Whether you run a small fitness center in your neighborhood or you have several gyms spread across different cities, marketing your fitness brand is vital. Marketing your fitness brand will help to boost brand awareness, reach more potential clients, sign up more clients and grow your profit margins.
Fortunately, marketing a fitness brand these days is not as hard as it used to be a couple of years ago. Today, you have numerous ways of promoting and marketing your fitness brand, to boost its popularity.
In this article, we’ve selected the top nine most effective marketing tactics for your fitness brand. These tactics include a combination of online and offline strategies, to ensure maximum reach. With that said, let’s dive straight in.
1. Traditional Advertising and Outdoor Marketing
Traditional marketing may have taken a backseat, in today’s digital age. While these strategies may not be as popular as digital marketing strategies, they remain a powerful method of boosting the visibility of a fitness business. Such strategies will come in handy, especially for promoting or marketing your fitness brand at the local level.
Some of the traditional marketing tactics that you can use to boost the visibility of your fitness business include placing your ads in a local newspaper or advertising your fitness business on local TV channels or radios.
Another traditional marketing strategy that you can use to promote your business is by using outdoor advertising. For outdoor advertising, you simply need to print and distribute flyers by the roadside, in local businesses, and during local events.
And if you can afford it, you can consider paying for advertising space on a billboard near you. All these strategies will help to get more eyes on your fitness business, leading to more leads and clients.
2. Social Media Marketing
A fitness marketing list wouldn’t be complete without social media marketing, such as on Pinterest and Facebook. Over the last couple of years, social media marketing has taken the center stage as one of the most effective methods of fitness marketing.
However, social media marketing is a bit more challenging, compared to other strategies. And this can be attributed to the fact that you will need a large following and strong influence on social media to land clients.
But, other fitness brands are using it successfully. And so should you. To succeed with social media marketing, you will need to have a social media marketing plan. Without a plan, you will be shooting arrows in the dark. Consequently, you will end up losing your valuable time and money. So, make sure you create one.
Once you’ve created a social media marketing plan, you will then need to focus on creating eye-catching content consistently and engaging with your audience. By doing so, your following will grow. And they are not just any followers; these are followers interested in your products or services.
Eventually, these followers may end up purchasing your products, signing up for your gym memberships or even referring their close associates to your fitness business. Again, your visibility will grow and your sales will increase.
3. Offering Special Promotions
If you take a short walk in your local town, it’s highly likely you will spot a health and wellness business on almost every corner. And this means that your target audience has plenty of fitness businesses to choose from, besides yours.
The question is, how can you set yourself apart and entice fitness enthusiasts to choose your fitness brand instead of the others in the area? Well, you can do something as simple as offering special promotions.
Special offers and promotions like free personal training sessions, free meal plans, free workout guides or even free fitness evaluations can help to entice fitness prospects to check out your fitness brand.
Once you’ve managed to get them through the door, you then need to offer them a great experience. And from there, you may manage to convert some of these prospects into paying customers.
4. Host a Workshop or Webinar
Hosting regular workshops and webinars can also help to increase awareness of your fitness brand and acquire more clients. The workshop can simply be a workout session or a seminar, hosted in your gym.
The main goal of such an event is to provide the attendees with workout tips and techniques as well as diet information, which will help them to pursue and reach their fitness goals.
Once you’ve managed to grab their attention, you can then take this opportunity to introduce your fitness program. The goal is to capture their interest and entice them to come to your gym.
5. Influencer Marketing
Businesses and organizations are increasingly using influencers these days, to increase brand awareness and market reach. And you should also consider tapping into this unique marketing tactic.
So, exactly does influencer marketing work? Well, you will need to reach out to a popular individual with a large online following. That individual will then promote your fitness business to their audiences. And considering that these individuals have large numbers of followers who trust them, mentioning your brand is enough to drive some prospects your way.
But, you should note that the majority of influencers will charge you for their services unless you have a close relationship. To this end, you will need to offer them some incentives. The incentive can be any form of compensation that you can agree on, whether it’s monetary or free gear.
If you decide to use this marketing tactic to promote your fitness brand, you should begin by compiling a list of fitness influencers who align with your fitness brand. From there, you should then contact them and propose a partnership, based on agreeable terms and conditions.
6. Co-marketing with Other Brands
Another effective marketing tactic for your fitness brand is to partner with another fitness-related business. With this tactic, you will be taking advantage of the traffic or social media followers they already enjoy. The other business will also tap into your client your base.
For example, if you run a yoga studio, you can partner with a store that sells yoga clothing, yoga mats or other yoga-related gear. You can then promote the other brand’s yoga gear, by offering a discount for your members.
In exchange, the yoga store will be promoting your yoga studio, either via social media or word-of-mouth marketing, by offering a discount for their clients to sign up for your products or services.
You can also decide to bundle your services with their products as a special offer. Such partnerships will go a long way in increasing the reach of both of your businesses, leading to more clients.
7. Guerilla Marketing
Guerilla marketing is a strategy that entails surprising your target audience with something unexpected or unique. Some examples of guerilla marketing may include things like reverse graffiti, viral videos, creative billboards, stencil graffiti, flash mobs, stickers, and publicity, stunts, just to name a few.
With guerilla marketing, you will be capturing people’s attention using creative strategies, as opposed to spending thousands of dollars in marketing to put your message across.
For guerilla marketing, you can partner with a team of street artists, who will then come up with creative art pieces. They will then stick these unique and creative art pieces everywhere, including markets, gas stations, railway termini and other public areas.
You also have the option of organizing a flash mob outside a supermarket, where you will surprise and entertain the shoppers. You will then distribute your marketing materials like flyers or business cards to the surprised public that may have gathered around.
8. Retargeting Leads
Retargeting is an effective means of keeping your fitness brand at the top of your prospects’ minds. For instance, a prospect may have visited your fitness website several times or come across your social media posts. But at that point, they may be unsure whether to sign up for your products or services.
After some time, they may come across your retargeting or remarketing ads offering discounted memberships or free personal training sessions. And that retargeting ad may simply be what they need to check out your products or services.
Once they’ve signed up for your discounted membership or free classes, you will continue sending them retargeted ads, offering them relevant and compelling offers, until they finally become a paying customer.
9. Testimonials and Reviews
The reality is that, you may spend days on end talking about how outstanding your personal training services or your online workout programs are. But the reality is, considering that these are your products and services, your target audience will expect you to be biased. As a result, they may not fully trust your messaging.
But, if your target audience reads reviews and testimonials from satisfied clients, they may be compelled to check out your products or services. The main reason behind this is that those reviews or testimonials are coming from a relatable and unbiased source.
Hence, if you already have some reviews and testimonials from some of your clients, you should post them on your fitness website or on social media channels. Such reviews and testimonials can help to market your fitness brand in a huge way.
10. Wrapping It Up
While the fitness industry is expected to enjoy massive growth in the future, the competition is equally going to become tighter. Hence, your fitness brand will need effective marketing tactics to boost its visibility and keep up with the competition. By incorporating the tactics we’ve discussed in this article into your overall marketing strategy, you will enjoy a wider reach, increased brand awareness and more conversions.