How to Promote your Gym for the New Year

The clock has struck twelve, fireworks have lit up the sky, the champagne has been popped, and the New Year’s resolutions have been made. Making it to the top of most people’s lists will be – joining the gym to try burning that holiday bulge. With fitness clubs trying to grab up clients with special offers , the competition is ramped up to the max. If you own a gym you’ll want to jump on the bandwagon and ramp up your marketing to get the attention of potential customers. Here are some marketing strategies you can implement to get that boost in gym memberships:

• Promote your Gym using Traditional Marketing Techniques

Marketing the traditional way never gets old. Though the world has rapidly evolved and digital marketing is becoming an increasingly popular method, nothing beats a well-designed print out when it comes to grabbing the attention of audiences.

Through the use of online poster and flyer makers you can easily and affordably design engaging graphics by using eye-catching fitness poster templates that can be customized easily to add details for your own gym, like the one below.

Additionally, consider leveraging offline marketing channels such as local community boards and utilizing Oppizi’s flyer distribution service to ensure that your gym promotions reach a wider local audience. When you combine traditional marketing techniques with online tools, you can effectively promote your gym digitally and physically.

Placing posters at popular places such as shopping malls, and local shops is a great way to get the word out about your gym, particularly in the local area. The posters can easily be resized and made into flyers, using online resizing tools available, and these flyers can then be distributed at popular areas during rush hour, so as to get maximum exposure.

• Social Media Marketing

In recent years, social media has become a highly popular and a very powerful digital marketing channel for businesses. If you want to create or improve brand awareness for your gym it’s essential you have social media handles.

The social media platforms you choose to create profiles for your gym on will depend on the platform most popular amongst your target audience. Facebook and Instagram tend to be the more popular platforms, but you can always create a business account on Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and possibly a WhatApp business account. Having business profiles on social platforms will allow you to engage with your current clients and connect with new customers.

Also Read=> Gym Franchise Advertising Case Study

Make sure you have relevant content going out regularly on your social channels, so as to remain active. You may want to pull together a content plan. This can be done quickly and easily through the use of customizable templates for gym graphics available online. You can create a bank of posts in advance, and schedule them for the coming weeks.

To grow your gym membership through the power of social media, on top of posting updates regularly, you can publish posts about exclusive deals and offers. These can then be shown to a larger audience through paid social media posts. Like Facebook’s boost functionality, which allows for your boosted post to reach a larger target audience, by spending a specified amount on it.

Social media is not only great for acquisition, but is also essential to help you retain the new members you get. You can post helpful guides, cheat sheets, workout videos, meal plans, host live Q&A sessions, and share other informative content to keep your members engaged, ensuring they don’t give up on their New Year’s resolution in a few weeks time.

• Make use of Influencer Marketing

A report shows that 58.4% of the total global population uses social media regularly, spending an average of 2.5 hours on it daily. With the rise in social media usage, businesses now see more of their target audience being found here. On each social platform users tend to follow others for information or entertainment purposes, which is where influencer marketing stems from.

Influencer marketing works by collaborating ‘Influencers’. Influencers are individuals, businesses, and famous industry leaders who have a large following and engagement rate on their social media profiles. Users who follow influencers tend to trust them, and therefore when influencers recommend, or use particular products or services, it comes across as an authentic source of information, influencing users to try out what is being recommended by the influencer.

Implementing a localized influencer marketing strategy with your gym can help promote brand awareness and drive your brands messaging to the specific group of consumers you’re looking to target. By making use of local popular influencers in the vicinity of your gym, you can reach potential customers. 

If potential customers see influencers they follow on social media going to your gym, or attending fitness classes offered at your gym, they’re sure to try it out based on the fact that they view that information coming from an authentic source. Each influencer can also be given unique discount codes to share with their followers. That way you’ll be able to measure success and effectiveness, the influencers will be able to offer an incentive to their audience, and the potential customers will benefit in terms of saving money – a win for all!

• Refer a Friend Scheme

Last but not least, a marketing strategy which works particularly well for gyms is making use of the refer-a-friend scheme. A referral program can be an influential marketing tool for your business. 

A referral program works by introducing new customers to your services, through the use of referrals by friends, family members, colleagues, and others. The idea behind it is based on trust, that is, when someone you know refers a product or service to you you’re more likely to buy it. Studies have shown a direct correlation between consumer trust and levels of engagement, with consumers more likely to make a purchase if they trust the brand. 

With gyms people tend to enjoy working out with a partner. It’s quite common for friends of family members to join the gym together, as a motivation for each other. Offering refer-a-friend programs can help you boost your membership, by giving existing members and anyone they get to join your gym, a discount, freebie, or some sort of cashback. Allowing your members to become your gym’s cheerleaders by offering them some sort of incentive can help you get that increase in membership needed.

But, you can’t just rely on the program to work by itself and wait for the referrals to come to you. You need to actively market and promote your referral program to see results.

Final Thoughts

There are numerous fitness marketing strategies that can help you increase your gym membership. Depending on time and resources, you can choose to pick a few that you think will be most effective, or implement them all. Whatever you choose, always remember to analyze performance, and measure success, so as to ascertain which strategy works best for you.

It can be easy, but costly to market to anyone and everyone, an approach most gyms take. Spend some time to carefully select your target audience before implementing your chosen gym marketing strategy.