BETA x Rise Above: Climbing Gym Data and What Actions to Take #2 -- How Membership Shapes Revenue
Updated: 1 day ago
A couple of weeks ago, Rise Above Consulting attended the Association of British Climbing Walls (ABC Walls) annual summit. In 2024, I gave a keynote address there entitled "Sales is not a Dirty Word" to a packed room of UK climbing gym owners and operators. What followed was hours of conversations from eager gym managers and owners about how to increase their revenue. I got home and Rise Above took on many UK clients, and even more free discovery calls centered around how to think more strategically about revenue.
Fast forward to 2026 and Rise Above returned to the ABC Summit and we sat down with a dozen or more operators this year and unlike in 2024, almost all of them opened up their laptops to show us reports, charts, spreadsheets and documents of the data they were looking at. This is a huge step in the right direction and I was really impressed with how well many were thinking about what data to look at and why.
The Best Talk at the Summit
Rise Above sat in many talks, seminars and unplanned discussions over the course of the summit, and hands down far and away the best one was led by the Founder and CEO of BETA, Miura Hawkins. You might remember a blog we posted a few years back about climbing gym software where we mentioned that BETA is the best option around. Well, Miura proved why in this talk.
The talk lead by Miura centered around data. Specifically, aggregated data from dozens of UK gyms. In it, Miura laid out some VERY interesting trends (or lack there of) and an incredible hypothesis about "community" - the most overused phrase in the climbing gym industry.
Miura is writing an entire blog series about her data findings, and we've agreed to write a connected series of blogs here at Rise Above. BETA's blogs will focus on the data and the insights. and as always, Rise Above's companion blogs will be about what to do with those insights.Read the BETA blogs here |
BETA's Hypothesis #2: If More of Your Pie is Membership, Your Pie will be Bigger
Miura continued her discussion by sharing with the audience that the general fitness industry (an industry often cited by climbing gym operators and often used as a compass) sees around 70% of their revenue coming from membership.
When asked what percentage the audience thought membership made up in the UK climbing gym industry, nobody thought it would be nearly as low as it is: about 1/3 of revenue vs. general fitness' 3/4.
We have to be careful when comparing the climbing industry to traditional fitness facilities. We are not the same.
Perhaps the most surprising chart Miura showed was the one below, which clearly showed that operators with >28% of their revenue coming from membership generally also had correspondingly higher overall revenue.
The facilities with a lower membership focus have a lower earning potential, or in other words it appears that there is a ceiling on how much total revenue a climbing gym can earn if the focus is not on membership.
What Should a Gym Do to Grow Membership?
If we take the climbing gym data Miura uncovered and presented at her talk at face value, operators would be well-served to develop and implement strategies which focus their business on recurring membership revenue.
At the end of the day, the membership engine is about bringing in membership-qualified users, converting them into a membership, and keeping them from cancelling their membership.
So, what can you do to gas up membership? The short answer: leverage your data to build an measurable funnel that moves customers through a curated journey towards membership, and keep them as members. Below are strategies we have implemented, and seen results from.
ATTRACT - Identify & understand your ideal/most-likely membership qualified customers and build a marketing and top-of-funnel strategy to attract them to your gym
Based on your offering, your local market, and your brand; who are you most likely to resonate with? What are the characteristics of people most likely to want to engage long term with your brand and your offering?
Where are those people? How do you meaningfully get your offer(s) in front of their eyeballs. Don't limit yourself to social media here. Think about events, affinity groups, even less common marketing opportunities like posters, stickers, flyers, partnerships, etc.
Ensure you have the proper tracking tactics in place to identify which marketing and top-of-funnel channels are producing results
CONVERT - Develop, implement & iterate a customer journey grouped by your top 2-3 customer cohorts driving towards converstion to membership
The above is an example of a place Rise Above often starts with, and then customizes based on brand, customer feedback, and specific data points.
Who are your top customer types? Families, Experiences, and Inexperienced are a good starting point.
What is the "ideal" product or service for each?
What actions need to take place to get (and keep) that customer on the "happy path" toward that ideal outcome?
This includes in person scripts and interactions, online interactions, and re-targeting tactics
RETAIN - Develop, implement & iterate an engagement strategy that will protect your active membership base from becoming a revolving door or shrinking
If you have spent the time to understand your customers, their needs, and have married that with the right offerings this step gets a lot easier. Put simply, your business has to be valuable to your customer or else they will not stick around. Climbing gym members tend to have pretty basic needs: have a clean gym with a good environment, help me improve and progress as a climber (especially if I am new to it), and make me feel welcome and like I can find a sense of belonging.
Programming tends to add a lot of value in this category. Making offerings that meet your customers where they are and move them along their journey to becoming a more engaged and invested climber is heavy lifting typically most suited to high quality programming.
Customer experience and your service standards are a huge contributing factor here as well. People will pay more, go more out of their way, and be more loyal to a business that over-delivers on customer service. If you are reading this, I am sure there is at least one brand you are a superfan of. Might be a coffee shop or a clothing company or a gear company or whatever. Think about why you love them. It's likely because their service and product quality meets the mark and overdelivers. For gyms this tends to be meeting or exceeding the member's expectations in:
Amenities
Cleanliness and atmosphere (route-setting falls into this)
Customer service, which is more than just being polite
You want a bucket, and you want that bucket to fill over time. The larger the hole in the bottom of the bucket, the more your bucket starts to look like a pipe and you aren't actually capturing anything
Where Membership Contributes to Greater Revenue
If you have a steady and meaningful base of "regulars", those customers are more likely to buy their shoes from you. Those customers are more likely to bring in family or friends. Those customers are more likely to enroll their children in Summer Camp or after school programs. Those customers are. more likely to purchase snacks and chalk and other consumables. This is where a higher member base lifts revenue. So as you enhance your ability to grow your membership, consider how to enhance your ability to serve those customer more holistically.
CORRELATION OR CAUSATION?
The data in Miura's talk may be correlation or it might be causation. It's hard to know for sure. But honestly, does it matter? It's highly believable that a larger. member-base would increase overall revenue. So why argue the point when you could just take action on it and grow your revenue?
Intersted in learning more winning strategies to grow your membership engine? Let's talk
Comments