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Need Quick Help With Your Marketing? Here are 6 tips for marketing your gym or fitness club in 2024!
Some call it networking, some call it community engagement. Irrespective of what you decide to call it, it is very effective and it is largely free!
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, we have seen a greater shift towards the local economy and community-driven initiatives. This has only been compounded by the suffering caused by the cost of living crisis. While the tightening of budgets and belts has people looking for value, it also has people looking beyond faceless corporations.
This renewed focus on the local area seems to have only strengthened as we move through 2023 and it made an already unique selling point for independent gyms and fitness clubs even more appealing.
So today we will be focusing on tips that will help maximise this in-built advantage that we’ve seen independent gyms and fitness clubs already capitalise on!
Our Top 6 Marketing Tips Are...
(you can also click to skip ahead!)
Build a brand identity that will appeal to your local area, culture and surroundings.
Thrust your brand into the local community and intertwine your story with theirs.
Actively foster your gym’s community, both online and offline!
Ideas to help you create reward programmes who keep your best customers around.
Use the power of data from your online platforms to accurately track your success.
Use the power of reviews and referrals to build authority and legitimacy.
TIP #1: Build A Brand Identity That Will Appeal To Your Local Area, Culture & Surroundings
We cannot understate the importance of a strong identity for your gym business.
Too often when building a brand identity for a gym or fitness club we find that many owners didn’t prioritise consideration of their local area nearly enough.
While connecting with your local community is always somewhere on the list of concerns, it should nearly always be much higher!
It is an understandable trap to fall into. Certain other parts of brand identity are more exciting, more dynamic or more interesting to the people involved.
But ultimately the area that every independent gym and fitness club will find themselves operating in will be their surrounding area. If the brand identity is consistently aimed at attracting locals and mobilising the community, the gym is leaving money on the table. Money that rivals will happily collect!
TIP #2: Thrust Your Brand Into The Local Area
Goodwill and support for local business is at an all time higher and running an advertising campaign or social media campaign that reflects that could pay dividends.
Focusing on the story behind an independent gym or fitness club. The people who made it possible and their connection to the area, the building, the community events it has hosted.
These are all things that the budget chains will never be able to replicate. What is the story behind its existence? Rigorous data analysis informed a panel that this was the best location for a gym….
...HARDLY MAKES FOR A COMPELLING SOCIAL MEDIA STORY, DOES IT?
As we are seeing across many sectors, there is a portion of the population which receives this sort of marketing and messaging very positively.
At the same time, pushing the name of your gym or fitness club into the community’s consciousness through hosting events and making deals with local businesses is a great way to generate awareness. After participating and hosting events like these, we have seen time and time again that locals say things such as ‘I didn’t realise it was so nice in here’ or ‘I can’t believe this has been here the whole time!’.
A lot of local engagement is about breaking members of the local community out of an apathetic routine and into your gym or fitness club.
Once that barrier for entry, the reluctance to enter the unknown, has disappeared then the sky’s the limits.
By holding event days for the local community such as charity fundraising and sporting activities a gym can not only get free advertising, but start a chain of positive word of mouth. News spreads fast in a community!
In addition, business partnerships with local sports clubs, spas, cafes or even the local council can go a long way. Anything that gets the name of your gym out there and gives you something to post and tweet about!
Attending unrelated community events, genuinely befriending members of the community and making your gym or fitness club a part of the community’s social fabric are all great ways to spread the message of your facility.
This will help present a friendly, accessible and non-corporate image to the area.
TIP #3: Foster A Community, Online And Offline!
How can hiring or incentivising influencers to endorse a fitness business boost their digital marketing campaigns?
Work on creating a Community both Online and Offline: Activities, Events and a shared forum as a key pillar of an independent gym or fitness club owners marketing strategy.
It is an arena where we see comparatively little competition from the corporate chains!
It is an authenticity issue! Whenever a large chain attempts to engage in that sort of thing, it has to fight against looking inauthentic.
However independent gyms and fitness clubs do not have this issue within their advertising and marketing strategy, especially when it comes to forming communities.
Gym members are more likely to identify themselves with an independent fitness facility. In turn, they are more likely to want to engage in the community that forms around that facility.
Afterall, people crave authenticity in all things...
...And in an era where corporate brands attempt to dominate even our social spaces, belonging to something like an independent gym or fitness club can create a powerful feeling within people.
It is up to gyms and fitness clubs to harness that feeling and channel the positive energy into their online and offline communities
By cultivating a dedicated community, it will increase the loyalty of existing members and potentially create new members. By engaging with and dedicating resources to this burgeoning new community, a gym or fitness club can create a real sense of investment.
It could be as simple as sporting events or monthly socials. Little things can have a powerful bonding effect.
In turn, this strong sense of community is fantastic marketing potential. The events, in and of themselves, are free advertising. When coupled with the potential tool for retention and further marketing opportunities, it is a hard proposition to pass up!
TIP #4: Create A Reward Programme To Reward Loyalty
Building on the idea of community from the last tip, we now want to focus even further. Down to the individual relationships that gym members have with other members and other potential members.
A reward/referral scheme is a great way to get people through the door. Much like the community system, it has a double benefit. Positive reinforcement for the referrer and the referred.
It is likely to increase the loyalty of the existing member and the chance to retain the business of the referred member for longer. It has been proven that both collaboration and incentives can help motivate members toward their fitness goals and reduce attrition rates on membership.
As such, reward and referral programmes are a simple scheme with a low setup cost and potentially powerful outcomes if administered correctly.
TIP #5: Legitimacy, Authority, Reviews
This next tip falls into something we like to call ‘passive-marketing’, similar to a gym’s brand identity, it is the sort of marketing that works when a potential member comes across the gym or fitness club.
There are certain signifiers that each of us look for when deciding whether we are going to invest in a product. Gym and fitness club memberships are no different!
While some are highly specific to the individual, many of these signifiers apply to everyone.
One of the most common, unsurprisingly, is online ratings and reviews. The number of consumers that base their consumption habits mostly or entirely on reviews frequently tops 90% in studies.
As such, when we think of prospective gym or fitness club members discovering a gym online, we must view it through the lens of their first impression from reviews.
THE MORE NEGATIVE REVIEWS, OR THE LOWER REVIEW AVERAGE THAT POTENTIAL MEMBERS SEE FOR A GYM OR FITNESS CLUB, THE LESS LIKELY THEY ARE TO SIGN UP! THE SLICKEST MARKETING CAMPAIGN IN THE WORLD COULD FALL FLAT IF A GYM OR FITNESS CLUB DOESN’T PASS THE BASIC CHECKS THAT A SAVVY CONSUMER MIGHT MAKE.
Bespoke Content, Quality Not Quantity
How can AI be unsuitable for producing high-quality content, despite its ability to produce content in vast quantities?
For our final point, we will head back to AI and a sentiment that was espoused in the first section of this blog. For those paying attention, it has been the throughline of the entire article.
We believe AI has a place. It seems that AI may even have a place in video with the recent announcement of Sora. An OpenAI product that seems to be able to produce uncannily realistic videos with only a few lines of text, in the style that we have come to expect from ChatGPT (also an OpenAI product) for text or Midjourney for pictures.
But the ‘place’ that AI has is not only a very tentative one, but one that must be subject to constant review.
So we believe that AI and language-learning models, as they currently stand, are effective for spell-checking and the like. Menial tasks. We do not believe they are any substitute for actual people behind a digital marketing strategy.
Take our example earlier of the local influencer working with the gym. Is it better to have one actual person preaching to their fans about the virtues of their partnership with an independent gym or fitness club. Or five ‘AI’ fitness influencers, were that possible, to espouse the same.
One is full of real passion and an actual relationship being forged. Between independent gym and influencer. Influencer and audience. Human and unreplicatable. The other is eerie and soulless, even if it can be produced in vast quantities.
So while we always advocate for adopting the latest technologies, up to and including AI, we also preach caution. Use AI responsibly. Use it as the powerful tool it is, to save tedium when checking actual work. But as the centrepiece of a digital marketing strategy for independent gyms and fitness clubs? No, we don’t think so. Not yet, and possibly not ever. But as the last five years have taught us. Never say never.
Tiktok especially feels like a platform just built for the promotion of independent gyms and fitness clubs, whether it is with a quick tour set to catchy music or a demonstration of the facility and equipment.
Authenticity and effortlessness are what these influencers are trading on and it is a powerful tool, proven to be very effective with millennials and Gen Z. It is a great way to make the marketing of an independent gym or fitness club more personal. The recommendation of a trusted influencer feels remarkably different to a cold and calculated advert. (Especially if it was made using AI!)
Equally, unlike some influencer advertising that we see on Tiktok or Youtube, independent gyms and fitness clubs have very real incentives to offer to fitness influencers! Namely the facility and their considerable resources. Conversely, it should not take the influencer much to get excited about a genuinely good independent gym or fitness club.
It is worth independent gyms and fitness clubs spending the time to find interesting and motivated fitness influencers in the area, even if their follower count is relatively small, the potential for a low-cost, high-yield partnership cannot be overlooked!
These arrangements need not end after a single video, but with the right influencer an independent gym or fitness club can weave an entire campaign’s worth of videos promoting the positive aspects of their fitness facility on a very low budget to the right audience.
It is a lesson in the face of AI marketing that creating the right content can be more important than creating huge volumes of content.
By utilising real influencers and incorporating them into a responsible, honest and ethical digital marketing campaign on platforms like Tiktok and Instagram, an independent gym or fitness club can access whole new demographics with ease while engaging with a new community.
Our Final Thoughts
And so ends our little thinkpiece on marketing and digital marketing for independent gyms and fitness clubs in 2024. It is an exciting time for marketing in the fitness industry, with more ways than ever for even small independents to promote themselves in new and interesting ways.
It is also a time of great change, and maybe not entirely for the better. We have already seen some businesses, inside and outside of the fitness industry, taking the ‘easy route’ and generating vast quantities of content with AI. Perhaps adhering to the old adage of throwing something at a wall and seeing what sticks.
As we said, we believe AI tools can be used by independent gyms and fitness clubs to a good end even in their current state in 2024, but it is no substitute for the talent, passion and expertise required to succeed in the industry.
And speaking of those three qualities, here at Ashbourne we know how to utilise talent, passion and expertise to help independent gym and fitness club owners take their operation to the next level!
Over the last twenty five years (back when the term ‘AI’ was mainly a concept in science fiction or chess computers), we have helped thousands of gyms and fitness clubs reach greater heights. Whether it is with our versatile and powerful membership management software or our website creation capabilities, we have the ability to help any gym reach a broader audience more effectively!
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Get your club in shape.
Want to discover how? Let us show you.
Simply select your preferred timeslot and we’ll be in touch to have a chat about your health club,
the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
Get your club in shape.
Want to discover how? Let us show you.
Simply select your preferred timeslot and we’ll be in touch to have a chat about your health club, the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.
Get your club in shape.
Want to discover how? Let us show you.
Simply select your preferred timeslot and we’ll be in touch to have a chat about your health club, the goals you want to achieve, and how our system can help you.