfold calipers.  No one is going to come to your store to get pinched and poked.

What information do you get from a typical BIA body composition test?

Nearly all BIA devices will determine body fat percentage.  Using this number and multiplying it with a customer’s body weight will give you their Fat Mass.  You can subtract that number from their body weight, and what remains is their Lean Body Mass (which includes, but isn’t the same as, muscle. More on that here)

If you’re an InBody customer, you will have access to additional information such Skeletal Muscle Mass (what most people refer to as just “muscle”) with a graph showing if the amount is under, over, or within the normal range for that person’s body.

You and your customer probably don’t need a body composition test to determine if they are overweight.  Your customers probably know this already, and this can be identified on the graph if the bar for Weight extends into the range under the “up” arrow.

What your customers may not know, however, is if they are underweight.  This can also be identified on the graph by checking if the bar ends in the range under the “down” arrow.

You can also provide extra value to your clients by showing them where their Lean Body Mass is located and how developed they are from both an upper/lower body and right/left body perspective.

InBody clients can also reveal their a customer’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which describes how many calories your customers need to keep their bodies operating at their full potential.

With BMR, you can quickly determine how many calories your customer needs to gain/lose weight based on their activity level.  With that information, you can start crafting customized diet plans based on your customer’s unique body composition and recommend the exact products. If you’re interested in that, you can read this complete guide to using BMR to creating diet plans.

Putting It Into Practice

Here are a couple situations where you can provide excellent customer service, build lasting relationships with your customers, and help your business grow.

• The First-Time Customer

Scenario: A first-time customer comes into your store.  They come into your nutrition store with the initial thought of buying whey protein because they “want to build muscle and get toned.”

Action: After hearing what your new customer’s goals are, you tell them that you’ve got a pretty good idea of what products might work for them, but in order to be sure, you offer them a free body composition test, just as a thank you for walking in.  You can mention to them that you usually charge a fee for this service, but for first-timers, you give it to them on the house thanking them for considering your store.

You test them, and you see their results look like this:

From this graph, you notice that this customer is underdeveloped in Weight, Skeletal Muscle, and Body Fat. You can make the recommendation that because this person’s Fat Mass is already low, they just need to focus on gaining weight and muscle.  You can recommend that in addition to whey protein, that they also get a weight-gaining product to increase their calorie intake to ensure they have the nutrients to perform at the gym.

Results: A first-time customer walked into your store thinking that they were only coming in for whey protein, and walks out with a body composition test, whey protein, and weight gainer.  Not only that, they walked out feeling like they made the right choice because you took the time to get to know them and offered them exactly what they needed to hit their goals.

They walk away happy because they feel like they just unexpectedly got great customer service, and you’re happy because you just potentially doubled your sale from what you would have sold before, AND you ensured that that customer will be a repeat customer.

• The Weekly Weight Challenge

Scenario: In order to build traffic to your store, you create and advertise a fat loss challenge with weekly weigh-ins to track progress. The challenge can go for as long as you like, and the winner gets a gift card to your store.

Action: You advertise to your customers that you’re going to be holding a fat loss challenge: whoever can lose the most pounds of fat in 8 weeks wins a big gift prize to your store.  You charge a small entry fee for each participant that will cover a free body composition analysis – one a week, at each weigh-in – during the competition.

Every time one of your customers comes in for a weekly weigh-in, you can comment on their progress and offer recommendations that might help them win the contest.

Let’s say one of your customers come in on the second week of the competition, and their body composition results look like this:

Imagine this person lost half a pound of fat over 2 weeks. You tell them you think they can do better if they make a couple changes in their diet.  You recommend that they introduce a fat-burning supplement to help them stay focused and increase their metabolism.  6 weeks later, that person you helped wins the contest.

Results: By holding a fat loss contest and charging a small fee to participate, you’re guaranteeing traffic coming into your shop every week.  They’ll want that free body composition test, and they’ll want to know if they’re on the track path to win.

Every time someone from your contest comes in, you’re creating another opportunity to offer exceptional customer service by analyzing their results.  When you analyze their results and make recommendations, you’re creating new opportunities to potentially sell more products.

But selling products will just be an extra bonus. What you’re gaining is something even more valuable – a reputation of expertise and customer service.  Your customers have friends, and they talk to them.  By offering fun, exciting, and educational that they can only get from your store, you’re creating more traffic for yourself, increasing your revenue and growing your business.

Get Your Name Out There By You Getting Out There

If you really want to drive traffic and growth for your nutrition store, get out from behind the counter and go out to where your customers are using  your products – their gym.  If you’ve got a body composition analyzer, you can use it as a bridge to get you connected with business owners in your local area.  Here’s how.

From one of your customers, find out if you can get introduced to the person who runs their gym.  When you meet with a local gym owner, you can propose a mutual cross-promotion arrangement where both of you can improve the image of your respective businesses. It might go something like this.

You bring your body composition analyzer to a gym on a set day.  The gym owner can advertise your arrival to their members prior to your coming on that set day.  What you’re there to do is test as many people as possible for a fee.  Create a profit-sharing plan with the gym owner at whatever arrangement works best for the both of you.

Another arrangement could be that you bring samples of your products and promotional material for your shop that you can hand out when you give the body composition tests.  Don’t sell your products at the gym unless that’s been agreed to by the gym owner.

Why This Benefits The Gym Owner: Your partner gym owner gets to use a body composition tool and provide it to his members at absolutely no charge.  In fact, all he has to do is say yes, and he makes money.

On top of all that, now it’s the gym owner that’s providing excellent customer service because of a service you provide.  Your partner gets to build rapport with his customers, ensuring that he retains his members continue paying their memberships, building his reputation in the community.  All of that costs him nothing, and what remains is more money for him and a new, profitable partnership with you.

Why This Benefits The Gym Members: The gym members get to have their body composition analyzed and interpreted.  If you decide to give away free samples, then they’re getting free stuff too.

Why This Benefits You: You get to expose your services to a whole new group of potential customers, and you get to do it in the place where they are most receptive to hearing about health supplements – their gym.  You get your name out in the community, and you can get people interested in coming to your store to buy your products.  You’ll be driving traffic to your store.

You also get to benefit from what can be a valuable and profitable partnership with a local gym owner.  Because your businesses complement each other, there are many creative ways you can cross-promote your two businesses to the benefit of both.

One advantage of this strategy is that it is scalable.  You can build more partnerships with more gym owners.  For example, if you work to build relationships with 4 gym owners and do body composition testing once a month at each, now you’ve got a place to test people and promote your business outside of your store once a week.

Exceed Expectations Always

As a nutrition store owner, you provide vitamins, supplements, and wellness products to the community.

The baseline expectation of your customers will be that you have what they want in stock, whenever they come into your store.

But if the only service you provide is just being a place where people can buy products, slowly but surely, you are going to lose traffic and profit to the internet.  Once one of your customers experiences how easy it is to order online, they’ll start ordering online all the time. Why wouldn’t they?

Wouldn’t you?

If you want to keep your customers and grow your business beyond what you thought was possible, you need to provide something that the internet will never be able to do: the personal touch of human interaction. You need to exceed the expectations your customers have of you.  You need to offer superior customer service, and with a little effort, you can do it. Here’s how:

• Be the expert

As a nutrition store owner, you know your products inside and out.  Every product is in your store for a reason, and if someone tells you what their goals are, you know exactly which one to recommend.

But today’s customers are smart. They know how to research online, and they will probably come into your store thinking they know what they want already.

Be the expert. Use their individual body composition results to guide your recommendations.  Not only are you creating opportunities for yourself to upsell and move more products, but you’re also providing personalized service with someone’s actual body composition results.  No website can do that.

• Engage with your customers

Time is valuable. Your customers are busy people with busy lives, and like anyone else, have to decide when and how to use their time.

Make your customers want to spend a small amount of their valuable time at your store.  To do that, you have to give them a reason to, and not just to buy more products when they run out.

Host events at your store like fat loss challenges.  Get them interested in coming back.  Offer them a prize to keep them engaged.  The more you get people interested in coming through your store, the more opportunities you have to prove your value and sell.

• Reach out to your community

Whether you realize it or not, you are part of a greater network of like minded businesses  that can compliment each other. You just need to tap into it.

Get involved with businesses in your local community, and use your body composition analyzer as the vehicle that opens the door to the relationship.  You have a valuable resource – share it.  Every person you test becomes a potential customer of yours.

By being out in the community, you will begin to build a reputation for yourself as the go-to person for supplements and health information.  You will begin to be much more than simply a storefront and a place where people pick up their protein powder once a month.

You can become the person that people come to for the information and products that impact their lives.  You can offer advice, plans, and products that make people healthier and happier.  That’s superior customer service.

And that, no matter how technology improves over time, is something people will always want.

All the doom-and-gloom reports about global obesity may be having one positive outcome: more Americans are signing up for gyms every single year.  According to IHRSA, the number of memberships at health clubs of all types has increased by 31% to 54.1 million memberships from 2005 to 2014.

To account for this rise in demand, the number of registered health clubs has risen by 28.4% in the same period, contributing to what has become a $24.2 billion-dollar industry.

This should tell you two things:

1. The industry is healthy and growing, with more people demanding quality gyms and health clubs today than ever before.

2. The fitness space is becoming ever more crowded and competitive, meaning that attracting new members and membership retention has never been more critical for fitness centers than it is today.

In this crowded space, what can you do to remain competitive?

Sure, you can – and probably should –  hire personal trainers to help your members reach their goals.  You can also develop new programming and classes to diversify your clientele and reach out to new types of members.  Both of these are tried-and-true methods that have been proven to work in gyms all over the world.

But what’s something else you can offer that can increase member engagement and retention, while at the same time improve your training programs, improve your customer service, and make training more personal?  

Body composition analysis.

With body composition analysis, you will be able to tell your members exactly what all their hard work in your gym, working with your trainers, has resulted in: the pounds of muscle gained and/or fat lost– whatever their individual goals are.

Here are ways you can retain your members and increase revenue by implementing body composition analysis in every stage of the member cycle: attracting them, keeping them engaged, and retaining them over the long term.

#1 Improve Training/Coaching Quality

Nearly every gym, large and small, has personal trainers on staff if they can afford them.  It’s pretty much expected to have trainers if you plan to run a successful gym in a competitive marketplace. Small wonder that personal training is now a $10 billion-dollar industry.

Getting the right trainers with experience is one important hurdle, but giving them the resources they need to do their job is just as important.  That’s where body composition analysis can improve the quality of your trainers and coaches.

With a member’s body composition results in hand, you can give your trainers the data they need to design the workouts to meet a member’s goals, and then give them the proof to back it up later on.  This is especially important when two very different members come to you with a similar goal.  Do you treat them the same because they have the same goal?

For example, consider the ever-popular goal that goes something like: “I don’t really want to get big but just get toned.”

Any personal trainer worth their salt should be able to hear this and understand it as “I need some degree of muscle development coupled with some degree of fat loss.”  But how much of each does the new signup need?  Consider the body composition profiles of these two people and imagine both of them coming into the gym and saying they “want to just get toned.”

“C Shape”: Ends of Bars form a C

“I Shape”: Ends of Bars are aligned in an I

The first person’s body composition (C shape) is a pretty common example of someone who has not been exercising much – underdeveloped Skeletal Muscle Mass combined with excessive Fat Mass.

For this person to become “toned,” it would be wise to set them on a path that leads towards both muscle development and fat reduction.  Depending on this person’s goals, a trainer might advise them to focus on muscle development first through resistance/strength training, or the trainer could target Fat Mass reduction through some combination of cardiovascular/resistance exercise and dieting.

Unlike the first person, the second person (I shape) has reasonably developed Skeletal Muscle Mass, and although their Fat Mass bar extends beyond 100 – indicating that this person has more fat than the average person for their height – it isn’t excessive.

Based on this person’s body composition, the training plan you or your trainer creates for your member won’t be the same as the first person’s.  Because the Skeletal Muscle Mass is reasonably developed and the goal is to be toned, this could be achieved by focusing primarily on reducing Fat Mass while maintaining Skeletal Muscle Mass as a secondary goal.

By prescribing and designing workouts that match the current body composition of your member, they will be able to achieve their desired results faster.

Having members achieve their goals at your gym faster than they could elsewhere benefits you immensely in the following ways:

• It creates huge trust between you and your member, ensuring that this member stays with you

• It validates your expertise as a fitness instructor, which will cause your reputation to grow

• It increases the chances that your members recommend you to their friends, bringing in new members and new revenue.

#2 Improve Your Initial Consultation with a New Member

Image Credit: LocalFitness.com.au

Everyone who enters through your doors for the first time does so because they want to make changes in their body.  If they didn’t, they would still be on the couch, deservedly relaxing from a busy day full of responsibilities and stresses.  So, the mere fact that they’re in your facility, ready to use what energy they have left on fitness, speaks volumes about their intent.  Their motivation at that moment in time is at one of the highest points it will ever be at any point, except for when they start meeting their goals.  It’s time to capitalize.

As motivated as people might be about their fitness in the beginning, their ability to articulate what their goals are can vary drastically.  You might get everything from the vague “I want to lose weight” to “I need to lose 10 pounds in 6 weeks because I’m  the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding” and everything in between.  How can you get them on the right path?

By analyzing their body composition using a reliable, scientifically validated body composition analyzer such as those developed by InBody, you and your new member can view the results together, while you guide them to a plan that will help them reach their goals, whatever those might be.

In doing this, you’ll be laying the foundations for a strong personal relationship between yourself and your new member by giving them individualized attention on their particular goals.  That personal relationship you start right at the outset builds the foundation of trust and loyalty, which is the rock member retention is built on.

#3 Advertise Free Trials to Bring in New Members, Then Show Their Progress on Paper

Free trials are a great way to get more people into your gym and/or get them trying out your personal training program.  It’s no risk to the trial member, and it gives you a chance to prove the value of your services.  You can set the length of your free trial for any range of time that works for you, but as an example, let’s assume that you set a 30-day trial period.

On the first day the trial member comes to work out, analyze their body composition and throw in a complimentary breakdown of their results to help them understand their current state.  For many people, this may be the first time they have ever had a body composition analysis test performed before.  This alone can make a huge, positive impression on a trial member, as was the experience of North Point Fitness’ General Manager, Joe Rummell:

“What I didn’t know was whether [showing clients their results] was going to be a negative thing or not. But it wasn’t. It ended up being an extremely positive experience ultimately for the client.

They would literally sit there and then say nothing because it’s hardly ever a good number when they first start…and then they would say something like ‘Alright, I guess I need to do something about this now.’”

Once you make that positive impression, you can let the client use your facility for 30 days, or however long you set your trial for.

On day 30, meet with – or have one of your trainers meet with – your trial member once more.  Give them a second body composition analysis, and show them what they were able to accomplish at your gym in one month.

The beauty of this strategy is that it doesn’t necessarily matter if they made improvements or not in those 30 days!  That’s because:

• For the first time, your trial member has seen changes in their body composition over time as a result of their efforts.  They know if what they are doing is working or if they need help from a trainer

• You showed that you have a personal stake in their success.

By showing a personal interest in their success and giving them the information they need to track their results, chances are very high they sign up as full members.

Seeing results can be extremely empowering for a gym goer – even if the results aren’t what they hoped would be.  Even if they don’t work with one of your trainers, they can still check their efforts every month with a body composition analysis at your facility.  That’s member retention.

Add in the personal touch by helping them understand their results, and now you’re creating outstanding customer service, which 86% of consumers say they will pay up to 25% more for, which builds your reputation, bring in new members, and increase your revenue.

#4 Create Fat Loss/Muscle Gain Challenges Instead of Weight Loss Challenges

Challenges and contests are a great strategy for keeping current members engaged and focused on achieving their goals.  If you have members that are already working on losing weight and you offer them an opportunity to win a prize for doing the thing they are already doing, that’s a great way for your gym to motivate them even more!  However, go the extra mile and do one better than the weight loss challenge the other guy next door is doing.

Body composition analysis allows you to go a step further from tracking simple weight loss by showing what is actually being lost: fat, muscle, or water.  The problems with measuring scale weight are numerous.  Your members want to see changes that actually matter to them – so instead of doing weight loss challenges, create challenges around losing fat or gaining muscle.  You can set any time limit you like and issue prizes to the winner(s).

The best competitions are fair ones, and the best judges are impartial.  That’s why advanced body composition analyzers are the ideal tool to run and score these competitions instead of other body composition tools, such as skinfold calipers.

Although it is possible to perform caliper tests accurately if you follow every precautionary step, perfect technique is key.  Because these tools are handled by people, human error will unfortunately influence caliper tests, especially if a different person performs the test from the one who performed the first test.  This is one of the reasons calipers often fail to give accurate body fat results.

Running contests like these that are fair, with results judged by an impartial machine outside of human error, will make your contests that much more engaging and fun for your members.  This will encourage participation for future contests, which you can run as often as you’d like.

Contests like these keep your members engaged, which encourages them to continue coming.  Not only that, it encourages friendly competition between your members, which makes them even more engaged.

What’s more: making your members increasingly engaged with your facility has definite benefits – a recent market study by Capgemini Consulting indicated that “fully engaged” customers with strong attachment to a company or organization actually deliver a 23% premium over an average customer.

#5 Create New Programming and Guide People to the Best Programs Based on their Fitness

If you want to increase revenue, you need to increase your member base.  A great way to tap into groups of new members is to offer a variety of classes and programs for your members to get involved with.

If you only have a weight room and a couple treadmills, you’ll only attract a certain type of member.  But if you add in something that only requires an instructor – like yoga – you open yourself up to bringing in a whole new subset of potential members.  A class that requires new equipment, like spinning classes, may involve more of an initial investment but can attract a large following due to its accessibility.

Here’s the kicker: not all types of programming are perfect for everyone because everyone has different goals. For example:

• Spinning classes: great for fat loss and sustaining muscle (primarily leg muscle), but not good for upper body development or strength building

This type of class might be ideal for someone with an I-shaped body composition.

Someone with this type of body composition could be a candidate for a class that focused on fat reduction if their goal is “to become toned.”  Because this person already has developed Skeletal Muscle Mass, guiding this person to a plan that targets fat reduction may be ideal for them.

• Barbell strength classes: great for building overall muscle strength and tone, but will not always result in rapid fat loss and can be offputting for certain people.

This type of class can benefit someone with a C-shaped body composition.

Because this person has more Fat Mass than Skeletal Muscle Mass, one option for guiding this person to a fitter body is to focus on resistance/strength training.  Resistance training, if combined with proper nutrition, can result in both muscle gain and fat reduction.

Anyone can offer classes, but by using a member’s body composition results to place them in the right class, you’re ensuring that they reach their goals faster while at the same time taking a personal interest in their fitness.  This allows you to build rapport with your members, and once they see the results you promised them, they will become advocates for your gym.

Some people will join a class and find that it was exactly what they wanted.  Others will want to change classes from time to time as their needs and interests change.  The more options you provide at your gym, the greater chance you retain your members over the long term and reduce the risk that they quit out of boredom.

At every stage of their journey, you can offer body composition testing to assess the effect a particular class has had on their goals, and if necessary, guide them to a new option that might be better for them.

#6: Sell Body Composition Analysis + Consultation Packages

With a results sheet that has as much information as the InBody Result Sheet, it can be difficult for one of your members to fully understand what their results say about their fitness.  This is an excellent opportunity to sell your expertise in a consultation package and build another revenue stream for your gym.

DO NOT just sell the body composition analysis test without the consultation afterward.  You want to prove the value of your services and show off what you can offer one of your members.  Putting a price on something inherently increases its value in the eyes of the consumer. If you can deliver a solid product – your consultation with the body composition results – after purchase, you will build customer loyalty, which for you translates into member retention.

There are so many ways you can build the value and rapport with your member during that consultation: you can go over their fitness plan over the past month and discuss what worked and what didn’t; you can strategize a new fitness plan if goals are being met and/or are changing; you can guide your member to another service you offer (such as programming/classes).

But most importantly, in that consultation, your member will be able to see their body composition change over time.  This will ensure that they keep coming back for tests month after month.  That means every month, you’ll have the opportunity to touch base with your members and keep developing that ever-important personal relationship by providing superior customer service. Not only that, you’ll have the opportunity to sell and provide other services you may have during that consultation, which can increase your other revenue streams.

#7: Create A Community That Understands and Values Body Composition

Community-building is one of the most effective strategies any gym can follow to increase member retention.  By creating an atmosphere where your members can meet each other and develop friendships, you’re giving them a strong reason to go back to your gym: to meet their friends.

You can be as creative as you want to be with getting your members together to meet and socialize.  You can offer a free yoga class in a local park on a weekend and serve healthy snacks at the end of the class.  You could sponsor a barbecue at your gym on a holiday that features healthy, high-protein foods that people can learn to prepare for themselves to meet their macros.  The possibilities are almost endless.

If you’re encouraging people to understand their fitness with body composition, you open yourself up to a whole new range of community-building ideas that can support member retention and build your reputation in your local area.  For example:

• Create a space for people to post their results in public.  When people start seeing the results they’ve worked so hard for, some of them will want to show off.  Let them. Create a space somewhere in your facility where people can post their result sheets.  You can even turn it into a friendly competition between your members by creating a leaderboard and showcase one person a month who made the most impressive changes.

• Host a free class on body composition analysis to help people understand why it’s important to increase lean mass and reduce fat mass.  Offer a free body composition analysis at the end of the class for people to take home. You can offer snacks at the end to encourage people to stay, meet each other, and swap training stories.

#8: Be On the Cutting Edge of Health and Fitness

There’s nothing less attractive to a member than a facility that has old equipment from 20 years ago with old posters that look like they’re holdovers from the 1980s.  This atmosphere makes your gym seem less valuable, especially when they can go down the street and sign up with a gym that keeps current equipment and the latest tools on hand.

Body composition analysis is one of the coming things in health and fitness in the 21st century.  The notion that Body Mass Index (BMI) is an accurate gauge to measure an individual’s health is giving way to the realization that body composition is a much more reliable indicator of weight and health. Groups like the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) have been saying this for years.

More and more, however, the general public is beginning to take notice.  Take for example a feature on this topic in the New York Times during their 2015 “Summer of Science”.  This feature was so popular that the newspaper was compelled to write a second article a month later titled “How Often Is B.M.I. Misleading?” because they “were struck by the massive response to [their] post on how it’s possible for individuals to have the same BMI but very different bodies.”

Bottom line: your members are hearing about body composition analysis and if you’re able to provide that service to them, now you’re:

• offering superior customer service

• increasing the effectiveness of your trainers,

• opening up new opportunities to build personal relationships, trust, and loyalty to retain your members

• building your reputation in your community to attract new members

These are just some ways that you can use body composition analysis to retain members and increase your revenue.  It all comes down to the ability to connect with your members and keep them loyal because you care about their success and offer the best services and solutions for them to meet their goals.  What other applications can you come up with?