Owners of fitness facilities running marketing initiatives to promote their gym member acquisition game have probably heard the term “retargeting ads” before. Many advertising agencies and programs tend to list this as an option and typically share how outstanding the click-through rates (CTR) or conversions are when you enable these. But what are they exactly? Does it make sense to run them for your fitness facility? How should you approach campaign creation for these types of programs? In this blog, we will dive in to help answer these questions and more.
Push Vs. Pull Marketing
Before we define retargeting ads, it’s beneficial to understand that marketing typically has two common approaches, similar to lifting styles: push and pull marketing. Note: there is also a third called “earned,” which generally refers to more organic mentions, referrals, word-of-mouth, etc.
This point is noteworthy because running advertisements is a form of “push” marketing, where you effectively push your messaging, ads, or brand in front of your target audience. This push is typically done via any of the accessible channels they utilize that sell ad space.
Push-focused marketing leans heavily on brand/product recognition through repetition. This repetition factor is why some advertising platforms will distinguish average times users see your message in a day/week/month vs. unique user views – depending on your campaign goals; these metrics can make a difference.
What Are Retargeting Ads
Now that you know what push marketing involves, retargeting advertisements is a more packaged service for running a series of ads. This system typically consists of purchasing space on an advertising network of websites/apps. How it works is pretty simple: once a potential lead lands on a site hosting your ad, a cookie tracks them when they revisit the same website or another site on the advertiser’s network. Once they return or visit another participating site, your advertisement/branding will typically appear again.
This utilization of cookies and advertising networks is how marketers try to push the repetition factor frequently on prospects as they go from website to website or website to app. Further, having the ability to diversify advertisements, specify audience types, or select niche industries within their networks can also help segment your target market and hone in on ideal leads for your gym member acquisition efforts.
Should My Fitness Facility Run Retargeting Ads
Much like any other marketing tool available to business owners, the question invariably arises: “Will this help my business?” Generally speaking, most marketing tools will indeed help your business. However, the real question is which instruments will move the dial of acquiring new gym members most effectively and efficiently and be within your gym’s marketing budget.
When considering retargeting as a potential to advertise your fitness facility to grow membership rates, consider the following points.
- What is the value of a new lead for your business
- How many leads are you currently generating per month
- What is your typical conversion rate
- How long does your average member stay with your facility
- Do you have processes in place to process and maintain new leads through a sales funnel system
If you can answer these questions and confidently say that retargeting advertisements would boost your lead generation efforts, there are still a few points to consider. The first concerns the marketing budget for your fitness facility. You should be confident in how much money you plan to allocate to these efforts, know what key performance metrics (KPIs) to monitor, and how to track and analyze your return on investment (ROI) over time.
Of course, push marketing is nothing shy of passive marketing. When you set up retargeting advertisements (or any type of marketing piece), you should monitor your KPIs and check the data supporting them. This monitoring allows you to look for weak points, message strengths, or underperforming elements in your advertisements that you can address to help boost success.
The other factor is how your retargeting ads will fit within your overall marketing efforts. For this, you should start with your business growth goals and supporting marketing initiatives. Keep reading as we discuss building these ad types into your overall gym marketing campaign efforts.
Building Retargeting Ads Into Your Gym’s Marketing Campaign
Retargeting ads can be a helpful avenue when it comes to gym member acquisition and developing effective ways to capture people’s interest and information. Again, leaning into the push-style design and focusing on repetition can help cultivate interest and enable engagement with advertisements through frequency over time.
However, this boost in lead interest is not due to a mistake but rather by design. Building a marketing campaign for your gym is critical to long-term and short-term success with your marketing efforts. By following the structure that goes into developing a campaign, you ensure you cover the basics of understanding your target audience, goals, and budget before you even begin discussing advertising packages or channels.
Implementing structure to your advertisement planning through a campaign also assures you understand your business’s unique selling propositions. It also allows you to review your marketing literature or collateral that is currently available (or unavailable) to support your goals and address any gaps you may need to fill. As you continue the process, you will understand what channels and messaging make the most sense to leverage based on your collected information.
Next, you will examine your marketing campaign and consider whether retargeting-style ads make sense for your gym’s member acquisition-based goals. Again, the core factors of campaign goals and budget tend to be some of the primary drivers for this decision. However, additional details, such as content gap deficits or limited channels for exposure, can also sway your decision to utilize retargeting ad types.
If running these ad types within your campaign makes sense, you will want to focus on developing multiple ad styles and message variations within the program. These variations will help keep your branding and ads feeling fresh to your target audience and allow you to help track what works or doesn’t. By reviewing the data from your ad sets, you can help optimize your content pieces to show more ads that deliver results and reduce or refresh the ones that don’t perform as well.
Making A Splash
Gym member acquisition is a critical point for business growth and sustainability. Although it is only part of the puzzle to healthy business operations and financials, it is an essential part of the buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle of your fitness facility. That said, when working on enhancing this aspect of your business, understanding the tools at your disposal based on your goals, audience, and budget is vital to achieving success. Retargeting ads, therefore, can be an avenue for your campaign’s success when implemented in the right circumstances and properly designed within your campaign.
