How can I promote a dying business?

[Frezemis]

I'd like to throw a few cents in.

 

Try the following:

Host events as it was mentioned above. Sponsor bike riding, adventures and so on. You operate a gym so you can definitely partner up with like Hang Ten Adventures and advertise it as an event but at the same time obtain more customer base, people like events with more than like 3 people otherwise it just seems boring.

Host different types of openings with different themes, maybe offer some sort of incentive? Gyms IRL will have like a pizza friday or what not, try adding a bit of flavor in that and offer the same thing, Taco Tuesday but make it like a whole wheat thing cause you gotta get them gains.

Advertise more. Facebrowser, Forums IC section. IG Ads.
More employees = more coverage. Offer incentive to your employees, employee gets a free membership and a free referral.

 

With this type of business you have to be unique and creative. Something that would grab your attention and your customer base's attention. Try a few things out, if they don't work you know not to keep going down that path. Majority of the businesses fail because they don't put in that extra bit of effort, hire someone to manage it properly.

 

Property Management is always willing to aid businesses so if you need more advice you're welcomed to ask any of the team members to give you some advice on your business.

[SweetDaffodil]

9 hours ago, Santanaa said:

How could I make my business more community-engaging? 

You, as a business owner, must engage with the community. It is not effective long-term to randomly open your gym and hope for the best. You need to build up the gym’s reputation, build business connections, and build up a consistent clientele. Unlike cafes, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, role-playing at a gym can become tedious. That is not your fault. However, if all the gym offers are treadmills and are left to passively RP on their own, it gets old pretty quickly. You must facilitate an environment that encourages players to want to come back to your business. It is a great sign you want to provide a valuable role-play experience to the server as opposed to getting a quick cash grab. I have a few ideas that may help you get your gym flourishing with lots of members:

 

Collaborate with other businesses

 

Building connections with other businesses across Los Santos is going to help you in the long run. The beauty part about a gym is that anyone from the community can go there.

 

My first suggestion: your gym could reach out to other businesses and offer them company staff memberships. If that company decides to purchase a bundle of memberships for all their staff, let that company for a heavily discounted price. Not only is this beneficial for your gym, it gives the other business an incentive to get these memberships - it makes their company a better place to work because they provide all these benefits for their employees. Win win! (I have a character who owns an adult shop and character who owns a cafe. I want to set all my staff up with gym memberships out of my own pockets. I have failed to find a gym that offers these services. If a gym offered this, I would sign up straight away.)

 

My second suggestion: offer special coupons that can be redeemed. These coupons will already be prepaid by the other business. All you have to do is create a /note with a special code on it. Business can give these as rewards for their staff, give them away in raffles or simply as prizes when they hold important events. You do not lose anything if they don’t redeem it since the company has already paid for the coupons. (I bought four prepaid monthly memberships from a gym in Little Seoul and gave them out as prizes last year. All four recipients of the coupon still attend that gym to this day.)

 

Hold charity events for a cause of your choice

 

You can either have charity events held at your gym or set them up somewhere in Los Santos. I suggest fitness-based charity events such as marathons, walks, bike riding, swimming, etc. At these events, you will raise money and donate it to charity of your choice. I highly suggest this since it adds value to the server and will gets the gym’s name out in a positive light. Simply, it will encourage word of mouth. The more people talk about your gym, the more people will come to try it out. People like it when business do good things for the community.  

 

Offer new and existing members great deals for memberships

 

For new members:

• "Sign up today, you get the first month of membership free."
• "Sign up today and you are entitled to [x] amount of free personal trainer sessions."
• "Sign up today with a friend and you pay for two memberships for the price of one."

 

For existing members:

• "Pay for three months worth of membership now, get the four month free."
• "Bring a friend to sign up, get a month of your membership free."
• "Stay with the gym for six months, receive three free personal training session for the next month."

 

(I am sure you can think of others but these are just examples of what I would offer.)

 

Offer unique classes that players can OOC interact with -

 

Roleplaying at a gym is fun when I can actually interact with others there and use a series of different /animations. Perfect way to do this is by providing unique classes for the public. Examples include yoga, zumba, dancing, bootcamp, body building, cage fights, wrestling shows, women’s only classes, etc. All of these classes will help bring in the players who do not like passively running on a treadmill or passively lifting weights.

 

Get active on Facebrowser and the forums

 

Using only green text advertisement will not suffice. You need to get a Facebrowser page and a forum thread up and running. You can use these two to advertise classes, membership deals and showcase the livery in the gym.

My suggestion: Feature a gym member of the week on Facebrowser. Everyone likes to be recognized and there is no better way to keep your members happy than them knowing their personal trainers and coaches are paying attention. It makes it look like you care about your members hence them wanting to come back to the gym.

 

Good luck! 😃

Edited April 29, 2021 by SweetDaffodil

[orangejuice]

6 hours ago, LICE said:

So here's my idea - we monopolize ERP. If people wanna ERP, they need ERP points which deplete per raunchy emote they type. How do you attain ERP points? By working out at gym scripts. So to have a full ERP session? Minimum one hour at the gym getting swole.

 

Thank me later. Or just thank me now. Problem solved.

His a mad man... it might just work 

[Greyfeather]

5 hours ago, Frezemis said:

More employees = more coverage. Offer incentive to your employees, employee gets a free membership and a free referral.

Also have little events in your business to make it more attractive for your employees to stay engaged.

 

You can map things into your property - even something as simple as placing some boxes in reception and having an IC channel in your discord where you send an email to staff telling them to "please get onto unpacking and storing the new brand of protein powder."

 

That's a lame example, but you know what I mean.

 

Good luck with it. I hope your business improves. ❤️

[DianeAnderson]

Oh, if the business is fading, you need to make every effort, even if it seems that your hands are falling. It is necessary to introduce something new, interesting, to dismiss old employees, to hire new more promising ones....the main thing is to act !! Good luck)

Edited April 29, 2021 by DianeAnderson

[TinPan]

In a server dominated by bars and nightclubs which has resulted in business diversity being dragged out back and shot, you have to do a lot to stand out and survive; there's always going to be periods of activity where income is good and income completely flatlines unless you open every single night.

Thankfully though, as a gym; you have a ton of potential opportunities that can pull you out of the grave. Provided you at least go advertising crazy and make sure that people's first experiences of attending are good, then you'll pretty much be in a very comfortable position to engage in a lot of diverse strategies for revival like people have listed above.

It is a genuine shame though that business diversity is pretty much on life support; seems to be that anything which isn't a bar or a nightclub usually goes the way of the dinosaur due to most players seemingly wanting to make the safe bet of doing what'll bring in the money as opposed to what'll create unique roleplay.

[BobBob]

I'm not sure if it's a time zone difference or lack of advertising but my character would definitely be a regular if I spotted an ad about it.

[Sim]

18 minutes ago, BobBob said:

I'm not sure if it's a time zone difference or lack of advertising but my character would definitely be a regular if I spotted an ad about it.

I know exactly which gym this is and I can tell you it opens nearly every day in the afternoon, when gyms should usually be open.

 

Shit I'd go to your gym if it wasn't that my char is 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Sim

[DLimit]

4 minutes ago, Sim said:

I know exactly which gym this is and I can tell you it opens nearly every day in the afternoon, when gyms should usually be open.

 

Shit I'd go to your gym if it wasn't that my char is 

Good reason to make them athletic, haha.

[mj2002]

11 hours ago, TinPan said:

It is a genuine shame though that business diversity is pretty much on life support; seems to be that anything which isn't a bar or a nightclub usually goes the way of the dinosaur due to most players seemingly wanting to make the safe bet of doing what'll bring in the money as opposed to what'll create unique roleplay.

if you have any good suggestions on what to do in order to improve this situation, we're happy to hear them.