Is the Paradox of Choice Hurting Your CrossFit Marketing?

There’s a great book called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz and can be highly useful for CrossFit marketing. I recommend you either read the book or watch his Ted Talk.

Sometimes, when human beings are presented with too many options, it makes it harder for us to make a decision. For example, I recently bought the new Moto X smartphone. It’s the phone where you can pick your own front and back colors as well as button colors. There are thousands of possible combinations. I used their color combo creator for about an hour and I couldn’t decide on what color combo to get. I was frustrated. The purpose of this customization is to be able to “express yourself”. Whatever that means. Ultimately, I ended up just getting the stock black phone. You can call me boring, but it was way easier for me to buy without having to think about it too much. I’m also not surprised that the phone is not selling well. I think it’s a great phone, but maybe too many people are stricken with the paradox of choice.

Let’s apply this to your CrossFit box.

Lately, I’ve noticed that many CrossFit boxes offer many other workout options other than CrossFit. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I’ve also noticed that the other workouts are way too similar to CrossFit.

I’ve seen boxes that offer services like this:

• CrossFit
• Strength Training
• Weight Training
• Strengthening and Conditioning
• Off-Season Training

So...what exactly is the difference between all these? Should I do CrossFit or Strengthening and Conditioning? What if I choose CrossFit, but Strength Training was actually the better option for me? Now I’m worried about opportunity costs. You’re making it more difficult for people to make a decision. I’m not saying to should eliminate these options, but be aware that they could possibly be hurting your signup rates. If they’re not, then keep doing them.

Sometimes the customer could be suffering from too few options. Working out isn’t a one-size fits all solution. You might need to make your programs customizable, but you should consider doing it according to your customer’s need and not based on assumption. Hopefully this post gave you a few insights with your CrossFit marketing.

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