You’ve spent months setting up your new fitness business, and you’ve finally managed to launch it. It’s now time to sit back and clients will come rushing to purchase your products or sign up for your services right? Unfortunately, things don’t work that way.
The reality is that, most of your target clients don’t know about your newly opened fitness business. So, if you sit back and wait for them to find you, you will be doing your new fitness business a huge disservice.
If you want your new fitness business to take off fast, you need to invest your time, money and effort in promoting and marketing it. In this article, we will share some effective ways of promoting and marketing your new fitness business.
1. Set Up a Website
Regardless of whether your fitness business is service-based or product-based, you will need to have a website. A website will be at the center of your marketing campaigns. Whether you are launching Google ads or social media ads, they will all need landing pages. And these landing pages will be on your website.
And with all your marketing strategies flowing through your fitness website, you can then implement analytics, to determine which methods are delivering the best results. Also, you will be able to gather great insights into your target audience.
So, before anything else, make sure you first set up a website. You can either decide to set up the website yourself if you have the skills or hire someone.
2. Implement SEO
Once your website is fully set up, you will need to implement search engine optimization or SEO.
SEO refers to a set of practices, which will align your fitness website with Google’s ranking algorithms. To this end, you will need to optimize your website with relevant location-based and industry-based keywords.
By setting up a website and implementing SEO, your website will be among Google’s search results for relevant keywords. For example, you may have opened a gym in Chicago, you’ve set up its website and made the necessary optimizations.
Whenever someone searches for a gym in Chicago, your business website will show among the search results. But, you should note that SEO is a long-term marketing strategy. So, don’t expect it to deliver immediate results.
3. Run Google Ads
As mentioned above, SEO is a long-term strategy. It will take approximately two to six months for your fitness website to achieve a decent ranking on Google. In the meantime, you will need to look for alternatives that can deliver immediate results. And this is where Google ads come in.
Once you launch Google ads, they will show at the top of the Google results page for relevant keywords, above the local and organic listings. So, if a prospect searches for a fitness center in your area, your business will feature prominently on the search engine results page.
However, Google ads will cost you money. Furthermore, it may take you some time to master how to set them up properly. But, the time, money and effort will be worth it. With the right implementation, Google ads will deliver hundreds of prospects and potential clients, within a matter of hours.
4. Facebook Ads
With close to 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides a great marketing opportunity for your new fitness business. What makes Facebook ads so effective is that it allows marketers to make specific audience targeting.
For instance, you can target people based on their age, gender, location, marital status, interest and profession, just to name a few. With such high levels of precision targeting, you can rest confident you will get value for your money.
To set up Facebook ads, you simply need to open an account with Facebook Ads Manager. Once you’ve opened an account, you will then need to select your ad’s objective, choose your audience, set your budget, create and launch your ad.
Facebook ads also come with analytics. Therefore, you will be able to monitor how your ads are performing. Once your Facebook ads are live, you can start getting results in less than a day. And if the ads are not delivering the expected results, you can then use the data from the analytics to make the necessary adjustments.
5. Run a Contest on Social Media
Social media contests are also an effective means of promoting a new fitness business. On average, contests have a conversion rate of approximately 34% higher than the majority of other content types.
You can increase your conversion rates even more, by making use of professionally designed social media templates, such as the ones found in ContentBASE's Fitness Canva Bundle.
For the contest to be effective, you should keep it as simple as possible. For instance, if you have opened a gym, the contest can be something as simple as a creative photo, where participants will post photos working out in unusual places.
At the same time, the participants will also be tagging your Facebook page and using your branded hashtags. The individuals whose posts generate the highest number of likes will then be the winners. You can have up to five winners.
As for the reward, you can give the winners branded merchandise as well as the opportunity to train in your fitness center, free of charge, for the first month or at a highly discounted rate.
Besides helping to spread awareness and excitement around your new fitness business, contests will also provide a means of connecting with your target audience while driving more traffic, and keeping it, to your fitness website.
6. Host an Event
Hosting an event is yet another great means of promoting and marketing your new business. Besides helping your target audience to get excited about your new fitness business, events also provide an opportunity for prospects to interact with your new fitness brand. And, during such interactions, you may end up signing some new clients.
Also, you will end up with the attendees’ contact information. And, as much as some of them may not purchase your products or services right away, you will continue nurturing them using email. And you may eventually manage to convert these leads into customers.
And, the event doesn’t have to be something expensive or fancy. Something as simple as an info session with fitness experts or a pop-up workout session will get the job done. You can also partner with other health and wellness businesses in your area to help spread more awareness for your event.
7. Collaborate with Local Influencers
Influencers are highly-popular, deeply-trusted and highly respected individuals in the fitness community. Also, they have large followings online, either via their blogs or on social media.
So, when you partner with such an individual and they mention your brand on their platforms, your new business will enjoy a massive reach. And such a huge reach will go a long way in promoting and marketing your new fitness business.
For example, you may only have a few followers on Facebook, since your brand is relatively new. And this means only a few people will engage with your posts. But when you partner with an influencer who has thousands of followers, your posts will reach considerably more people. And the higher the reach, the higher the chance of landing more prospects and leads.
With that said, you should approach influencer marketing with caution. There are plenty of scammers out there. So, before you engage any influencer, ensure you conduct thorough due diligence.
Ask for previous campaigns and check for the level of engagement. Once you’ve identified the right individual, you should make sure the terms and conditions are clear. If anything goes wrong, such an individual may end up tarnishing your reputation – something you want to avoid at all costs.
8. Upload Videos on YouTube
Studies show that videos have become one of the most preferred methods for consuming content today. And with the average person spending approximately 100 minutes every day watching videos, they should be part of your promotional strategies for your new fitness business.
And the good news is that, YouTube allows you to do video marketing for free. So, what types of videos can you post on YouTube to promote your new fitness business? Well, you have numerous options to explore.
For instance, if you are selling fitness-related products, you can put together a quick how-to video on how to use your products. And if your fitness business is service-based like a gym, you can give upload a tour of your gym, giving your audience a sneak-peek of your equipment, facilities available, as well as your team.
Once you’ve uploaded the videos on YouTube, you should then post a link to the various social media channels that you are using. Doing so will help to generate more views for your videos while getting more people to know about your new fitness business.
9. Advertise Locally
Radio, newspapers, magazines and TV channels also provide an opportunity to promote your fitness business. You simply need to approach their marketing teams and enquire how you will place an ad. While placing an ad through these media can be costly, the results are usually worthwhile.
Most of the leads that you will get from these ads are already qualified, meaning the conversion rate will be higher, compared to standard search campaigns. So, if your budget can allow it, then you should definitely tap into local marketing.
10. Wrapping It Up
There are numerous options available when it comes to promoting your new fitness business, regardless of its niche or your budget. And you can begin with some of those that we’ve discussed in this article and monitoring their performance. From there, you will then need to double down on the strategies that deliver the best results.