Why Your Pilates Studio Isn’t Getting New Clients (And It’s Not Your Social Media)

In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield dives into one of the most common (and exhausting) challenges facing Pilates studio owners today: inconsistent new client flow. If you feel like you’re doing all the things—posting on social media, running promotions, offering discounts—yet still not seeing steady growth, this conversation will be a game changer. 

Seran breaks down why the problem is rarely about tactics and instead lives in your foundations: lead generation strategy, messaging clarity, trust-building, and the path into your studio. This episode is a must-listen for Pilates studio owners and boutique fitness business owners who want predictable leads, stronger client retention, and a sustainable business that grows without burnout.

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Transcript

Why New Clients Feel Scarce

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever looked at your class schedule, your marketing, your social media, your emails, and thought, why is none of this bringing in the new clients that I want? And it's that frustrating moment where you'd feel like you're doing all the things. You're posting, you're running promotions, and you're trying to get the word out. Yet that new client flow might now feel like a bit of a slow drip. So today we're talking about the real reason that you're not getting new clients. And it might not be what you think. Because often what I found is that the real solution has nothing to do with more posting, more discounts, or working more hours. So if you really want to understand what actually drives consistent leads into your studio and what to focus on instead of running yourself into the ground, this episode is going to shift everything. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah Glamfield. 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. This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Well, hey there and welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah Glamfield, and if we've never met before, quick intro to what I do and how I got here. I spent the last almost 13 years building and growing Pilates studio businesses alongside their founders and helping the studio owners to turn their love of movement into profitable, sustainable businesses without burning out. And this is the show where I share a lot of honest conversations and a teeny tiny sneak peek into the strategies and the systems that I share with my Thrive Coaching Program members to help you to grow your classes, to fill your schedule, to grow your revenue, and build a profitable studio that truly supports and fulfills you. And I'm so glad you're here because today I'm talking about something that is perhaps one of the most universal frustrations among studio owners. And that is why does it feel so hard to bring consistent new clients or to consistently bring new clients into the studio? Now I know many of you listening are probably thinking to yourself, no, no, I get some new clients, right? I get them in. They come, they come, they come, they come. But what when we talk when I talk about new clients, I'm not talking about just leads. I'm not just talking about first-time folks coming in. I'm talking about actually new clients, the people that make it all the way through into purchasing not just their next package, but perhaps the one after that and the one after that. Now, you and I both know, and this is one of this is the reason why I do what I do, we both know that you are really good at what you do. You know your clients get incredible results. You know your studio has heart and soul and value. But then perhaps when you look at your numbers and what is left for you at the end of the day, perhaps it's not quite what you want it to be. And then when you look at perhaps those new client numbers and how many of them stay and stay for the long haul, things perhaps aren't quite adding up. The effort that you're putting in isn't quite getting you what you want it to get to. And if you're like a lot of the studio owners that get in touch and book a discovery call to learn more about how we work together, you probably are going to start going down a very similar rabbit hole to them. So that looks like often should I add a social media person to my team? Should I just post more? Should I offer another discount? What discount should that be? Because I'm seeing a lot of competition right now and they are rock bottom pricing themselves. How do I compete with that? Do I need to change and update my website? What about if I change my color of my logo? Do I need to run ads? And how much money should I be spending across all these different digital platforms on my ads? And the reality is that before we can even go there, honestly, there is a lot that we have to dive into because the issue is almost never in the tactics. It's not just about doing more and spending more or making bigger discounts or adding, you know, the magical next sort of trending audio to your reel. There is often a deeper problem. These are the foundational pieces of your business that need to be rock solid before you start layering on these more advanced tactics or tools, right? And once you have these foundational pieces in place, everything just gets a lot simpler and easier to fix, right? Because the one thing that I know, and I've seen it over and over and over again, is that getting new clients doesn't happen just because you're just pushing, pushing, pushing more, discounting more, adding more. It happens when you understand how your clients make decisions and what they need to feel in order to feel like they're wanting to say yes. And then how your studio is positioned in their mind, their perception of you. And once you shift your thinking around this, right, once you shift from this idea that I just need to spend more on meta ads, I just need to spend more on Google Ads, I just need to um post more, I just need to hire someone to do this for me, right? Um, when you shift from that more tactic like idea of just doing more and more and more to more strategic clarity, you, your entire system around your business, the way that you approach your business and what you think about your business, it changes. And so does the way that you see your clients and how they interact with your business. And once you understand the strategic piece of it, these foundational building blocks of your business, your business becomes more solid, it becomes more systemized, it becomes more consistent, it becomes more predictable, and it also becomes more sustainable. And I am all about helping you build a business of all of those things. And that's why when uh you join Thrive and we work together and we start to think about where there are gaps in your business and what's missing. I'm not gonna give you the cheapest advice out there, which is typically, hey, you just need to raise your prices and then everything will be great. That's absolute nonsense. It is the cheapest business advice you will ever hear and is usually incredibly uninformed. Without more context, that is not a simple answer. So today I'm gonna unpack with you the core reasons why your studio may not be bringing in new clients and some of the shifts that you can make that will absolutely change everything. Because I don't want you just to add more hours. I don't want you to be up later at night putting things together, posting stuff, putting together discounts, sending emails. I want to take you out of overwhelm. I want to stop you spinning in circles. Okay. So let's first of all talk about the one of the problems that I see, right? And I think that often we start a business and we are growing a business and we have a strong business, especially if we've grown very, very quickly. We are flying by the seat of our pants. And this is absolutely fine in the beginning. But there always comes a point where we want to say, okay, this is not necessarily uh feasible for the long haul. So let's put a little bit of systems, let's put some strategies, let's put some structure in place. And I think one of the things that we've read we can see very early on when we start working with studios who are incredibly successful typically, they're very profitable, they're growing, they're seeing clients coming in, but they often find that they're missing some of these systems and often relying on a bit of hope and perhaps market momentum instead of actual real strategy. And so what we see is that most businesses, most studio owners who don't have consistent new clients coming in, don't have a real lead generation strategy. They have a list of things that they're going to try. Okay, yes, social media is on there, yes, Google is on there, yes, emails is on there, yes, discounts on there, but nothing intentionally built to drive predictable new clients to come in, right? And so what often this leads to is sort of this sort of big sort of pendulum that swings back and forth between you working really, really hard and getting new clients. And then when you kind of max out because you're exhausted, it kind of swings back the other way. And then we see this sort of sort of downturn and a lack of energy and you feeling frustrated, and that also often coincides with a lack of new clients walking in the door. And this sort of pendulum that swings back and forth also creates a roller coaster or in when it comes to revenue. And it's not always apparent immediately. Sometimes this happens a few months later. So if, you know, where this is this this episode is in February, if you perhaps had that swing backwards in, you know, November time, then you might start to feel that right now. And this is sometimes often the case, right? And so some months you'll have new clients trickling in, and other months absolutely nothing. Some months you'll have a huge boost, and other months it'll be really, really quiet. Right. And this inconsistency, honestly, keeps you stressed and in reactive mode. And I want you to be able to enjoy your business and everything that you have built and to feel fulfilled by it, but also to feel in control of it, right? And the shift happens when lead generation becomes more predictable, when it becomes more intentional, not because you're posting and hoping, um, because you're throwing something at the wall, but because you have a clear understanding of who you're attracting, why they choose you, and exactly how they enter your world, right? And so taking away a lot of this sort of like, I'm just gonna see what happens. And, you know, this caveat is yes, there is a place for testing, but you have to have the foundational pieces in place, first of all. And this is exactly what we're working on right now with the members that recently joined Thrive inside our deep dive marketing intensive. And it's just so incredibly powerful to revisit these foundational building blocks around your value proposition, around who you serve and how you communicate your value to your clients. And this is the consistency that the is the consistency is that is created from that work, um, just pays you back, not just next week, right, but for years to come. And I think that, you know, one of the this is sort of leads me nicely into one of the biggest problems that I see continuing to be the case in the world that we're in today. Um, and I think it's going to become an even bigger problem as we head into 26 and 27. Because, you know, we do see that there is a continuing saturation of studios in every town and city across most of the world that you know you're listening from today, right? You know, I think that when you see a lot of competition come into the space, and the competition doesn't just look like other people that do exactly what you do, it's this competition for wellness dollars, for movement dollars, for the money that people are willing to put towards the movement practice, there is a lot of competition for that dollar or pound or euro amount, okay. And the reality is that you know what it is that you don't you do inside of the four walls of your incredible, amazing studio. But the reality is that people on the outside of those four walls often don't. And when your messaging is vague, right, your potential client is wondering whether it's for you, for them, or they may not think that you will be ever before them. And we see a lot of folks, what I see now is a lot of folks relying on um some fabulous new technology, right? We've we who who doesn't use Chat GPT for a lot of things, especially when it comes to copy and words and language. And with the idea that, you know, hoping that that that that you know AI output, ChatGPT or what have you, is going to give you great copying content. And the reality is that without using it appropriately, it actually is gonna make you sound more generic than you may have may have sounded without using it. So we've got a lot of tools that we thought would help, but actually aren't helping, right? We're a few years into using these tools, they're not actually helping people stand out. And I think when we have unclear and vague and generic messaging, you're gonna blend in, you're gonna get ignored, and you're not gonna motivate anyone to take action, right? People will scroll past your posts. It seems sounds like everyone else, it's not gonna sound real, doesn't sound authentic, doesn't sound genuine, and they won't ever even find their way to even click on your website at all, right? They will never inquire if they don't feel like they have some sort of an attachment to you or identification of themselves in your business. And so the shift is that people aren't now looking for a workout. They're looking for the next solution to something that they need your help with. And they're not necessarily buying Pilates or yoga. What they're looking for is something way more specific than that. And in order to get attention in the world that we're in today, we have to be more specific than that. Because when you're able to talk about what you do in a way that is compelling and that resonates with the people you most want to come into your studio, then you will start to see so much shifts. And you're still gonna start to use language and phrases that really and brings people towards you, sort of creates a magnifying effect, a magnetic, sorry, sorry, not magnifying, magnetic effect, where people are attracted to your business and are excited to try, right? And so then when they're excited to come in, you're not coercive or manipulating them to buy, right, through some discount because you want to make them stay right with some carrot that you're dangling. You're actually talking very openly and from the heart and soul about what it is that you do. And when you find that language and you have that spark within you, that is contagious, right? And what happens is that you find that people come in already available to say yes. They're excited to do that. And that's what we that's that's who we want in your studio. That's who we want in your classes, right? And so in order for you to get to that place, we need to do some deep work around your value proposition and your messaging and the way that you're communicating the value with your audience. And again, I have been doing this work with studio owners since 2015. And, you know, studio owners who are brand new to business ownership and studio owners who've been in business for 10 or 15 years, and it doesn't matter how long you've been doing this. This is deep work that I cannot, I just cannot emphasize enough how important and powerful it can be to revisit over and over again. Because every time you do, you are an you are, you find your inspiration, you find your enthusiasm for that. So don't hold back on revisiting some of these deep, deep sort of pieces of of what perhaps drove you to open your studio in the first place. Okay. Now, let's continue to talk a little bit about some of the other issues that I see and some of the other things that have made a difference. Okay. So I think um, you know, sometimes when we are in our business and we are thinking about our business, we are so deep in it. You've been in it for maybe years and years and years, right? Because you know your business so well, because you're surrounded by people who know it so well, your teachers, your clients who've been coming for a long time, right? We often forget and we make assumptions about what other people may or may not know about our business. Most studio owners fail or miss, I think, this real opportunity to guide people and to offer their expertise at a level that people understand and need in order to for them to sort of make that next decision in an informed way. And so imagine if you were, you know, if we if you think of sort of where your client is or the potential client is at, right, and they're just thinking about trying a new workout or trying a new movement practice, and they're at the edge of this sort of like cliff, right? And they're just about to sort of take that step onto the bridge across to the other side of the valley, right? And they're about to take that step, but that step, when they step onto that bridge, there is no, there is a piece of the bridge missing, right? They're gonna slip through that crack and it's not gonna end well, right? Now, what I see is that when you, when your bridge, the with part of the the the journey that you're talking about is is complete, right? You can guide them forward across that bridge and you're able to take them step by step by step to this beautiful place on the other side of the bridge, which is your studio and all of the amazing things that happen. And I think a lot of people talk to their their new their prospects or their community, the people who are aware they exist but aren't actually taking action yet, as if they're they already know everything there is to know. And most people who are discovering you for the first time, they don't know you. They don't know whether you are the same or different to the other place that they've tried and didn't enjoy. They don't understand or know what makes your studio unique and different. And if you're not telling them that, then they will never know. And those people who are sitting in that place, in that part of the funnel, the marketing funnel, where they're aware you exist, but they're not going to take any action, it's because you're not telling them something that they need to hear in order to take that next step. You're not filling in that gap for them, right? So when there is not enough trust established and not enough connection built beforehand, they won't even try, or they'll try one class and they'll disappear because they never really were invested in the first place. And I think the shift that has to happen is this is not about giving them a discount saying, okay, well, then I'm just going to give you a cheaper first class. This is about actually talk shifting the entire way that you talk about clients. And the reality is, you guys, if you're listening to this, you're a step ahead of the game because most people will not do this work. Most studio owners in Boutique Fitness and in the fitness world generally will not do the deep work that is needed in order to fill these gaps. They will use the tactics, the promotions, the discounts to get people in. Why? It's quicker, it's easier, right? But when you do this deep work, this is where you build a sustainable, strong, rock solid business, not just that not just for the next month, but for years to come. Right. So for new clients, don't necessarily need more discounts or more promotions. They perhaps need a bit more connection, a bit more communication, right? They need to have be better communicated with. They need to feel safe, that they are in a safe place, that they are safe, that they are safe choosing you, that they are not going to feel too uncomfortable or too uncoordinated, or that they're going to feel out of place when they come into the studio. And I think trust, this trust building in the world that we're in today, you guys, is so critical. And it's often that missing ingredient. And there's a lot that you can do and say to people out there who are just waiting and looking for that little prompt from you, right? And that missing ingredient that, you know, really help would help them to sort of take that first step in a very safe way, right? And so once you switch from sell, sell, sell, push, push, push to better communication, more strategic and sophisticated communication, then what we find is that people start finding new naturally, they're more likely to stay long term. Okay. Now, the other problem I see when it comes to getting new clients, and it kind of leads me nicely from the last point of, you know, assuming that people know more than more than they do, is that we often make it more difficult to make take that first step, right? And, you know, there was a book that was written a long time ago about how to build a website. And it used it was called Don't Make Me Think. And that was how, you know, you know, back in the day when people were starting building their own sites, they would, that was the theme was, you know, don't make me think. Just tell me what it is that you do, make it as easy for me to buy, as fewer clicks as possible. And the whole that still completely stands, by the way, right? And so if you haven't made it easy enough for a client to take that first step, then they probably won't because it's way easier for them to click the back button on their browser and go somewhere else, right? And so from pricing to scheduling to booking to understanding what they should buy first, the path into your studio has to be as simple and straightforward as possible, right? And I will tell you over and over again, what we find is complex pricing options, confusion over where to start, what button to hit. And what we find is that when the buyer is confused, they just stop dead in their tracks, right? Give them a reason not to, and they will take it. Okay. So confused people don't take action, right? And what happens is that those people, they may be perfect clients to your business. But if you've put one too many roadblocks in the way, then they're not going to take that next step. People will get overwhelmed, people will get distracted. And I think that's one of the biggest issues that we are fighting against every single day, right, in our marketing efforts is that distraction. Um, and they will disappear, right? And then they'll be the place that they thought of but then didn't go, decided not to go to. Okay. And so you lose leads, not because they're not interested, not because they don't need what it is that you have to offer, but because the process just wasn't simple enough. So that new client, the path for them to come and and take that first step, it needs to be completely effortless for them, right? Clear, obvious next steps, simple to to to get started, right? When it when it feels like a no-brainer for them, they will they will follow you forward, right? Whatever you kind of offer them along that path is is going to be helpful, right? And we just we're all about removing friction. When you remove the friction, what happens is your conversion will always increase. So quick recap here if your studio isn't getting enough new clients in the door, it's not because you're not posting enough. It's not because your classes aren't good enough, it's not because your teaching isn't good enough. It's yes, the market is getting busier. There is more out there. Okay. But that's that's probably just highlighting some things that might be missing in your business that you could get away with before. When we ever, whenever we see more competition coming to any market, it just raises the game for everyone, right? So this doesn't mean that your business has failed. It means that we just have to raise our game too. Okay. And typically what it means is that your lead generation system needs a bit more intention behind it. Your messaging needs more focus. Your trust building and connection during the uh the customer journey and an awareness part of the customer journey needs more intention. And perhaps that pathway into your business needs a bit more simplicity. And what I've noticed more over and over again with studio owners who come to me, who find themselves in that sort of hamster wheel place, is that when they shift from that, from being on the hamster wheel and just throwing tactics at the wall and keeping on trying to do all the things and adding more to their plate, shifting from that to thinking more strategically about their business, everything changes. Your marketing gets easier, your leads get more consistent, your confidence around your business improves, right? You sleep better at night, you're excited to take time off instead of concerned and worried. And your business becomes more predictable in the best possible way. So if you're ready to build lead generation systems that actually work, if you want clarity around your messaging so that you stand out from the crowd, if you want to build that path for your new clients and structure your studio in order for you to grow and take time out. If you're tired of guessing, of hoping and overworking, then I would love to invite you to explore joining Thrive. This is my business coaching program for Boutique Fitness Studio Owners. It's where we take these big mindset shifts and strategy and structure and tools and frameworks and resources and coaching and turn them into sustainable business foundations so that your studio grows profitably without you burning out. So you can learn more and schedule a discovery call at springthree.com forward slash thrive. And your next wave of new clients, honestly, it starts with that one decision to stop hustling, stop chasing that next tactic, and instead start leading your business forward with smart, sophisticated, sustainable strategies. So I hope this is helpful to you as you go about building your fabulous boutique fitness studio business. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, I'd be so appreciative if you could take a quick minute, go to wherever you're listening to this, and rate and review this podcast. It would mean a ton to me and to help make sure that I can show up for you every single week here and give you even more guidance and insights and conversations around business growth. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to springfree.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.