Digital Marketing Plan for Gym Startup

 “A Good Workout is a Great Way to Clear Your Mind”

Hi everyone, in this article, you will see the marketing strategy plan for Gym. If you are a certified fitness trainer and planning to open your Gym chain then this article is very helpful to you. Give your valuable 10 minutes to this article and you can get a lot of marketing benefits at no cost.

If you are already running a gym and you are lacking in marketing or not getting more clients to your gym or if you are planning to open a new gym then marketing your fitness club is one of the most important parts of running your start-up or business.

To get more members to your gym the best marketing in this case is word-of-mouth marketing. But in today’s competitive markets word-of-mouth marketing is not enough. 

I am sure, you are thinking about what else you can do to promote your gym in the local market and as well as to promote your gym chain to the others parts of the city as well. Don’t worry; here is the digital marketing plan for gym startups. These steps will help you in promoting your business online and will attract more members to your gym. Also, this article will answer your question on “how to create a digital marketing strategy plan for the gym”.

Set Your Goals

Setting your goals is the primary task for every business. Goals can be of two types either it can be short-term goals or long-term goals. If we talk about setting up goals for a Gym business then it can depend upon your choice, whether you need more profit initially or more clients initially.

Let us take an example to understand it clear:

Short-term Goals

Getting 80-100 Clients in a two-three months

Long-term Goals

1. Getting more than 200 clients in six months
2. Open new franchise in next year in another locality

Setting up your goals will help you to decide that what is good for your business and what should need to be ignored.

USP (Unique Selling Point)

Every Business has its uniqueness or you can say it is new to the audience. USP is the thing that defines your business to the audience so that is why the audience would choose your business rather than your competitors. The gym should consist of something new to the market. Let us take an example to understand it better:

1. Open in-house diet canteen with your gym: Many gyms have their canteen but most of the gyms have not. So this add-on will help you in attracting more clients.
2. Introduce your merchandise for members: Just think, for every membership you are giving your brand name shakers or brand name gym t-shirts. It will help you in your marketing as well and it will attract more memberships in the market.

Create a Website

According to the surveys, 54% of people search online for a business before purchasing or taking the services. This is the main reason you should create a user-friendly website because it covers more than 50% of your audience.

Points to remember: 

• A website should be user-friendly
• Easy to navigate
• Informative about the location of the Gym and active contact numbers
• Mention all facilities available in the gym
• Your website should be present in the search engines

There are many options available on Google for creating a free website. If you are good at budget then you can hire a Website Designer else you can go with the free options given below:

1. WordPress
2. Wix
3. Squarespace

Creating a website will help you in future when you create marketing campaigns to build up your clients. Now your website is ready! It’s time to get users to your website. Now continue your reading and know how to attract customers to your gym.

LOCAL SEO

Local SEO is free. Yes, you read it right; local SEO is the cost-effective technique of search engine optimization. Most people search in Google or use a keyword like “gym near me” or “gyms in (area name)”. These keywords are difficult to rank higher as a startup but continuous work will give you better results. Here is the task you can do on regular basis to rank your website locally:

1. You can use local keywords in your content
2. Put your name, address and phone number on the entire website
3. Create citations for each nearby area
4. Get register yourself with Google My Business

What is Google My Business

Google is the most used search engine in every country except for some countries. Google My Business is free and benefits the most. It is the tool to get your business on Google and create an appearance of your business in your area. With the help of Google My Business, you can:

• Locate your business proper address, phone numbers
• Show your products or services to the audience
• Get genuine reviews about your business from the clients
• Show your Gym space area, machines, and many more images to the audience

Create Social Media Accounts

In today’s era social media influence about 80% of the total marketing. Not only creating your GYM social media is important but posting regularly on these accounts make your image strong in the neighbourhood.

Post daily content on Instagram or Facebook make your business presence more. This is one of the ways to engage your clients. You can post-diet plans, future offers, discounts, tips, workouts, etc. Never forget to use #hashtags of your brand and other related to the topic. 

Initially, you can start with posting it manually but as the business grows you can use automation tools for posting on social media (all platforms). In my opinion, Heropost is the best automation tool I have ever used.

Do Proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Now it is time to make your Gym popular by targeting more and more audiences organically. SEO is the best option to cover more audiences and this can be done if your website has more audience reach. Let’s see how SEO can be done for Gym startup

1. Post informative blogs daily
2. Use keywords that have high search volume. Keywords searching can be done by available tools like Google keyword planner, ubersuggest, Ahrefs
3. Choose topics of your blogs like healthy diets, workouts for beginners, chest workouts, etc. Also, you can search topics on the above-mentioned tools and write accordingly.
4. Now, promote your blogs on guest post sites or on popular sites like Quora and put your website link to your blog. This action will help you in creating backlinks for your website.
5. Many techniques can be done for a business website. Seo is an ongoing process, changes and research are normal for an SEO executive.

It is my suggestion to hire an expert for Seo activities. It is very difficult to explain all about SEO under one heading. Still, if you want to know more about SEO then you can read “What is Search Engine Optimization” for your knowledge.

Video Marketing

With the help of videos, you can spread knowledge to the audience about your gym facilities, workout tips, workout online tips, gym atmosphere, client’s reviews. You can make clients reviews videos about the gym environment, fitness trainer and more activities.

Instagram is also a great platform for marketing your gym‘s video content. Use different hashtags on your video content and make new reels related to gym workout tips, health tips and many more.

Health Club Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a process of setting up people to refer your gym to the people who might be interested in joining your gym and gain some perks.

Affiliate marketing is considered a fantastic marketing strategy. There are many options you can do it manually if you don’t have any online portal to track affiliates. For Example:

1. Tie-up with nearby Doctors: Doctors can recommend their patients to exercise regularly if their patients have health problems.
2. Personal Trainers: Usually personal trainers have their regular clients but they don’t have the area to workout. So contacting personal trainers in your locality and providing them with your gym area will be a type of mouth-of-word marketing. You can charge a commission from personal trainers as well.
3. Fitness apparel stores: Drop your brochure at the fitness apparel store counter and ask them to refer people visiting their stores. They can refer to a free trial or good discounts if someone registers for membership by using their referral codes 

Gym Promotions

It is recommended to not run gym promotions for the whole year. According to the survey by experts, the best result of gym promotions is between December to January.

Of course, we heard from almost everyone that my New Year resolution is to get fit. So, try to promote your gym in these two months. Try as many methods to promote your gym. Some suggestions are given below:

• Run marketing campaigns on Google or Facebook and try to target the desired audience
• Print advertising: Print brochures and stickers and try to distribute as much as you can
• Billboards
• Referral Programs: Add benefits to existing members, if they refer their friends or relatives to join your gym.

Host Events

You are running a business and with the success of your business throw a party by inviting your members with their families. Although you can set a milestone that after reaching 500 memberships we will celebrate our success or goodwill in the market.

Good marketing ideas for events are:

1. Gym anniversaries
2. Membership Milestone as discussed above
3. Holiday Events
4. Celebrating Staff Birthdays
5. Host extra activities like Marathon, Free Yoga sessions, Strength training sessions, Boxing sessions

Conclusion

Marketing strategies for the gym are higher in number so you can choose the best ones which fit your gym. Do remember; always track the success rate of each marketing strategy or campaign. So that you can compare what is best for you. Always ask your staff and clients that “how did you hear about us”.

It will help you to understand the market better for your gym business and will give better results in the end.

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