4 Tips for Effective Health Club Social Media Marketing

The odds are that you are on social media personally. And, your health club hopefully has an online social media presence as well. However, just being there doesn’t mean it is doing you any good. The key is to turn your social presence into a marketing powerhouse for your gym.

And it makes sense as an estimated 43% of people use some form of social media globally, according to Emarsys.

To utilize social media marketing for your gym takes some planning, a bit of science, and some good old-fashioned creative content. Here are four tips to keep in mind as you build—or build out—your social media marketing.

Fine-tune your gym social channels

It’s tempting to try and be everywhere on social media to make sure you don’t miss anyone. However, a shotgun approach may not be the most efficient way to utilize social media to reach potential members. Most fitness and wellness brands should focus their efforts on the two or three of the top, established social channels to start.

Ensure you have a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as these tend to not only have a great deal of combined traffic but are also high in engagement. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikToc, and others – including the next big thing that hasn’t been invented yet — but starting with what are still the three biggest channels will bring you the biggest ROI for your time and dollars.

Be persona-driven when searching for health club prospects on social media

As with any marketing strategy, you’ve got to start your plan with buyer personas. If you haven’t developed the persona of your perfect gym member and prospect, spend some time first so you can create the best content and give you the ability to target it to the right audience so you’re social media campaigns are helping your brand grow. Too often, gym owners just assume anyone with a checking account within a certain distance from the gym is their perfect member. However, you want to focus on reaching your ideal gym members, which is easier when you know who you are targeting.

Speak to prospects at all stages of the health club sales funnel

Remember prospects are going to be in different stages of your marketing funnel, and it is important to communicate with all of them. Different social messaging and content is needed at each stage in order to nurture leads toward the next stage, while also keeping them and your health club’s members engaged. Keep your posts varied between the following stages in order to get the right content in front of the right people at the right time.

Strangers – Concentrate on generating fan followers and advertising to bring new prospects to your profiles and eventually to your website and gym.

Followers – Focus on engagement with your followers and blog content that highlights what you do –without using sales pitches – to build trust and keep your followers interested in your gym’s brand

MQLs/SQLs (Marketing/Sales Qualified Leads) – Focus on giveaways and educational gated content such as checklists, eBooks, etc. to turn a follower into a lead by having them exchange their contact information for the content.

Member Generation – At this stage, your content focus should be on Bottom-of-Funnel membership offers, free trials, giveaways, etc. to encourage leads from social media to come in and give your health club a try.

Member Engagement – Just because they have joined already, it is no time to forget to engage with members on your social media.  Focus on in-club events, new class information, gym updates, weather closures, new staff and more to encourage social sharing and boost member retention.

Social media isn’t always free

It doesn’t matter how many fans or followers you have; if you rely exclusively on organic content, you will not grow your community. Additionally, you will miss out on prospects that meet your demographic and psychographic parameters that have not found your social feeds. You need to be willing to allocate some of your marketing spend on a social ad budget to boost your reach and bring in leads. Social media content should be a mixture of paid and organic for the best results. Be sure to spread your gym’s social media ad budget in a variety of paid programs such as boosted posts, “Like” ads, giveaways, contests, and membership offers.

Social media is constantly evolving, but despite the platform being tried-and-true or the hot new site, by providing engaging, educational, and entertaining content, whether organic or paid, your gym can grow its membership base by becoming the go-to social page for health and fitness.