8 simple ways to improve your marketing strategy to recruit new members

When it comes to marketing for gyms and fitness centers, your strategy's main goal should be sales. Of course, marketing can help brand awareness and growing your reputation. However, the bottom line is your gym's success is measures in its profit, not the number of likes.

That is why it is essential to have a marketing strategy that will help you recruit as many new members as possible for your gym. Sounds complicated? Don't worry. It's not! With just a handful of tasks, you can quickly grow the number of new members, without a large budget.

Optimize your gym's website

A website is a requirement for any business, more so for a fitness center. This is where anyone interested in your gym's services can find all the information they need. That is why your website should be well optimized.

First of all, it should contain all the details a potential member would be interested in, like your address, working hours, prices, and services you provide.

All pages should be optimized with specific keywords that potential members might search for the most on Google. Focus on a few expressions and make sure they are included in all your webpages, so that, when someone googles those keywords, your site will be displayed among the first results.

Avoid using general phrases like 'gym' or 'fitness center'. They will not help you reach people who want to purchase memberships at your gym. Consider keywords that include the name of the city where your gym is, like 'gym + CITY NAME', 'yoga classes + CITY NAME'. That way you will reach only the people in your city, interested in the services you provide.

Exclusive offers only for new members

Special offers are nothing new for any business. On the contrary, expect this more and more from shops and service providers. To recruit new members, you should consider this strategy because it can be quite efficient. 

You don't want to discount membership prices? No problem!

Add additional benefits to your standard memberships and make sure you promote these offers as often as possible. Usually, it's a good ides to add extra perks, like PT or massage sessions, to long-term offers. That way, members are used to your standard pricing from the beginning, and they will not be disappointed when they renew their membership.

Publish positive reviews and success stories

There's nothing like a glowing review or a success story from a client. Ask a few members to allow you to post their before and after photos and interview them. Entice as many members as possible to leave a review on your Facebook page or Google Business, and post the nicest ones on your social media channels and website.

Give out trial memberships and make sure the first impression is excellent

Another simple method to recruit new members is trial memberships. These memberships are free and are only available for one or several days. These perks can be given to people who have expressed interest in your gym or to those who filled in a form on your site or social media.

No matter how much you praise your services, nothing will have the same reach as the real experience. So make sure these memberships are used, and that those testing your gym have the best experience.

Run Facebook and Instagram ads for your audience

If you want to recruit new members quickly, you should allocate a budget for ads on Facebook and Instagram. You don't have to invest a large sum of money, but running these ads only to the right audience is necessary. Both platforms have many options for audience segmentation.

Even if your add has loads of likes, it will not be useful if those who liked it were unwilling to become members.

Therefore, make sure your ads are only displayed to users in your city that would be inclined to join your gym.

Use remarketing 

Ads on social media can be even more effective if you also set up the remarketing feature. This tool is available on Google Ads as well, including YouTube. Remarketing means that everyone who visited your website will constantly see your ads for a particular period.

That way, if a person visits your gym, the ads you run on Facebook or Google will be displayed whenever that person accesses Facebook, websites with AdSense, or YouTube. Therefore, people interested in your gym will see your ads more often, and the chances of conversion will increase exponentially.

Create a referral program

Like glowing reviews and success stories, referral programs tend to have great success, because your members are promoting you. A referral program can easily be implemented - all you have to do is encourage your members to convince their friends to join your gym.

How could you accomplish this? You can rely on their affability, or you can persuade them to by offering them a small token of your appreciation in the form of extra days for their memberships, a discount voucher or a free massage session..

Partner with influencers

Influencer marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy that has excellent results. Weh you think about influencers, you probably think about celebrities with millions of followers on Instagram, that only work with large budgets.

That is not the only type of influencers. First, find members who are very active on social media, and that might be willing to promote your gym. Offer them a partnership through which they receive free memberships or a percentage from the sales they make, based on a discount code. Ideally, that code would also provide a discount to clients using it. Measure the success of this campaign, and depending on its results, you can recruit influencers with a larger fan base.

A quick catch up...

There are many marketing strategies that can help you recruit more new members. The important part is to have a well-thought plan for each strategy and always measure and keep track of your results. Make sure you have all the necessary tools in your gym management software to identify the exact number of memberships sold as a result of each campaign.

The biggest mistake you can make is to create campaigns for... everyone without keeping track of the results. What worked and what didn't work. That is why it's crucial to know how each new member has heard of your gym. And that can be checked online and at the reception desk with a simple question like 'how did you hear about our gym?'