Courtesy of Omnify, a SwimSwam partner.
Following two years of living with a pandemic and its many disruptions to our lives, it is time to steady the ship again. While the world has certainly changed in the last two years, we have adapted to every challenge thrown our way. Swim schools have had to deal with their own set of challenges during this time – from working with lower capacities to dealing with staffing shortages and maintaining hygienic conditions round the clock. In fact, in the UK alone, nearly 2 million youngsters lost the opportunity to practice their swimming skills due to the pandemic.
This year, every swim school needs to grab the opportunity to grow as they seek to recover from the challenges faced in the last two years. There are a number of avenues that can be explored as swim schools work to expand their business. From improving the quality of programs to offering a wider variety of classes and even welcoming more age groups, swim schools can build a solid strategy guaranteed to generate better results.
If you have been struggling to draw up an effective strategy to drive your swim school to new highs then these tactics may be just what you have been looking for!
How to grow your swim school?
- Optimize marketing and communication
- Get creative with your programs
- Prioritize member delight
- Improve the swim school experience
- Automate your operations
The tactics suggested here are particularly relevant in today’s landscape, taking into account the complexities that swim schools are now faced with. Let us look at each of these in greater detail.
1. Optimize marketing and communication
Before you go about your swim school expansion, you will need to refine your marketing strategy to attract more people to your classes. You can start by going through all the contacts you have collected over the years – interested leads who dropped off, former students, and any other contacts you have in your email list can help you increase registrations now.
Segregate them into different groups such that you can target them more effectively. This would largely depend on the type of classes you offer and the ones that you’re prioritizing now. You could split up your list on the basis of age, expertise, or even current versus expired memberships to align your communications with each group accordingly.
A segregated contact list will also help you develop more accurate target profiles that you can use to sharpen your social media marketing strategy. This would be particularly useful on Facebook, thanks to the platform’s extensive advertising tools.
You can also attract more relevant people to your swim school through communication that connects with your target customer profiles. If you have a website, make sure your copy is tight, yet impactful. Maintain active profiles on the social media platforms where you’d find your target audience – create content around aquatic sports, best-practices, and safety measures and build conversations that bring value to your audience. Engaging organically can even help you understand their preferences on a deeper level.
2. Get creative with your programs
Improving the quality of your programs adds immediate value to your swim school. A wider variety of programs means people can be more specific with their choices and you can attract more visitors to your pool. Study your market carefully before you work on your programs – study the gaps in your services today as well the interests and preferences of your target audience.
Your program sheet depends heavily on the member profiles you serve, so make sure you have a good understanding of what they are looking for and the timings that would work best for them. If you teach school and college students, for example, it would be best to schedule more programs around the holidays and offer exciting discounts to attract more members.
Study the programs you currently have on offer. You could offer more classes for the programs that are currently most popular with your members. You will also be able to observe what isn’t working for you and create new programs that might be more appealing to your members instead.
3. Prioritize member delight
Members are essential to every swim school. Not only do they ensure recurring revenue, they also keep your pool buzzing through the year! Reviewing your memberships regularly is a great way to improve your retention. Retaining more members will help you expand through your existing community and bring you more solid leads through referrals in the long run.
Take a look at what your members love about your services and what you could do to add further value to their experience. Add a personal touch to your services to connect better with your members. You could even offer private classes to those who may need it, while also revising the programs for your group classes to challenge your members and help them build on their skills. Adding premium benefits like rewarding loyalty programs to your membership tiers is another great way to bring your members closer to your brand.
Aside from the pool, there are a number of things you can do to boost revenue on the days when you have few or no classes at the facility. Enabling walk-ins will allow your members to visit the facility round the week and spend quality time with their friends and family. Setting up a pool store that sells branded merchandise, swimwear, and accessories would also be a great draw for your members. It would serve as a convenience for visitors who may have forgotten to carry essential supplies with them and act as a steady support for your revenue generation.
4. Improve the swim school experience
The last two years have been disruptive in many ways and this has naturally had an impact on the way you interact with your members and how you offer your services. Today, improving the experience you offer from check-in to check-out every time someone visits your pool can create a strong impression that helps you stand out against your competition.
Hiring has been a significant challenge across the industry over the last two years, but it is now essential to shore up your staff. A stronger, more coordinated team will help you establish a smoother experience by allowing you to pay more attention to detail and the individual student during every class. You can also track member preferences to optimize your classes and help your instructors interact with members more effectively.
Shoring up your hospitality and services outside the pool can also make a huge difference to the poolside experience. With a cafe at your facility, you would be ensuring that members spend more time at the pool after their session and enjoy the ambiance you create. Additionally, you will be able to set a menu that advocates a healthy diet for your members with smoothies, salads, and juices offering the right balance of nutrition and flavor!
5. Automate your operations
As you begin to expand your business, you would likely be handling more classes, more students, and more instructors. Keeping your operations running smoothly can become increasingly challenging as you expand. You will need to devote more time and resources to your operations and this could stop you from channeling your growth effectively.
With time being essential to helping you grow, minimizing your efforts in running day-to-day operations at the pool will help you focus on improving your services. Automating your business with technology is a great way to optimize your operations and even simplify your work. Enabling self-scheduling will also allow members to schedule classes at their convenience with the instructor of their choice.
Using the right pool scheduling and management software will provide a real-time access to data that ultimately cuts down any potential scheduling errors or overlaps and makes your services a lot more accessible to your members.
Time to do more with less!
In 2022, expanding your operations will need you to plan smart and plan minimally. This is the time to re-evaluate your business and your resources. Consolidate your team and automate time consuming operations. This will help you spend most of your time on improving the experience at your swim school and help you build a stronger reputation within the community.
Choosing an intuitive swim school management software can help you communicate effectively with members and allow them to schedule classes online, while also allowing you to manage their data and simplify your workflow through a single platform, leading to smarter decisions and better results in the long run.
Get in touch with Omnify anytime for a lot more information that has not been covered in this piece. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.