How independent gyms can use AI and LLM tools to enhance their marketing without losing authenticity
Running an independent gym is more than a full time job, which is why we are always keen to take automation wherever we can. But automation should never come at the cost of the quality or authenticity that has always given independent gyms and fitness clubs an edge over their corporate rivals.
You know your area, you know your equipment and most importantly, you know your members. But when it comes to marketing and drawing in new members, it can often be a job that falls by the wayside. Why focus on the theoretical, potential members outside your walls when there is so much to do within them.
Here at Ashbourne Membership Management, we’ve helped countless independent gym and fitness club owners automate everything from the infrastructure that governs their payment collections to the biometric tools and turnstiles that allow access to their fitness facilities.
With over 25 years of experience in the fitness industry, we know when automation is worth adopting without hesitation and when the technology comes with some caveats and warnings.
ChatGPT and other LLMs (Large Language Models) are powerful tools that can potentially take the grind out of your marketing, but it needs to be used correctly and responsibly.
The news has been full of stories about over-eager corporate directors purging entire departments only to learn that AI isn’t the silver-bullet solution they thought it was. And today we will be focusing on how independent gym and fitness club owners can avoid overestimating and underestimating their AI tools.
“ChatGPT is only as effective as the person using it!”
The biggest weakness of the ChatGPT and other LLMs is that they don’t know your gym. Whether it is the local community, the unique culture you have built or the specific challenges you face when it comes to getting new members through the doors. This guide will show you how to leverage ChatGPT’s strengths while ensuring your marketing remains relatable, genuine and authentic to your brand.
Understanding ChatGPT: Your New Marketing Assistant...
Not the New Marketing Manager
The first thing to remember when using ChatGPT and other LLMs for gym marketing is that it isn’t a replacement for your efforts or the efforts of your marketing team, but as an incredibly fast, always on stand-by marketing assistant. It is an assistant that is brilliant at structure, language and generating ideas, but they have never set foot in your town.
In fact, ChatGPT has never even seen a town, let alone an independent gym. It has just read billions of sentences about towns and gyms and marketing. That is certainly useful, but it means they have significant blindspots. Your job is to be the expert, the editor and the heart that utilises this tool to maximum effect. You and your staff will provide the local knowledge and authenticity while ChatGPT provides the speed and scale.
How to Use ChatGPT to Enhance Your Marketing
1. Content Idea Generation and Brainstorming
Staring at a blank page rarely inspires great feats of creativity and marketing, but ChatGPT and other LLMs are a great way to spark your creativity by generating ideas at a hitherto unimaginably fast rate. Don’t accept the ideas blindly of course, but even a marketing idea you disagree with or wish to edit can be instructive in determining what your course of action should be.
As we covered in the introduction, ChatGPT doesn’t know your current circumstances so be sure to specify such details as the time of year, the country you are operating within and other key details.
How to do it: Provide ChatGPT with context before asking for ideas.
Prompt Example: “I own an independent strength-focused gym in X town, Y country, which has a significant student population thanks to the local University. We primarily focus on powerlifting, strongman and functional fitness. We have tried to cultivate a strong community feeling and run monthly events. Give me 10 ideas for social media posts for the month of October that would resonate with this audience”.
Why it works: It gives you a jumping-off point. You can take an idea like “Member Spotlight Sunday” and then use your knowledge to feature an actual, inspiring member.
It is important not to overload ChatGPT with information. It doesn’t need seven paragraphs of background every time. Just give pertinent information, such as the country you are located in, the demographic population and population density of your area and any local peculiarities. Perhaps the student population in the example might be a commuter belt population in another town and ChatGPT would have different suggestions for an independent gym owner in the UK compared to another fitness club owner in Ireland or Norway.
2. Writing First Drafts, Overcoming Writer’s Block and Providing Outlines
Keeping up with a social media content calendar can be quite a task for any gym owner. And an independent gym’s social media presence can look sloppy if updates aren’t posted regularly and certain styles aren’t adhered to. Sometimes you will need an email, a social media caption or a blog post outline in a hurry.
The good news? ChatGPT can draft it in seconds.
Sometimes it is easier to edit a piece of work than create it from scratch. ChatGPT can be instructed to generate the template for an email or social media post, which can save you or your social media team time on starting from scratch.
Due to the vast number of social media posts it has been trained on, ChatGPT and other LLMs can often suggest layouts and concepts you might otherwise not have considered.
How to get the best from ChatGPT here: Be specific about the topic, tone and goal. Be prepared to make significant edits and fill in the details in order to make it feel authentic.
Prompt Example: “Write a friendly and encouraging email to my gym members announcing a new ‘Functional Fitness’ workshop. The tone should be exciting but not salesy. Include a section on who the workshop is for (beginners welcome) and key benefits. Leave a placeholder for the date, time, and a link to sign up”.
Why it works: You get a solid structure and base language. Then, you edit it heavily. Add local references, mention a nearby landmark (‘perfect for getting strong for hiking up (Local Hill)’), and make not only sound like it was written by someone from your area but written in your brand’s tone.
3. Crafting Engaging Social Media Captions
Consistency is vital when it comes to marketing campaigns for an independent gym on social media. ChatGPT can be a powerful tool in maintaining a steady flow of engaging social media content for any independent gym or fitness club.
How to do it: Ask for multiple options for a single post.
Prompt Example:”I’m posting a photo of the gym’s sunrise class. Write three different Instagram captions: one that is motivational, one that focuses on community, and one that is a simple question to drive engagement”.
Why it works: You get variety and can choose the caption that best matches the mood of the photo and your community that day.
4. Scripting Short Video Content (Reels/TikToks)
Short-form video has quickly become one of the dominant forms of media consumption, especially among the digital generations. Everything is now trying to be TikTok, from YouTube Shorts to Reels, but thinking of concepts and scripting can be time-consuming.
How to do it: Ask for video concepts and short scripts.
Prompt Example: “Generate 5 ideas for a 15-second Instagram Reel for a gym. The ideas should be simple, show a quick exercise tip, and be engaging”. “Write me a twenty second script for each idea”.
Why it works: It helps outsource some of the conceptual heavy lifting while still making sure that a fitness certified pair of eyes will have final say over what it generates. You (or your trainer) are still the star on camera, demonstrating the exercise with correct form and personality.
5. Repurposing Content Across Platforms
Get more mileage from your best content! Given the amount of time taken to create content, very few pieces you post should be a one-and-done affair. The internet has a short memory and content can be posted in a fairly cyclical nature as long as it isn’t spammed or repeated verbatim.
One of ChatGPT’s key strengths is the ability to rearrange existing content into new form. It is important to specify that the actual information in the post should not be changed to prevent it from getting creative and editing hard fitness facts into strange fitness fiction.
How to do it: Feed ChatGPT a long-form piece of content (like a blog post or newsletter) and ask it to reformat it.
Prompt Example: “I wrote this blog post about ‘Why Recovery is Important’. Turn the key points into a thread for Twitter, 5 separate Instagram post captions, and 3 bullet points for an email newsletter. Do not alter any of the information in the original blog post.”
Why it works: This method can potentially save you hours of work, allowing you to maintain a presence on multiple platforms without creating entirely new content each time.
It is important to note that this will not work well the other way around. While social media content can be created from blogs, the opposite will generally result in poor engagement due to the different way website posts are discovered when compared to posts on X (formally Twitter), Instagram and other platforms.
The Crucial Don't Section: How to Keep Your Gym’s Marketing Authentic
This is the most important section. Misusing ChatGPT will make your marketing sound generic and robotic, driving away the local members you want to attract.
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DON’T: Use It Without Heavy Editing and Localisation
ChatGPT doesn’t know about the roadworks on the High Street, the famous local cat coffee shop everyone goes to post-workout, or the charity 5k your gym sponsors every year, but you do!
INSTEAD:
Use the output as a first draft only. Always infuse it with your brand’s voice and a genuine human tone. Add in the names of specific areas, mention local events and use the language you would use with your members every day.
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DON’T: Let It Write Your Entire “Our Story” Page
Your gym or fitness club’s story is a key part of your heart and your brand. If it is a block of generic AI-generated text, this will be instantly recognisable to savvy readers and will immediately feel flat and hollow.
Time and time again we’ve seen that members respond best to an origin story that was written with genuine passion, preferably by the founder or someone who has been with the gym for a long time.
INSTEAD:
Use ChatGPT to help you structure your thoughts. Prompt: “I started my gym because I wanted to create a place where beginners wouldn’t feel intimidated. Help me outline the key points for an ‘Our Story’ page.” Then, you write your actual words with the passion and personal details only you can provide.
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DON’T: Blindly Use Americanised Examples and Jargon
ChatGPT and other LLMs have training data that is heavily USA-centric. This can be a significant issue for an independent gym operating in the UK or Ireland if it isn’t checked thoroughly enough. If you are asking for marketing ideas in November, your Birmingham-based gym members might not be too interested in Thanksgiving Dinner ideas, the superbowl or even the “soccer”.
It is also good practice to look out for times when ChatGPT uses American-English. Unless your brand voice and communications already occur in American English, it can be confusing to have a variety of English and American-English spellings (Americanized vs Americanised is a pertinent example here).
INSTEAD:
Be specific in your prompts. Say “I am a gym owner in [Your Country, e.g., Australia, UK, Canada]. Please generate ideas that are relevant for this location.” Correct any American spellings or references that crop up.
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DON’T: Use It for Customer Interactions Directly
Never copy and paste the response from ChatGPT in order to respond to Google reviews, DMs or comments automatically. Members can spot an AI-generated “I’m sorry to hear about your experience, that sounds frustrating” from a mile away. It feels dismissive and impersonal and is more likely to lead to escalation than deescalation.
INSTEAD:
If you get a negative review, respond personally and genuinely. Use ChatGPT to help you draft a response if you’re stuck, but then rewrite it in your own voice, address the specific issue, and offer a real solution.
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DON’T: Believe Everything It Says (The “Hallucination” Problem)
It is an unfortunate truth that ChatGPT and other LLMs can sometimes make up facts, quotes or “stats” that sound plausible but are completely false. This occurs due to how it processes information. Never ask it for scientific or health claims without verifying them yourself. Always double-check that the events it has highlighted are true.
Common weaknesses are anything involving numbers (including dates, recipes and events), as well as anything that has occurred very recently. It will be very reluctant to say that it doesn’t know something and is much more likely to generate a plausible but ultimately incorrect answer instead.
As such, it is important to double check and research any information you have concerns about.
INSTEAD:
Use it for creative and administrative tasks, not for establishing technical authority. Always fact-check any information about nutrition, exercise science or facts about your business before posting.
The Golden Rule: You Are the Expert
ChatGPT is an invaluable tool to independent gym owners looking for efficiency, structure and inspiration, but the soul of your marketing must always come from you and your staff.
ChatGPT isn’t invested in your community, no matter how much enthusiasm it is capable of feigning. It isn’t familiar with how your PTs bond with your members and it can’t feel or hear that buzz your gym makes during its busiest hours, but you are, and you can!
We hope we have laid out how ChatGPT can be used to handle the tedious parts while reinforcing how important it is to always put your authentic, genuine and human stamp on everything before it goes out the door. That is how you market a gym that people will love and call their own.
If your members were after soulless automatons, they’d go to a corporate chain gym instead!
If you are an independent gym owner looking for ways that automation can improve your independent gym or fitness club, you might be in the right place for more than just how to use ChatGPT.
Here at Ashbourne Membership Management, we’ve been helping gym owners like yourself streamline their operations, boost member retention and reduce workloads for over twenty-five years.
Long, long before the LLM revolution. We’ve done this by designing powerful software to simplify and enhance how you run your club, with tools that automate administrative tasks, enhance member engagement and provide real-time insights into what is happening within your facility.
From seamless payment processing to smart access control, our systems help you focus on what matters most, growing your community and improving your facility while we handle the technology, payment collection and access controls.
With free training, step-by-step guides and ongoing support not only through your entire partnership with Ashbourne, you’ll be forging a partnership with a company you can trust.
Whether you want BI Dashboards that provide live, instant data or the ability to configure member access on the fly, we are here to ensure your success. So contact our demo team here and they will start to lay out much of what we have discussed above with a personal and professional touch. Your gym or club’s transformative journey with us here at Ashbourne Club Management could begin today.
