Gym owners- creating a gym marketing plan is essential to the success of your fitness centre if you hope to add new customers and continue making money. In this post, you will find a quick introduction to answer these four questions: what, why, who and how.
WHAT
Let’s rewind for a second and start at the very beginning. So, what is it exactly?
Well, a gym marketing plan is basically your written marketing strategy, or game plan. It’s the overall record you outline for yourself and refer to often during the length of your business venture. Don’t be afraid to jump in right away and jot down business goals. Whatever you mark down initially isn’t written in stone, and that’s the beauty of this living and breathing document you are shaping. The point is to consistently tweak it with any new information you believe is pertinent to keeping your gym growth at a healthy rate.
In your document, you can plan for the next month, quarter or even the full year, and it doesn’t have to be super fancy or overly complex in order for it to work. You just need to know these four main things your target, objectives, strategies and tactics. Who are you marketing to? What are your goals? What are your best ideas on how to reach them? And what steps are you going to take to do so?
WHY
Why do you need to have a plan? It’s because very few people are ever able to ace a test without first studying for it. Especially in business. There is always going to be a certain trend you want to keep a close eye on or follow in order to grow yourself successfully. In the case of gyms, you want to track your customers. You want to know who they are and what they like and don’t like.
You can have the greatest facility with state-of-the-art machinery and top notch instructors. But, none of that means anything if you aren’t able to attract new customers to your fitness centre and get the existing ones to stick around. Especially in an industry that is getting bigger by the day. No, make that bigger by the second! The fitness industry is growing at such a rapid rate. So, if you hope to stay in the game, you need to make sure you are constantly learning new things and applying them so your brand can continue to stand out.
WHO
If you aren’t comfortable taking on all of these responsibilities by yourself just yet, or there simply isn’t enough of yourself to go around, you should implement these two things:
1. You can research a good gym management software. Gym management software is a computer program that runs real-time tabulations to provide the right content, to the right person, at the right time. It can tell you which customers are attending class or alert you on who has missed out. It can tell you how much money you’ve made for the month and if your revenue is climbing or if it’s plateaued. Plus, it assists with everyday clerical tasks like checking in on your customers or sending out nurture emails.
2. The next thing you need is to find people who specialise in marketing and data to use those inputs from your gym management software. Hire an experienced digital marketing team to help you create your business goals and execute a tailored plan. Their job is to help you run your marketing efforts, and increase brand awareness on social media. They also drive traffic to your doorsteps through organic and paid searches, and keep you up to date on month over month business related growth. Of course, there are traditional agencies as well, who focus more on commercials, billboards and other efforts.
HOW
Once you’ve got a marketing strategy mapped out and your programs and people in place, it’s time to put all of those notes to use. Test out the theories you’ve learned about the fitness industry, and start gaining traction. Fortunately, living in the digital marketing age has made promoting any kind of product a lot easier than it used to be. For starters, get on social media and promote, promote, promote yourself. Then, create and host a variety of gym events, follow up on every single lead, use email marketing, and start a referral program.
Gym owners, good luck on creating your marketing plan and building up your loyal customers. We hope this post has new or valuable content for you! Check back often for more fitness related topics and industry savvy tips.