7 Marketing Strategies for Gyms (that Actually Work)

People today are fascinated with the idea of being thinner, fitter, and overall fabulous. This is why you'll see millions upon millions of selfies on Instagram.

But to get to a satisfactory point, they need your local gym to lose weight and get in shape. The question now is, how do you get them to walk through your doors?

We put together a list of marketing strategies for gyms you can try out.

Let's dive in.

Give Your Gym a Unique Look & Atmosphere

Gyms are pretty much all the same -- they have workout equipment, weights, benches, and mirrors to perfect your form.

So what can you do to set your gym apart from competitors?

You can start with the design. When a person walks into your gym, they should immediately feel like this is a clean, safe, and comfortable place to work out.

Try adding plants, televisions, music, and nice seating. You can even opt for some new equipment that your competition doesn't own yet.

When it comes to marketing strategies for gyms, you want to focus on differentiating your brand so folks will choose you over the rest.

Send Out Postcards with Unbeatable Offers

If you're keeping an eye on your competition (as you should be), then you're aware of their prices and promotions. How can you outdo them?

Try sending out seasonal postcards that'll help get more foot traffic into your gym. For instance, send a holiday postcard referencing losing weight they may have gained over Thanksgiving weekend.

Make it funny or inspiring to incite emotion and action. Then to top it off, make an introductory offer that's next to free to get them into your gym.

This is only one of many marketing strategies for gyms involving direct mailers and promotions, so try to get creative!

Allow Prospects to Book Appointments Online

Most people are using Google to search for local businesses. So hopefully, you already have a business citation listed on Google My Business.

If not, you can use increase your web presence to get your listing up and running in no time. Having listings on multiple directories is critical for marketing strategies for gyms.

Once locals start finding your listings, you'll need a way to book appointments. This is ideal if you offer personal training services at your gym or in the home of your clients.

Either way, you're going to need a tool to make this process simple. scheduling software for business makes it seamless for people to book appointments with your gym.

But what happens when your client base increases? You're going to need a tool like GoSite's contact hub (a.k.a CRM) to manage them all. This will allow you to keep track of your customer details, as well as their position in the customer journey.

Use this to send out texts and emails containing offers to prospects or reminders to customers who already booked. 

Target a Specific Niche

Your gym doesn't discriminate -- any and everyone's welcome to join. However, you can help set your business apart by targeting a unique group of people.

For instance, you can try attracting moms to join or book personal appointments. This helps to make marketing strategies for gyms more effective.

Rather than creating ads and marketing collateral for everyone in your city, you can create a campaign geared towards new moms looking to lose postpartum weight gain, or get active after dropping the kids off at school. 

And just because you target moms doesn't mean you can't target anyone else. You can also target professionals who are too busy and need quick sessions to stay in shape.

Or maybe you want to go after athletes who want to go pro or join a local team.

Niches help to make your marketing more targeted, so it speaks directly to the audience you're targeting. Do that, and you can get more prospects calling your gym.

Create Fitness Videos for YouTube

Establishing yourself as an authority is an excellent way to gain the trust of your ideal customers. Going with the niche idea -- you could come up with a line of videos targeted at them specifically.

For instance, creating various video series for new moms, athletes, and busy professionals.

Using video content in marketing strategies for gyms can help build visibility for your brand. Online video is one of the most widely consumed pieces of content on the web. In fact, YouTube (which is owned by Google) happens to be the second-largest search engine.

This can help people find your business. And those who saw your business citation can view your videos (which you can share in your listing) to help build their confidence in your services.

Ask Your Clients to Leave Reviews

Marketing strategies for gyms should always include the collection of testimonials. To make the process seamless, you can just direct your clients to your business listing (preferably Google My Business).

The more high ratings and good reviews your gym receive, the higher your listing will be ranked.

Also, most locals conducting an online search will read through reviews to determine whether or not to trust a business. By showing your gym has a ton of satisfied members, it'll help drive more business.

Start Using Marketing Strategies for Gyms that Work

You'll find all sorts of marketing strategies for gyms online. But not all of them are bound to work. This list consists of the best places to start with your marketing efforts.

At the end of the day, it's about appealing to and appeasing your customers. If you can do that consistently, then the raving reviews and ratings will follow. Just be sure you use get reviews to help keep track of what users are saying about your gym.

Then to help improve your ranking in the directories (and Google), download and read our free 5-step guide on getting started with local SEO!