How To Market Your Health Club, Gym or Fitness Business

You know you run a fitness business when...

...your most important to-do is reliably getting new customers at a reasonable cost.

Why is it so hard to get enough health club members and personal training clients?

Health clubs, gyms and personal training studios face familiar fitness marketing challenges, whether its advertising your Crossfit gym, getting more members at your independent health club, or promoting your personal training business.

Need to cover facility/equip costs can lead to deep discounting to fill funnel ASAP
Excessive marketing emphasis on facility/equipment vs member experience, interactions & vibe
Seasonal "blast" marketing leads to weak year-round funnel development
Confusion about competition: YMCAs, hospital fitness centers, deluxe & budget chains, boutique fitness franchises, online, in-home
Misplaced emphasis on demographics (age, income, etc.) vs customer mindset leads to discounting & churn
Not fully addressing prospect concerns (ex: being judged, "Do you really get me?" etc.)

Too much generic marketing ("New Year New You") vs selling unique standout strengths
Bad reviews scare off potential new members (billing, broken equipment, bad smells, rude staff, etc.)
Failure to tangibly demonstrate how your business helps clients achieve their goals
Overreliance on tours, 7-day offers ignores early-stage prospects
Focus on easy/cheap but ineffective marketing (ex: social posts)
Low retention = neverending need to replace members

What's the best way to get more health club, gym and personal training members & clients?

The Local Marketing Triangle^©
for Health & Wellness

To get more customers, you've got to get your business in front of people who don't know about you yet and are actively looking to buy services like yours.

The Local Marketing Triangle achieves both goals:

Google Ads promotes your business to people actively looking to buy services like yours
Your Google Business Profile earns your visibility in local 3-pack, next best thing to an ad
Your website does the heavy lifting: anticipating what prospects typically wonder and worry about

More about the Local Marketing Triangle >

"But...what about backlinks? Directory citations? E-books? Facebook? TV? Radio? Postcards? Etc."

Backlinks and directory citations? Important years ago. Today, no longer relevant for local search. You can safely forget about them.

TV, radio, newspapers & direct mail? They target everyone in a region, so you pay to show your ad to lots of people who will never care about what you sell. That makes it an expensive way to get prospects. Worth a look as a secondary strategy, but not as your primary marketing tool.

Facebook Ads? At least you can target people interested in a broad category, like fitness or yoga. But unlike Google, it doesn't show ads based on purchase intent. And it significantly restricts what health and wellness ads can say or show. Worth a look once you've got Google Ads, your business profile and your site dialed in—but it shouldn't be your primary advertising tool.

Facebook business page posts? At least they're free. But they only show up in newsfeeds of people who already know about you. You need awareness among people who don't know about you. Better for staying connected to customers you already have.

E-books or PDFs? Potentially useful lead magnets—once folks are in your sales funnel! But they don't help people discover your brick-and-mortar wellness business in the first place.

"Research shows that more than 90% of qualified leads for local health and wellness businesses come from Google Ads, your Google Business Profile, and your website, so that's what deserves your time and budget."
~Don Muchow, Radial's Chief Content Officer

Marketing Help for Health Clubs, Gyms & Personal Trainers

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