6 Ways to Make Your Fitness Business Stand Out
September 29, 2021
There’s a lot of competition in the fitness industry. Even if you have the very best fitness classes, state-of-the-art equipment or the most inspiring personal trainers, no one is going to know about it until they visit your website or fitness center.
In order to get new people in the door (whether it’s virtual or physical), you need to learn how to make your fitness business stand out from the crowd.
6 fitness marketing tips to make your business stand out and get noticed
#1. Meet the moment
While COVID has had an impact on every industry in different ways, in-person industries, including the fitness industry, have been hit the hardest.
In order to stay afloat, personal trainers, fitness centers, gyms and other fitness businesses have had to change the way they operate in order to meet the moment. This has meant implementing a rental equipment program, offering training sessions and classes online, offering gym-time by appointment and more.
And, even though things have gone back to relative normal in many places, some of your members will still prefer to work out at home or in a setting with fewer people.
The good news, though, is that fitness businesses that have been able to pivot and meet the changing needs of members and customers have not only survived, but they’ve also been able to thrive while many of their competitors are just scraping by.
Change is always hard, but it’s the only thing you can really count on in life. The sooner you accept that change will happen, the sooner you’ll set your fitness business up for success.
#2. Build an effective fitness website
To meet the evolving needs of members and customers, many fitness businesses have had to transition to operating less in-person and more online. That means that you need to ensure that your fitness website is up to par and offers the functionality you need.
Marketing 360® Websites makes it easy to build a great fitness website that has all of the features you need, including:
- Forms – Build out contact forms, consultation forms, feedback forms and more for your website that connect with the CRM
- E-commerce – Move your pro shop online and highlight your best and most popular products
- Payments – Make it easy for members and students to pay for one-time classes and sessions, buy products and make recurring membership payments
Having a modern, professional website will help you stay nimble and make the changes necessary in order to stay competitive.
#3. Use more video
Having a compelling message and using eye-catching images are both great things, but no other content type is quite as engaging or as attention-grabbing as video.
Video is an incredibly powerful thing. It’s no wonder why it’s become so popular over the last several years, and all signs point to it continuing to grow in the future. In fact, online video is expected to account for more than 82% of consumer internet traffic (Cisco). That’s 15 times higher than in 2017!
The great part is that fitness businesses are uniquely poised for video. Here are just a few examples of the types of videos you could create for your fitness business:
- How-to videos demonstrating specific exercises
- Tutorials on how to use equipment properly
- Virtual tours of your fitness center or studio
- Introduction videos to personal trainers, group fitness instructors and other staff
- Member testimonial videos
- Inspirational and motivational videos
- And many, many more
While it’s always preferable to use professional video whenever possible, even video shot with your smartphone is better than nothing! Best of all, no matter how it’s shot, videos can be used on YouTube, social media, on your blog, on website landing pages, in ads and more.
#4. Get active on social media
Fitness isn’t just something people do in their free time. It’s a lifestyle, and it’s one that many people are passionate about once they start seeing the benefits and results for themselves. That makes social media management a uniquely powerful medium for the fitness industry.
Posting regularly on social media will help you stay connected with existing members and customers, and help you gain more visibility within your community. The best part is that there are plenty of things a fitness business could post about on social media. Here are a few ideas:
- Motivational quotes, images and videos
- Client success stories
- Instructor, personal trainer and staff highlights
- Exercise tips and advice
- Updates in regards to your service, hours of operation, etc.
- And many more
Marketing 360 offers multiple apps to help your fitness business stand out and stay active on social media. With Social, you can schedule out posts in advance, ensuring consistency and saving you time. And, with Creative, you’ll have access to professional tools and talent you can use to design eye-catching social posts.
#5. Advertise on the top channels and to the right audience
Thanks to COVID-19 and the economic downturn, a lot of businesses have pulled back their advertising budgets, which is exactly why it’s the perfect time to invest more in advertising your fitness business. With fewer businesses advertising, it’s cheaper than ever to advertise, and there’s also less competition.
By launching multi-channel advertising campaigns across all of the top channels, like Google, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, you can ensure that you’re connecting with prospective members and customers, no matter where they’re spending their time online.
Best of all, channels like Google and Facebook allow for pin-point ad targeting, giving you the ability to focus your advertising on people who are most likely to convert. You can target based on all kinds of data, including age, geographic location, interests, gender and so much more.
You should also take advantage of retargeting, which targets internet users that have previously interacted with your fitness business online.
#6. Get listed on local sites and directories
Smart marketing is about being visible wherever potential customers are looking, and for a fitness business, that could include Google and Facebook, as well as a long list of local directories, apps and review sites.
Getting listed anywhere and everywhere prospective customers are looking is an important step for any local fitness business. Not only does this ensure more visibility in front of people who are actively searching for what you’re offering, but consistent business information across the web will also help with organic visibility on search engines.
Whether you’re getting your fitness business listed on relevant sites for the first time or you need to update your listings with a new phone number, address or hours, doing each listing one at a time will take hours.
Marketing 360 Listings makes it fast and easy to update more than 50 listings across the web all at once, making a typically hours-long task take mere minutes.
When it comes to growing and managing your fitness business, there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of. Keeping it all together can be a full-time job. But, how many small fitness businesses do you know have the budget for a full-time marketing specialist?
With Marketing 360, you’ll have the #1 Marketing Platform® for small business on your side, giving you all of the tools and data you need to make your fitness business stand out online and off, while helping you save a significant amount of time and stay organized.
It’s the next best thing to having your own marketing team, and the best part is that you’ll also have access to our team of marketing professionals, designers, content writers, video professionals and more whenever you need them.
Originally published on 1/13/21
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