Groupon debate - does it work for your fitness business?

There has been plenty of chatter from fit-pro's on whether Groupon is a good or a bad for business.
The general consensus is that it's a bad thing.

Well, I have thought long and hard about this, and although I agree with all the posts, blogs, updates, videos giving reasons why it's not good for business, I decided to give it a try.

Recently, a local bootcamp session instructor run an offer with Groupon, and from what I hear, he done pretty well out of it, I thought I would give it a go and see if it works for me.

Now don't get me wrong, there is no point on running an offer like this if your camp is full or close to full, it will upset current campers and devalue the business. But if you are like me, and have only recently started to expand your camps or you maybe just about to launch a new camp, carry on reading as this is why I think it could work for you and me....

Groupon have a pretty standard offer for bootcamps, £19 for 10 bootcamp sessions wherever you are. Groupon then will take 50% of this, so basically you are left with £9.50 per person - crap eh?

So this is what I did, I didn't want to devalue my regular 4 week camp, or upset my current members, so I set up a 'groupon special intensive camp'.
Most of my campers start seeing fantastic results in the first few weeks, so for my intensive camp, I scheduled 4 sessions in two weeks = 8 sessions for £19.

On this Intensive camp, they will do the same workout routine's as my regular camp, and of course, receive the nutritional plan along with the majority of the handouts.. but not all of the goodies!

I also invited all my current campers, and previous campers to purchase the camp at £19 (direct to me) as a special bonus!

What about the money? Well, I sold 125 groupon vouchers, Im guessing (based on what the groupon sales rep told me) 80 of these will actually use this voucher. This equates to £760. The 80 will then be split into 4 different camps (I have 3 locations) = 16 hours of work per week for two weeks. It's starting to look better right?

Well, now it get a little more interesting.....
Immediately following the two week camp, I have dates set up for my full camp which costs £77.
I would be naive to think all of these individuals will sign up, a lot of them would have just bought the voucher purely for price (great price!!), but there will be a percentage that may have just been thinking about joining a gym, or always wanted to do a bootcamp, and hopefully there will be some on this camp who planned to do just the groupon offer and by the end of the two weeks were converted by the results!
So what is this percentage? Well, I don't know yet as my camp has not run yet, however, I estimate 20% will sign up straight away, and a further 40% will come back to camp at a later date.
So from the off, you have another 20 bootcampers paying £77 each. You will also be getting FREE brand awareness, in Ipswich alone, there are 45000 subscribers, who will see your company name and logo in their inbox when they wake up in the morning, the groupon offer (with specific dates) may not be suited to them at this point, but at a later date, they may join up with your camp! Not forgetting the 80+ people who will be sampling your camp and spreading the good word for you.

So for me, everyone's a winner: Groupon certainly are, The customer - even more so, and for us the guys who run the bootcamps it's a gamble, there will definitely be some benefits, but also there should be some great benefits!
If the bootcampers get the results which they should do (similar to what you will get in 4 weeks) then I will run regular 2 week camps at £77.
I will of course update this post when the camp is complete (end of September) and I know the actual figures of converts to my regular 4 week camp, but for now I believe it Is a good business model for newby bootcamp owners.

Matt Brennan - bootcamp director

www.woodbridgebootcamps.co.uk
www.kesgravebootcamps.co.uk
www.felixstowebootcamps.co.uk