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Stacey Corrin
Stacey Corrin
John Turner
John Turner
Are you looking for smart ways to promote your gym? Without being on the gym floor, it’s hard to encourage people to take fitness seriously. So how else do you reach them?
Don’t worry! In this article, we’ll share gym promotion ideas you can use to improve your business both online and off.
Promoting your gym is one of the best ways to reach more potential customers and clients. The more you speak the word about your fitness business, the more your reputation will grow, leading to an interest in your workout classes and gym facilities.
Gym promotion can also help you stand out from competitors in your industry. By creating a more engaging promotional campaign, you can steal attention from the competition and boost valuable leads.
As you may know, the traditional way to promote any health or fitness brand is to be there in person, promoting a healthy lifestyle. You can talk face-to-face with potential customers, take them on a personal tour of your gym, and even have them sit in on a few sessions.
A few other ways to promote your gym offline include:
Yet when you look at the methods for marketing your fitness business online, they far outweigh what you can do in person. Even better, they free up your time so you can focus on keeping people healthy.
With this in mind, let’s dig into our top gym promotion suggestions.
The following fitness marketing ideas are ideal for growing your business online so you can get more clients through your front door.
It’s hard to promote any business online if you don’t have a website. Your gym’s website acts as a central hub for potential customers to learn more information and sign up for membership.
If you don’t already have a website for your fitness business, we’d suggest creating one with WordPress. WordPress is the most popular platform for building sites, and it’s pretty easy to get set up. You can learn how to make a WordPress website here.
Once you have a website, you should also ensure it’s user-friendly. A site that’s easy to navigate and clutter-free will improve the experience for visitors.
So don’t get caught up with flashy animations and all the features you can cram into one place. This could hurt your page speeds and, in turn, make it harder for you to appear in search engines.
Instead, remember that less is more, and often the most straightforward approach is the best. Take a look at the best WordPress themes to get you started.
With a website in place, the next logical step is to start a blog. Starting a blog opens a channel of communication with your clients where you can keep them up-to-date with new developments and news.
Consider using your blog to answer common questions your clients ask. You can also research what people are asking in search engines, then tailor your blog content to provide a clear answer.
This is what we call keyword research, which helps you appear in search results, and in turn, sends more traffic to your website.
Besides creating high-quality content for your blog, you can also put together taster classes to promote your gym. All you need is to record a quick video of your classes, which you can upload to your website.
These videos will give potential clients an idea of what to expect at your gym.
They provide insight into your teaching methods and help people decide if it’s the right fit for them without having to set foot inside the building.
If your taster sessions work out, you can move on to offering members-only classes direct from your website. You can do this by recording lessons ahead of time and uploading them to a locked section of your site reserved for paying members.
It’s easy to set up a members-only area on your WordPress site with membership plugins like MemberPress. Even better, it lets you offer different membership levels based on price, as well as recurring subscriptions for ongoing members.
You can also offer member-only perks and discounts to encourage more signups. To help you promote your gym with memberships, here’s a complete guide to creating a membership site on WordPress.
Online consultations are another excellent way to promote your fitness business.
People will pay a premium for 1-on-1 sessions with a coach or fitness professional. And since they won’t have to visit your gym in person, you’ll be able to reach a much wider audience.
You can start by offering the first consultation for free and then charging a recurring fee for further sessions. And to sweeten the deal, you can offer perks in the form of tailored meal plans and training schedules for paying clients.
There are a ton of ways to set up your sessions too. First, set up a booking system with a WordPress booking and appointment plugin. Then host your consultations using video conferencing software such as Zoom and Skype.
You don’t have to limit your classes to the fittest people, either. Most people want to improve their fitness but may not be able to attend a gym physically.
To reach those people, offer classes tailored to specific fitness levels, which could include:
Offering classes for different abilities is not only a smart gym promotion idea, but it helps those often vulnerable groups feel included.
Another promotion idea for gyms is to use time-sensitive offers and discounts to encourage site visitors to sign up.
Promotions that end at a particular time create a sense of urgency and the fear of missing out in potential clients. And that urgency spurs them into taking action.
You can create time-sensitive offers for your website using a tool like OptinMonster. OptinMonster is the most powerful lead generation software for marketers. And with features including discount timers and Exit-Intent popups, you can easily attract more customers to your gym.
You can learn how to create a count-down timer popup to increase sales here.
One of the most effective gym promotion ideas on this list is running a giveaway on your site to win a free membership to your gym.
Since gym memberships are usually pretty pricey, offering one for free is a powerful way to drive traffic to your website and raise awareness for your gym.
You can easily create an online contest with RafflePress, the best giveaway plugin for WordPress.
RafflePress comes packed with all the following features to grow your business:
Then once you’ve launched your giveaway, you can use these contest promotion ideas to ensure it reaches the broadest possible audience.
Your gym promotion ideas don’t have to end there, either. When you run a giveaway with RafflePress, you can add retargeting scripts to serve ads to site visitors after they’ve left your site.
By using special offers in these retargeting ads, you can attract people back to your site for another attempt at converting them into paying clients.
Even better, retargeting scripts in RafflePress are set to fire right after someone enters your contest. That means as soon as they’ve entered, you can reach them wherever they go online with your ads.
To learn how to create a retargeting strategy, check this guide out.
Friend referrals are effective gym promotion ideas for both online promotions and offline. When someone refers a friend to your gym, you can start a chain reaction where that person refers another friend, and so on.
But friend referrals are best used combined with a good incentive. So consider what you can offer to encourage more people to refer their friends.
Here are a few ideas to get you going:
You can even use the Refer-a-Friend action in RafflePress to promote your gym during a contest. This action lets participants share your giveaway on all the major social media networks and through email.
Speaking of social media, this is one of the first places to consider promoting your gym online. Every social media platform is bustling with users from all walks of life, making them ideal for reaching your target audience.
For fitness businesses, Instagram is one of the best places to market your gym. Instagram has a thriving community of fitness enthusiasts, and because it’s focused on visual content, your images, and video clips can effectively promote the virtues of a healthy lifestyle.
Just remember to keep posts on Instagram of high quality with an excellent aesthetic.
For more informal updates, stick to Instagram stories. Stories let you share a more down-to-earth side of your business to help connect with followers on a more personal level.
There’s little point talking about Instagram if we don’t also mention hashtags. Hashtags are what make the Instagram world go round, and they’re used to group content into categories, as well as make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for.
Instagram hashtags are usually added to the bottom of a post. But it’s crucial to find the right ones for your business; otherwise, you won’t reach the right people.
Luckily we’ve researched the best fitness hashtags for Instagram, and we’ve listed them by category below.
#GetFit #Cardio #Cycling #FitFam #FitLife #Fitness #FitnessMotivation #FitnessAddict #GetStrong #LiftHeavy #GirlsWhoLift #GymLife #GymTime #NoPainNoGain #PersonalTrainer #Sweat #Weights #WeightLifting #Workout #TransformationTuesday #FitQuote #FitnessMotivation #MotivationMonday #Fitspo #GetFit #Goals #YouCanDoIt #FitnessGoals #TrainHard #GoHardOrGoHome #NoExcuses
#Health #EatClean #EatLocal #FitFood #GlutenFree #HealthyEating #HealthyRecipes #Nutrition #Paleo #Vegan #GetHealthy #HealthyLife #HealthTalk #HealthyFoodPorn #IQuitSugar #Detox #Nutrition #CleanEating #AvocadoLove #CalorieCounting #MealPrep #MindBodyGram
#RunnersOfInstagram #FurtherFasterStronger #RunningMotivation #Marathon #MarathonTraining #SeenOnMyRun #TrailRunning #InstaRunners #CrossCountry #Instarunners #LoveRunning #RunnerLife #RunningCommunity #RunningShoes #RunItFast
#crossfit, #crossfitgirls, #crossfitlove, #crossfitlife, #crossfitfood, #crossfitcoach, #crossfitmoms, #crossfitters, #crossfitgirl, #crossfitlovers, #crossfitcouple, #crossfitstyle, #crossfitter, #crossfitmen, #crossfitfamily, #crossfitforlife, #crossfitlifestyle, #crossfitstrong, #crossfitathlete, #crossfitwod, #crossfittraining, #crossfitbox, #crossfitopen, #crossfitphotography, #crossfitmotivation, #instacrossfit, #crossfittersdaily, #crossfitmasters, #crossfitcommunity, #crossfitgames, #wod, #crossfitaddiction, #crossfitquotes
And if you’d like to know what the best giveaway hashtags are, check out this article.
If you’ve gone down the route of recording videos for your classes, a great way to promote them to potential gym members is to upload them to YouTube.
YouTube is the biggest video platform on the internet, and it’s the 2nd most visited website in the world, so it’s full of people eager to consume your content. Even better, according to these social media marketing statistics, yoga and meditation videos are on the rise, having seen a 70% growth in popularity.
So if your gym runs yoga classes, why not record a few sessions and add them to YouTube to promote them? You never know, this could be the start of a thriving YouTube channel.
Besides adding your pre-recorded gym videos to YouTube, you can also embed them in your blog. This two-pronged approach provides fresh content to your blog visitors, as well as promoting your YouTube Channel.
And because YouTube videos are now more prominent in search engines like Google, it’s another way to reach people searching for the type of content you’re offering. Even better, regular blog content is a factor Google takes into account when ranking your site in search results.
You can easily embed a YouTube video in WordPress using a simple content block.
All you have to do is create a new post in WordPress. Then paste the video URL into the editor. WordPress then automatically converts the link into a YouTube embed block so that people can watch the video right from your website.
You can even kick it up a notch by embedding an entire YouTube feed on your site with a plugin like Smash Balloon.
Smash Balloon’s Feeds for YouTube Pro lets you add customizable YouTube feeds anywhere on your WordPress site, including live streaming feeds.
You can choose from multiple layout styles, design the feed to match your brand, display views and subscribers, and more.
This is the perfect way to keep your website automatically updated with fresh content to promote your gym.
And one of the coolest features is the custom pause and end actions. Using this feature, you can display a link to a product page or display a thumbnail of another video when the current video ends.
Yet another gym promotion idea that works for several business types is setting up a rewards program for loyal customers.
The idea is for every time someone uses your fitness services, they can accumulate points or even a stamp on their membership card. Then when they’ve collected a certain number of points, you reward them with a gift or freebie.
For gyms and fitness services, you can offer the following rewards to loyal customers:
Other businesses can play a crucial role in marketing your gym too. If you can find a local company that aligns with your brand values that also caters to a health and wellness audience (without competing with you), you can team up to form a brand partnership.
Doing so enables you to leverage both of your audiences to reach more like-minded people while combining the marketing power of both brands.
Here are a few ideas for the types of businesses you could partner with:
You could even create long-lasting relationships with several brands at once to further promote your gym.
As you probably know, accountability is everything when it comes to maintaining your fitness. So one way your gym can encourage accountability while marketing your services is to create an online workout group where people can support each other.
One way you can do this is to add a forum to your WordPress website, where people can post updates on their fitness journey. It’s also a good place for people to ask questions and get help and advice from other members.
You can even use some of the discussions from your workout group as the basis for new content on your blog to better serve your audience.
Your workout group can also be the place where you set fun fitness challenges to encourage your members to achieve their best selves. This is a great way to take people’s minds off their ultimate goals and to focus on enjoying the experience of improving their health.
Here are a few fitness challenges you can introduce to your gym members:
Besides promoting healthy competition, fitness challenges are an excellent way to increase member loyalty and build a robust community around your gym.
And there you have it. In this article, we’ve shared a ton of helpful gym promotion ideas to attract new members and grow your fitness business.
While you’re here, check out our guide on how to drive traffic to your website to get even more clients.
You can also see our guide to the best sports marketing and promotion ideas here.
And if you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for RafflePress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
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