Strategies for selling gym memberships with content marketing
In today’s fitness business world, great content marketing is critical to a gym’s success.
Many businesses, ranging from local bakeries to Fortune 100 behemoths, utilize content marketing to drive traffic to their websites, nurture leads, and turn them into customers. The fitness industry in particular is one of the best at this type of marketing and effectively uses content to sell gym memberships, equipment, personal training, and everything else the industry offers.
The success of your business is driven largely by revenues. And revenues are created mainly through selling gym memberships, which in turn come from the qualified leads you generate.
So the question fitness club owners should be asking is, “where do I find new leads?”.
The opportunity of content marketing
Lead generation and nurturing isn’t a new concept, but the way to go about it certainly has changed.
Today’s consumer wants to spend their money on brands that are authentic and engaging. Quality content designed for your target audience will create happy and loyal members.
The more your marketing can engage people in a way that appeals to them, the better your results will be.
Personal trainers, fitness product manufacturers (particularly infomercial products), and video distributors are far more adept at utilizing online content to drive sales than health clubs.
As an independent gym or fitness studio owner, there is a huge opportunity to embrace content marketing to convert sales at lower costs and higher ROI than traditional methods such as mailers, radio, and print ads.
4 content marketing tactics to sell more memberships
Create a YouTube channel
Some video ideas to create awareness and generate leads:
- Showcase group workouts at your facility
- Create short videos with your trainers and their clients
- Provide virtual tours of your facility
- Show general exercise tips
YouTube has a course on building an audience to get you started.
Grow your email list
An engaged email list is an excellent asset for any business to have. It’s an interested audience that you can message for free as often as you want (as long as people don’t hit unsubscribe!).
When someone opts-in to your list, it’s usually best to send a series of automated emails over the course of a couple of weeks.
Use these emails to welcome people to your brand, share your story, introduce them to your staff, and provide testimonials and other compelling reasons to join your club.
While the end goal is to send them offers and get leads to join, make sure to provide value in the form of fitness tips, success stories, and other content that isn’t simply pushing for a sale.
Finally, remember that your subject lines should be interesting enough to get prospects to open the email, and the opening paragraph needs to grab their attention so that they read on.
Write high-quality articles
Well-written articles are one of the quickest ways to establish credibility and build interest from prospects.
Focus on quality over quantity for your blog posts and optimize your pages in order to generate organic traffic through Google and other search engines.
You can also write guest posts for relevant local businesses such as health food stores and active-wear companies that share a similar audience with your gym.
Engage with your audience on social media
Social media is a great avenue to get real-time feedback from your customers and prospects. You can respond to questions and complaints in a timely fashion and post relevant news and updates about your gym.
In the early stages, focus on one or two of the most relevant platforms for your business. This will typically be Instagram and Facebook, but Twitter and Pinterest are viable options as well.
Share snippets of your longer-form content and post engaging pictures/videos to help drive traffic back to your website where you can capture lead information, have people learn about the facilities and service offerings, and sign up for tours and memberships.
Wrap-up
In this age of fitness marketing, it is important for health clubs to remember that customers are looking at more than price, cleanliness, and equipment.
They are looking for fitness facilities that can help them best reach their goals. Great content can help club owners stand out from the competition and attract long-term members.
If you are interested in learning more about how to put together an effective content marketing strategy, we offer marketing services to attract new members and grow your revenue.
