Standing out in a crowded market is more difficult and more crucial than ever. Whether you’re an up-and-coming fitness studio, a seasoned wellness center, or an ambitious personal trainer, the right marketing strategies can be the linchpin to attracting new members and retaining them long-term. With the digital landscape offering a plethora of platforms and tools, knowing how to effectively harness these resources can transform your business from unremarkable to the go-to destination for your audience.
We understand these unique challenges. We’ve been in your shoes ourselves. In this article, we’ll dive deep into the most effective fitness marketing strategies that are proven to drive growth, enhance engagement, and build a loyal community around your brand.
OfferingTree’s “business in a box” software can help you get your fitness business up and running so that you can start engaging with your audience in no time.
How To Market A Fitness Business
You don’t need an MBA to effectively promote your business. All you need is an understanding of your audience and a willingness to try new things.
Applying tactics for marketing fitness and wellness often starts with creating a strong name for yourself, utilizing various social media tactics, and generating open and honest content for clients. For more in-depth info and strategies, let’s get started:
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Build a Strong and Unique Brand
Creating a strong brand that differentiates your business should be one of the first strategies you implement. Who is your audience? Do you focus on helping physical therapy patients build more strength? Does your fitness studio offer holistic remedies alongside strength classes? No matter what your niche is, it’s imperative to know who is looking for your services.
Building your company around your audience and figuring out what makes you stand out will help you curate a strong brand that genuinely resonates with your target audience and keeps them coming back for more.
A few other questions to ask yourself can include:
- Who are my existing clients? How do I already help them?
- What areas can I expand on to further reach my existing clients?
- What can I offer to entice new clients?
- Have I been casting my net too wide?
Create Valuable and Honest Content
With how many businesses are constantly trying to get us to notice them, all of us are way too familiar with how fake content can sound. It’s important that your fitness business marketing content doesn’t fall into that trap. Create open and honest content for your clients with organic calls to action.
You may be compelled to jam a ton of information about your business and why you think it’s so great into a flyer or landing page. Instead, follow these guidelines:
- Opt for shorter, more personalized content
- Don’t make any promises you can’t keep
- Consider how short attention spans are these days
- Use a personal touch to connect with your specific audience
- Call out the problems you solve IE classes to help with back pain
Utilize Social Media
It’s almost impossible to understand how to market your fitness business in the modern age without the use of social media marketing. Fitness digital marketing can give your gym, yoga studio, or wellness center the boost it needs.
Beyond creating informational or reminder content that you can share daily or throughout the week, you can also ask your existing members to get involved. This helps create a more organic and social community online. If people see your current customers enjoying your presence online, they’ll be more inclined to check you out as well.
A few social media tactics you can utilize include:
- Ask members to show before and after pictures of any results they’ve experienced
- Experiment with tapping into influencer marketing, a referral program, or Facebook ads
- Provide quick information about events or seminars happening soon
- Offer tips on what members can do from home to keep up with their progress
- Get silly by participating in current TikTok or Instagram Reels trends
If you’re looking to grow and build a yoga marketing strategy, we’ve got a comprehensive strategy for growth to help you out.
Utilize Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience. Our inboxes are full of companies vying for our attention, so it’s critical to craft a subject line compelling enough to get the recipient to open it. Again, don’t make any promises you can’t keep. Otherwise, they may just unsubscribe from your email list entirely.
Emails are a great way to communicate all kinds of messages to existing and future clients. Utilize the following email types:
- Newsletter: This is a great way to communicate important information to clients. Include links to upcoming events, your class schedule, etc. Make sure it adds real value for your community by adding some helpful tips and advice.
- Welcome Sequence: What happens after a new member joins? If you don’t have an automated welcome sequence that is triggered to send a few emails over time to make new members feel seen and part of the community, you may be losing customers.
- Nurture Sequence: What about your members who have been around forever? Having automated sequences to nurture your existing members to ensure they still feel valued can help reduce churn.
- Promo: If you run a promo in the gym and aren’t promoting it to your email subscribers, you’re missing out! Otherwise, the only people who hear about your promos are those who come in all the time.
include links to your site or landing pages for upcoming events, various price rates, and tips for continued success.
Host Events
One way to actually connect with people in person is by hosting events or other seminars at your business or another business. Events can let people see the real, authentic you, along with what else your business can offer. Events can let people get involved as well. Some great ideas for events could be:
- Free gym, yoga, or wellness classes to get people started
- Workshops, such as those catered to healthy eating, relaxation, etc.
- Off-site events, like hiking or a meet-up at a local health bar
- Seminars with professional speakers
It’s important to offer online events as well. These can let people stay involved even if they’re elderly, sick, or simply can’t attend physically.
Get inspiration for your next event with our guide to coming up with creative workshop ideas and the practical considerations of putting them on.
Offer Discounts and Promotions
A great way to entice potential customers – and offer new services to existing clients – is to offer discounts or promotions. This can help you stand apart from everyone else by showing what you can offer. This can also be beneficial if you want to send out a promotion for a service your company is known for or if you want to highlight something new you’re bringing to the table.
Other examples of promotions include:
- Free trial membership or free classes
- Reduced or free personal training sessions or one-on-one health coaching
- Discounts on packages
- Perks if someone follows you on social media
Utilize SEO and Fitness Digital Marketing
SEO, or search engine optimization, has recently become one of the best marketing tactics for businesses. A digital marketing strategy like SEO helps people find services near them without getting bogged down in Google’s search results.
Figuring out how to optimize your SEO in your marketing for fitness journey can really set you apart from the competition. SEO marketing can help make sure that your business is one of the first things people see when they’re looking for fitness centers in their area.
Create Shareable Content & Tips
This also ties into creating honest and authentic content. Creating content, either online or offline, that can easily be shared with clients helps them stay loyal while still getting relevant information out there.
This doesn’t just have to include what services you offer or how much a year membership costs. Instead, make it a bit more personalized. Offer tips on exercises people can do at home, or create recipe cards that highlight nutritional benefits outside of the gym too. You can even offer mental health exercises or tips. Once people realize that you care about them in more ways than just as a client, they’ll keep coming back for more.
Track and Analyze Marketing Data
Once you push marketing content out there, it’s also beneficial to track and analyze who it reaches. This can help you cultivate more streamlined content that’s specifically targeted to your audience. And, once you find out who your content is reaching, you can tweak it to make sure it’s going to the right crowd. Some ways to effectively track and analyze data can include looking at:
- Social media engagement
- Site traffic
- Cost per click of any ads you put online
- Return on advertisement spending
- The amount of comments vs. likes a post gets – what gets people more engaged?
- SEO keyword searches
Stay Up-to-Date With Online Trends
Trending can look different depending on the content and platform. For example, what’s trending on TikTok may not be trending on Facebook. However, it’s a good idea to stay up-to-date with trends and even participate in them if possible. This is a great way to attract organic traffic to your site without pushing stale marketing content. A few platforms that you may be able to participate in trends on include:
- TikTok
- Youtube
It’s helpful to employ or work with someone socially savvy to help stay up-to-date with these as well, as trends can start and stop quickly.
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What Makes A Fitness Marketing Strategy Successful?
It’s important to note that not every fitness marketing strategy is going to work for your business specifically. Creating a plan of who you want to target and how you want to reach them can help you figure out what marketing strategies may work better for you than others. But still, creating the right strategy for your business will take some trial and error, so don’t be discouraged if some strategies don’t work. You may be surprised by what works and what doesn’t, so it’s also important to try a variety of things.
Use OfferingTree’s Marketing Tools In Its All-In-One Fitness Business Software
Hopefully, some of these fitness marketing tactics can benefit you as you look to increase your business’ outreach to potential clients and customers. And if you need help marketing your fitness business, look no further than OfferingTree.
Our “business in a box” solution can help you get your business up and running within 30 minutes. Our software offers tools for data management, content dissemination, and digital marketing tools. OfferingTree can help you make sure you reach your customers organically and effectively while still showcasing all you have to offer. Our all-in-one service can be just the tool you need. Take us for a test run with a free trial, or schedule a demo with our sales team.
