How Much To Charge For Group Fitness Classes?

As a fitness studio owner or a personal trainer, you would have often wondered how much you should charge for group fitness classes. The price you charge depends on the clientele you want to attract and the perceived value of your group fitness classes. 

On average, for group fitness classes, charge between $35 and $50 per person per class. The group fitness classes are typically 45 mins to 60 mins in duration. Anything higher than $90 per person per class, and you are in the price range of individual personal training. 

In this article, I will explain, as a fitness studio owner or a personal trainer, why you must follow a value-based pricing strategy and not the cost-based pricing strategy. I will also cover the importance of class packs and bulk discounts. Finally, I will cover how much you can make from group fitness classes. 

Read till the end if you are having trouble attracting students to your group fitness classes, and you suspect pricing could be the issue. 

How To Decide The Price Of Your Group Fitness Classes

Now that you have a range of what you should price your group fitness classes let us consider the strategies you can use to arrive at the right price for your group fitness classes.

Prices Of Similar Group Fitness Classes

One of the surest ways of identifying the price range for your group fitness classes is to look at what is the charge for similar group fitness classes in your location. 

Consumers have a value threshold, and there is a limit to what they consider fair and are willing to pay. The value threshold is the reason you will see that similar group fitness classes in a location have identical pricing. 

The ideal price range for group fitness classes is between £25 and £40 per person per class. It is the price range that is also charged by popular group fitness classes such as Barry’s Bootcamp, SoulCycle, 1Rebel, and others in locations like London and New York. 

Identify the group fitness classes in your city that are similar in class size, specialization, and brand to your group fitness program. Next, identify the price range of these classes. You can price your group fitness classes within that range, and you will not go wrong. 

Your competitors have already done the hard work of identifying the ideal pricing for your location. Use that knowledge to price your group fitness classes. 

Value-Based Pricing

Value-based pricing means that you are charging your group fitness class members the price that they believe your class is worth. This not related to your cost per class at all. The perceived value of your sessions by your members is what determines the price.

I have always used value-based pricing successfully, and this is my preferred way of pricing. So, even if the cost of running your class per person is £10, you can charge your customers £30 per person if they are willing to pay that price.

So, how do you identify what your customers are willing to pay? The simple answer is to ask them. You can select a group of your members and survey them, promising that you will not increase the price for them. You can then ask their honest answer to how much more are they willing to pay for your group fitness classes. This exercise will give you a good view of what is the perceived dollar value of your group fitness classes.

Another way to examine the perceived dollar value of your group classes is to test the pricing. Increase your prices per person per class and see the results. Does revenue (sales per class) remain the same or decrease? 

At this point, don’t pay attention if attendance drops, the metric you need to track is revenues. Continue increasing your prices until you begin to see a slight dip in revenues per class. The pricing at this point is the maximum your members are willing to pay based on perceived value. 

Cost-Based Pricing

For group fitness sessions, cost-based pricing is not ideal. Cost-based pricing is suitable for manufacturing or e-commerce sales, but where the perceived value of the service or product is what determines the price, it is not ideal. 

Cost-based pricing is where you calculate all the costs related to delivering the service and add a profit margin on top to arrive at the price. 

In your case, you will need to identify all the costs associated with running a single group fitness class. These costs could include electricity, rent, your time, etc. 

Once you have the cost per class, divide it by the total number of students per class to arrive at your cost per person per class. Now add the profit you want, and you will arrive at the amount that you need to charge per class per person. 

If you want to learn more, you will find additional information about pricing strategies and increasing revenues in another article I wrote. 

Class Packs And Discounts

A crucial part of your pricing strategy will be to consider class packs and discounts. The trend for group fitness classes is that members buy sessions in packs. Typical monthly memberships are not the norm for group fitness classes. 

Class packs are designed to incentivize repeat usage. As a member buys more classes, the bigger the discount they receive. Some people might say that offering discounts for your classes is not ideal. However, I believe, from experience, that offering discounts for the behavior you want to encourage is not only fitting but also essential. 

The power of class packs lies in encouraging your members to book more classes by offering discounts for additional sessions booked. Also, unlike memberships that are rolling, your members have limited sessions to use, and so the use of class packs is high. 

Regarding discounts, it is essential to remove friction and incentivize your members to attend your group fitness classes. Concessions are needed to encourage your members to buy more sessions. If you don’t offer class pack discounts, your regular members might buy a single class each time, and you will miss out on repeat usage. 

How Much Can you Make From Your Group Fitness Classes

The amount of money you make from your group fitness classes will depend on whether you are teaching the classes or hiring instructors to lead the sessions. 

Studio Owner

If you are the studio owner, you will need to account for instructor fees per class along with variable expenses such as electricity and rent per class. Ideally, you will be paying your instructors a fixed price per session. 

You will end up paying your instructors roughly 25%, and your variable expenses will account for another 25% per class. So you should be taking 50% of the collected revenue as gross profit.

For example, your group fitness classes consist of 20 students in each session, and the price per class per student is £20. In this example, for a single session, you will collect £400. From the £400 received, 25% will go to the instructor (£100), and another 25%will go towards your variable expenses (£100). In this example, you will be left with £200 per class as gross profit. 

Individual Fitness Instructor

As an individual fitness instructor, your group fitness class sizes will be much smaller. Ideally, you will be instructing no more than 5-10 people per class. Although your class size is small, the amount of money you can make is not. Your expenses are much lower as compared to that of a boutique studio. 

Roughly 30% of your revenues per class will go towards your variable expenses, including the space you might be renting. So consider an example where your session has five people paying £30 per class. In this case, your total revenues per class is £150. From the total revenues, 30% will go towards your variable costs. In this example, your gross profit is £105 per class, which represents 70% of your sales for that session. 

Summary

To summarize, price your group fitness classes at a level similar to other group fitness classes in your city. Always adopt value-based pricing as opposed to cost-based pricing. Learn to love class packs and discounts. They are designed to make you get regular customers and tap into the current consumer trend. 

Finally, you will make good money both as a fitness studio owner who hires instructors to run group fitness classes or as a fitness instructor teaching or running your personal branded group fitness programs. 

To enable your members to buy classes easily, book appointments, and offer discounts, check out StudioGrowth. A simple class management software to help you set-up and grow your boutique studio business today.