Advertising everywhere, on both social media as well as search engines, is a vital part of any business. And gyms are no exception. Without gym advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc., you will struggle to generate new leads for your gym. And without new leads, it will be impossible to grow your gym’s membership.
Therefore, advertising also needs the same level of attention and dedication as any other part of your fitness business.
However, creating a gym advertisement is not as easy as it appears. It needs to be compelling and creative enough, to get new fitness clients through the door. So, every person who owns or runs a fitness brand should learn how to create one.
In this article, we will take a closer look at why fitness advertisements are important to anyone who runs a fitness brand. We will also walk you through the steps to creating attention-grabbing gym advertisements.
1. Why Gym Adverts are Important
Regardless of how well equipped your gym is, if no one knows about it, then no one will visit. And if your target audience is not visiting your gym, then your revenues may stagnate. Simply put, every fitness brand needs a powerful advertising strategy.
Also, the fitness industry is highly competitive. Currently, there are approximately 104,000 health and fitness clubs in the U.S. So, if you don’t have a robust health club advertising strategy in place, it will be almost impossible for it to stand out from the competition.
2. How to Create an Effective Gym Ad
As noted above, advertising is a vital component of any gym. When properly planned and executed, advertising can help to enhance a fitness brand’s awareness. Also, they can help to attract more clients to the gym, further increasing the gym’s revenues. Utilizing an AI ads generator can streamline this process, making it easier to create targeted and effective ads.
So, how can you create a gym ad that will attain these objectives? Well, here are some tips on how to create a compelling and effective fitness center ad.
2.1 Conduct Market Research
Before creating your fitness ads, you should first conduct some basic market research. The market research will help you to learn more about your target client.
During the research, you will learn more about your target client’s income, age, where they live, as well as their fitness goals, among others.
With that information, it will be easy for you to come up with a fitness ad that aligns best with your target client.
2.2 Set Your Goals
Every fitness ad should have a clear set of goals. So, before you launch one, you should first define what your health club ad will achieve.
For instance, you can decide to use the advertisement to raise brand awareness, generate new leads, or announce a new personal training class.
Knowing what you intend to achieve with your fitness advertisement will help to keep everything on track.
2.3 Use an Attention-Grabbing Header
Your target audience will come across hundreds of advertisements every day. And as you may expect, they cannot read each of these headers. Therefore, you need to design your gym ads in a way that will grab the viewer’s attention, and encourage them to read them.
And you can achieve that by including a powerful header. The header for your gym ad should be big enough and readable. So, make sure you use a readable font.
Also, it will be highly advisable to use high contrast between the header and the other elements on the ad. Using high contrast will not only grab the reader’s attention, but will also help your gym ad to stand out from the others.
2.4 Include a Compelling Offer
Customers love great offers. Therefore, ensure you include a compelling offer in your fitness advertisement to encourage them to sign up for your gym’s membership.
The offer can be a free trial, unbeatable discounts, or free personal training or the first members who sign up first.
When potential clients see that you are offering something great, they will find it hard to resist it.
However, make sure you add an element of scarcity to your offer. Adding an element of scarcity creates FOMO or the fear of missing out.
So, whether you decide to offer a free trial, free personal training sessions or unbeatable discounts, you should ensure you create a sense of urgency or scarcity.
For instance, the free personal training lessons can be limited to the first 10 people who sign up while the discounts should be limited to one week or so.
2.5 Highlight the Benefits
When it comes to creating a gym ad, you should highlight the benefits your target client stands to gain when they sign up for your gym.
After all, your target client wants to know how they will benefit from the services that you offer. They also want to know whether they will get value for your money.
So, instead of wasting time stating how accomplished you are or how well equipped your gym is, you should use this opportunity to tell the reader how your fitness brand will improve their lives.
2.6 Minimize the Risks
People are naturally nervous when it comes to spending their money. And you can’t blame them. After all, there are too many poor-quality services out there.
Therefore, if your target clients fear that they may lose their money when they sign up for your personal training services, it’s highly likely they will not sign up.
So, how do you remove these doubts? Well, you can do so by including a risk-free guarantee on your fitness ad.
For instance, you can offer a 7-day or 15-day money-back guarantee to everyone who signs up for your gym. Such a guarantee will convince your target audience that they have nothing to lose if they sign up for your services.
Offering a risk-free guarantee also shows that you are confident in the services offered at your gym and you are ready to back them up. And this will go a long way in convincing your target clients that your services are worthwhile.
2.7 Leverage Testimonials
If your gym is relatively new, convincing people to become members will not be easy. So, you will need to find a means of building trust and credibility. And this is where testimonials come in.
Reviews from satisfied members will show potential clients that your fitness business is legitimate.
Also, adding one or two testimonials from your current members will go a long way in convincing or encouraging potential clients that they will get value for your money.
However, make sure you first seek permission from the members whose testimonials you intend to feature on your gym ad. Also, provide full disclosure as to how or where you intend to use their testimonials.
Using this approach will help to avoid legal issues, which may run your gym’s reputation.
2.8 Add Contact Information
As earlier mentioned, gym advertisements are designed to help a gym grow its membership.
Therefore, it needs to have complete contact information, so that potential clients can find your gym easily.
Some of the contact details that you can include on your gym ad include your phone number, email address and social media handles.
You also need to indicate its exact location. So, you should indicate the street it’s located, building name, and floor number, just to name a few.
2.9 Add a Call to Action
Your fitness ad will also need a call to action button. As its name suggests, a call to action button will encourage potential clients to take action.
The call to action that you include will depend on where you intend to place your gym advertisement.
If your advertisement will be a physical poster or banner, then you can have a call to action that encourages people to call or email you.
And if you decide to post your fitness club advertisement on your social media platforms, you can have a call to action that requests users to purchase your gym’s membership.
2.10 Test Your Fitness Club Ads
Once you’ve finished designing your fitness ads, you should then test them to see what works and what doesn’t.
To do this, you will first need to create a wide range of headlines, images, videos, and designs. From there, you then need to test different combinations of your fitness ads.
And you can do this both with digital ads and print ads. For digital gym ads, you can post them on your fitness Instagram account or Facebook page and then run A/B tests to assess which combination delivers the best response.
3. Final Thoughts
As you can see, creating one is not as easy as adding a few words to a template. If it’s average, potential clients will walk past it, without even glancing in its direction. On the other hand, if you create a compelling gym ad, it will have potential fitness clients walking into your gym.
So, once you’ve finished designing your fitness advertisement, you should ask yourself whether it will encourage potential clients to sign up for your gym or they would walk past it. If you are convinced it will encourage people to come to your gym, you should then test it and launch it.
After you’ve launched your gym ads, you will need to put a tracking system in place. Tracking your gym ads, especially the digital versions, will help you to determine their overall engagement statistics and conversion rates. You can then use that information to make the necessary tweaks.