Scaling Up: The Ultimate Guide to Taking Your Kids Activity Business to the Next Level

Consider franchising

Another exciting possibility for growing your business is to franchise your club! This means expanding your kids activity business into more locations under separate owners. For example, McDonalds is a super well known franchise. Each restaurant is run by a different owner, a different group of team members and serves a different community. In exchange for running a branch, the franchisee gets to use the established business model, logo, menu names and so on! Similarly, your club can expand in this way too!

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Utilise social media marketing

A great way of attracting and finding new customers is by investing in marketing. But, running ads and utilising marketing doesn’t have to cost you a fortune! A great, affordable option is to run ads on social media. This will allow you to generate awareness without spending crazy amounts, as you can set a daily or lifetime budget behind the campaign. You can easily run successful marketing campaigns for your club with a very small budget and social media platforms are a great way to start out!

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[.pink__text]Not sure what to post on socials? Download our social media planner today![.pink__text]

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Increase your prices to reflect the value you offer

A lot of the time, business owners will undersell themselves and their businesses, even if they are solving a very real problem for their customers. If this is the case, you might be able to grow your club simply by increasing the price of classes you are already providing. As long as you are transparent with the value you provide and increase prices little by little, parents will be understanding. Think about it like this: if your goal is to increase the price of a class from £6 to £10 it’s a good idea to increase the price a little bit, twice that year. The first time, you’ll increase the price from £6 to £8. Then, a few months later, you’ll increase the price again from £8 to £10. A £2 increase will not be something your customers are likely to dispute, and you will finally end up with the £10 charge per class, just as planned.

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[.orange__text]Is it worth increasing your prices if it’s such a small increase? Let’s look at the calculations: Say you currently run 10 classes per week at £6 per child and your average class size is 15 kids. That means you make £90 per class and £900 per week. Even by increasing the price to £8 per child whilst running the same number of classes, you will now make £120 per class and £1200 per week. If you increase the price to £10 per child, you will receive £150 per class and £1500 per week! That means your club has the potential of earning a substantial amount of profit, even when the parents only see a small increase in price![.orange__text]

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[.pink__text]Read our Guilt-Free Guide to Increasing Your prices![.pink__text]

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Run a referral program

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One way of growing your club is by increasing the number of customers. But how? Well, one tried-and-true method is by running a referral program. A referral program means that you encourage your existing customers to bring along or refer their friends to join your club. Your existing customers are often your greatest supporters since they have tried your club and know that they enjoy your classes. Just think about it: wouldn’t you be more likely to join a club if your friend said they were amazing compared to one you’ve only seen an ad for?

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Usually, the existing customer referring their friends will get a discount or special referral offer in return for introducing your club to their friends. This offer doesn’t have to be anything crazy! You could simply offer a discount on classes they’re already taking or put the price down for a set amount of time.