Pilates Business Podcast

Are You Undervaluing Your Studio? How Smart Pricing Attracts Loyal Clients & Fuels Growth

• Seran Glanfield • Season 21 • Episode 209

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In this episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield takes a deep dive into one of the most emotionally charged — and strategically vital — areas of running a boutique fitness studio: pricing. 


Seran explores how your pricing strategy does far more than cover expenses — it sends a powerful message about your studio’s value, brand positioning, and the level of service you provide. Studio owners will learn how underpricing can sabotage their reputation and profitability, while smart, intentional pricing can attract the right clients, boost retention, and build long-term revenue. 


Whether you’re avoiding price increases out of fear, unsure how to position your offers, or simply want a pricing strategy that supports sustainable growth, this episode is packed with insights and strategies to help you price with confidence.


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Speaker 1:

Did you know that your pricing strategy might be leaving money on the table? If you've ever wondered why some clients stay loyal for years while others disappear after maybe just one or two or even three classes, it might be tied to the way that you're pricing your classes and services. So in today's episode, I'm not just talking fancy spreadsheets or fancy formulas. I'm not just talking fancy spreadsheets or fancy formulas. I'm going to be diving into the psychology of pricing and how your prices silently communicate your studio's value before you've ever even said a word to them face to face. So maybe you've been underpricing out of fear, or avoiding price adjustments, or worried that if you make changes or price too high, you might lose clients. Then listen in, because this is the episode you never knew you needed. Well, hi there, I'm Saren Glanfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact. Like you, if you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio.

Speaker 1:

This is the Pilates Business Podcast studio. This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Saran, and I'm so glad that you're here with me again today, mostly because I'm excited to share this with you, because it is so important to know how to price, where to price and how your pricing impacts your business. So I've had my coffee Actually, I'm on my second cup, so get ready. This means it's going to be a good one, and you probably don't need to listen to this on 1.5 times speed.

Speaker 1:

So today we're exploring a topic that really does tend to trigger us all. It doesn't matter if you own a Pilates studio, a yoga studio, a bar studio, a spin studio or that coffee shop down the street that I've just come back from. It is something that really does often just get under our skin and just put us perhaps in a place of a little bit of anxiety, and that is pricing. Because often for the business that we're in, especially a business that you have created for yourself, where you're delivering the, you are doing the thing, you are delivering the classes, you're delivering the teaching, you are sharing your expertise, that pricing can often feel very, very personal. It's such an emotional piece of the business, right, and it can be tied to all sorts of different things, from the way that you have been bought up and how money and pricing is woven into your way of thinking. It can be often tied to the way that you value your work and see the value of your work compared to others, your skills, how much you've invested in those skills and also how you see yourself as a business owner. So pricing is very, very loaded, and I often see studio owners spend a lot more time thinking about it than they need to, or often the case is that we avoid thinking about it altogether because perhaps there is some anxiety there that we don't even want to go near.

Speaker 1:

But what we want to make sure we do at this, wherever you're at, is we understand what the impact is of pricing on our business, and that means we have to understand what the impact of our pricing is on our clients, because we are a relationship, client-facing business after all, and so when it comes to pricing, it's more than just a way to cover your rent and your payroll. It absolutely has to do that. That's a checkbox that has to be checked, but your prices are bigger than that. They are tied to more than that in your business, and that's why we don't want to just price based on what the studio owner down the street is doing. We wanna make sure we're pricing based on a level that represents your business, because your pricing tells a story about your business as well, which is why I will always refer to your pricing as a marketing tool in your business. It is a part of your brand message. It tells a story about what you offer, who you serve and why your studio is special.

Speaker 1:

So it's not just about maths although it is a lot about maths. It is also about psychology, because pricing shapes how clients perceive your expertise, the level of care they expect and even how committed they are to showing up consistently. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the hidden messages that your pricing is sending and how to make sure those messages are really working for you and your business, not against you. Okay, so let's dive in and talk a little bit about how perceived value drives behavior and why pricing really is a brand signal to them a signal to them that your brand is worth a certain amount or level and what it is that you do. Now a little bit of a backstory and what it is that you do. Now, a little bit of a backstory.

Speaker 1:

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that, when it comes to consumer behavior and pricing psychology, that we as human beings tend to rely on a quick sort of checkbox, and that is that we often use pricing as a shortcut to judge quality. So, for example, perhaps you wanted to pick up a bottle of wine for a friend as a gift, or when you were going to their house for a book club or a dinner party, and you stop by and you go to pick up that bottle of wine and you're going to see a lot of different options when it comes to pricing. Now, my guess is that as you look at those pricing options, there are going to be some that are way too expensive, that you you know we're going to save for a very, very special occasion. But there might be also some on the lower end of that spectrum that you might also kind of cast away as options, because you might not, you might be concerned about perhaps the way that those that bottle of wine might taste right Because of its price point and its price point alone. And so when we see.

Speaker 1:

What we see with human behavior is that in those sorts of situations, people tend to go for the middle and what they feel is probably enough that they will. It will meet their expectations in terms of the taste, etc. Right, and that's a really quick example of when we tend to sort of decide based on price, the quality of what something may be, and so if you're like me and you know very little about wine, then that's tend to be how we pick out that bottle of wine for the book club that is coming up next week, right, that we want to take a nice bottle of wine to our friend's house for. So we tend to do this, and I'm not the only one that does it. This is something that we know is how humans tend to behave when it comes to pricing, and one of the reasons why is because, typically, when it comes to making decisions, the human brain is actually quite lazy, especially if it wants to make a quick decision. So if you're not going to walk into your to get that bottle of wine and do your research for you know 45 minutes, an hour and a half long you're going to make that quick decision because you've got places to be, and we do this all day long.

Speaker 1:

And when we do this, it's our brain being a little bit lazy because it doesn't want to analyze all the different options. We don't have time for that. A little bit lazy because it doesn't want to analyze all the different options. We don't have time for that, and so we make a decision to rely on our gut, on our intuition, and often our intuition tells us that price is a shortcut to judge quality. And so when we think about that, we also want to make sure that when we're pricing our services and our offers, that we are our services and our offers, that the price level is indeed showing and showcasing the value of what happens in our business. Okay, so clients will use pricing as a shortcut to decide quality. That's the first thing I want you to kind of take away. The second thing is is that, because of that, pricing often will position you in the market at a certain level. So oftentimes pricing shapes the perception even before a client walks in in the door.

Speaker 1:

And so if you are priced higher, right, then you might find that your clients expect more attention or a higher level of service, perhaps higher level of expertise. If the studio is a lower, budget-friendly option, then they may expect less of that type of attention. And that's why, you know, as a boutique fitness studio, you want to make sure you're differentiating yourself, perhaps from a big box gym or a much, much larger facility down the street, because you're already differentiating, because you're already in the way that you deliver your service, giving that higher level of attention and often also, perhaps sometimes, a higher level of expertise as well. So you know, a $5 or $7 or $8 drop-in class sends a wildly different message to that $30, $40, or even $25 class, relatively speaking. One says the casuals no frills, zero attention, you're going to be working out with a very, very large number of people. And the other says maybe a more personalized experience, perhaps a little bit more expertise, perhaps a bit more personalized attention, and so on.

Speaker 1:

And so we want to make sure that we are not pricing ourselves in a comparable manner to people who are actually offering a different level of service. And I think we often do that out of fear, in some cases because we're worried about pricing ourselves out of the market, but often what happens is that underpricing sends the message that your offerings are of a lower quality, and I don't think that's the case, right? So if you have your ideal client in your mind, then they should be the type of person who is willing to pay for value, right, to pay that little bit more than the big box gym, to pay that little bit more than they would get perhaps in the level of service they would get at a place where there was perhaps less personalized attention. So we want to be mindful of the way that our pricing drives the perception of our business. As we're pricing Now, we also want to price for not just that first sale, right, we want to price for the long term.

Speaker 1:

We're playing the long game here. We're in a customer relationship business, so we want to price for lifetime value, and what that means is the total amount that any average client will spend in your business over the course of their entire lifetime as your client. And so we want to make sure that we are pricing for that ongoing repeat visit relationship. And so it's not just about that first sale, it's about their long game. Your best clients are not the ones that buy the one-off classes. They're the ones who stay with you for years and years and years and know you, and you can chat with them, and they talk about your studio to their friends and they show up on time and they're enjoyable to be around, etc. The people that you bring in you enjoy having in your studio and what we know is that clients that come more consistently, consistently, who buy packages or memberships, are more likely to stay loyal compared to pay-as-you-go clients, right, and so we want to make sure we're designing our pricing to be sticky, and by that I mean we want to make sure that your pricing is structured to make it easier and more rewarding to stay than to leave. So a day pass probably won't keep people coming back, but members will build that habit, will be there to build that consistency and that habit is what keeps them coming back. So we want to make sure that we're designing a pricing model and your pricing model is designed to keep people coming back, to engage them actively and to increase that lifetime value of every single client.

Speaker 1:

Now there is a time and a place to discount. We do use discounts and I recommend you use discounted pricing across the customer journey in lots of different ways and different places. But there is a danger to constant discounting, because we really want to make sure we're protecting the value of your brand and one of the biggest, I think, misconceptions is that the more you discount, the more clients you get and the better your business will be. And, to be honest, it actually creates just a really tremendous amount of churn in your business where people come in, do one class, two classes, and amount of churn in your business where people come in, do one class, two classes and then walk straight back out your business and never be seen again. And so we want to make sure we're not constantly discounting, but we're being very strategic about how and where and by how much we are discounting in our business. So the constant discounts will dilute your value.

Speaker 1:

And what we see, and what I've seen over the years, is that those studios who do regular promotions with a lot of discounting over the years, is that clients will wait for those sales. They'll wait until they see that sale and then they'll buy at a discounted rate over and over and over again. So what happens is your clients. You're almost training your clients to stop seeing your services as worth that full price. But if you're strategic with your promotions, it actually helps to build momentum and create a bit of urgency and a bit more commitment occasionally at times when that might be waning, and so it can help to really build momentum without undercutting value when promotions are used in the right way.

Speaker 1:

And so be thoughtful about the way that you use promotions in your business. Maybe think of them like the appetizer at a restaurant, where they sort of kind of are the first bite, the first dish, but they don't fill you up before the main course, right? So there's almost like that stepping stone into something that is actually going to be better for you and the client long term. Okay, so be thoughtful about promotions and be careful about doing too much discounting. There is, like I said, a time and a place. Instead of Thrive, I share with my studio owners exactly where and how and when they should be discounting their sessions, their classes and their packages, so that they have a plan over the year for when those things happen and aren't just constantly in reactive mode or trying to replace lost clients because of their previous promotions and discounts, which I think is a bit of a struggle that some studios get into.

Speaker 1:

So let me talk a little bit more about some of the pricing pitfalls that I see some other ones because we do see challenging. It is challenging to get your pricing right, but it is so important to get it right. So we want to make sure that we're I want to make sure that you're aware of what some of these pricing pitfalls are and what they might cost you over the course of your business. So we already have talked about how underpricing can also lead to people perhaps underestimating your value, and that means that they are not going to do any more research on your skills, your space, your community, even though they all might be really, really valuable to the client. So what we see is that underpricing actually undermines your value not only your revenue, but then also, ultimately, your confidence in your business, and so just keep that in the back of your mind. You want to make sure that you're competitive with your pricing. You want to make sure you're covering all of your costs as well as your targeted profit level, but you also want to make sure it represents value for your business and that represents the level of value that your clients will get.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that often happens is when we are trying to meet the needs of so many different people and different price points, we often create a lot of options for our pricing, and sometimes these look like very logical options, and sometimes they are packages and pricing options that you have, or memberships even that we have created because somebody asked once about that option. And when that happens, what we see often is this long, long list of many different pricing options. And what happens when people have too many options is that it creates decision fatigue, and when clients are confused, they tend to default to either the cheapest option, the lowest commitment option or, even worse, they make no choice at all. So we want to be mindful of the number of options we're presenting to clients when it comes to them choosing their packaging package pricing or the membership pricing or even their introductory offer. So we also want to make sure your pricing reflects both cost and value. So it's not just about covering expenses. It's about reflecting on your experience, your team's expertise, as well as the impact that you have on your client's lives.

Speaker 1:

Now, inside of Thrive, we do a deep dive, via the marketing intensive, into your value proposition and what you really do for your clients, and every time we come back to this work, it reinforces just how incredibly valuable the work you do really, really is and for the studio owners who go through this program. Almost every time I run it within Thrive and for even year over year. There is always more here that we can unpack and uncover, and it really supports your confidence when you are able to understand what that value is. And that's one of the biggest, I think, things that hold studio owners back when we're trying to think about pricing is that we cannot. It's very challenging to articulate the value of what you do, and if you can't do that, it's then very difficult to price it correctly, right? So we need to first of all get really clear on the value of what you do in your business so that we can then structure pricing strategically around that. And it all also has to do, obviously, with the way that you work with your clients too, but it's a really, really critical component to making sure you're pricing profitably and effectively.

Speaker 1:

The best pricing strategies, honestly, are very clear and very client-centered, but not only that. You as a studio owner have to feel very confident in your pricing levels, and when you have that confidence and that clarity and that your pricing is designed around your customer journey, it makes that purchase and that just so much easier for your client and it makes the stress and the anxiety and perhaps the concern, the fear and the worry about your pricing and is it right that just evaporates because you start to see the impact of a strong pricing model. So those were the sort of common pricing pitfalls. It really comes down to the level of pricing and does it reflect your value, how many options you're introducing to your clients, whether or not your pricing is designed to cover your costs and make sure you're profitable, and then knowing how to introduce it and how to talk about it and being confident in it as the business owner. So when you're very confident in your pricing and you have all that mapped out, how do you know if your pricing is right? And this is a question that comes up a lot and we want to make sure that. I want to make sure that I give you some kind of guidance on you know, on this, because often that is half the worry, right.

Speaker 1:

So there are some things to we watch for to make sure to sort of indicate that your pricing is at a good level. Number one is that you have a really nice lifetime client value number, and that is important, especially because, when we think about the type of business you're in, you're not just in a one-time sale to business, you're in a customer relationship business, and so we want to know how much your average client spends over the course of their lifetime in your business, because that helps you to understand the value of a client and what is possible when you niche that client throughout the customer journey. We also want to track the churn rate, so how and when and where clients perhaps drop out of your studio Do they drop out after one class, that first package, or after just a few months? And knowing that data can really help you to understand where the gaps are in your marketing messaging and whether or not your pricing is supporting that next step. Then you also want to look at your other data points within your software right, and you can look at which packages are most popular and you can use some of that data to really refine your offerings. And then you also want to look at your client's behavior. How do they interact with your business? How often do they attend, how often do they buy packages, how often do they revisit or review their membership attend, how often do they buy packages, how often do they revisit or review their membership? And that is also going to feed into whether or not your pricing is effective.

Speaker 1:

Just a few of the things that we look at to make sure your pricing is working for you. So I want to just close this episode with just a few more sort of things to think about, and I think if you take one thing away from this episode, I hope it's this your pricing is not just a number. There is so much more to it than that. It is a part of your marketing toolkit, it's a part of your brand and it's a reflection of the perceived value of your business as well. It's a reflection of how you see yourself and how you want your clients to see you too.

Speaker 1:

Smart, confident pricing attracts the right clients for your business, the ones who value what you offer and are more than happy to pay for it. It helps you create a sustainable and really profitable business, too, so you can serve your clients without running yourself into the ground. So have a little think about what that looks like for you in your business. If pricing has felt a little bit scary or if you've been avoiding thinking about it in your business. I want you to think about how and what that story around your pricing is telling you and telling your clients.

Speaker 1:

And remember you're not alone in this the reason why I'm talking about this with you today is because I see this come up often with studio owners, whether they're studio owners who've been in business for many, many years or even those just starting out as well. And so if you are concerned about your pricing, then know that there is help out there and inside of Thrive. We help you to craft a pricing strategy that supports your business and your profitability and is able to really sustain long-term growth in your business. But it all starts with truly knowing your value. So I hope this is helpful to you as you go about building your boutique fitness studio business.

Speaker 1:

And until next time, I'll see you back here on the Pilates Business Podcast. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to spring3.com and check out my free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder there is no one way to do what you do only your way. Reminder there is no one way to do what you do only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.