Before someone ever becomes a member of your gym, they first become a lead. A lead is a prospect that knows about you, is familiar with the problem you solve, and is considering your solution for their challenges.
Generating leads is crucial for any business, and fitness businesses like gyms need to have a plan to keep leads steadily rolling in.
We’re sharing a simple three step process for generating more gym leads. And with this method, you can be sure that the leads you’re bringing in are more likely to convert into paying customers. This, of course, means more revenue for your gym!
So are you ready to start growing your fitness business faster than ever before? Let’s start.
Table of Contents:
- Step 1: Create A Unique And Killer Offer To Bait More People
- Step 2: Make Sure That You Are Reaching The Right Prospects
- Step 3: Share Your Offer With The World
Create A Unique And Killer Offer To Bait More People
Occasionally, you’ll get lucky and have new members find you with little effort on your part. They may have heard great things about your gym from a friend or done enough research on their own to decide that you are the right fit.
However, in most cases you will need to be doing active outreach to people that have never heard of you. When trying to sell gym memberships, one problem you’ll encounter is that people are hesitant to put up a lot of money up front.
Think of it from their perspective. It can be hard to invest if they aren’t sure your services will solve their problem – i.e. help them get in shape, help them actually commit to working out, help them find a supportive fitness community, etc.
On the other hand, they are probably more likely to risk a smaller amount of money or time to see if your gym is actually the right fit. And giving them a way to do this is how you get them to trust you!
You need to create an offer that baits people and makes them excited about trying your gym or services.
Some ideas?
- Short, discounted program like a “21 Day Fat Loss Challenge”
- Free membership trial period
- Free fitness assessment
- Discounted or free personal training session
As you can imagine, it’s much easier to commit to a free week at the gym than signing up for a membership without any prior experience with your business.
Having an offer is great, but it’s no use if you’re not getting it in front of the right people. Let’s talk a little more about how you can decide on an offer and marketing plan that will be most effective for your prospects.
Make Sure That You Are Reaching The Right Prospects
Creating and marketing your lead will be much more effective if you’re targeting the right people. This means you need to get clear on who you are, who you serve, and how you do that differently than your competitors.
You don’t want to spend the time and effort on marketing your offer to people that ultimately aren’t the right fit for your gym. Once you have a killer offer in mind, it can be helpful to think about your niche and unique selling proposition (USP), so you can hone in on your offer and make sure that it’s enticing to the right people.
Target your niche
You may or may not already have a niche for your gym or fitness business. Your niche is the special segment of the population you serve. It needs to be a large enough market to meet your revenue goals, but small enough that you can get specific with your marketing.
Gyms and fitness studios typically have a broader niche segment. Think about the age range of your ideal clients and their fitness challenges and goals. Does your gym serve bodybuilders who focus on gaining muscle mass? How about working moms who want a quick mile on the treadmill and some time in the sauna?
Get clear on your niche so that you can create your offer around their needs – and more importantly, know how to market it to them.
Have a clear unique selling proposition
Once you know your niche, you can determine your unique value proposition. Your unique value proposition is “a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer, how you solve your customer’s needs and what distinguishes you from the competition.”
When trying to determine your UVP, think about your competition – fitness businesses that are serving the same niche as you. Think about how your way of doing things differs from other gyms. What makes your space unique? What special knowledge do you or your staff have? How does it shape the impact you make?
If your niche is busy moms that want to get in shape, how exactly does your gym help them do that? What makes you stand out from other fitness businesses helping the same group? Be sure to focus on what you do well, not what others do poorly.
For example, OrangeTheory focuses on being a “science backed” workout that delivers more results than regular HIIT workouts. And Crunch gyms centers its messaging around being a “judgment free” place to work out.
Having a clearly defined USP is important for many reasons, and you’ll use your USP again and again in your marketing. Speaking of marketing – let’s get into some specific strategies you can use to market your offer and start bringing in those leads.
Share Your Offer With The World
Once you’ve created a killer offer and gotten clear on who you’re marketing it to, it’s time to actually get it in front of your prospects.
There are many different ways to do this, and it’s probably a good idea to take advantage of more than one method. Let’s go over some of the most common distribution channels you can use.
Landing pages
Depending on your offer, you may want to give prospects the option of signing up for it online. Instead of directing leads to your gym’s website, create a separate landing page that has all the details of your offer and an easy way to take advantage of it. If you want to try email marketing for your gym, a landing page is a great way to collect your prospects’ contact information.
Facebook and Google ads
If you’ve got a little money to spend, you can pay for targeted ads on Facebook and Google. These highly sophisticated tools allow you to add in details about your ideal clients so that your ads reach exactly who you are looking for.
Partnerships
Another way to get your offer in front of more people is to partner with another local business or online fitness influencer. For example, you might see if a local smoothie shop wants to share your offer with their customers in exchange for you advertising at your gym or giving out smoothie coupons at your next event. Or, you could see if a local fitness influencer would post some stories and videos from your gym in exchange for a free membership! Get creative. Partnering with other businesses can be really beneficial for both parties and greatly increase your gym’s visibility.
Events
Host events to bring in interested prospects and to get your offer in front of a lot of people at once. Try fun, in-person or virtual events that your community will love in and out of the gym. Some ideas? Yoga for a local business’s employees, a HIIT session at the park, free boot camps, a charity 5k, the list goes on!
These events are a great way to get involved and get to know your community and help your community get to know you.
Referral program
One of your best sources of leads are your existing clients. Consider creating a referral program where clients are rewarded for bringing in leads and leads are given a special gift or discount for joining.
Flyers
Nothing beats good old fashioned marketing! If you have a great offer, sometimes the best way to get it out there is to physically share it via flyers in your community. Think about where your ideal prospects hang out. Maybe it’s on campus, at a local health food store, in coffee shops – you get the idea. Post flyers there. Make sure your flyers include all the relevant info someone would need to take advantage of your offer.
Convert More Leads Into Paying Clients With Online Personal Training
Even if you follow all the steps above, it will be hard to convert leads into paying clients if they ultimately aren’t interested in your offer. One way to ensure that you can convert more leads is to have an offer that works better for more people – online personal training.
With online personal training, you deliver some or all of your gym services to clients remotely. Online training can include pre-recorded workouts, educational content like recipe guides, virtual check-in meetings, online messaging, community support, and more.
The nature of online personal training makes it more flexible for your clients as they can complete their training on their own time, and more affordable since you or your trainers will be spending less one-on-one time with each person.
This offering can be super enticing for people that aren’t a good fit for the traditional personal training model but want more than a standard gym membership. Online personal training can be the added edge that helps you convert more leads into paying clients.
To easily incorporate online personal training into your repertoire, use an online personal training software like TrainerFu. TrainerFu can help you organize your client workflow and deliver all of your training to clients online – this helps you not only convert more leads, you’ll also retain them for the long haul.