By Ray Algar

What does your club stand for? Providing an antidote to the stressful lives that our members live? Creating a special community of people who share the wish to be fit and healthy? Becoming a special place in members’ lives? It sounds like such an innocent question, but scratch deeper and it reveals some fundamental truth about the long-term strategy and prospects for a club.

What is market positioning?
Think of some well known brands and see how you have framed them in your memory. With the Body Shop, I think of their fair-trade policy and strong stance on products free from animal testing. What about Apple Computers, who are seen as ‘anti establishment,’ immensely innovative, responsive and a company that produces beautifully designed products? Positioning may be defined as creating a clear, distinctive and attractive market position in the minds of prospective members

Why is positioning necessary?
Most of us now suffer from information overload as our everyday lives become increasingly complex. The proliferation of multi-channel television, radio, the internet and newspapers means that thousands of new messages are trying to engage with us, seven days a week. Slowly, we are being overwhelmed with information and suffering from ‘Choice Trauma.’ Even simple purchases such as buying a coffee, have now been transformed into a complicated science.

Once consumers have registered a brand in their mind, it tends to endure. That is why repositioning a brand is so challenging. Imagine new owners repositioning a male-dominated body building gym to a premium-priced health club and spa.

Now imagine your health club has a clear and distinctive position in the mind of members. What if your club was known for being the friendliest in town, or even in your region? What a powerful position that is. You may manage a small club and parts of it could look tired, but what if everything you did underpinned your friendly market position. In a world where more people feel socially isolated with friends and family widely dispersed, what an important place your small health club could become.

How to begin to position your health club
Curves is the women-only fitness franchise that has grown to 9,500 international clubs in just 14 years and has entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest fitness chain. Spare a moment to consider that statistic; that is an average of 678 clubs every year for 14 years! In terms of market segmentation, Gary Heavin, the founder, identified women who wished to lose weight. Many of these women were habitual dieters, struggling to keep weight off once lost. Heavin believed that weight management advice and a short 30-minute exercise program needed to be combined.

In creating a desirable market position, Curves needed to answer the following:
* Why were women being put off health clubs?
* What do women above their ideal weight need from a health club?
* How is this segment presently being served?
* What are the main barriers to women achieving their weight management goals?
* How do we wish women to perceive our brand?
* What adjectives would members use to describe our brand?
* What resources do we need to mobilize to deliver what is required?
* Is there a new and attractive market position that we can claim?

Developing a positioning statement
You can begin to develop a positioning statement, once the above have been answered. This is a short statement that clearly articulates how the club wishes prospective and existing members to perceive it.
Curves’ positioning statement is:

Discover a gym where women change their lives 30 minutes at a time.

You may find the following process useful for synchronizing your market position with your club’s values and ultimately the way you interact with prospective and existing members.

Brand Value
What unequivocally defines the essence of your club and affects everything you do?

Market Position
Creating a clear, distinctive and attractive market position in the minds of prospective members

Manifestations
The physical evidence that supports your business values and market position

Staff actions
The actions and behaviour of staff with prospective and existing members

What we will measure
The ways in which you validate that you are practicing what you preach

What if my club does not have any distinctive qualities?
That’s simple. Create one! Take it upon yourself to discover two or three things that your club does really well. Then galvanize your team to make one of those service features the best that it can possibly be. Ensure that it passes the test of being:

* Distinctive
* Difficult for a rival to imitate
* Compelling to members and your staff team
* Consistent with your club vision

Once you have discovered your unique attribute, flaunt it at every opportunity. Be proud of it and make it impossibly difficult for another club to even try and imitate it.

‘If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything’
Malcolm X
American civil rights activist

Summary of Key actions
1. Conduct research among your members, staff and suppliers to build a picture of your club’s unique qualities. Discover what your club stands for
2. Identify and understand where the needs of new and existing members are not being met
3. Develop a market position for your club that is clear, distinctive and attractive
4. Ensure that all your marketing activities synchronize with your market position. Be bold and change those things that conflict with and undermine it
5. Ensure that you measure your club’s actions against your market position

The above article is excerpted from Mastering Health Club Management by Ray Algar and a number of outstanding contributing authors. Ray is managing director of Oxygen Consulting which provides strategic insights to the global leisure industry.
Email for orders and enquiries: smartideas@oxygen-consulting.co.uk
Website: www.oxygen-consulting.co.uk

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