Whether you are just opening a new fitness studio or you’ve owned a facility for a while, marketing a gym can sometimes seem like a mountain of a project. But before you get too overwhelmed or concerned about the costs associated with hiring a person or agency, we will focus on three straightforward things you can do right now to help promote your fitness facility’s visibility online.
Build a Website for Your Gym
First and foremost, we recommend making a website for your gym. While there are plenty of reasons to do this, the primary reason we want to focus on for this post is the legitimacy that it gives your fitness center. When people look for a business/service like yours online, they may find listing in local directories, review sites, or even your social media pages. Unfortunately, many of these result types don’t give potential customers the information they may be looking for, let alone the confidence that your business is right for them or even legitimate.
Additional benefits of creating a website for your gym include better search engine optimization potential, the ability to build in sales functionality with your gym membership management software, or even a place for them to self-serve information you have available.
Establish Social Media Channels for Your Fitness Studio
While we will always encourage fitness studio owners to fish in the well-stocked ponds and not spread themselves thin trying to be everywhere, there is still some value in at least claiming pages for your fitness center and establishing a presence. While your pages might not go viral or even get much engagement, establishing these channels can help in other ways. From additional points where potential clients could find you to marketing campaign enablement, leveraging these pages into your sales funnel can help add additional reach to your messaging.
Later down the road, you may run ads on social media platforms. Having your pages already established with posts and history can help your advertising with audience building, interested lead experience, and even perceived legitimacy due to the age of the account.
Claim or Create a Google Business Profile for Your Gym
Our final point can definitely move the dial for some local gym owners. Establishing or claiming your Google Business Profile is huge for many reasons. First off, it’s completely free. Second, it shows your business information to users searching via search or maps without them having to click or leave their current screen view. Third, it enables you to quickly show what kind of gym you are, what services you offer, and who your audience is. Finally, it can be a helpful tool to get in front of your target audience and position yourself better than your competition.
The Google Business Profile is one tool that we cannot emphasize enough to utilize. The biggest problem we’ve seen is the “good enough” response to owners who see an auto-generated/user-generated profile already established for their business. The information is good enough for them, so they never take the additional steps to claim their business and manage the profile. This lack of control is a huge potential loss of clients! Owners can liven up their profile page quickly and easily, as it serves as their digital storefront for queries like “gyms near me” or “personal training studios in my area.”
Bonus Round Reading
If you’ve read this far and you’ve already accomplished some or all of these options, check out some of our other blogs that cover Why Your Fitness Studio Needs Email Marketing or Setting Up The Right Call-To-Action for Your Fitness Studio.
Making A Splash
Diving into marketing a gym-based business doesn’t need to be overly complex or expensive right out of the gate. Sometimes, the little things can make a big difference, especially early on when a gym is just getting started, or a personal training studio is building a name for itself. By taking these three steps, you can start on the right foot with marketing your business effectively in the long term.
