Casey Conrad at the IHRSA Institute in Lake Tahoe

I'm here at the IHRSA Institute for Professional Club Management speaking on Marketing. Great group of attendees this year and WOW, what a location!

We did a really cool team building exercise today and if you watch the video for today's post you'll see me embarass myself on the world wide web! All good fun.

Of course, in addition to having some fun during down time the sessions here are fabulous. Great opportunity to learn new things, remind us of things that work and network with other industry professionals.

My visit to Urban Active, Columbus, OH

I spent an entire day in Columbus and toured 5 Urban Active Fitness clubs. For those of you who followed this story in the industry the owner, Royce Pullman, was a former Gold's Gym operator with 18 locations. He created his own brand, Urban Active, and broke off from Gold's. Two+ years later and he now has 33 locations with the ultimate goal of 100. I have no doubt they'll get there. Really nice clubs and the value proposition is incredible. 40,000+ square foot locations; group x, basketball courts, Cycle rooms, Cardio Cinemas, childcare, tanning, big juice bars and monster cardio and strength training areas and indoor running tracks. All this for $39/month!

Too much to type about in one blog posting but let me bullet point out key insights I took away.
* Strong sales force (3+ per location).
* Scoreboarding every single day.
* Strong guerrilla marketing by every sales staff member.
* Add-on EFT's for tanning and personal training.
* PT contracts are for ONE YEAR. Yes, you read that right. More on that later.
* Very open floor concept creates a great environment with lots of energy.
* Sales systems with a lot of accountability (what a concept).

Two videos are below. One is a tour of their most recent Columbus location and the other are sales, marketing or operational insights that I took snipits of. Enjoy.

Casey Conrad's Visit to Galaxy Fitness

Long time club owner/operator, Denny Doyle, from Greensburg, PA opened a new club about 15 minutes from his first one, Westmorland Athletic Club. WAC is a full service club where his new one, Galaxy Fitness, is a low price model. Interesting, as he is not the first club operator who is opening a low cost box to diversify and/or to beat a potential competitor to the market place. Difference is that his model is more of a hybrid with the low cost for fitness only and then an add-on for group x. This is becoming a common approach. Also, he has a Parisi Speed School in the facility. This is a very interesting angle to reach kids and even the family market. The club conversion from a cinema is cool.

Casey visits Precision Fitness

The first club I visited was Precision Fitness in PA. Smaller town, probably 10,000 square feet, owned by a chiropractor and the GM is an Exercise Physiologist. The layout of the club is interesting, as you'll see, and their facility is amazingly clean--actually looks brand new after 4 years.

Caseys VisitOurClub.com discovery adventure begins!

As many of you know, I have planned a near cross country trip to visit health clubs to discover what they are doing that gives them a competitive advantage. My goal is to blog the cool and unique things I see along the way. I started my journey today and this video gives you a quick introduction to me and my travel companion. :)

Casey Conrad talks health club eMarketing at FitLife Convention

This past weekend I was at the FitLife Convention in Bend, OR. Health clubs from OR, WA, WY, MT and ID were there. I gave a seminar on eMarketing emphasizing that clubs need to incorporate capture mechanisms into every marketing effort made. Whether someone finds you through the Internet or they get to your website through a more traditional medium your primary goal is to engage them and find ways to capture their contact information. This allows you to turn them from a visitor into a prospect.

If you want to see the free replay of a webinar I recently gave on eMarketing go to:

http://www.smartclubmarketing.com/web-leads-into-sales/

Find more ways to leverage the Internet and your marketing will become more effective and less costly!

Casey Conrad: How to make club marketing cool!

I recently bought a pair of really cool shoes called Five Fingers. You wouldn't believe the response I've gotten to these. Watch this video and ask yourself what would happen if you could create raving fans like this.