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Managing your gym requires a lot of hard work. In order to grow, you have to combine your dedication with successful marketing strategies. You might be running the best gym out there with top-of-the-line equipment, motivating staff, and brilliant trainers, but if nobody knows about it you’ll be missing the mark.
Crafting a rock-solid gym marketing plan with proven techniques will help to promote your gym and boost membership sales. This will build awareness for your club and bring in new customers. You might even see an improvement in member retention.
Here are some gym membership sales strategies to help you increase your profits.
Invest in social media marketing
Encourage your existing members to participate and engage with you on social media. Create a content strategy for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to offer relevant, enticing content and connect with your members on a more personal level — really get to know them! Use these platforms to host contests or even celebrate member progress.
Consider some of the following to create an active digital community:
- Host exciting fitness challenges and monthly group goal
- Create a personalized hashtag for posting photos
- Share user-generated content — who better to promote your gym than your actual members?
- Post testimonials, and success stories, and even include before and after photos to get people buzzing about your fitness brand
- Live-stream any competitions hosted at your club and include raffles for those who tune in
- Write informative and engaging blog posts
- Use paid social media ads and promote your posts to reach a wider (or highly targeted) audience
Build community among your gym members to promote word-of-mouth marketing
What your members say and think about your gym matters. Take a look at these statistics:
- Word-of-mouth marketing is 92% more effective than any other form of advertising.
- In 2021, 85% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as a personal recommendation.
- The impact of negative reviews is crucial, with 92% of consumers stating they are less likely to use a business after reading a negative review.
You can easily see from these statistics that one of the best (and possibly one of the most important) ways to increase your gym membership sales is through the testimonies of others. Focus on building up a good rapport with your existing members, and let them do some free advertising for you.
As part of your reputation management strategy, you may even offer a bonus reward through a rewards or referral program when they write a review about your facility.
Be creative with pricing
This may sound counter-productive at first, but hear us out: try offering free memberships rather than discount rates. A free trial can be enticing and attract higher-quality customers who want a risk-free way to try out your facility before making a decision.
This way, you won’t attract customers who are just looking for a cheap membership. You’ll attract customers who are more interested in what your facility actually has to offer and how you can help them reach their fitness goals. Build value by showing them exactly what to expect from a membership and your state-of-the-art equipment.
The more value you provide, the higher your conversion and retention rates will be. Use the trial as a way to invite the prospect into your club’s community and get them involved with your weekly events or exclusive one-on-one training.
Just be creative with what you offer and make it unique so they’ll come back wanting more. Need help getting started or honing your gym marketing strategy? The fitness industry experts at UpSwell are here to help!
