Gym Marketing Ideas

[JoeMurray]

Hi,

I'm currently working with a gym owner who's struggling to get new clients. The gym is very specialised offering training that is really unavailable anywhere else locally. The gym owner is a fantastic trainer and the facility is not your typical gym set up - no machines in sight, it's all vintage stuff including kettlebells, sandbags, etc.

The current membership is pretty diverse from late teens to early sixties both male and female. We're looking to come up with some useful marketing ideas that could be delivered at low to no costs to drive up memberships.

Any help greatly appreciated, thanks guys.

 

[Raging Bull]

Hi,

Firstly it sounds like a CrossFit gym, am I correct? If it is I can help to a degree.

I sell CrossFit and S&C equipment and am sole European distributor for Kettlebells USA. I'm about to launch a new site with over 200 new products, it'll also have a section for people looking for a CF gym in their area, I could add the gym to the list.

 

[Murray Cowell]

Hi!

Definitely go on social media, especially Facebook and Pinterest, I would suggest!
Also, you could actually start with email marketing and keep your current gym clients interested with offers and bring new ones as well, by expanding the email list. I believe you could get a lot from sending out newsletters, it's cost efficient and with fast results.

Best of luck!

 

[MikeBzr]

The gym I go to employ one of my favourite marketing tactics - they offer free DVD rental for all members on the provision that all rentals are returned in person the next day.

It's a brilliantly simple way of giving an extra incentive for people to keep coming back to the gym, therefore getting more use of their membership and as such extending their 'life' as a customer.

Obviously this may not be the right fit for your client (particularly given the sort of cost involved) but this sort of outside-the-box thinking - particularly focusing on retention rather than making the mistake of always focusing on acquisition - should put you on the right track.

 

[MASSEY]

Does he have a website? Ranking high on google for all the popular local searches in his area? If not then that would be a start if he is looking to grow.

 

[smarterbarcodes]

Word of mouth must be important in this industry I should have thought, unless you are John Lloyd's or whatever.

How about intro offers half price for the first 3 months or whatever, some money is better than no money and for each person taking up the offer that's more chance they will come back themselves and spread the word.

Offer corporate bonding type days to local business's Tesco, offices etc at a really good rate, once again expose people to the place and hopefully they will come back, and or mention it to others.

Any a referral reward scheme, so for any paying membership your existing members generate they get a £50, or maybe you partner with a local health supplement shop to cross promote your services. Let them have a small product area in the gym and you get to promote the gym inside and outside (one day a week say) their location.

Setup a stall in the local town centre with an membership offer or an open day for a free days membership, come along and try before you buy.

YouTube videos, get your owner guy to do some short videos on how to use sandbags, kettlebells, nutrition etc.

They are all really standard things that don't take alot of money just some thought and time. You can't give up if you haven't actually tried any of these type ideas, theres tons more aswell. Just sit around and brain storm, out the box, in the box, forget the box.

Go on fitness forums and ask and discuss what people require from your type of gym, is the boss stuck in the past or is there genuinely a market for this type of thing these days, I hope so. Its better to find out though surely. Or maybe you just need to tweak whats on offer to get people through the door, I'm not suggesting lycra, maybe just a machine or 2.

Make is so. Good luck.

 

[Conglomer Group]

Hi,

Search engine marketing is a must when it comes to promotional efforts for your gym. There are more people online searching every single day through mobile devices than ever before. I am going to tell you some information that how can you start campaign for your gym.

A Proper Website

We are talking about a professionally designed and built website that truly captures your brand and your gym's appeal. Your website is your brochure so you have to be willing to put in the time to build up the power of your site. It is also your digital sales person and your website needs to be able to stand on 2 feet and sell your gym for you.

Some features your website should have:

• Well branded logo
• Responsive design so it renders correctly on mobile devices
• The ability for web traffic to sign up to your newsletter
• Lots of great images showcasing your gym
• Employee profiles so people understand your gym is friendly
• A blog you can update with news & events occurring in your gym
• Member testimonials
• Videos showcasing your gym

I hope all these informative points will solve your problem.

Thanks and Regards !!
Conglomer Group

 

[iBusiness Forums]

HI Joe,

Try setting up at least a Facebook Page and make sure you have frequent posts on that with enticing photos of the gym, and give special offers.

Post there your membership fees, offer free trials (2 free sessions won't hurt). You as a staff, can give flyers to your friends and let them be ambassadors; make them give those flyers to their family and friends also and especially to their workplaces.

And have some "refer a friend" promo. For example, A current member is free on his next month if he gets to invite 3 or 4 friends to be gym members there.

Personally a free trial is what worked for me, as this what my former colleague offered to me (which I can also get to invite another friend so that I won't be alone on those 2 free trial sessions.

Good luck!

 

[OlegLola]

Besides launching website which I thins is a must nowadays, you can try to offer him to develop special mobile app, which will give some different great experience for the visitors. For example, create an individual program, build a schedule, give some extra privileges.

 

[beasty]

This thread is ridiculous

WHY is a website must when you want local people? It seems that people who work in seo web design or fb etc do not ever see any other way.

There is some kind of nonsense on here, you know people ran gyms before websites existed and I do not go on the internet to know there is a gym 500m from my house!

Nonsense

Your market is local advertise local

leaflets
door to door
calls
newspaper
telephone
Bring a friend for free day
(Allow members to bring people for zero during your quiet time)
open day
stand
visit businesses
have a fitness competition
RUN WHEREVER IT IS strongest man..... be good to bring people in..
organise a fit kid fit parents, approach schools
advertise to Pts to rent your space
partner with complementary companies
Filling a gym requires you to contact local people and having joined many gyms and also been someone who used to help fill gyms I can tell you with no doubt that i do not look for a gym on the web (People that DO are looking to see if there is a David Lloyd or Bannantynes near them, they are not looking for you!), local gyms can do well with NO website


You know not much beats direct human to human contact so do that, internet stuff? why are you going to spend money on a website, people are not ordering a gym class online

etc

INTERNET
SEO


Oh yes, FB page, yes make that work for you too, but today you can get new customers, FB will be something to consolidate your image and bring customers later

What struggling gym wants to be told, spend money and time on something that will not produce anything right now but sounds nice
yes ok.. sure, do you guys all sell this? amazing you do!

 

[theRB]

This thread is ridiculous

WHY is a website must when you want local people? It seems that people who work in seo web design or fb etc do not ever see any other way.

There is some kind of nonsense on here, you know people ran gyms before websites existed and I do not go on the internet to know there is a gym 500m from my house!

Nonsense

Your market is local advertise local

leaflets
door to door
calls
newspaper
telephone
Bring a friend for free day
(Allow members to bring people for zero during your quiet time)
open day
stand
visit businesses
have a fitness competition
RUN WHEREVER IT IS strongest man..... be good to bring people in..
organise a fit kid fit parents, approach schools
advertise to Pts to rent your space
partner with complementary companies
Filling a gym requires you to contact local people and having joined many gyms and also been someone who used to help fill gyms I can tell you with no doubt that i do not look for a gym on the web (People that DO are looking to see if there is a David Lloyd or Bannantynes near them, they are not looking for you!), local gyms can do well with NO website


You know not much beats direct human to human contact so do that, internet stuff? why are you going to spend money on a website, people are not ordering a gym class online

etc

INTERNET
SEO


Oh yes, FB page, yes make that work for you too, but today you can get new customers, FB will be something to consolidate your image and bring customers later

What struggling gym wants to be told, spend money and time on something that will not produce anything right now but sounds nice
yes ok.. sure, do you guys all sell this? amazing you do!

+1

I was looking for something to add to this but was struggling. I think there is a place for search engine rankings but I wouldn't say it needs to go much further than a simple website and make sure you show in Google Places (or whatever they're calling it these days).

As long as I can find you if I type "gym in x place" then know where you are, what you're about and how to contact you I really wouldn't care very much. Then I'd go down, ask questions, look round the gym and join if I wanted to. It would help me decide if I could have a trial session.

Any chance you could get some local sports clubs in for free sessions during your quieter times?

Simply, find out where your current customers found you and exploit that area. All of the ideas in beasty's post seem about right.

Regards,
Ryan

 

[beasty]

The gym I go to employ one of my favourite marketing tactics - they offer free DVD rental for all members on the provision that all rentals are returned in person the next day.

It's a brilliantly simple way of giving an extra incentive for people to keep coming back to the gym, therefore getting more use of their membership and as such extending their 'life' as a customer.

Obviously this may not be the right fit for your client (particularly given the sort of cost involved) but this sort of outside-the-box thinking - particularly focusing on retention rather than making the mistake of always focusing on acquisition - should put you on the right track.

That is clever, like that

 

[jack_sparrow]

This is such a great idea! And so simple. Although I think my laziness would cost me the price of a DVD

 

[jamjam11]

Have an advert showing half naked woman. Haaaa wait a minute, that's already being used to sell cars/diet pills/C.K/lynx/etc.

Hmmm What about having a wet T-shirt competition or a foam party. LOL

Stick to dvd's it is.

 

[beasty]

http://betherave.com/2013/11/sexiest-twerk-choreography-ever/

do this

 

[Raging Bull]

Tired of being fat and ugly.......... Just be ugly

Works every time.

 

[jonrod]

I guess someone here said about word of mouth.

Well, with the setup of your gym I think the best way to market is through word of mouth. I don't own a gym but a friend of mine does. He use to tell all his gym buddies to tell their friends to go to his gym and avail promos/discounts if they get to pay the whole monthly gym fee in cash.

 

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[Karllacey]

I kinda agree with the guy who said that this thread is ridiculous and website is kind of useless for this.

There is yahoo, they have a local search engine listing which might bring one or two rewards.

OR maybe this which has not mentioned, you can telesales the local businesses / canvass them and offer incentives i.e. 10% discount if they quote the promotional code on the leaflet, you could put a serious spin on it if you like, but that's up to you. Posters in local post offices, shops etc etc all brings potential value at minimal cost.

 

[HazelC]

Okay - wow, this would be one exciting project to work on!!!

* Social Media - post about the classes / sessions available on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Use Google+ too as this helps with website SEO. Join groups, circles and communities that promote health and fitness (there's LOADS of them).

* Videos! Stick a load of videos on YouTube. You could post daily exercises, videos of sessions and classes and even testimonials from customers as well. Then pop the YouTube link on your website. Videos on websites work!!! Google owns YouTube... hence more SEO / Google points!

* Write blog posts - blog posts are great for giving a business a personality and Google loves blogs too. Do blog posts on the latest diet and exercise fads, do posts on how your fitness classes work, compare different work outs and how they help different parts of the body.

* Video FAQs or do them as blog posts. There must be loads of questions you are asked all the time... answer these in an easy to understand way and this will help build up customer trust!

* Competitions! Run competitions on social media and your website, offer a free class or training session and people will enter - and when they enter you gain their contact details.

If you want to hear more then drop me a private message - happy to help out or even offer some more free advice

 

[HazelC]

Tired of being fat and ugly.......... Just be ugly

Works every time.

Just spat out my coffee all over my laptop - thanks!!!!

 

[HazelC]

This thread is ridiculous

WHY is a website must when you want local people? It seems that people who work in seo web design or fb etc do not ever see any other way.

There is some kind of nonsense on here, you know people ran gyms before websites existed and I do not go on the internet to know there is a gym 500m from my house!

Nonsense

Your market is local advertise local

leaflets
door to door
calls
newspaper
telephone
Bring a friend for free day
(Allow members to bring people for zero during your quiet time)
open day
stand
visit businesses
have a fitness competition
RUN WHEREVER IT IS strongest man..... be good to bring people in..
organise a fit kid fit parents, approach schools
advertise to Pts to rent your space
partner with complementary companies
Filling a gym requires you to contact local people and having joined many gyms and also been someone who used to help fill gyms I can tell you with no doubt that i do not look for a gym on the web (People that DO are looking to see if there is a David Lloyd or Bannantynes near them, they are not looking for you!), local gyms can do well with NO website


You know not much beats direct human to human contact so do that, internet stuff? why are you going to spend money on a website, people are not ordering a gym class online

etc

INTERNET
SEO


Oh yes, FB page, yes make that work for you too, but today you can get new customers, FB will be something to consolidate your image and bring customers later

What struggling gym wants to be told, spend money and time on something that will not produce anything right now but sounds nice
yes ok.. sure, do you guys all sell this? amazing you do!

People are ordering a gym class online. I speak from experience... I moved to a new area and popped on the internet to find where the nearest gym was and the classes available... it turned out it was a few streets away but I would never have driven past it

 

[MRLogodesign]

Offer what the people want, offering a service that nobody else does locally is great, but is there a reason why and also if the gym isn't as modern as the rest, then your narrowing down your client base. That's my opinion

 

[Jeff Nev]

There seem to be a lot of answers about getting online which is probably because it is one of the most effective ways to generate new business, that and recommendations. Oddly enough, even for a vintage type gym, a lot of your target audience will be tech-savvy but bored of the high-tech monotonous gym workouts and searching online for something different.

Even though it is a local website, Google has specific local searches that you can get into to rouse interest. Submit the business to local directories so when people search for gyms you make sure that you are top of the list.

Because you have a unique selling point this can be a gem in the marketing world. Getting on facebook, twitter, linked in, pinterest, instagram all of the social media platforms and promoting the uniqueness of the gym will create a buzz. You could have some very clever marketing ideas with instagram and their vintage filters, sharing these on facebook and twitter and so on because they will look good.

Offering competitions and bonuses, such as get a month free if you refer a friend or 'sign up now and get a free personal training session worth £?'. These little benefits will help those unsure about committing. There is also the fact that a gym is a lifestyle improver, there are not many people that can deny that getting fit will improve their health! Use this but make it sound interesting and less monotonous than using a treadmill for 40 minutes twice a week. Do they do classes for instance? From the sounds of it I imagine these won't be ordinary classes, so promote these as a way to exercise without feeling bored!

I hope this helps and good luck!
Jeff