Planet Fitness Change Plan
March 15, 2013 Introduction
Planet Fitness is an American fitness franchise that originated from Newington, New Hampshire. Planet fitness was founded in 1992 when Michael Grondahl took over a struggling fitness facility. Grondahl decided to decrease his prices of his facility to better compete with his competitors and currently there are 11 corporate facilities along with national Planet Fitness franchises. The Planet Fitness brand promise is that their facilities are a “Judgment Free Zone” (About Planet Fitness, 2013). As a fitness facility competitor, Planet Fitness offers fitness memberships for as little as $10 a month plus a $29 initiation fee, which is drastically, lower than its national competitors. In order to maintain their position as the low cost fitness facility, they must deliver 100% on this promise to help membership fees low while providing great workout facilities. As it stands now, Planet Fitness needs to make some modifications to some of their protocols, specifically in the way their membership sales are designed. Instead of having different employees in charge of only one area such as front desk, or giving tours, these two roles need to be united in order to flourish with carrying out the promise of providing low-cost monthly memberships. Although Planet Fitness is a mixture of corporate facilities as well as franchise facilities through eliminating the role of “membership relations specialist” who are only responsible for selling the memberships, and incorporating the actual personal trainers into the mix of selling additional memberships, there can be less staff required on the payroll as well as more qualified staff members to take on this duty when it comes to servicing the members. This is where the additional responsibilities will generate more revenue for commercial marketing and advertising of Planet Fitness. Although each facility will largely vary, by emphasizing the need for staff members to be well equipped with the knowledge that they need to promote and sell memberships, Planet Fitness will be able to better help potential members understand why Planet Fitness is the preferred fitness facility for them, while making sure that the proper number of staff members are at each facility without having to waste additional variable labor hours.
External Analysis Like many fitness facilities, Planet Fitness is in the fitness industry not only to promote and sell a service, but also to sell various products. The current issue with Planet Fitness is that while many individuals believe that fitness is important for one’s health, not everyone feels the need to join a gym due to rising and sometimes hidden costs and fees. Fitness and the desire to want to stay fit is not like everyday essentials that one deems necessary to purchase like; housing, food, clothing or gas. Jamie Medeiros, Director of marketing for Planet Fitness, said that “the company was focused not on trying to lure consumers from other facilities but on enticing those who had avoided gyms altogether. We go after the 85 percent who don’t belong to a gym now or who have never belonged to a gym”. Going to a gym is not at the top of everyone’s priority list and with current marketing tactics aimed at individuals that are not members of gyms; this lack of desire to have a gym membership makes generating revenue by means of selling membership difficult sometimes. Planet Fitness needs to ensure that they are using all of its money for marketing and expenses wisely to keep up with their current $10 a month fitness memberships. So with much of Planet Fitness sales coming from walk-ins, there should be a stronger effort in attracting these walk-in clients. Currently much of Planet Fitness’ external marketing does not actually exist, you may see a billboard here and there generating some inquiry into the fitness facility however this form of marketing may not generate the appeal to change the