Pilates Business Podcast

Stop Leaving Money on the Table: The Hidden Link Between Pricing and Client Retention

• Seran Glanfield • Season 24 • Episode 234

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💸 Is your pricing secretly driving clients away?

In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, Seran Glanfield reveals the hidden link between your pricing strategy and client retention — and why matching the studio down the street is keeping you stuck in hustle mode.

Discover how small shifts in your pricing model can:
 ✔️ Boost client loyalty
 ✔️ Increase lifetime value (LTV)
 ✔️ Stabilize your revenue
 ✔️ Help you grow your Pilates business sustainably

Whether you’re tired of chasing new clients or struggling with unpredictable income, this episode will change the way you think about pricing forever.

🎧 Tune in and learn how to make your pricing work for you — and finally build a boutique fitness business that’s profitable, sustainable, and built to last.


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Work with Seran:

🌟 Join the Thrive Business Coaching Program and get smart strategies that drive growth (and profit) in your boutique fitness studio

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Speaker 1:

What if I told you that the way you price your classes might actually be costing you money? Not because your prices are too low or even too high, but because the strategy behind them isn't designed to maximize the LTV or lifetime value of your clients. Many, many studio owners think that pricing is just about covering costs or being competitive, but the truth is your pricing directly impacts how long people stay, how much they spend and how loyal they are to your studio. So in today's episode, I'm going to be diving into the hidden link between your pricing model and client retention, and how small shifts in strategy can make your business far more profitable without adding more to your plate. Well, hi there. I'm Saren Glanfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio.

Speaker 1:

This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarang Glanfield and I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here with me again today talking about a topic that we talk about a lot as business owners, and if we're not talking about it, we're thinking about it probably a lot as well. And this is, I think, specifically what I want to talk to you about today is a bit more of the strategy behind your pricing. Right, because you know, when it comes to pricing, it is a bit of a loaded conversation. There is a lot of emotion often tied to it. It's often tied to our sense of value, and sometimes it can actually be just a complete guessing game, right? Maybe you set your prices by looking at what other studios in town are charging, and if you didn't, and then you find out what they're charging, that makes you feel some things too right. Or maybe you felt pressure to keep things affordable so that more people could join. Or maybe you haven't touched your pricing in years because you just don't want to rock the boat. Now, I get it, and I think anyone who has ever owned a business and set pricing has been in all of those shoes. So you are not alone.

Speaker 1:

But what I want to tell you is that pricing isn't just about numbers on a website. It's actually what I consider to be a powerful marketing tool. It's actually a lever that you can pull that can influence the way that people interact with your business. It can influence client behavior and that means it can also influence retention. And obviously we know that pricing is pretty directly tied to revenue. So when it's done well, when it's managed well, your pricing structure not only works to draw folks into the studio but actually encourages them to stay longer and spend more over time, without you just having to keep on doing more and more and more right.

Speaker 1:

And when I work with the studio owners that I work with inside of my coaching program Thrive, we talk a lot about how you can build and grow your business in a very sustainable way. So we're not just running more promotions and more discounts, trying to grab people's attention and then trying to convince them to become your client. We want to be more strategic than that, and there are many ways to implement strategies that help you to grow a business that is incredibly sustainable from an energy perspective, from the amount of time you're putting in, as well as from a growth perspective as well. And I think that's why this conversation really matters, because if you have come into the world of business ownership in the boutique fitness world, then it's not just important to know what your pricing perhaps, or what your pricing should be and this is a quote, unquote should be. It's also important to understand all of these different concepts that can impact and influence what a solid pricing structure and pricing model looks like in your business. Because if you're already working as much as you can, perhaps teaching a lot, and perhaps you're not seeing the growth that you really want, then the chances are that your pricing and your packaging may not be aligned with the bigger picture of that client lifetime value. And so once we dive into these concepts today, I'm hoping that you'll start to see your pricing in a whole new way, not as something that you want to avoid and not talk about or as a necessary evil, but as a strategic tool for building a profitable and sustainable business.

Speaker 1:

So I want to kick off by talking about perhaps what I see as the most common way that studios will set their prices, and that is just pricing based on what the competition is pricing themselves at, and I want to talk about the problem with that. To start with, to be honest and I think sometimes when studios do this, especially if they're opening they often try to match that studio down the street, perhaps it's a studio that they went to, perhaps it's a studio that inspired them, and sometimes they may think well, I'm newer and I want to get clients quickly, so I'm actually going to undercut the competition. And the problem is that that approach positions you as comparable to everybody else on the street. You're now interchangeable with others, and when we price purely on that sort of competitive, comparable price point, it actually communicates nothing about the unique value of your studio.

Speaker 1:

And what happens is that if you only talk about your studio and draw clients in with your price, which is comparable to that one down the street, maybe it's just exactly the same as the studio down the street or the studios around the corner, because, let's face it, we know there are many, many more than just that one studio on your block right now probably. Then we know that we see clients hopping from one intro offer to the next intro offer. They love to class hop. They love to studio hop. They love to intro offer hop, right. And so what happens is you're left working harder to replace them when they inevitably perhaps don't move into that next sell package and, let's not forget, when they purchase the intro pack and they don't move into an Excel. They're not necessarily paying you what your class is worth, right, because that intro offer or that trial offer is often a discounted rate, so your income will probably be below what you want it to be, or perhaps had projected with full classes. Now, however, if you're filling those classes with people who are all on intro offers and none of them are staying and converting, then you might find that your classes are not generating enough profit for you, and so not only that, but it also makes your income less stable, because you're not able to perhaps keep people in your business long enough.

Speaker 1:

That long-term commitment that we really, really like it's more short-term based, which means your income is prone to quite large fluctuations, which isn't so good for budget often leaves you feeling confused and perhaps a little bit of anxiety about what will next month look like. So, when it comes to pricing, next month look like so. When it comes to pricing, it's not about being the cheapest or even the best deal, honestly. It's about recognizing that your business, your studio, has a unique value of its own and then anchoring your pricing in your value. Okay, and this is one of the most important things that we want to make sure that we're doing in all of our marketing efforts. Okay, now, in order to price correctly and to be strategic about your pricing, you have to understand the concept of LTV, or lifetime value. So I've mentioned it already a couple of times and I want to just share with you a little bit more about what that actually looks like.

Speaker 1:

Now. The lifetime value is kind of how is what it is? It is the total revenue that a single client brings into your studio over the entire time they train with you. And what we're looking at actually is the average lifetime value typically, and we want to make that average lifetime value as high as possible so that when you have a client join your studio, they stay as long as you want them to and they spend as much as they can in the studio. Right, and we care about this a lot, because when we see CEOs that are really successful, have really strong revenue numbers and have very strong growth in their revenue numbers, very consistent growth in their revenue numbers, then they actually have typically a higher LTV. So their clients are coming in, they're converting into a membership or a package on a long-term basis, that is, recurring. They keep coming back and they perhaps have been clients for many, many, many years in many cases, and so what happens is, unfortunately, that many owners and business owners focus only on that front end sale, that first sale, that perhaps that intro package, right, but that isn't what is going to drive a high lifetime value, right? That's just kind of like the front door. So when we're not thinking about LTV, what you end up doing is you're always chasing new clients instead of nurturing the ones you already have, and that is exhausting and often keeps you stuck in that sort of spinning the wheels mode right In hustle mode right, and so, instead of thinking about how do I get more people in the door, maybe the question to ask is how do I keep the right people in the studio longer? That's usually where there is humongous amounts of opportunity for more profit in your studio Every single time we dive into the numbers.

Speaker 1:

This is what we find for sure. Now, the smartest people out there this is what we find for sure Now. The smartest people out there also know how pricing shapes behavior, and if you've ever worked with me or been in any of my trainings, you'll know that the psychology of the buying decision, especially when it comes to fitness and wellness services really is driven by a multitude of factors, right, and what we know about whether that's wellness and fitness and movement practice or perhaps anything else that people buy is that the purchase decision is based on how different options are framed most of the time, right. So there are some very famous quotes about how people buy, based on how you make them feel, and so on, and this is a big part of that. There's a lot of different elements that go into a positive purchase decision.

Speaker 1:

Now, what we find far too often is pricing often encourages, perhaps a short-term commitment, drop-ins or small packages, and so what happens then is the repercussion of that is that clients often default to more casual attendance, more here and there class bookings, and instead what we want is we want, typically, we want clients to show up and come frequently, right. That's the best way for them to get the most out of their experience. They're going to get the best results. That way. They're going to feel a better part of the community and they become a better client for you when they understand the way your studio works, instead of sort of being a newbie every two to three weeks, right. And so what we really want is we want clients that are showing up and showing up at a particular frequency, and so we want to make sure that your pricing is driving that type of interaction with your business, and so we want to encourage people to avoid those non-committal options and encourage them to perhaps take a higher commitment option that's going to get them those results faster.

Speaker 1:

So pricing isn't passive right. It isn't just a thing, just a number. It actually can also be a bit of a silent salesperson in a way, right. That can often nudge clients towards the behavior that you want, like upgrading to a larger package or coming more often or staying longer. And far too often we are extremely linear in the way that we approach our pricing and our relative prices within the business, and there's usually a lot of opportunity to develop a pricing strategy that really influences the way your clients see your business and interact with your business and that impacts that lifetime value. Now, one of the most critical things that you can do and I've already talked about it a little bit, touched on it earlier on in the first concept I shared with you but one of the most critical things that I would always recommend that you do is align your pricing with your value delivery.

Speaker 1:

Now the two things we know that are true about movement is that when clients commit, then they show up. When clients show up, they enjoy it right, they get results, and when clients come more frequently, they get better results or results faster, and that makes them even more loyal. So it's sort of like this sort of self-fulfilling cycle, right, and this is the loop that we actually want to create, and this is where your pricing can have an incredibly powerful impact. We want pricing that drives commitment, because that commitment drives results and that results is what drives retention. Right, people will keep coming back if they know that your classes are going to keep delivering value.

Speaker 1:

Now, what happens over and over again is that we are missing that connection between the value and the pricing and how to get results and the pricing, and without this alignment, what happens is you end up perhaps over-teaching in your classes because people aren't really sure about what they're doing there or why they're there. You often find that people don't really commit early on, that they come from time to time and obviously that is poorly impacts your LTV and retention and your clients, frankly, are missing out on the very best that you could be giving them Right, and so because of that. It's important to stop thinking about pricing as numbers on a page and start to think about it as part of your client journey. Right and the right pricing structure really will keep people engaged long enough to experience real change, and that's truly what makes them lifelong clients.

Speaker 1:

Now the bigger opportunity that I see for you as studio owners is that, once you recognize that pricing is a strategy, you know it's not just about covering today's costs. It's about designing your business for the growth that is still coming. And so when pricing is super reactive, when you're throwing around discounts, when you are offering these one-time offers or you're promoting this super cheap package, you're always scrambling. And when I've seen the very few of my studio owners that I thrive need to do this because we are so strategic with the way that we price your offers when you join the program. But when I find folks who come in and they have this kind of habit happening, what we find is that often your clients have been sort of encouraged to buy only when there's a big sale, only when there's a big sale, and what happens then is it gets really challenging to really find that place where your clients are purchasing at a level or a price point that actually is profitable for your business. So, instead of scrambling, I want you to be more strategic, and when you're more strategic, what happens is you have more stability, more predictable revenue, and you know that you have, then, more freedom perhaps to focus on some of the other areas of your business that might be necessary as you grow, and so, instead of being stuck in the weeds and trying to be constantly reacting, you're able to be perhaps thinking further down the path, more ahead of the game, and that obviously brings a lot more confidence to the way that you lead your business forward and probably helps you sleep a little bit better at night as well.

Speaker 1:

So your prices are not set in stone. What you've priced your prices at so far in your business is not how they always have to be, that. They are an amazing tool that you can use in your business and in your marketing to design that business that you want, perhaps as a business with higher lifetime value, with higher retention, with more active and engaged clients, and pricing really is the tool that can help you to do that. So let's bring this full circle your pricing is not about what's fair, necessarily, or what's competitive. It's actually about helping you shape your client's behavior, encouraging commitment and ultimately maximizing the lifetime value of every client who walks into your studio. So when you stop focusing on those quick sales and start getting really intentional about designing your pricing for long-term retention, you'll find that you have a business that is not only more profitable but also more sustainable long-term and that gives you a lot of freedom freedom to step back, freedom to lead, freedom to grow.

Speaker 1:

And so if today's conversation sparked some ideas for you and you'd like to perhaps dig a little bit deeper into building out a pricing strategy that truly supports growth, then I'd love to invite you into my business coaching program for boutique fitness studio owners called Thrive. Inside Thrive, we work together to create the systems, the strategies and the mindset shifts that help you to build a business that gives you back as much as you put in. So if you want to learn more and join us, you go to spring3.com forward slash thrive, because I want your studio to be more than just a place that is busy for you right. I want it to be a studio that is profitable and built to last. Thank you so much for listening in today.

Speaker 1:

I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week and I'll be back next week with more insights and tips to help you build and grow your boutique fitness studio business. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.