Network Magazine (NZ) SPRING-2019 NZ-Final | Page 9

ANYTIME FITNESS CHALLENGE DEMONSTRATES FUNDRAISING POWER OF CLUB COMMUNITIES 1 thing I’ve learnt Anytime Fitness recently announced that its third annual fundraiser for suicide prevention awareness raised over $330,000. The 2019 ‘Tread As One’ event, held over 24 hours from 30 May to 1 June, saw over 250 Anytime Fitness clubs around Australia participate in a donation drive for Australian charity R U OK? Anytime Fitness encouraged its nationwide community of 500,000 members to jump on a treadmill for suicide prevention awareness. The Tread As One event was started by the community, for the community. A group of friends from Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs who were bereaved by suicide started a 24-hour community treadmill challenge event to raise awareness and funds for suicide prevention. Since 2017, the Anytime Fitness Australia community has raised a total of $1.1 million. The funds raised by the 2019 Anytime Fitness treadmill challenge will enhance R U OK?’s capacity to improve and sustain its campaign activity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; provide additional resourcing for LGBTQI+ communities and help R U OK? to further its reach into multicultural communities. Source: Anytime Fitness Jamie Hayes, Founder healthyinspirations.com.au, dietflex.com.au, and ketofitness.com “The success or failure of a fitness business has little to do with how good they are at the technical stuff, but more to do with the leader’s ability to attract members and clients in an increasingly competitive environment. In this online world, organic social media marketing works for very few marketers and takes a lot of time, as Facebook throttles any posts so less than 5% see them. The way we were… Back in February 1991 a Network magazine feature penned by Gary Leong turned the mirror on fitness instructors to pose the question, how fit are you – or rather – R U Fit? ‘Fitness - it’s the buzz word of the nineties – it’s progressed from a leisure activity to a lifestyle... a career... it’s our business! As fitness professionals we spend most of our time designing fitness programs for other people. But what about our own fitness? Are we as meticulous with our own health and fitness as we are about our clients?’ Lesson: business owners need to learn about making ‘paid traffic’ work – using Facebook ad manager to deliver ads to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and even WhatsApp. There are 50 million businesses on Facebook, but only 6 million Facebook ad accounts. Bonus lesson: as the #1 goal of new members is weight loss, you’ll attract way more members and clients by promoting a weight loss program, through which people become members, than by promoting membership and hoping that weight loss will follow.” Click here to learn from Jamie how to add an extra 10 to 20 new high-paying members a month using proven weight loss programming and marketing. NETWORK SPRING 2019 | 9