GFAA Best Practice: Rebrand Existing Programs to Attract New Customers

Laura Mosier is the Fitness Director at Vaquero Club in Westlake, Texas.

Laura Mosier on the importance of rebranding existing programs to attract new customers:

Knowing your customer is the vital first step in effective planning of any programming. At Vaquero Club, we have a very popular yoga program facilitated, welcoming between three and six female members per session, positive numbers for our small club. As we strive to marry some of our fitness and golf programming services, we wanted to market the yoga class to our core male golfers to enhance their stretching capabilities – but not one of them signed up. So, without altering any details of the yoga curriculum, we simply rebranded the class and called it “Men’s Golf Conditioning Yoga” with this description: “Improve balance, stability, muscle endurance, core strength and ROM, and maximize your golf game.” We figured out the most convenient times for them to attend, which happened to be on Tuesday and Thursday evenings when there were no conflicts with other activities at the club, and immediately had 28 members register for the class! There’s no long-term commitment to attend these sessions and we just charge their member accounts for the classes they attend.

Laura Mosier on the business impact of rebranding existing programs to attract new customers:

With such a great response, we had to order additional yoga mats, and we even hired a stretching specialist, and strategically had her stretch some key golf influencers at our club. Again, I marketed it as “Improve your golf game with one-on-one assisted stretching.” Word got around, and those members talking to each other became our most effective selling tool. In fact, we just hired our third stretching specialist because they’re so busy. If we tell members, “It’s good for you.” nobody comes. But, if we say, “It will improve your golf game.” they can’t wait to participate. We stretch members at the practice tee before hosting club tournaments, and they can’t get enough. When they team up for internal matches, they compete over who gets to hire our stretching specialists, because they feel that’s the secret weapon. The increased flexibility really helps their golf game and, because we renamed our existing yoga program, our male golfers now understand and appreciate the benefits. We made sure to keep this group engaged in yoga during quarantine and COVID-19 closures by emailing videos, and even informing them of free online yoga classes offered by some of the biggest names in fitness.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email lmosier@vaqueroclub.com