Perhaps you have an established gym but are looking for tips to help you leverage more customers, or you have a small PT studio and are new to marketing your business. In this article, we will look at the typical methods to Market your Gym, what can work, and what you might not have considered giving some examples and insights to help you with your own planning.
What is Gym Marketing?
At its core, Gym marketing is getting the message out there for your business. It is about spreading the word and getting membership sign-ups. The secondary layer is building an aspirational community and a sense of belonging and loyalty. If you complete the primary marketing function, you naturally then need to build a community to support and retain your customers. There is an arsenal of tools you can use to do this, and we cover them in this article.
Why is it essential to Market your Gym?
New customers – Without the influx of new customers, your Gym business will be strangled by costs, which can creep up on you because the customer erosion can be slow and almost unnoticeable. You must have a robust customer recruitment plan in place.
Brand awareness – If you do not represent yourself well online, the chances are that potential customers will forget you and active members will be less engaged and even more susceptible to joining other gyms or stopping their memberships.
Long-term growth – To plan growth, you need to understand your USPs and your space in the market. Being niche can work in your favour; ensure that you have considered the opportunities to grow – More staff, clothing, classes, coffee, and nutrition consultancy.
Loyalty – A fundamental competency of marketing success – it forms part of the other examples. Loyalty helps new customers to maintain their membership and affiliation. Brand awareness promotes loyalty. Long-term growth comes from loyalty and new customers.
What tools can you use and why?
Google My Business (Maps)
If you have a location, even if you don’t, GMB or Maps, as it is now called, is an excellent way to generate business visibility fast! Being found quickly is important to a new business; however, it remains a crucial part of maintaining your customers and new business too. Maps also provide useful insights that can help you to understand how people are searching.
Social Media
Essential to modern Gyms and PT Studios, building a strong community online is the best way to keep your members engaged. You can post offers, spaces, and much more quickly and get responses. Advertising via social media can also heavily influence your ideal demographic. Lookalike audiences and distance-defined ads can ensure that you get to the right people at the right times.
Website
A critical function to your Gym business, a website is a place to list your classes, take bookings, gain signups and present the reasons your customers should want to be a member. It can be worth getting yourself up to speed with SEO or consulting a freelancer to help you. This type of organic marketing takes time. Finding some low-cost or even free directories to list your business on is worthwhile.
Google Analytics
Track your traffic and understand its geography. Let Google help you identify the age, sex, and device of your visitors. It links with your Google Ads account, as mentioned later. It helps you ensure that new content is indexed more quickly and any issues are raised by alerts.
Email Marketing
Once you have sign-ups, you need to be emailing new information, important Gym updates, and even tips. For example, if your new Mirafit Squat Rack has just landed, tell the world. It is imperative to ensure that this touchpoint is followed.
Google Ads (PPC)
Paying for visitors is a great way to ensure that you find customers fast. If your average membership fee is £50.00pm and you keep someone for 6 months, they are worth £300 to your business. Then if it costs you £30.00 in ads to secure their membership, you are effectively positive £270. It is a good idea to have a campaign running on a low budget and increasing spending around lean periods. It means you can fill classes and gain new memberships, which all help cash flow.
Sponsorship
Often overlooked, supporting community projects can get you press exposure and advertising all year round. Sponsoring a community centre, school, or project can be a fantastic way to get your name out there because, typically, this is covered by local press or banners that present your name for as long as the banners are present. Footfall and readership are two very different things.
Free taster sessions
Often a free taster is a great we to encourage people to come and try. If they love it and some will, then you get new sign-ups. This can be more labour-intensive, but definitely worth considering. This is good because you are giving to receive. You are passing value to the customer so they feel more obliged to sign up.
Creating a marketing strategy
Once you have considered the options above, your budget, your margins, and how much you need to be turning over in order to turn a profit. Then it is then time to draw up a marketing plan. This is a framework of costs, timings, and places to spend your budget, and it is a considered method for finding your customers and growing your business.
Your marketing plan should be adaptable and reviewed regularly to see where your budget is returning you the most success. The ultimate goal is to automate your marketing but work toward this once you know for certain the channels that work for you. Consider optimising your costs to ensure that you protect as much of that hard-earned cash as possible.
We hope that this article has been helpful and confirmed the benefits of core marketing channels while opening your eyes to approaches that you might not have considered, such as community sponsorship.
Interesting Related Article: “4 Reasons Why it’s Time to Have a Fitness Software“