If you own a gym, health club, fitness studio, or you are a freelance personal trainer, the growth of your fitness business will depend on two main aspects – attracting new clients and retaining the existing ones. And to attract new clients, you will need to be constantly and consistently marketing your fitness business.
The good news is, there are plenty of fitness marketing strategies you can implement, to promote your fitness business, attract new clients, generate more sales and grow your fitness business. In this article, we will walk you through eight effective fitness marketing strategies and ideas that you can use to attract new customers.
1. Set Up a Website
When it comes to finding a new product or service, most people these days begin with an online search. According to recent statistics, approximately 93% of online searches begin with a search engine. And, there’s a high chance that your target clients are also using search engines to find gyms and fitness centers near them.
Hence, if you are looking to grow your fitness business, you should begin by being findable on search engines. And a website will help you with that. So, if you don’t have a website, you should make sure you set up one right away.
When properly optimized with relevant keywords, a website will make it easy for people to find your fitness business. It will also provide relevant details about your fitness business such as location, hours of operation, and rates, among other details.
Make sure your website has a blog section, where you can be posting articles and other types of content related to your niche. These articles will also show up on search engines for the relevant keywords, thus helping to attract lots of free traffic.
2. Run Google Ads
It will take approximately six to twelve months for your fitness website to rank well and start delivering targeted leads. And, if your fitness business is new, you cannot afford to wait that long. Fortunately, Google ads can help to deliver faster results. They will provide you with a cost-effective method of reaching a targeted audience, within a short period.
Google ads work almost like organic search. Whenever someone in your town or city searches for a keyword related to your fitness business, it will show up at the top of the search engine results page.
One of the main benefits of using Google ads is that they work on a cost-per-click basis, meaning you will only pay whenever someone clicks on your fitness ads. The price you will pay for the ad is entirely dependent on the level of competition in your area. If you live in an area where the competition for the keywords you are targeting is low, then you will only pay around $1 to $ per click.
With Google ads, you have the opportunity to reach the right people, within a shorter period. Besides, if your competitors are not using ads, then you will outrank them on the search results, thus helping you to acquire more leads.
3. Run Referral Programs
Referral programs provide yet another effective fitness marketing strategy that can help to grow your membership. As its name suggests, referral marketing is a method where your gym members will refer or recommend your gym to their close associates like family and friends. You will then offer your members a reward, for every referee who signs up for your gym membership.
For this method to work, the incentive that you offer should be worth the referrer’s time and effort. If it’s not, then no one will bother recommending your gym to their friends or family. You should also offer an incentive to the referee. Some possible incentives that can work include free gym products, a free-workout program or meal plan, discounts on their memberships or even a sponsored dinner.
Creating a referral program is an easy process. You simply need to decide on the reward you will offer the referrer. From there, you will need to announce to your members about the program as well as how to redeem their rewards. You can do so on your social media channels or your gym noticeboard. With proper implementation, referral programs provide a cost-effective method of acquiring new fitness clients.
4. Leverage Co-Marketing
Co-marketing is more of a referral program between two businesses that serve almost the same type of clientele. But, you are not competitors. This method will deliver the best results if you can find a business that aligns best with your target audience’s interests.
For instance, if there’s a supplements store close to you, you can request them to display your marketing materials such as banners or flyers. You can then offer them something similar in return.
With this arrangement, the health supplements store will be referring fitness enthusiasts to you, who may be looking for a gym or fitness center to join. At the same time, you will be referring or recommending their supplements store to any of your members, who may be looking for fitness supplements.
Some of the other businesses that you can enter into a partnership with include chiropractors, massage therapists, orthopedic clinics, stores that sell workout gear or healthy restaurants.
Co-marketing will save you both time and money. Also, it will boost your reach and help you to land clients faster. And just like other referral programs, the retention rate for these clients will equally be high.
5. Run Facebook Ads
With approximately 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides one of the best platforms to reach potential clients. But, if you don’t have a massive following on Facebook, you will struggle to get any success with this fitness marketing strategy. And this is where Facebook ads come in.
Facebook ads come with powerful targeting options, which you can use to reach fitness enthusiasts, who may be living nearby your fitness studio. You can target prospects by gender, age, income, behaviors and interests, depending on who you are targeting.
The main benefit of using Facebook ads for marketing your fitness business is that they will deliver fast results. Most fitness marketing strategies take a considerable amount of time and effort before you can see results. But with Facebook ads, the results are immediate. If the ad is properly set up and optimized, you can start getting leads within a couple of minutes.
6. Consider Membership Giveaways
Offers, discounts and other giveaways provide one of the quickest methods of collecting targeted email addresses, which you can then use to build your email list. And, you have various approaches that you can use.
For example, you can run a contest, where offer a free gym membership for three or six months to the winner. And for people to participate in this event, they will be required to provide their contact details such as their names, email addresses and phone number.
Once the contest is over, you can then announce the winner. You can also offer a one-month free trial to the runners-up. From there, you can then start nurturing the prospects whose email addresses you’ve collected.
Giveaways provide a cheap lead generation method. Besides, they can also provide plenty of engagement on your social media posts, if you run the contest them. And this translates to more visibility and reach for your fitness business.
7. Run Fitness Events and Challenges
Fitness events and challenges are also an effective fitness marketing strategy that you should consider implementing. They will enable you to reach more prospects, build your following on social media, get more email subscribers, and increase your customer base.
For instance, you can run a 30-day couples’ fitness challenge, where the couple that manages to lose the highest number of pounds wins a special award. Such a challenge can be a powerful lead magnet. It will help you to attract couples who may have fitness goals, but may be unsure how to pursue them.
Also, running a fitness challenge and promoting it on your various social media platforms will increase your brand’s awareness and exposure. It can also help to boost your gym’s credibility, thus earning you more referrals.
8. Partner With Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers are personalities that have built large online followings on various social media platforms. And, most will be more than willing to partner with you and promote your fitness business.
For this fitness marketing strategy, you simply need to identify around two to three influencers in your area with around 5,000 followers or more. You can then ask them to give your business a shout on their social media platforms, in exchange for an agreed compensation.
But, before you engage any influencer, you need to do proper research to ensure you are working with the right person. Some influencers buy followers. And if you partner with such an individual, you will end up wasting your money with nothing to show for it.
Also, you should check for the level of engagement before you partner with an influencer. Again, some influencers purchase likes, making it look like they have a high engagement, and that may not be the case.
Once you identify the right influencer, you can then give them a unique referral code, which they can use to promote your gym on their social media channels. You can then use that code to track the conversion rate.
9. Wrapping It Up
When it comes to marketing your fitness business, you have several fitness marketing strategies to choose from. And, you don’t need to start implementing all the above strategies at once. You simply need to select two or three fitness marketing strategies from our list, focus on them for a few months, and test how they are performing. And from there, you can then choose those strategies that deliver the best results.