Affinity Marketing: How to Clone Your Best Clients and Keep Them Longer

The key to steady gym growth and stronger retention? Turning your best members into your best recruiters.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper explains how to use affinity marketing to strengthen your community, keep members longer and bring in more people just like your favorite clients.

Passive referral programs rarely work, so Chris shows you how to actively connect your clients’ families, coworkers and friends to your gym.

He even provides an inside look at Two-Brain’s Affinity Marketing Cheat Sheet, shows you exactly when to ask for referrals and explains how to start those conversations without making them feel awkward or transactional.

Tune in to learn how to build a referral system that generates steady growth and improves retention at the same time.

Links

Gym Owners United

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1:18 - When to ask for a referral

5:53 - Duplicating your best clients

13:35 - The goal review conversation

20:52 - Hosting group events

24:35 - Affinity marketing highlights

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

I have been obsessed about retention for years. Many years ago, working with my first mentor, I asked his advice about having my clients sign contracts, thinking that would lock them into my gym. He said, Chris, are you really going to enforce these contracts? Are you ready to take somebody to court if they try and leave your gym before their year is up? I said, well, no, but maybe just the threat will make them think that they have to. He said, Chris, would you rather spend your time helping people or suing people. That was a big turning point for me. And I'm going to give you a big turning point on retention today. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And today I'm going to walk you through one of the things that surprises most people about retention. And that is that one of the best tactics is to ask for a referral. Now, all of us want more referrals. We know that it feels like easy marketing, but most of us are just way too passive about it. We don't ask our clients for referrals. And so we don't get these retention benefits and we don't get those new customer benefits either. Today, I'm going to tell you how exactly to walk through that process. I'm going to show you a cheat sheet that we use in 2Brain that you can make up yourself if you're not part of the 2Brain family yet. And I'm going to tell you exactly what to say so that it doesn't feel weird. But first, I want to go back to something that Joey Coleman wrote about never losing a customer again. And he has an entire phase of his book that he calls the advocate phase. And when somebody has been onboard it properly, they've achieved something, they feel like they're part of your program, that's the time to ask for a referral. So not after two years, but after maybe about 90 days. This is a really powerful lever. So let's talk about why that is. If you tell a friend that you recommend something, now you are bought into convincing them to like it. And the reason is this, the way that our brains have evolved in tribes over time is that we never want to seen as the outsider. Adding something of value to the group, like a recommendation, you should go to this steakhouse. You love it. I really love this new Volkswagen or whatever. Go to this gym. That adds value to the group and helps make you seem like more of an insider. But if you recommend something and the rest of the group is like, what? That sucks. You're going to feel more like an outsider. So referral is always a risk to all of us. And so when we bring somebody to our favorite steakhouse, when we take them to the car dealer or bring them to the gym, We do our best to sell them on it. We want them to enjoy it so that we are part of the group instead of excluded from the group. We don't want to be an outsider. This is all happening unconsciously, of course. But think about what happens when you take your friend to a new coffee shop. Oh, you got to try the carnaletto. Or you take them to a steakhouse. Oh, hey, I really recommend this cut. Get the T-bone or get the ribeye or whatever. You'll love it. Oh, you like fish? You would love this fish. Hey, let me wave this waiter over. You got to meet this guy. He's crazy. He does an Elvis impersonation right at the table. I'm thinking back because I've actually done this. You're bought into selling your friend on liking the same experience that you do. And so when that happens in your gym, what happens is that the client and you are both trying to sell the new person on joining the gym. Then something else happens too. If I join a gym, I like it. I'm bring my wife. She likes it. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. Both of us now have another reason to stay. And that's that the other person is there. Not because we're getting a family discount or I'm getting a referral bonus or something like that, but she's there. So I want to be there and I'm there. So she wants to be there too. And if our kids are also there, now we've got this really sticky web that makes it enormously hard to quit. This knowledge started with something that a friend told me. And he said, Chris, if you really want to help somebody, you got to help their spouse. And what he was saying was that what causes people to quit, fall off their exercise plan, fall off their diet, fall off rehab, is that all the people they're surrounded with are pressuring them to quit. Maybe not overtly, but let's say that a woman is working out at your gym. She finishes up at six o'clock. She gets home and her family is like, we're starving. Where's dinner? And she has to make two meals because they're not going to eat the same protein and vegetables that she's going to eat. They want some carbs. Where's the fries? Where's the rice? Where's the baked potato, right? This is the kind of pressure that separates people from their goals. It drives a wedge between your clients and your gym and eventually just becomes too much. Like, well, hey, we're not going to start taking the dog out at 6 a.m. just because you want to join a gym. So now she's got to get up at 530 and take the dog out. We're not going to start doing the laundry. Like that's your job, right? And I don't want this to sound sexist. It can easily go the other way too. Well, what do you mean you're going to be late for work if you join this gym? You know, what do you mean you can't pull that overtime shift because you want to do a 5K this weekend. This could work for men or women. The point is that the people that surround our clients are quite often the biggest wedge between our gym and them. The same thing could happen at work. Hey, you can't come back here sweaty at 1 PM. You got a client meeting, right? Or hey, you can't be coming in here late. Or who left this stinky protein shake in the fridge? All of these things make it uncomfortable and hard for our clients to come to our gym. And if we want to keep them longer, we can start pulling in We can change their family's life. We can change their coworker's life. We can change their friend's life. And now what used to be a wedge becomes this thing that keeps them in. It becomes a buttress. It becomes a wall to stop them from leaving. So there are so many reasons to work on referrals that I probably don't even need to tell you anymore, except I will give you one more. The reason that we love referrals so much is because they come from our best clients, the people that we really want to duplicate over and over. Instead of just having having any clients. We want to have our best clients and other versions of themselves. Well, who are those people? They are the friends, coworkers, and family of our best clients. They probably have about the same income. They probably have about the same thoughts about fitness and nutrition, and they just need a pull. Now, our clients are not marketers for us. They are not just going to go out there no matter how much you bribe them and say, hey, come to the gym and talk people into it. They are not going going to do that. That is not their job. That's your job. They can be the conduit, meaning they can introduce you to the right people, but it's your job to grab those people by the hand and pull them into your gym. This is why referrals have to be active. Most of us love referrals. We love the idea of referrals. We understand how important they are, but we're too passive. We sit around and we wait for them, or we take the passive aggressive approach of, I will give you 50% off your membership next month if you bring this person in. Waiting and hoping doesn't fast enough. And these golden ticket approaches of bribes, they can sometimes work, but not for the people that we really care about, right? Like look at your best client. Is a 30% off next month really incentive to them? Like, are they going to refer their friend when they wouldn't have before? I don't think so. Bribes do reward behavior, but they tend to attract or incentivize the wrong people instead of the best people. And they make these referrals feel transactional. And the reality is you're not going to get a lot of out of them anyway. What you actually need is a process whereby you're constantly asking for referrals in hopes of changing the people who surround your client's lives so that you can better support your client, okay? So let's talk about this. If you really want to help somebody, you have to help their family, right? We frame that because the reality is if it's you versus their wife, you versus their husband, you versus their kids, that family is always going to win. And when that family says, you got to stop going to the gym because our dinner's later. You're not prioritizing us on the weekends, or we're always waiting around for you on Saturday morning. You're going to lose every single time. The way that we help them stay on their exercise program is by helping their family and then helping their coworkers and then helping their BFFs and eventually helping our entire community. And the way that happens best is through referral. Let's talk about how to start the referral conversation. Now, I'm going to share a tool with you here that we This is called the Affinity Marketing Cheat Sheet. This is it. So the first thing we're going to do is name the clients that we'd like to clone. You know, our favorite clients in the gym, the people that we'd love to have more people just like. If we could get their identical twin or the person who behaved just like them, you know, we're probably looking at their parent, their kid, their spouse first. So the first thing that we want to do is make a list of, let's say, five clients that we really, really love in our gym. Okay. Mine is like Boo. I'm going to make another one here. David. I'm going to make a Courtney. I'm going to make an Avery. And if there's one, oh, there's Mike. There's actually two Mikes that I'd love to duplicate. So I'm going to call him Mike S. So the first thing I'm going to do is say like, who is closest to this person? Now this happens before I start a conversation with any of these people. What I'm trying to do is identify the next customer in my gym before they're even named. All right. So Boo, who's Boo's family? Well, she's got three kids. They're all adults. She's got a husband and she's got a dad. Okay. So we're going to husband, David, wife. He also has three kids. They're all adults too. Okay. Courtney has four kids, very young and a husband.

UNKNOWN: 9:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

Now, what we really want to do here is use names if we can. So family, parents, younger, a kid, not a kid, wife, young kids. So the next thing that we want to do here is get as specific as we can, like get the name wherever possible. So the reason that I didn't write names in here is because we're starting to get too personal. I'm using like real people from my gym. But instead of writing like three kids and dad, what I would actually want to write here is like their name. So I'm going to just make up spousal names. You get it. Bill. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 10:35

Clarissa. Courtney. Husband. Stephen. Okay. Avery. Parents. Ted and Susan.

UNKNOWN: 10:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 10:55

Okay. My guess, actually, I don't know his wife's name. So there's a key to me as a coach. Like, why don't you know Mike's wife's name? You should. Okay. So let's figure that out. But I'm also using that as a good example here. So then the next thing I'm going to do is like, I'm going to look at their coworkers. Now these might be less familiar to me, but in some cases, some people might actually mention their coworkers. I happen to know that Boo has a coworker named Jen. So I'm going to use that as a good example here too. David is actually retired. okay courtney is stay-at-home mom which we all know is like the hardest job ever student and mike s uh yeah actually he's a financial advisor so what that's what I'm going to do is write down that he's a financial advisor. I don't know any of the people in his office specifically, but that's okay. Then the next thing that I could do is like go to friends. Okay. So here's like Lori. I know she talks about Lori a lot. David has a friend, Kari, Courtney. I'm not actually sure. Avery, let's call her Sarah. Okay. My guess, not sure. Then I can also go to hobbies too. But what you can see here is we're already amassing a list of potential clients for our gym. Like if I were to say, who are the next 20 clients to catalyst likely to be? These are them, right? These are the people who are most closely connected, who have the highest affinity. So affinity is a measure of magnetism between you and your client. I have high affinity with my clients. Then it's a measure of magnetism between your clients and their family, coworkers, friends, and hobbyists. So the closer they are on this chart, the higher the affinity is. And that's why we always want to start with this first, the family, right? They're very tight. There's a very good chance that they are going to come to the gym if they're invited. I'll do a couple of hobbies just to make sure. I'm not really sure what her hobby is there. His is like woodworking. It's not really going to be great. Courtney, it's probably like kids sports or kids all play a lot of sports. She's on the go all the time. But I do know that Mike plays rec hockey, like a men's league. Okay. Now you can put any hobby in there that you want to too. And even, you know, if all I could get out of this whole chart was the woodworking hobby, I would probably approach that too. But here's what we're going to do. Now we're going to look at the people with the highest affinity. Okay. Like these are the people who are most likely to actually get invited to my gym. Then what we're going to do is we're going to start the conversation. So let's back up to that first. So here's what we're going to do. We are going to invite some clients in for a goal review session. We're going to ask them about their progress. And only if they say that they're totally satisfied, happy with their progress, that's when we'll ask for a referral. So if I invite five goal reviews in, I should probably expect to ask for at least two referrals. I can boost that number up if at the pre-frame it by saying, Hey, if things are going perfectly well in 90 days, I'm going to be asking you for a referral. Okay. Like that's what we do at our intake now. And it just, it lets them expect it. So they're not caught off guard. They know it's coming. So at the 90 day mark, for example, or the six month mark, or if the client's been with you for two years, that's even better. You send them a message. Hey, it's time to meet for a goal review. Let's talk about your progress. They come in, you do a measurement. Okay. They're going to answer one of three things. We say, are you totally happy with your progress? Yes, I am. Great. Kind of. of, or no. If they answer, yes, I am, or even kind of, now is our opportunity to ask for a referral. So the first thing you're going to say is like, great, we're so proud of you. I thought that the best way to say thank you would be to invite, and then we turn to the affinity marketing cheat sheet. So let's go back to the affinity marketing cheat sheet and actually walk through some of these examples together. So I'm sitting here with Boo, and I say, hey, Boo, we're so proud of you. Look, I've been thinking about the best way to say thanks for being such a great client. And I remembered that Bill usually takes the winter off from all his hobbies. He kind of gets out of shape. I know he's doing a lot of stuff all summer. He's building stuff and whatever. But in the winter, he tends to get out of shape. Am I remembering that correctly? Boo says, oh, yeah. He just sits on his butt for eight months of the year. Well, what if we did this? What if we invited him in for a two-on-one session with just me and you and him next week? Do you think he would come in? Well, you might, I don't know. You might kill me. Why don't we ask him? And instead of letting the client say, okay, I'll ask him. Because again, the client is not a salesperson. You can say, why don't we call him right now? And you call him on your phone. Okay. And of course, Boo is like, oh, he's going to kill me. Whatever. We're doing this to help everybody. So we call him up. You know, Bill answers the phone. Bill, hey, it's Chris here from the gym, sitting here with Boo. She's doing amazing. We're so proud of her. And he'll probably say something like, yeah, me too. And I'll say, look, I just asked her, do you think you'd come in and do a little workout with the three of us next Tuesday when she's here? Now, what you're doing is you're setting up a two-on-one session because it is going to turn into a no sweat intro. It's not a trial. You don't want to invite them to come and try a class. No, no, no. That's not going to sell them anything. What you're going to do is make an appointment. So the three of us are going to work out together, Boo, Bill, and me. We're going to do a 30-minute session. It's going to be really, really basic, way below boo's skill level. We're going to do it together. They're going to be super pumped. They're going to high five each other at the end. And then we're going to sit down and I'm going to say, Bill, let's talk about your fitness, man. I don't want you just doing nothing all winter. You're not going to throw boo under the bus or whatever, but you're going to say like, you know, what are your plans for the winter for your fitness? And if he tells you he's got a gym membership, just say like, man, that is so good. How's that working for you? Right. And you just basically go into a no sweat and Now, Boo can still be there. If it doesn't feel like high pressure to Bill, that's fine. Let Boo decide if she wants to stay or go. That's fine. But with her sitting there too, number one, he'll be quick to make a decision. Number two, he'll feel very pressured to make a decision to join the gym. And number three, you're doing the right thing for their family. Think how much stronger their relationship would be. I'm sure you've seen this in your gym a hundred times. So that's how we would approach that. Now, let's say that we had David in front of us and we went to Clarissa is David's wife. And we said, David, we're so proud of you. As a way to say thanks for being such a great client, I would love to invite Clarissa. Well, no, man, she goes to that other gym. She loves it. There's no talking her out of it. And you would say, yeah, that's right. I totally get that. I forgot that she was joining that gym. If she's happy, man, I am thrilled because that builds your support network. Then what you would say is like, hey, I know you're retired, but I also know that you hang around with Cuddy quite a bit. That's just how you pronounce that

SPEAKER_00: 18:03

here.

SPEAKER_01: 18:06

What do you think about bringing him in, doing a little workout with him, letting him flip the big tire? I know you guys are both former contractors. You still like doing woodworking and stuff. What if we just brought him in for fun? Now, the farther we go down this list here, this way, the lower affinity, which means the lower leverage your client has on their friend or their coworker or their hobbyist. And so David might be like, no, I'm good. I'll just go back to working out. And then what you're going to say is, totally get it, David. That's so awesome, man. See you in the gym. And at that point too, you could also just go for a client story. So if there's nobody specifically that David's going to bring in, we're going to say, you know what, man, let's just do this. I'm so proud of you. Can you share your story with me? And we'll put it on our Instagram or whatever just to inspire other people that you don't even know. It'll take two minutes. I'll do it on my phone right now. Okay, fine. And then you go down the list of questions. But the reason that we want to come into this conversation with a list already in place is because if we just ask the question, is there anybody in your life that you think should come to this gym? Quite often, they'll say no, or they'll feel guilty, or they'll call that person and warn them, hey, sorry, bro, I just threw you under the bus. If you've ever been in that conversation before, you You feel like, oh God, I just betrayed my friend. But if you come into this conversation and you've already got a name in front of you, you don't have to show them this sheet, but if you've already got somebody specific and you approach it as thanking up, which is to, hey, as a thank you, why don't we get Clarissa in here? You're way more likely to have them see it as an invitation to help them and their spouse or their friend and to have them actually act on it. I don't know if you've ever gone to a high pressure sales person, they've been like, hey, before we leave here, can you give me the name of one of your friends? I did that with a financial advisor before the stock market problems back in 2008. I gave a name and I felt guilty about it since. But done this way, I would feel amazing about inviting even my closest friends or my spouse into the gym. Okay. Let's go down the line here just a little bit more. So if we go to, let's go to Courtney here for a moment. And And okay. Steven maybe is a no, uh, coworker. Okay. Stay at home mom. We put kids sports. Let's approach this one. So what we would say here is, Hey court, um, you know, we've, we've offered to bring Steven in the past. She said, no, let's go down the list. Uh, kids sports court. Um, I know all your kids are in sports. That's gotta get crazy with team parties and trips and all that kind of stuff. Am I right? Yeah. Look, as a thank you for being such a great client, what I'd love to do is invite your kid's soccer team to have their year-end party here. That way the parents don't have to fork over for dinner or whatever while the kids just go nuts. And we'll have two hours right here. You can bring some drinks if you want to. And we'll just do like a fun little Ninja Warrior obstacle course for them. How's that sound? And then what you're doing is you're getting that entire group of kids into the gym. Now, the only place that we would ever say, give a free trial to your group program is with kids because with kids, if they try it and they love it, they are going to sell it to their parents, right? Kids are salespeople. Adults are not. So this is the one place where you might say, okay, here's this offer to bring the kids in and have a party or a kid's birthday party or whatever it is. Like you find an excuse. It's the year-end banquet. It's the kid's birthday party, whatever. So you could say also like, hey, I know these kids' birthday parties get really expensive. What if we held the birthday party for one of your kids here? I'm happy to do it. Like I'll come in, I'll open up the gym, I'll run a couple of games, I'll disappear while you have cake, and then I'll come back and clean up. What you're going to get there is a dozen kids who are thrilled about your program. They're all going to sign a waiver. They're all going to be dropped off and picked up by a parent, and they're going to go home and sell your program. And then the parent is going to be on your email list, and you can send them information about your program later. Not as direct as a direct referral, a two-on-one workout, but it's still super duper effective. Another way that we did this in the past was, hey, I know you put a lot of care into what you feed your kids. I also know that the other parents don't know. And what if I came in and just did a nutrition seminar for your kids on the team at the next practice? And I've done dozens of these over the years. I'll show up at the arena. We'll find a quiet spot. I'll give the parents a one-page handout called How to Feed a Hockey Animal and talk to them a little bit about what to feed their kid before and after a game and then do Q&A. And they'll ask me, what do I feed them on tournament weekend? And I'll answer that question. And everything's bulleted for them on the handout. Then what I'm going to do is contact each one of those parents afterward and talk about the kid's program or get them on the email list to help in our gym. This is how affinity marketing works. It's very simple. It's actually easy once you get some reps in. If I was looking at Mike, I'll just quickly say, hey, Mike, I know this is a busy time of the year in the financial planning industry. I know it's a stressful time. The markets are bananas right now. What if I came in at lunchtime? We did a brown I'll talk about reducing stress or I'll talk about stretches you can do at your office. That's up to you. You're the coach. Look at what Mike needs. What are Mike's problems in the workplace that you can solve? Offer to do that. Offer to get in touch with the person who could coordinate that, if that's HR or whoever, and then just go in and do it. And you're going to capture so many leads that way. Look, this is how affinity marketing works. And we have to be as deliberate about affinity marketing as we are any other way. our other marketing. And so while gym owners put a lot of thought into being consistent on Instagram or maybe tweaking their Facebook ads, they don't put a lot of thought into referrals. But the referral marketing funnel, if you look at it separately, it's almost more important than all the other marketing funnels. Because if you bring somebody in through a Facebook ad and then you do your referral marketing with them, that Facebook lead turns into two customers. It's a multiple It's so important to be able to do this. And it's a skill that you have to learn and then you have to practice. So a couple of highlights from what I just showed you. Number one, if you want to get referrals, know everything that you can about the client. Ask for a referral by the person's name. Number two, take the referral process out of their hands. Don't wait. Don't wait for the client to be asked at Christmas dinner. Don't wait for the client to go home and sell the program to their spouse because you never know. Maybe they're fighting over who takes the garbage out that week or whatever. take the initiative. Forget the incentive, right? Your best clients probably don't really care that much about bribes or the free months. While that might work once in a blue moon, it's usually not the way that the best referrals happen. You can recognize them without a bribe. So give them a gift after, send them a coffee card. Hey, take David out for a coffee after the gym as my way to thank you both. Give them some recognition in the class. Hey, by the way, everybody, Bill is here today. Boo brought him in. They're married. Let's give it up for them. Okay. The most important point though, is that referrals are not passive. And while they can build retention in your gym, you have to be active about it. Like all other methods of retention that I talked about, you can't just like wait and hope that it happens, or you can't just leave it up to the programming or blame the coach when people leave. Retention is as active as marketing and sales are, and you have to be deliberate about it. You Meet with your clients. Measure their progress. If they love what they're doing, ask for a referral. Take the reins on that referral. Call the lead yourself. Invite them in. Thank up. Pitch it as a thank you. As a thank you to you, I'd like to offer you this. And hey, keep growing your gym with the right people who are going to stick around so you don't get caught in the marketing flywheel. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And look, referrals are great for marketing. They're even better for retention.

UNKNOWN: 26:25

you