Marketing gym memberships can be a challenge to keep affordable and effective. We are putting together several articles to help with marketing for a gym. We previously wrote on how to use modern, social marketing tactics for membership. We will soon publish a follow-up to this article on easy ways to retain members. This article outlines 5 cost-effective and straight-forward ways to increase your gym membership.

Determine and Set Goals.

Just like setting goals helps people stay motivated to increase personal fitness, reasonable and achievable goals for your club membership will help you stay focused and driven as you execute your marketing strategy. Good goals are:

• results-oriented
• realistic
• specific
• measurable

For example, you might have a goal of “Signing up 30 new fitness club members within 90 days.” If you need help coming up with realistic goals, review previous membership drives to see what was accomplished and how long it took. Let that be your guide.

Make sure that you can measure your goals. You should be able to measure how many new people signed up for club membership within a specific time period. Having a realistic and measurable goal creates a positive feedback system that will help you succeed. You can also translate the goal into terms of revenue to help keep everyone involved motivated. For example, you could express the goal of singing up new members as “increasing monthly dues revenue by 5 percent within 60 days and by 15 percent within 90 days.” You can then measure your progress against these goals and make adjustments, if necessary. Everything you do should contribute to helping you achieve your goals.

Identify your target audience.

Analyze the local demographics (age, gender, income, education level, and spending habits) for the neighborhoods around your club, and the demographics for your current members. This will help you identify your customer base and the specific target audience for your new member campaign. (A good place to start your demographics research is at the Small Business Association website.) You can then focus your efforts on that target audience and promote services that will attract that audience to your club rather than to your competitors.

For example, perhaps, after analyzing your current membership data and the local demographics, you determine that the area has a very large population of middle-income 18-29 year-old males and females, and that your current membership is significantly underrepresented by that population. Accordingly, you might make 18-29 year-old males and females your primary target audience for your new membership drive and use social media, which is very popular with that age group, to reach them and get them to act.

Use Social Media Marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram can all be used to stay engaged with your existing club members and to attract new club members. But some platforms are better for social media for gyms than others. For example, if you are targeting 18-29 year-olds, Instagram might be a better choice than LinkedIn. Alternatively, LinkedIn could be very effective for an older, more professional target audience. Facebook is a good choice for most target audiences, and Twitter can almost always be used to re-purpose your content and drive people to your website to sign up to be a new club member. We wrote a separate article that goes into detail on current, actionable social marketing you can do for new membership and retention, but here are a few easy ideas for using social media to engage new and existing members:

• Announce seasonal or time-sensitive promotions, such as a “Get Ready for Swimsuit Season Special,” or “Get into the Olympic Spirit with Our Hot Brazilian Workout Special.” You could even invoke Facebook “boosts” to advertise this to locals.
• Post tips or instructions on how to perform certain exercises. Include photographs or videos showing the proper technique.
• Offer a special promotion, such as a “Get a free month’s membership with no sign-up fee.”
• Ask readers to submit their best workout success stories and give the winners a free workout session.
• Promote a contest, such as “Submit Your Healthiest Pre-Workout Recipe and Win a Free Month’s Membership.” Have the contest on your website, and post a link on your Facebook page to the contest page on your website. Post colorful flyers around the club.
• If you are active on Twitter, tweet about a contest that contains a short link to your website. Post an image on Instagram and include a link to your website.

Offer something free via your website.  

Consider offering a free first month (trial period) or free session with a personal trainer. This can be very effective for getting and keeping visitors’ attention once they come to your site (everyone likes something that’s free!) and for converting them into new club members. Offering a free session with a personal trainer also makes people aware that your club has personal trainers, which can help separate your club from other fitness clubs and establish your club as a place that is serious about helping people meet their health and fitness goals. Another free item to consider offering is a couple fitness classes to new individuals, or a standard free class once per week.

Use the power of video marketing.

Studies show that websites that include video are more than 20-40 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google organic search. Video helps improve the search engine optimization (SEO) for your site, which should result in increased traffic—and increased conversions. Post a fitness-focused video on YouTube, your website (e.g., via the blog) and social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to attract and convert viewers into new club members. You can use your phone to video, if you practice to ensure good lighting and audio. Here are some video ideas:

• Introduce your club and your staff with warmth and enthusiasm. Working out can be intimidating to many people. Making them comfortable with where equipment is, and the faces they will see will help them get past some anxiety about signing up.
• An instructional video on the basics of a hot fitness activity. Keep your video short (3-5 minutes or less), and make sure it is of high quality (especially the audio!).
• Show the key features and equipment of your club.
• Testimonial videos by club members can be very effective at highlighting the unique qualities of your club and helping persuade people to join.

Rather than embedding the video on your website, consider posting it on YouTube and linking to it from your website. This yields better ranking results, and can be easier to post on the website (using the YouTube embed link). Creating and posting a short video is not difficult and can be very effective part of your marketing strategy for increasing club membership.