3 Ways to Decrease TTV for Your Trialers
So what is TTV and why does it matter?
Time to Value (TTV) is the amount of time that it takes for a new client or trialer to realize value from your product or service. The goal, over time, is to decrease your TTV so that the delay between a client buying a trial and them receiving the promised benefit of visiting your studio is as short as possible.
The reality is, once a lead has made a purchase and become a trialer, you have a limited amount of time to show them the value of their purchase before they churn.
In fitness, prospective members or trialers are buying into a long-term outcome, we all know that it will take time for them to achieve their goals, but in order for them to get there they need to have many short-term experiences along the way. Let’s call these micro-wins. These micro-wins are what tell a trialer that they are in the right place and on the right path to achieving their long-term goals.
The truth is, in these days of increased instant gratification, patience with attaining results is likely the lowest it’s ever been—clients tend to churn a lot faster. That’s why it’s crucial that studio teams try to create as short a TTV as possible. If a trialer can get a return on their investment faster, they are more likely to stick around long-term!
Before we dive into what you can do to decrease TTV and get those early micro-wins. We first need to define the value or benefit that your trailers are expecting to receive. The key here is that this is the value from the trialer’s perspective, not the value that you want to deliver. If someone has purchased a trial from a class-based boutique fitness studio, we can really only make three assumptions on the value they are looking for:
- Community
- Enhanced physical fitness
- A minor or significant change in physique
That’s it. In a nutshell, those are the reasons your clients are giving you money. Ease of booking, slick technology for delivering classes, and amenities are great add-ons, but your trialers are giving you money because you’ve lead them to believe that your studio is the best place for them to get more physically fit, lose weight, or gain muscle, and do it all with a supportive community of coaches and members. Until those things happen, they are not seeing value.
Now that we’re clear on what value means in this context. Let’s look at 3 micro-wins to get trialers there as fast as possible.
- Community: an emotional micro-win
The nature of fitness is a focus on the physical, but the best thing you can do to decrease TTV and increase the likelihood of a trialer sticking around to get to their long-term goal is to deliver a momentum building emotional win right away. The quickest way to do this is to introduce them to at least one other member on their first day, so they are immediately feeling the emotional benefit of belonging and the support of a community.
- Enhanced physical fitness: a performance micro-win
In the world of physical fitness gains, it’s easy to think that there isn’t a whole lot that can be accomplished over the course of a 7-day trial, but that simply isn’t true. Remember, we aren’t looking for big changes immediately, just a small victory that signals to a trialer that they are already on the right path.
The key here is trying to find just one thing that a trialer could improve on throughout the week that will actually be foundational to their progress moving forward. For example, soft landings while jumping, not “locking out” their knees or arching their back while performing exercises in a standing position. Even within a week, they will feel different by doing these things. Less pain means an increased ability to perform. It is up to your studio team to communicate with each other what the focus of each trialer should be throughout their trial, one small note in a trialer’s account can make a big difference in decreasing their TTV.
- A minor or significant change in physique: a physical micro-win
It’s pretty safe to say that every person that purchases a trial for your studio wants to look good “nekkid”. And the quickest way for them to get there, to reduce the TTV of this micro-win, is consistency in training and nutrition. One way we can do this, even on just a 7-day trial, is to set mico-goals with trialers, setting them up for micro-wins. For example, getting to at least 3 classes in their first week, and focusing on having a clean protein with each meal. Two micro-goals that your studio team can follow-up with them on over the course of their trial. That’s it, nothing crazy, but just enough for them to see that their long-term goal of losing weight, or gaining muscle is attainable, and that your studio and team are the environment and catalyst to get them there.
Trialers that experience small victories, or micro-wins, early on are more likely to stick with a training program compared to those who do not. Focusing on Time to Value (TTV) for your trailers will undoubtedly increase your conversion rates and contribute directly to studio growth.
