The Statistics

This first stat is sure to pique your interest; the TurnTo Network found that 90% of all consumers in the US find UGC to be the most influential when making purchasing decisions. This tells you that people are paying attention to what their friends, family, and acquaintances are doing. You want your users to show they are enjoying your space virtually.

When people see others that they personally know using a product or service they are more likely to use and trust the brand. As you can see in the image below UGC plays a significant role in user decisions as well as their overall reported experience.
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Credibility and Customer Experience

As mentioned above, when people see others that they know benefiting from things they may be interested in doing they are more likely to choose the products their friends use over others. This occurs because people making decisions about products or services want to know they are going to have a good experience. When they see their friends having a good experience, they want the same for themselves.

This, in turn, enhances the new customer’s experience because when they come into your gym, they already have expectations. If you can meet and exceed those expectations, you may just have a new customer for life.

Free Marketing

There is nothing better than a free lunch; you savor every bite. For every minute of work, you put into your social media accounts you will be paid many times over. Encourage customers to interact with you on social media by tagging them in photos, liking their posts, or even holding photo contests.

When customers post photos of themselves in your gym with tags, you have access to new possible members. Businesses that run social media accounts for different amenity services will look into the demographics of your followers and tailor social media posts specific to their interests.

You gain exposure to the community as well as a list of new possible members. Using UGC will give you a leg up on the type of people you should be marketing to in addition to some free ad space.

Interacting with the Community

It is hard for small businesses to keep up with their communities. A gym should be part of the lifeblood of a community, where people interact and meet on a daily basis.

Your personal interaction with UGC and your customers will help to keep your finger on the pulse of the community. You will know what they need and be exposed to creative ways to get more of the community’s attention using UGC.

Increase Membership

UGC is a hands-on well-loved way to garner attention for your establishment. It is all in the statistics above. If you can generate quality UGC, people will be influenced to come and at least check out your fitness space.

Once you have new people in the door, it is up to you to get them excited about enrolling and coming back. In addition, customers that are influenced by UGC to join your fitness center are more likely to add to your treasure trove of UGC customers than ones attracted by a sign or coupon.

Using UGC will establish your credibility as a gym that people want to go to. It will solidify your place in the community. You will gain membership and free marketing from using it. Every penny and second spent on your social media accounts to gain UGC will benefit you greatly in the long run.

Click here for our samples user generated content collector!

For more information about user generated content, contact soOlis at info@soOlis.comor 877-789-8773.

1. Control Capital Costs and Cut Labor Costs: Outsourcing takes your variable cost and makes them a fixed cost. That way businesses can invest elsewhere and limit the large expensive in their start up stages. In terms of labor costs, business owners have proven it time and time again that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The time it takes an employee or business owner to figure out how to start a specific project, he or she could have had it done by Outsourcing it to the experts.
a. Example: A Fitness Equipment Dealer wants a website for his business, and along with one of his/her employees, they decide they can build it. A year later, the site is almost done and the manufacture informs the dealer of all the new products coming out and the old ones are discontinued. A waste of all that time and money!

2. Focus on core business: As employees workloads increase with non-core business tasks due to increasing business, the business focus can shift away from the core activities. When business outsource they keep their employees focus.
a. Example: The gym is growing and you need a better way to communicate with the members. Outsource a company to develop e mail and social media campaign instead of trying to do it yourself!

3. Level Playing Field or Even Give Your Business a Competitive Edge: As start- up business and/ or small businesses strives to grow and compete in competitive markets, they need to look as professional as the competition.
a. Example: Don’t through your new business website together on go daddy just so you can have a website. It is the first impression to clients and prospects.

4. Start New Projects Quickly: Coming up with an idea, hiring the staff for the idea, putting the procedures in place all takes time and money
a. Example: A Fitness Manufactures wants to develop Custom QR Codes that link to Instructional Videos. Do they know everything that goes into that project? It’s not just create a video and slap on a QR Code.

5. Reduce Risk: Business are constantly pushing the envelope with new ideas; before investing in staff, outsource the project and see it the project will generate revenue.
a. Example: Let’s build a shopping cart for the gyms website. Who will manage it; ship it; handle returns; credit card compliance issues, and so on.

6. Get Access to Skilled Expertise: Jack of all trade masters of none. Outsourcing enables the business to get experts in the field.
a. Example: A health club owner has some knowledge in website design; he decides he needs a new website and is going to build one in his spare time. The problem is he has not spare time because he is managing his health club, creating sales and marketing materials, doing the accounting and so on.

All these facts and example can be found in the Health & Fitness Industry. The question is why are they so prominent? If outsourcing is a common practice for Fortune 500 companies why don’t more health and fitness companies take advantage of outsourcing?

For more information on outsourcing services contact Tim Sebold @ tsebold@soOlis.com or visit www.soOlis.com/business for all soOlis’ business products and services.