Using Member
s
EX
ps
own
!
To Improve
Your Business
By Celeste Kirby-Brown
C
eleste Kirby-Brown
explains how
member surveys
can help take your business
success to new levels.
In 2006 I attended the annual Fitness
New Zealand conference. I was at
the Auckland event sitting between
Justin Tamsett, Professional Trainer
and Coach, and Reece Zondag, CEO
Les Mills. We were listening to Richard
Beddie CEO of Fitness New Zealand
speak about the insights from the annual
survey they conducted to clubs across
New Zealand. Justin leaned over and
whispered “Ezypay should do that.”
What he meant was Ezypay should do a
survey of the fitness industry. There was
a lack of data and information on the
industry and Fitness Australia was not
yet in a position to run a major national
survey. However Richard Beddie and the
Fitness New Zealand team were running
a comprehensive industry survey and
bringing forward some really great data.
In 2007 we ran our first survey. We
focused solely on clubs asking owners
and operators general information
about their business. We launched the
results at FILEX in 2008. I think we got
something like 195 respondents. The
next year we ran it again including New
Zealand clubs this time. We achieved
275 respondents and asked almost the
same questions. From this we were able
to produce a report comparing this year
and last year’s data. Not much had
changed except club sizes decreased
as ladies only clubs rolled out across
Australia and New Zealand.
Over the next few years we ran the
survey each year. Each year we would
change it slightly. The changes included
WHAT’S NEW IN FITNESS - AUTUMN 2014
tweaking a few of the questions or
focusing on a specific area of interest like
sales and marketing. We also included
a member survey where we asked
members (current and past) across
Australia and New Zealand specific
questions on their experiences. We
also started creating different types of
data with the insights we received from
respondents. Over the last few years we
started developing infographs which
are graphical representations of the
information. We also created videos with
experts and their opinions, as well as
reports and trend documents.
Last year we ran the survey and had
over 20,000 members and 1,500 clubs
respond across Australia and New
Zealand. We produced a trend report,
five infographs and a comprehensive
report. All of these documents are
available for free download from our
website.
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