Dear Gym Owners, Please Stop being Salesy and Do This Instead

When you step through those gym doors, emotions are typically ramping up and they can vary wildly for each individual. Serious lifters are amping themselves up to move heavy weight and get that extra rep in. CrossFit warriors mentally prepare before checking how grueling the WOD is going to be. Cardio enthusiasts are getting into the zone before a session that pushes them to their absolute limit.

With all of this in mind, why disrupt the state of mind that your clients truly want to be in by selling them on something they simply don't need? An unwanted pitch sours the session, and enough of them feed the attrition problem you're already fighting. The industry loses roughly one in three members every year (HFA 2025 Benchmarking Report), and most cancellations land in months two through four, exactly when a new member is most likely to be getting pitched. Not everyone needs a personal trainer or wants to sign up for a group activity. The gym is already intimidating for beginners (half of Americans say they've experienced “gymtimidation,”. If you pressure them into signing up to the different things that you offer, it can be a real turnoff.

"But as a business owner, I need to make money to keep the gym running."
"I have certain metrics to hit so I need to keep upselling."
"I get a commission of everything I sell so I need to push more."

To some degree, we all understand that. It's a business, and you opened it with dreams of being successful. We aren’t advocating for you to close down your business or make less money.

We want you to do it in a smarter, more time-efficient way. I don't want you to feel like you need to use sleazy sales tactics and make the conversation uncomfortable whether you are trying to get someone new to join the gym or having a sale that you want everyone to know about. So let's talk about a better approach, one that doesn't feel like upselling at all.

Let your advertising do the selling for you. There are plenty of ways to do that (posters, socials, community events), but the most undervalued channel is one you probably already own: the TV on your wall.

Turning Pixels into Promotion

Some think a TV is just there for entertainment and nothing else. You can pay for cable and throw on a few different channels that might get watched for a little bit but people aren't there to watch TV from the comfort of an elevated heart rate. You can throw on your socials and just have it continually scroll but that means you need to hook up your phone, laptop, or tablet to keep showing. There's a lot more that screen can do for you.

Using your TV is one of the best ways to advertise without directly getting in a customer's face and disturbing their workout. Run slides with current promotions, personal trainer bios, and your group class schedules. Film a 20-second clip of a trainer demonstrating proper form on a lift and add it to the rotation so beginners get educated without having to ask. One of our Anytime Fitness locations out in Oakdale put its challenges and personal training content on screen and saw sign-ups go up!

You aren't pushing information at them; you're educating them bit by bit, and over time they come to appreciate what you offer. When the time is right and they do feel comfortable enough to take you up on a group class or personal training session, they'll start the conversation themselves, and that conversation is a completely different one. Les Mills' MVP research found group training members stay an average of 22.6 months versus 16.2 for gym-floor-only members, and retention researcher Dr. Paul Bedford's data shows a member who has two or three staff interactions in a month is about 50% more likely to show up the next month. Screens don't replace those conversations. They start them.

How can I easily do this?

This is exactly what we built Loop TV for. It's a plug-and-play device that puts licensed, business-appropriate TV channels on your screens, with a simple place to upload your own photos and videos to run in between.

Got an upcoming promotion you want to share with everyone in your gym? Have it appear on your TV, and if they do have the interest, they will come up and ask your staff about it.
Tired of making paper copies of schedules that are changing weekly or monthly? Post your schedules with our software and changing them takes way less time.

Want to give more information about group classes coming up or share a picture of your staff? Loop handles all of it.

Your gym should be a place where people want to go every day and pushing different products or services in their face does the exact opposite. Advertising what you have to offer is a great way of getting the same messaging out but at a time and moment that works for them. A member glancing up between sets at a promo on the screen is far more receptive than one being interrupted mid-workout. Members will know your staff by name because they've seen the profiles on screen: that's the welcoming environment that sets you apart from the competition.
 
If you want to stop being salesy and want to start advertising your business in a friendlier, more effective way, go to loop.tv and see what your Loop TV screens can do for you.