Category: Blog

Over a year after COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns began, most gym owners are beyond ready to fully open their doors. Part of running a successful gym is making sure that every person feels welcome, and now is no different.

While you likely have vocal gym enthusiasts ready to get back into their old routines, remember that there are likely just as many people hesitant about re-joining large indoor groups. Here are 3 ways to properly reopen your gym so that all feel welcome.

1. Maintain Health Standards

Recent studies show that gyms and fitness centers were some of the superspreader sites of spring 2020. Even if your staff are fully vaccinated, consider the benefits of reducing their exposure to colds, flus, and other viruses. Requiring staff to wear a face covering and maintaining safety protocols of cleaning more will not only make members feel more comfortable, but could also reduce lost attendance for both members and employees due to illness.

Help your members and staff continue the health protocols developed over the last year. Here are a few ways to encourage good health habits:

• Mark circles on the floor in the free weight and floor exercise areas to show people how far apart to maintain social distancing
• Stagger class start times of classes to reduce the number of people in the locker rooms at one time
• Increase the number of equipment cleaner stations throughout the gym to make it easier to reach and use
• Provide virtual streaming access to group classes to reduce the number of people in the room
• Work with your facilities management to increase ventilation and air filtration in the building

2. Stay Up to Date

In order to both keep your people safe and keep your gym compliant, make sure to stay abreast of public health news in your area. Review the COVID-19 Employer Information for Gyms and Fitness Centers article to find how to protect your employees and which hazard controls to implement to keep everyone safe.

3. Ask People What They Want

As vaccination rates vary and children are still ineligible to receive the vaccine, there is no one right answer to what will make gym members comfortable again. Send a survey to your email list stating that while you’re following the protocols, you want to hear from them. Ask first how likely they are to return to the gym as well as which safety protocols they’d like to see in place. Some options include smaller group fitness classes, offering times where masks are required, and enforcing physical distancing.

When reviewing survey responses, you may want to give more weight to people more in the middle of the pack in being ready to return. People who respond that they absolutely won’t come back aren’t going to be swayed by wiping down machines more often. And, your most loyal gym attenders are less likely to be kept away by some additional rules. Focus on the people who are hesitant to come, but want to make it work.

Conclusion

While there’s light at the end of the tunnel, it’s important to maintain your commitment to keeping your staff and your members safe at your fitness center. Continue with your existing health protocols, stay up-to-date on changing business guidance, and ask your members what would make them comfortable to return to your facilities.

Group classes are back in session! But does that mean that the gym owners, trainers, and employees are ready to be back?

Here are a few ways that you can protect and support your staff and gym members during this time.

1. Help People Ease Back In

Although there were more at-home workout options than ever this past year, people likely weren’t doing as much vigorous activity as before. Consider offering members with consultations to provide activities recommendations and physical activity guidelines to help prevent injury and see results. Plus, offer more classes and workouts at a moderate intensity and check in more with your members who are working at a high intensity.

Additionally, some people may not want to return due to a certain health condition or other reason. No matter how much you tell people to wash your hands, this won’t change. For these members, make it easy for them to leave. They’ll be much more likely to come back when they do feel safe than if you try to argue the point with them.

2. Offer Outdoor Activities

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people re-discovered a love of the great outdoors. Consider offering member activities outside of the facility, like guided hikes, yoga in a park, and group runs. Since people breathe more heavily during aerobic activities, moving them outside can help slow the spread of airborne illnesses. And, by having fewer members in the studio, you’ll be able to maintain physical distancing more easily.

3. Support Mental Health

Although many people are ready to “get back to normal,” 2020 was nothing but normal. Remember that you don’t know everything that everyone is dealing with, whether the loss of loved ones, stress of managing at-home schooling and remote work, or feelings of isolation from spending so much time alone. People joked about gaining the “quarantine fifteen,” but there are more serious cases of anxiety and depression as a result of a year inside.

Keep in mind that being healthy is both physical and mental. Consider offering mental health benefits as part of your employee health insurance and including classes on mindfulness and meditation for your members.

Conclusion

Just like how none of us were prepared for COVID-19, none of us know what to expect next as the world starts reopening. As a gym owner, you’re responsible for the health and well-being of your employees, your members, and by extension, your community. Be empathetic and kind as you help everyone ease back into their fitness routines to help do your part to keep people happy and healthy.

Employee wellness programs are more important than ever as the lines between work and home life continue to become increasingly entangled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. With more people working from home, and with many also managing their kids’ virtual learning simultaneously, it’s no surprise that workers are experiencing burnout, loss of productivity and struggling to maintain their physical and mental health.

With new stressors piling on workers every day, employers need to take a more proactive role in improving employee health by creating wellness programs that take individual needs into consideration to offer the greatest benefit. What may help one employee, may offer little to no benefit for another, which is why it’s important to offer a diverse array of initiatives.

In this blog, we’ll talk about what an employee wellness program is, and three reasons why you should consider implementing one.

What is an employee wellness program?

An employee wellness program is a collective of initiatives put into place to improve overall health, as well as to provide resources, knowledge and support for employees to manage health-related issues. When thinking about wellness, it’s important to understand that a person’s overall wellbeing extends beyond just physical health and includes other dimensions as well—for example, social, financial, environmental, and mental health.

One-size-fits-all programs tend to fail to meet most employees’ actual needs, thereby offering little real value. The most successful types of wellness programs address different dimensions of wellness through various programs, providing multiple pathways for employees to improve health across all boards.

Why should you offer an employee wellness program?

Investing in your employees is investing in your business, and when your workers are at their finest, your company will reap the benefits. As an employer, it’s important to provide career development opportunities, as well as holistic support, to help your employees be the best they can be.

Key benefits of an employee wellness program:

The ultimate goal of an employee wellness program is to improve your workers’ overall health and wellbeing, but there are benefits for business owners as well.

Here are three top reasons to have an employee wellness program:

1. Improve employee health
   With the right education and resources, people are able to change their behaviors for the better. Employee wellness programs are a great way to promote healthy lifestyle habits by providing the knowledge and support needed for your workers to make positive, long term changes. Healthy habits lead to lower health risks and fewer chronic illnesses—and, in turn, having fewer employees with chronic illnesses can lead to reduced healthcare costs for employers.
2. Increase employee engagement & reduce absenteeism
   When workers feel better, they perform better—and they call out of work less often. Offering an employee wellness program shows your workers you’re invested in their long term health and success, which, in turn, makes them more likely to stay with your company. By reducing turnover, employers can save a lot of time and money on hiring, recruiting and training costs.
3. Workers want wellness
   In the post-pandemic landscape, employees are more stressed than ever. In fact, one recent study found that nearly 70% of workers claimed this was the most stressful time of their entire professional career. With an increased focus on health, more employees are seeking out employers who demonstrate a vested interest in their health and wellness. In addition to keeping your current workers happy and healthy, a comprehensive employee wellness program can be used as a recruiting tool to attract top talent.

Conclusion

Successful employee wellness programs are a win-win for everyone—employers can lower healthcare costs by improving employee health, reduce absenteeism and boost employee engagement, all of which contribute to a happier, healthier workforce. 

Everyone knows that exercising regularly is good for your health—it improves your mood, promotes quality sleep, boosts your energy, and helps combat a number of different health conditions and diseases. But when it comes to exercise, more isn’t always better. While it may seem counterintuitive, one of the best ways to get the most from any fitness regimen is to ensure you’re getting enough hours of sleep every night.

Here are five reasons why adequate sleep is critical to exercise recovery:

1. Provides your body time to heal

Exercising creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissue, and your body needs time to recover and repair it. While you sleep, cells called fibroblasts fix the damage and help the tissue heal and grow stronger. The more hours of sleep you get, the more time your muscle tissues have to regenerate.

Additionally, your muscles store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen, which get broken down during workouts to fuel your exercise. Your muscles need glycogen to perform everyday functions, and getting adequate sleep gives your body the time it needs to replenish your energy stores before your next workout.

2. Reduces risk of injury

Getting enough hours of sleep every night is essential to staying safe during workouts. A lack of sleep can lead to mental cloudiness, delayed reaction time, and increased risk of injury. When you’re overworked or overtired, you’re more likely to misuse equipment, drop a weight, take a misstep, or fall out of form.

On the days you’re tempted to push yourself, try to remember that it’s always better to pace yourself and provide your body the time it needs for optimal recovery than to overwork yourself and risk long-term damage or injury.

3. Prevents muscle fatigue

Exercise depletes your muscles’ glycogen levels, and your body needs glycogen to function. Metabolic overload happens when muscles are exercised to the point of fatigue, and your body has exhausted the amount of glycogen available.

When you’re asleep, your body continues to digest carbohydrates and metabolizes them into glycogen, which is then stored in muscle cells to fuel muscle contractions. This is why getting adequate sleep is necessary to avoid exercise-induced fatigue and soreness—because it provides your body the time it needs to replace energy stores.

4. Improves performance

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults over the age of 18 should aim for seven to nine hours of sleep per night. And did you know that increasing sleep time by one hour per night is like the equivalent of getting an extra night’s worth of sleep per week? Making adjustments to your schedule to ensure you’re getting enough hours of sleep per night makes all the difference when it comes to performance.

Overtraining can cause repetitive strain and stress to your muscles, which can lead to decreased performance, reduced endurance, and slower reaction times. Lack of sleep will wear you down physically, mentally and emotionally—whereas adequate sleep will increase your energy and prepare your body for consistently successful workouts. 

5. Boosts the immune system

Numerous studies have reported on the many benefits of a good night’s sleep—and, similarly, how a lack of sleep can lead to a number of negative impacts to your overall health. For example, quality sleep can maximize athletic performance, improve concentration and productivity—whereas poor sleep has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease, stroke and depression.

A recently published study found yet another way quality sleep can assist the immune system—by improving T cell functioning. T cells play an important role in the body’s immune system, and researchers found that poor sleep may inhibit the ability of T cells to function as effectively.

Conclusion

Many of us tend to think more is better, especially when it comes to exercise—when, actually, the opposite is true. Taking breaks and getting adequate sleep is critical for achieving optimal performance, regardless of your level of fitness or sport. Skipping rest days or not getting enough hours of sleep can quickly lead to burnout, muscle fatigue or injury. As with many things in life, moderation is key.

Sandwiched in the middle of another pandemic year, fitness businesses around the world continue to grow and evolve. Everything the fitness industry knew back in 2019 is very different from what it knows in 2021. If you are a gym owner and haven’t done so already, now could be a good time to check in with your current business model. Find out what still serves you and what doesn’t, in order to stay on top of the competition and continue reaching your target audience. We’d love to help you get started in your search! In this post are some different membership models to consider for your gym.

Membership-Based

Let’s start with a membership-based gym model because it’s what most people think of when they first sign up at the gym. It’s a monthly or annual fee in exchange for unlimited access to facility services. The pros are, it’s been around the block. So, it’s tried and true. It’s straightforward in what your members will receive for their fee. And when it comes to cash flow, it’s a steady and predictable revenue stream for business owners.

The cons are, because it’s an annual contract, members can sometimes feel locked in or locked down. Especially if they aren’t getting full use out of their membership like they want. Or, circumstances arise and they can’t. For example, when people were unable to access their gyms at the start of the coronavirus and couldn’t take full advantage of the equipment and classes they paid for. 

Tiered Membership Models

A tiered membership model is a membership based subscription with options. And who doesn’t love options, right? If members are anxious with a traditional membership plan, offer them a tiered plan. It will allow them more control over their pockets and fitness experience. Adopting a tiered membership shows clients you’re listening to their wants and needs. And that’s pretty cool.

Digital Subscription  

Everyone has watched the fitness industry dive into the digital work out space these last two years. Some businesses slowly added in online accessible features. Others went fully online. What’s great about a digital subscription during the pandemic is gym owners don’t have to fuss over social distancing, limited capacity, masks or sanitisation. However, the downside is members can miss out on the full gym experience. For most people, that’s a huge deal. A big pull of a physical gym is that group motivation. Plus, friendly competition and professional in-person guidance. 

Hybrid Fitness

Hybrid Fitness is somewhere in-between membership based and a digital subscription. By adopting a hybrid fitness business model, you can offer clients the best of both worlds. One with a mixture of in-person and online classes.

Your in-person clients will look forward to a more intimate class-size experience. Your online clients will still get the feel of being in your gym’s environment while working out from the comfort of their homes. Also, your in-person members have the flexibility to access a live-streamed class. Or, stop by a digital library whenever they are unable to make it there either, ensuring they still get in a workout.

Group Fitness

Speaking of group motivation and friendly competition, there’s a business model for that. One where members can pay for a bundle of classes, connect with other members and bounce off energy. While some people need music to pump them up for their workout, others enjoy having like-minded individuals to achieve goals with.

Pay As You Go 

A pay as you go plan can help attract members who are maybe on the fence about committing to a plan just yet. It lets them come and go as they please, and take what they need from your services. From a business perspective, sure, it might not have great cash flow. But, it could still be worth implementing into your business model plan. And remember, you can always mix and match business models until you find what works best for you. There is no right or wrong way to do your business, only what feels right to you.

Conclusion

Gym owners, remember this. Like you, some of the most successful businesses are the ones open to evolving. As you know, successful businesses don’t get stuck in their ways. They are always looking for ones to help grow their business. So, continue researching and learning. Listen to fitness industry trends, as well as your target audience and you will do well.  Start with these insights to different membership models for your gym. Then, keep digging for more information until you find your niche and groove. As always, we wish you well on your success journey.

In case you haven’t already heard the big news—we’re excited to share that we’re rolling out a major user interface (UI) redesign on May 1! Featuring a responsive, modern design across devices, our new UI offers an intuitive edge and solution to workflow challenges fitness businesses have been struggling to address since the pandemic upended the industry as we once knew it. And our latest investment doesn’t end with design—the upgrade also includes a new hosting partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

By now, we’ve all seen the extent to which COVID-19 has disrupted the fitness industry—from the physical landscape where people work out, to the needs and expectations consumers have regarding how fitness businesses should package and deliver products and services. To address these new challenges, we chose to invest more heavily into technology in order to create an all-in-one, seamless solution that addresses our customers’ unique operational needs.

“Many of our users are on-the-go admins who rely on our software to provide time-saving solutions. The latest interface updates are fully responsive, require fewer clicks to accomplish tasks, and are packaged into a clean, intuitive dashboard. This helps ensure we continue to lead from the front and provide our clients with the tools they need to excel in a new landscape,” says Bryant Strozinsky, President of EZFacility.

The UI redesign carries over the same functionality users are familiar with, while also introducing simplified processes and expanded capabilities. Features in the latest update include, but are not limited to: memberships, packages, scheduling, email campaigns, check-in, documents, reports, and settings.

The transition to Amazon Web Services prioritises client data security and increases site speed, with AWS boasting a reliable 99% uptime rate. “With built-in, unlimited storage capacity our clients can spend more time building out their operations without worrying about typical associated costs. Moving forward with AWS puts our development team in an excellent position to incorporate cutting-edge tools and integrations like Machine Learning into our software in the future,” adds Michael Vidal, Director of Research and Development at EZFacility.

As of May 1st, EZFacility will train and onboard all new users to the latest interface. Current clients will have the opportunity to enroll in an Early Access Program through the summer which will allow them to toggle back and forth between the previous and updated dashboards. EZFacility will permanently transition all users to the new interface by May 2022.

For additional information about our new UI launch, or to schedule a personalized product tour, click here.

By Amber Wojcek

When you are a gym owner or manager, you know how vital it is to constantly be bringing in new members. Some members will move, have scheduling issues, or just fall out of their gym routine, and you need to fill those spots with new members. However, former gym members can actually be an excellent source of renewals or referrals. Here’s how you can make the most of your relationship with former gym members.

1. Track Why People Cancel

The first step is to learn why gym-goers are cancelling their membership and track this in your CRM. Some reasons will disqualify people from rejoining, such as if they moved. However, other situations could have changed. Maybe they left halfway through their pregnancy, but it’s been a year and they could be interested in returning. Or perhaps they had a demanding job that took away their time, but now something has changed.

For those members with more temporary reasons for leaving, set a reminder to stay in touch after a certain amount of time. A personal phone call simply to check in on the situation and ask if they’d feel comfortable coming back for a free visit can make all the difference.

Additionally, by tracking why people cancel, you can let them know if a situation changed that could bring them back.

2. Promote Improvements

When a member cancels due to an issue with your fitness business itself, it can feel hard to come back from. However, if in time you’re able to make the improvements a former member was missing, then you should personally let them know. This both tells them that you were listening to their feedback and that you care enough to remember who was impacted.

For instance, maybe a member quit because the fitness classes didn’t work with their schedule or they just weren’t meeting their fitness goals. You can email all the former members who complained about these issues when you add more classes to the schedule or begin providing new fitness plans.

If you aren’t currently sending email blasts, then make sure that you share these changes on social media. Reiterate all the benefits that people get with their gym membership and encourage your gym community to share with their friends.

3. Provide a Special Offer

When it comes to boosting gym membership, nothing quite beats a special offer. People want to experience your gym before committing to a lengthy and expensive contract. Especially if you’ve made improvements to your fitness studio by upgrading equipment or amenities, it’s a great idea to invite former members back for a free personal training session.

Make sure your trainer is prepared not only to provide training but also to listen to and address their concerns. It’s important that these former members feel heard and that you care about their opinions.

While they’re there, consider offering former members with special conditions you wouldn’t give to a new member. Maybe they would come back if they got a month to month gym membership or they want to pay the rate they joined at before. Be flexible and you might just earn back a member for life.

4. Spot Issues Before They Happen

It can be difficult to manage so many pieces of owning a gym business and tracking what each member is doing. But, with gym management software, you can spot reasons people may cancel before they even happen. See which months historically have low member activity, like around winter holidays, and plan promotions for people who come in a certain number of times. Or, if you see your 6:15 classes booking up early every weekday, consider offering a different class at the same time in another area of the gym to provide more options.

At the end of the day, your best target audience for growing membership are the people in your gym. Ask members for feedback throughout the year – not just when they quit. And before you make big decisions like adding fitness centers in a new location, ask existing members what would be best for them.

As an owner or manager, it’s important to monitor satisfaction over time. It’s easier to encourage gym member retention than to try to bring back lapsed members. By keeping members engaged and with communication to former members, you can build strong relationships that make it easier for members to come back when they need to leave.

A common way to gauge the success of an Instagram page is to look at the number of followers it has, but attempting to measure success through such a limited lens can be misleading. While many businesses adopt the “more is better” approach—in the social media realm, oftentimes quality trumps quantity. An Instagram page with thousands of followers who aren’t engaged doesn’t offer much actual value, so it’s important to focus on building a community of loyal followers who are genuinely interested in your brand, what you’re offering, and what you have to say.  

Building a large following of real, engaged Instagram users isn’t easy, and it will take some time, but it’s a worthy investment—especially considering that Instagram now has over 1 billion users worldwide, and 80% of Instagram users say they use the platform for help when deciding to buy a product or service. Instagram’s strong impact on consumers’ buying journey has created tremendous new growth opportunities for fitness businesses—but it has created new challenges, too.

Because of the platform’s continuous growth and changing algorithms, it’s become more difficult for fitness brands to break through the noise to reach and connect with users—but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done! With a little bit of patience and the right social media marketing strategies in place, you’ll be able to boost your Instagram following, build brand awareness, and create meaningful connections with your audience.

In this blog, we’ll discuss five ways you can build a strong Instagram following for your fitness business.

1. Go after your audience

To utilise social media platforms effectively, you need to engage in meaningful dialogue with your followers—but first, you need to find them. One way to find Instagram users who are interested in fitness is to search popular fitness-related hashtags. From there, you can reach out via direct message, or like and comment on their posts. You can also follow hashtags to keep an eye on trending topics, and use that insight to create relevant posts and spark conversations. Centre your Instagram marketing efforts around building genuine connections with like-minded users, and try to avoid coming across as too salesy.

2. Focus on the “why”

Your Instagram page may be someone’s first interaction with your fitness business—and first impressions matter! The COVID-19 pandemic created a significant shift in the way consumers interact with brands. Now more than ever, social media users want to build bonds with fitness brands, and they’re more likely to base their buying decisions on a company’s purpose and mission. Instagram is a great way to promote a higher level of transparency, and features like Live Videos and Instagram Stories provide fitness brands with unique ways to offer behind-the-scenes looks and interesting insights.

In fact, a recent Deloitte study finds that purpose-driven companies are better positioned to survive this time of extraordinary change, and that “marketers can and should take an ‘outside-in’ consumer perspective to the C-suite and executive teams. Especially if your business is in an industry addressing one of the many essential needs that have gained importance in the pandemic. That can be your shot at demonstrating the value of purpose to all of your stakeholders.”

3. Tell a story

Because of its real-time factor, Instagram Stories is a great way for fitness brands to show their human side, and it can really help bring your business profile to life. In fact, 33% of the most viewed Instagram Stories come from businesses. Using the Instagram Stories feature, fitness brands can share short clips of personal training videos, fun snippets from the day, or even cheat meals. And if another Instagram user tags your fitness business in their Instagram story, use that as an opportunity to create a conversation by sending them a direct message, or reposting it to your fitness Instagram account.

4. Use the power of influence

As health has become a top priority over the past year, fitness influencers have seen a huge surge in popularity on social media platforms. This has created a golden opportunity for fitness brands to partner with fitness influencers to boost brand awareness and to increase their Instagram following. While many larger fitness brands look to partner with widely popular and well-known fitness influencers, smaller fitness businesses may want to consider working with local micro-influencers. After all, if you’re looking to build a genuinely engaged social media community, working with someone local gives you that much more of an advantage.

5. Encourage community content

Making your members a part of your Instagram marketing strategy is a great way to create a sense of community, and to make your business profile look and feel more authentic. Your members are oftentimes your greatest advocates, and they help boost brand awareness and drive membership for your fitness business without expecting much in return. Consider gifting select members with some free branded swag in exchange for taking photos and tagging your fitness Instagram account on their social media platforms. Everyone likes to feel valued and appreciated—and who doesn’t also love free stuff? 

Final Thoughts

With the global tendency continuing to shift toward more screen time, it’s a great time to revisit your Instagram marketing strategy to make sure you’re getting the most from your social media marketing efforts. With the right approach, you can effectively utilise your Instagram page to increase your number of followers, build meaningful connections with users, and to gain unfiltered consumer feedback that you can use to grow your fitness business.

If you’re interested in learning about how an all-in-one management software can help streamline your efforts, click here for more information.

By Amber Wojcek

Owning a yoga studio means that you get to enjoy working with people who are all passionate about health. But, as the owner and their boss, you’re responsible for more than making sure their classes get scheduled. While it can be tempting to have everyone classified as an independent contractor, it may not be so simple.

Small businesses may be violating federal law by misclassifying workers and can be subject to serious consequences. Here’s what studio owners need to know about worker classification.

This article is for informational purposes only, and EZFacility does not provide legal advice. Please consult your legal counsel and financial advisor on matters of worker classification.

What’s the Difference?

The biggest difference between employees and contractors is whether the business owner withholds taxes from the worker. Employees are protected by labour laws, such as being paid at least the minimum wage and accessing unemployment insurance if they lose their job. Contractors also are not covered by worker’s compensation or get access to benefits like sick pay or retirement earnings.

In order to keep your business compliant with laws in place, it is imperative that you properly report whether a worker is an independent contractor or if a worker is an employee

Classifying Instructors

Should your yoga instructors be classified as employees? The driving factor to determine whether your staff should be classified as employees or independent contractors comes down to control. Here are some questions to ask:

• How much control do I have over my instructors’ work?
• How am I paying my workers?
• How permanent is the relationship?
• How integral is the work to my business?

If you’re setting the schedule for your instructors, paying them by the class, require Yoga Alliance certifications, and have no “end” point set to your relationship, you may be misclassifying your instructors as contractors. After all, your business relies on the instructors to keep people coming to classes.

What Happens When You Misclassify

It should be noted that regardless of what employment forms your instructors complete, your workers are classified based on how your company operates. If a recently fired contractor seeks legal counsel to fight for unpaid overtime, for instance, the court will investigate whether you should have treated them as employees. That’s how audits and class action lawsuits can result in tens to hundreds of thousands owed in back taxes for business owners.

Even if you won a case against a former contractor, remember that your local yoga community is likely a tight-knit group. Any time someone argues that they were mistreated by a business, it will result in a huge hit to your reputation. It’s best to do right by your team from the beginning and make sure your yoga studio is compliant with labor laws.

Simplify Team Management

Overwhelmed with managing your instructors and studio? Consider investing in our yoga studio management software. In addition to features that will keep your members happy, you’ll be able to access payroll and commission tracking in the same app you use to schedule classes and take payments.

With more people spending time at home and scouring the internet looking for ways to improve their health and fitness routines, audiences are more dependent on digital content than they’ve ever been in the past. In fact, one recent global study found that engagement on social media has increased 61% over regular usage rates since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For health and fitness businesses, this means that social media marketing is no longer an optional component of the marketing mix—it has, essentially, taken center stage—creating both opportunities and challenges for fitness brands. In a world now dominated by digital marketing, consumers’ feeds are being flooded by businesses vying to capture their attention. It’s no longer enough to just create content—health and fitness businesses that want to break through the noise need to understand how to create and distribute compelling content that captures viewers’ attention.

Here are five ways fitness brands can amp up their social media marketing strategies in 2021:

1. Go live

Eighty percent of social media users say they’d rather watch video than read a blog, and internet users collectively watched more than 1.1 billion hours of live video in 2019. It should come as no surprise that with numbers like that, more fitness brands are going live to deliver content to consumers across the most popular social networks. The demand for social broadcasting is anticipated to continue to rise, creating a huge opportunity for fitness brands looking for ways to improve their social media marketing efforts.

2. Be inclusive

Inclusivity isn’t just “in”—it’s the new standard expected of fitness brands. Today’s consumers want to align themselves with health and fitness companies that promote equality, accessibility and welcomeness to all. In fact, 70% of Millennials are more likely to choose one brand over another if that brand demonstrates inclusion and diversity in terms of its promotions and offers. Fitness brands that choose to ignore this and continue to tout their exclusivity, or limit their messaging to an elite demographic, will not receive the same support or following as in years past.

3. Consider influencer marketing

If you’re familiar with the saying “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” then you already understand why influencer marketing can have such a profound impact on business. Consumers want to be like the people they admire—they want to walk like them and talk like them, so to speak. So, what better way to boost engagement on your company’s social media networks than with an endorsement from a popular influencer? It is worth noting, however, that more fitness brands are shifting to nano-influencers as many marketing budgets shrank as a result of COVID-19.

4. Utilize user-generated content

Almost half of marketing professionals (48%) believe that content created by customers helps humanize their marketing. User-generated content is an important part of social media marketing because it helps to establish trust between businesses and consumers by providing a genuine reflection of what other customers can anticipate when engaging with a particular business. User-generated content also provides fitness brands the ability to showcase success stories, creating emotional appeal that can have a huge impact on buying decisions. 

5. Invest in social advertising

With almost half of the global population using social media, it makes sense why so many fitness brands are investing in social media advertising. Social media advertising capabilities continue to improve, providing fitness brands the ability to reach their target audience with ease and accessibility like never before. In terms of performance and engagement, social media ads that contain video strongly outperform those that use static images, so it’s worth investing the time to create engaging video clips to get the most impact from your ad spend.

Conclusion

Because the social media marketing landscape is always changing, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse and pay attention to emerging trends. Fitness brands that want to stay relevant and competitive need to be willing and able to adapt and adopt quickly to break through the noise and develop lasting, authentic relationships with consumers.

For more health and fitness-related insights, click here to read our other blogs.