Do you truly understand which types of consumer your fitness facility appeals to, and how well you’ve penetrated the relevant audiences in a realistic catchment area?
Step forward Leisure DB’s Member Analysis reports...
Understanding who your members are and where they live – i.e. how far they’re travelling to reach your site – is a vital first step in achieving maximum bang for every marketing buck.
If you know that 80% of your members live within two miles of your site, for example, you also know that any marketing pushed out beyond this radius is likely to generate lower levels of interest, lower penetration rates and reduced returns.
So it’s surprising – and indeed concerning – how many operators tell us “we have members who drive 20 minutes to visit our facility” or “we know we have members who come from xyz area”, only for us to find, through our member mapping process, that this is the rare exception rather than the norm.
In fact, based on our 20+ years of experience, it’s fair to say that most operators believe they have members coming from a much larger area than is actually the case, at least in any significant numbers.
This is where Leisure DB’s member analysis reports come in, providing absolute clarity on where your members are coming from.
The report also provides invaluable insight on who your members are, with demographic data that highlights the population groups within your catchment to whom your facility appeals – and, just as importantly, those to whom it does not.
In short, the report is a springboard to smarter marketing strategies, helping you understand where budgets are best directed, who to speak to about which aspect of your offering, and so on.
Let’s take you through the steps to creating this go-to resource.
#1 – Defining your actual catchment
Step one is to determine your real catchment area, and it starts with your member data. We map your site and your members’ home postcodes and run a report to determine how far – in miles and in minutes – members travel to get to you.
Just as an example, let’s say 75% of members live within 10 minutes’ drive time. Quite possibly this is the perfect catchment, but there are other considerations.
Does that 10-minute drive time reach a big cluster of a specific population group that isn’t represented in the existing membership base? Is there a little corner of the catchment that’s heavily populated but more conveniently served by a number of competitive sites? Is there a cluster just outside the drive time that isn’t served by a competitor, from where members are already coming? Is there a river or railway line with no nearby bridge to cross it? Anything like this, we can factor in and manually adjust the catchment.
#2 – Identifying your areas of strength
Our next step is to cut the data so we’re only looking at members who live within the defined catchment area.
We then turn to Experian’s Mosaic consumer classification system – 15 groups that break down into 66 types for a clear picture of who lives where in the UK – to understand more about who the members are, in demographic terms.
We create a Mosaic profile of your catchment and a Mosaic profile of your members and compare the two. This shows how well your facility penetrates each Mosaic group and type, and how your site indexes for each compared to the total catchment population.
Anything indexing over 100 means you perform particularly well for that Mosaic group/type, and our reports then detail who they are demographically: age, life stage, affluence, home ownership, types of property, whether they have children, how they holiday, shop, consume social media and so on.
We deepen your understanding of your key audiences and empower you to speak to them in ever-more relevant ways, shaping your marketing to drive penetration rates even higher among these high-indexing groups and types – your low-hanging fruit.
#3 – Options for additional insight
But what about any areas of underperformance – any prominent Mosaic groups and types in your catchment among whom you’re under-represented. Why might this be?
There can be a number of reasons, with local competition an obvious one. That’s why we strongly recommend a competition map as part of any member analysis report – an accurate, up-to-date snapshot of the competitive sites in your catchment, which delivers another layer of understanding around why people are (or aren’t) choosing your site.
We also recommend a Mosaic map, which shows where in your catchment you’ll find each Mosaic group – a great complement to your site’s Mosaic profile and member dot map, and a helpful part of the jigsaw when looking to understand why you attract members from certain parts of your catchment and not others, especially when also viewed alongside a competition map.
#4 – Complementary reports
Where underperformance can’t be easily explained – where there are Mosaic groups and types represented in abundance in your catchment, not yet served by a competitor, with no obvious mismatch but still not attracted to your facility – further investigation is in order.
It could simply be down to marketing. Have you ever directly addressed these groups and/or types with messaging so relevant, so appealing, that they feel compelled to explore what you have to offer?
A Leisure DB age report can help. Segmenting and quantifying your catchment by age band and gender, it’s particularly useful if you have products you know will appeal to a specific target audience.
Meanwhile, although primarily produced for fitness memberships, Leisure DB can also create segmented member profiles if a site has distinct member databases – swim school, for example, or PAYG vs memberships.
#5 – Take it one step further
So, our member analysis reports show the penetration rate you’ve already achieved for each Mosaic group and type in your catchment, as well as bringing your key audiences to life demographically.
But could you do better – and if so, how much better?
A Leisure DB latent demand report is the next step to maximising membership at your facility. These reports look beyond the current penetration rates of our member analysis reports to predict potential future penetration rates for each Mosaic type. These predicted penetration rates are then converted into actual numbers and added together to produce a total number of additional members we believe you can realistically achieve: your site’s latent demand.
We draw on our 20+ years of experience and unparalleled database to maximise the potential of every site. It’s why we can proudly say that Leisure DB is ‘for the industry, by the industry’.
Read more about our latent demand reports here.
Or get in touch now to find out how we can help you.