Competition is fierce in the fitness industry. Someone who wants to get fit can go to a small gym, a major chain or just work out at home. Your gym will need to stand out if you want to come out on top and this is exactly why you need to focus on fitness digital marketing.
Since fitness digital marketing can be challenging in most cases, creating robust digital marketing strategies for gyms and fitness studios may be where you need to start. Having the right online fitness marketing strategies on your side can make a big difference when it comes to convincing people in your neighborhood to sign up with your fitness center instead of your competitors.
9 digital marketing strategies for gyms to beat competition
The tricky part, however, is finding the right marketing strategies for gyms and then using them to maximum effect. Fortunately, we’ve got your back! Keep reading to learn about all the different methods of gym marketing and how to weave them into your online fitness marketing strategies.
1. Fitness digital marketing works best through cross-selling and upselling
Research from Harvard indicates that earning a new customer is 5-25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.
So if you want to get as much out of your digital marketing budget as possible, the first goal of your gym marketing plan should be to better leverage your existing members.
Digital signage may be the most effective way to do that. You can use it to:
- Advertise classes
- Entertain guests
- Introduce personal trainers
- Highlight guests’ social media posts (with your hashtag)
- Advertise new deals, products and partnerships
The coolest part is that you can manage all your digital signage displays from a single internet-enabled device. That makes it even easier to cross-sell and upsell to your existing customers.
2. Partner with local fitness influencers for fitness studio marketing
Social media is the latest frontier in digital marketing. So establishing a presence for your gym on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok is a must.
But instead of making ads he lynchpin of social media marketing for your fitness center, you may get more bang for your buck by deploying an influencer marketing strategy.
71% of marketers say that the quality of traffic they get from influencers is better than other sources.
But if you want to optimize your engagement, then it’s better to go with a micro-influencer (someone with a few thousand followers) than a macro influencer (someone with tens of thousands of followers)
It all means that the ideal way to market your gym on social media could be to partner with a small local fitness influencer. These accounts tend to have more dedicated fans, so the influencer’s support of your gym will matter more.
3. Initiate SEO and other online fitness marketing strategies
SEO is another pillar that you need to incorporate into your online fitness marketing strategies. More than 50% of traffic across the web comes from organic SEO results.
The best way to improve your SEO results is to build web content that better reflects what your target audience is searching for online.
This is why creating an engaging blog needs to be a big part of the marketing plan for your gym. Every blog post that you publish can address a specific SEO search intent. If the content is valuable and uses the right keywords, it should drive traffic to your website.
The structure of your website can also impact your SEO results. Here are some tips:
- Use internal linking to make sure every page on your site is accessible within three clicks from any other
- Don’t run duplicate content on multiple pages
- Use keywords for page titles and headings
- Optimize for speed
- Ensure your site is easy to access and read on mobile devices
4. Embrace video as a gym marketing strategy
The amount of online video content people watch has nearly doubled since 2018. That says a lot about where people’s attention is when using the internet. These statistics are even more relevant when it comes to marketing in the fitness industry.
Your gym needs to prioritize making video a key component of its fitness marketing strategies – but what types of videos should you create?
The idea behind video content is the same as if you were writing a blog post. You want to create something that your target audience finds valuable.
You could film a video series that explains how to do gym exercises properly. Or you could create videos that expose fitness myths. You can make more extended versions of these for your YouTube channel and shorter ones for your TikTok account.
The goal is to get your target audience to watch the video. Then, you can leave them with a call-to-action that prompts them to learn more by visiting your website or signing up for a gym membership.
5. A marketing strategy for fitness centers is better if people engage with your gym online
Nowadays, marketing in fitness is all about customer engagement. People expect to be able to engage online with a business in all of the same ways that they would over the phone or in person.
The last thing you want is to run successful digital strategies for your gyms only for someone to give up on signing up for a membership because they’re unable to do so on your website.
That’s why it’s important to make sure that potential customers can engage with your fitness center online in whatever ways they want. They should be able to:
- Sign up for classes
- Reach out to personal trainers for scheduling
- Get started with memberships
- Buy fitness items from your gym store
If you want your digital marketing campaigns to be successful, the roads you build have to lead back to a website with great functionality.
6. Take advantage of seasonal digital marketing for gyms
In addition to your standard digital marketing strategies for gyms, it’s also a good idea to create unique content that takes advantage of seasonal opportunities.
For example, that might include writing a blog post about how to stay healthy during Thanksgiving. Or you could create a video about fat loss myths as people prepare for the summer sun.
You can attach special seasonal deals to your seasonal content to really up the ante. For example, you could run summer preparation campaigns or offer holiday boot camps at a discount.
Seasonal digital marketing content helps you take advantage of people’s fitness interests, and goals change throughout the year.
7. Make offering incentives for online reviews a part of your gym marketing plan
Some data suggests that as high as 97% of consumers say they look at reviews before making a purchasing decision. That makes online reviews a vital part of your gym digital marketing strategy.
If you have lots of good reviews, it prompts customers to do more research. But, on the other hand, if you don’t have many reviews (or, worse, have lots of bad ones), then a potential customer may begin looking elsewhere right away.
That’s why it could make sense to incentivize existing customers to leave reviews for your gym online. For example, you could offer a discounted membership for a month, a free product from your store, or something else you know your customers will find valuable.
8. Sharing success stories is one of the best marketing strategies for gyms
A new person will only join your gym if they believe that it will help them reach their fitness goals better (or in more preferable ways) than the alternatives.
To convince these consumers of that fact, you need to make your gym stand out from the alternatives. Real-world success stories are one of the best ways to do that.
Gym members who have lost weight, gained muscle or met their fitness goals in other ways are often happy to talk about how they did it. As you share these stories on your website, try to highlight the specific ways that your gym helped them reach their goals.
For example, maybe a specific personal trainer had a significant impact. Or they got to work on a specialized machine, which supercharged their results.
9. Take advantage of online fitness marketing strategies such as retargeting
There’s an old idea in marketing called “The Rule of 7." It boils down to the concept that the average person needs to see a product or service at least seven times before they’ll purchase it.
One of your digital marketing goals should be to reach the same people multiple times. Retargeting is the most effective way to do that.
It’s the idea of using paid ads that only reach people who have already visited your website or social media profiles.
With retargeting ads, you keep your gym at the front of potential customers’ minds as they go through a decision-making process that takes time to complete.
The hope is that you become the first gym that they think of when they’re ready to sign up for a membership somewhere by doing that.
UPshow improves marketing strategies for fitness centers with digital signs
Gym digital marketing is just one part of growing your gym’s revenue. If you can excel at on-premise marketing, then your company will be well on its way to success.
UPshow’s digital signage software makes that much easier to do. It provides a simple way to:
- Entertain your guests
- Run special advertisements
- Promote value-adding services like personal training and classes
- Share helpful fitness tips and tricks with your members
- And more
