Considering that approximately 60% of the global population is on social media, social media marketing can be an effective way for fitness businesses to reach more prospects and sell more products or memberships.
But, with thousands of other fitness, health and wellness businesses already using social media, standing out from the crowd is not easy, but it’s manageable. In this guide, we will take you through tips that will help your fitness business grow using social media marketing.
1. Target the Right Audience
When it comes to social media marketing, one of the biggest mistakes that fitness professionals make is trying to market their services or products to everyone. And this is based on the assumption that the broader the message that you put out, the more people you will reach and connect with. However, such an approach will not deliver any results. Your messaging will only deliver results if you speak directly to your audience.
Hence, it’s important to identify the exact target audience that would purchase your products or services. And to do this, you will need to come up with buyer personas. A buyer persona is simply a fictional representation of your ideal client. The data that you already have on your clients, either obtained from your newsletter, website, or social media analytics will be enough to help you come up with a buyer persona.
Once you’ve created a buyer persona and identified your target audience, it will then be easier to come up with the right messaging, which resonates with them. Also, focusing on a specific group will enable you to market your products or services more effectively.
2. Choose the Right Platform
After identifying your target audience, you will then need to go a step further and research the social media platforms they prefer. By focusing on the platforms where your target audience hangs out, you will get a higher return on your marketing resources as opposed to using guesswork.
For many fitness businesses, the most effective social media channels to invest in are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And as you may expect, each platform has its preferred audience.
For instance, older people tend to prefer hanging out on Facebook while the biggest percentage of Twitter users is composed of younger people. The younger generations also prefer Instagram.
In case you are not sure which platforms your target audience prefers, you can simply spy on your competitors. If the majority of their audience is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, then you should consider focusing on those specific platforms.
3. Post High-Quality Content Consistently
You may have probably heard thousands of times that content is key. And this also applies to social media platforms. If you want to build a sizeable online following and get more sales, you must be ready to create high-quality content for your audience.
So, what does it mean by high-quality content? Well, your content should be helpful, relevant, engaging, and informative. Hence, if you are pitching or selling your services or products on every post, you will struggle to grow a following. In fact, some of your followers may even end up unfollowing you, making it hard to sell more products or services.
Besides posting high-quality content, you also need to be doing it consistently. Ideally, you should be posting at least once per day, which translates to around five posts per week. It will be advisable to create a content calendar, which will help you plan your content in advance and stick to a posting schedule.
4. Interact With Your Audience
Just because you are consistently posting high-quality content on social media doesn’t mean your following will grow magically. You also need to interact and engage with your audience as much as possible.
Interacting with your audience will help to build closer relationships. And eventually, some of your loyal followers may soon become dedicated customers. Also, having strong relationships with your followers may lead to word-of-mouth referrals, which translates to more sales.
Some of the methods that you can use to interact and engage with your audience include commenting on their posts, responding to messages or tagged posts, liking and sharing their posts as well as answering questions.
Another effective method of interacting with your audience is by asking your followers open-ended questions. Some of the fitness questions to ask on Instagram include their most challenging workouts or their favorite pre-workout recipes. You can also ask general questions like their preferred eateries in the neighborhood or the TV shows they are currently following.
You should then go through all the comments posted and respond accordingly. Make sure you have fun with this exchange and allow your personality to shine through. Besides helping to humanize your brand and building closer relationships with your audience, asking questions can also provide you with content ideas for your blog or upcoming social media posts.
5. Use Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags can help more people to discover your content on social media. Also, they can boost social shares, meaning, your content will be reaching a bigger audience. And some of the new social media users that come across your posts on social media may end up becoming your followers.
But, with thousands of fitness-related hashtags, you may be unsure which hashtags you should be using. Well, you can start by checking out your competitors and see which hashtags they are using. You can then incorporate similar hashtags into your posts.
For instance, if you operate a local gym in Miami, you can use hashtags like #personaltrainerMiami, #fitnesscoachMiami, #personaltrainingMiammi or #gymMiami. And whenever a social media user clicks on any of these hashtags, your posts will be among the results. From there, the user can then decide to check out your gym or personal training services.
6. Use Social Media Marketing Tools
Managing several social media networks can prove to be a challenge for most fitness entrepreneurs. And while hiring a social media manager is an option, you may not have the funds to do so, especially if you are a small business owner.
Fortunately, you can still manage to maintain an active presence on various social media platforms without sacrificing too much of your time using social media marketing tools.
Social media marketing tools will enable you to run all your social media channels from a single dashboard. You can also use them to schedule posts and track your engagement from a single platform. Some of the social media marketing tools that you can use include:
- Hootsuite
- Buzzsumo
- Biteable
- MeetEdgar
- Sprout Social
- Buffer
Apart from the above social media management tools, you should also consider using social media templates, such as this Canva bundle. Social media templates are pre-designed branded graphics, which you can use to post content on various social media platforms. Instead of creating content from scratch, you just need to make a few edits on these templates, and you will have a visually-appealing post within a few minutes.
Together with social media management tools, social media templates will save you a great deal of time and effort. You can then dedicate the time you’ve saved to other important tasks of running your fitness business such as marketing.
7. Run Contests and Giveaways
Running contests and giveaways on social media can be a great means of creating excitement around your fitness brand and expanding your reach. The contest can be something like the most likes on a post that has your hashtag on Instagram or a post with the highest number of shares on Facebook.
As for the prizes, you don’t have to spend too much. You can offer branded merchandise, a free trial for your personal training, or free home workout equipment for the winner.
At the end of the contest, you will notice that your following has grown. And this means you will end up with more potential clients, who may be interested in your fitness services or products.
8. Connect With Influencers
Your followers are mainly the people who will be interacting with your unpaid posts. So, if you are looking to expand your reach beyond your current following, you should consider partnering with niche influencers.
Partnering with niche influencers can be a cost-effective method of reaching more people. When it comes to choosing influencers to partner with, you should go for micro-influencers.
Micro-influencers are popular social media users with approximately 1,000 to 100,000 followers. Unlike mega influencers, micro-influencers have higher engagement rates. Also, their rates are more affordable and they have niche audiences.
And when you hire them to share your content on social media, your messaging will resonate better with their smaller, loyal followers. Thus, they are the perfect match for your social media marketing campaigns.
9. Track Key Metrics
Regardless of whether you are running ads, experimenting with video posts, using influencer marketing or posting on social media channels as usual, you need to be tracking your metrics on social media.
Tracking your metrics will give you an idea of whether the strategies you are using are working. Some of the metrics that you need to watch out for include mentions, likes, comments, shares, clicks, impressions and direct messages.
10. Wrapping It Up
A majority of fitness consumers these days are on social media, making it a great marketing opportunity for your fitness business. However, social media marketing can also prove to a time-consuming endeavor, with no results to show. But by implementing the above tips and ideas, you will streamline your social media marketing efforts, thus helping to connect with more people, grow your audience over time, and increase brand awareness. Eventually, this will lead to more sales.