Reopening your gym is a huge opportunity to learn from your clients, remove barriers in your sales process, and start the next leg of your journey on the right foot.

A lot of that is tied to how you market your reopening – even if Day 1 has already passed. These ideas apply to more than just the date you literally reopen the doors for the first time. It’s all about communications – and realizing that it’s your responsibility to provide information and empathy during this transition process.

You need to have a plan to market that you’re back in business or that you will be soon. We’ve broken it down into five essential elements.

Capacity

How much space in your schedule will you have? How much time before reopening? And how much money can you spend on marketing? If you’re already open, look at your schedule to see how much room you have to fill. Even if you can’t spend much on marketing, be sure your resources match your plan.

Messaging

The 6 Cs are guidelines for strong messaging. Run everything through these filters before going public with them. Make everything clear, concise, compelling, credible, and customer centric, and give them a call to action (tell them what to do next).

Awareness

Your campaigns to promote your reopening should achieve three objectives. Inform your clients about your reopening plans through phone calls and text messages, updates to your website, posts on social media, and group emails. Emphasize health and safety measures you’ve implemented. And build some excitement.

Activity

What’s going to bring people in the door? Are you planning enough activity to generate the lead volume you’ll need? Think about reopening offers, reactivation, your email list, “bring a friend” promotions, social channels, and even paid advertising.

Conversions

Collect all the basic information – name, phone numbers, and email addresses, at least. (It’s surprising how often this gets overlooked!) Get them into a sales conversation without relying on a landing page or sales copy to do all the work for you. Anticipate their objections and have your responses in mind. And be sure to follow up, eight to 12 times at least (or until they tell you no).