Where does the promotion of a fitness club begin? How to promote a fitness club or gym and forget forever about the problem of attracting new clients

Fitness clubs are a relatively new type of business in Russia, but competition is already high. In these difficult conditions, it is important to use a combination of different ways to fight for customers. Until recently, people came to fitness centers mainly to lose weight. But today more than 50% of visitors sign up for other reasons, for example, to improve your well-being, enjoy physical activity, etc.. To attract clients to a fitness club, it is important understand their requests, arouse interest and remind them of themselves. Let's look at the basic techniques that will be useful to both owners of large centers and small halls.

8 real ways to attract clients to a fitness club

1. Effectively plan group class schedules to ensure they are time-convenient different groups people: from young mothers to businessmen.
2. Create and maintain groups on social networks: VKontakte, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. You will need specialists in the field of SMM marketing who know how to compose a post so that it interests people with words and photographs. In the fitness club group you can place different posts:

• educational (articles about healthy lifestyle, infographics, training recommendations);
• funny (jokes, anecdotes, memes);
• motivating (music selections for training, quotes, before/after photos);
• advertising (information about training, club news, promotions).

Please indicate hashtags, so that your group can be found and do not forget to answer questions.

1. Set up targeted advertising on social networks. Publications should be targeted at your current and potential clients:

• live or work within walking distance of a fitness center;
• interested in a healthy lifestyle, sports, dancing, yoga;
• average age from 15 to 50 years.

Ideas for attracting customers using a website

When thinking about how to attract clients to your fitness center, pay attention to the tools that you already have at your disposal. In other words, how much Your club website works effectively? Go to the main page yourself and try to answer these questions in half a minute:

• what services are available at your club;
• where is the hall located?
• how to sign up for classes;
• how to find out how much they cost;
• Do I believe that this club meets my needs?

Only if this important and convincing information is easy to find on the site will the potential client not close the page immediately.

It is especially effective if you can read on a website or in a social group reviews of trainers. This immediately increases the confidence of potential clients.

Another important point- Creation visitor registration systems. Often in fitness clubs, communication with the client ends after the first lesson, during which he determines whether he is satisfied or not. Therefore, it is important to record and control customer acquisition. You can do this using CRM system that saves full story visits each client with relevant information (what services are you interested in, when is it convenient to come, etc.). By saving contacts, you can periodically remind yourself by offering profitable promotions via SMS and email notifications.

How to implement it

To implement these ideas for attracting clients to a fitness club, you don’t need to hire a large number of specialists and understand a variety of complex programs. All you need to do is install the cloud platform. This system already has a built-in system for working with actual and potential clients:

• online registration for classes;
• reviews of trainers;
• automatic client base;
• segmentation of visitors by category;
• sms and email newsletters;
• powerful analytics, etc.

The program is linked to the site and social groups, helping both visitors and fitness center employees. You can check its operation for free during the trial period.

The task of every sports club manager in today's competitive environment is to increase the number of visitors and retain them. To do this, it is important to know how to attract clients to a fitness club. So what should you do about this?

How to attract clients

To begin with, you should prepare cards with a magnetic stripe and distribute them to as many people as possible. Why plastic? It’s very simple - a person subconsciously, having picked up a plastic card, will not want to throw it away. He will consider the company a serious organization and will definitely want to go there. The same cannot be said about paper certificates and coupons, which are often thrown away without even being read.

You can negotiate with other organizations to distribute cards to their employees. It’s also worth giving them to regular customers so that they, in turn, can share them with their friends. At the same time, it is important to systematize classes and correctly form groups according to age category and level of training.

Organization of leisure activities for visitors

As is known, in holidays clients seem to be “blown away” from fitness rooms, since the establishment has no alternative, for example, to going out into nature. You can post a notice a few weeks before the holidays about all interesting events, which will be held for visitors and their families.

What can you offer clients?

• family relay races
• dating evening
• weightlifting tournaments;
• photoshoot

It’s even worth giving out small surprises and bonuses for attending events.

Gift cards (certificates)

Club members should understand that they have the opportunity to purchase real gift certificates and cards for loved ones. Most modern sports complexes can achieve success if they put into operation an information and notification system. With a competent approach, a large percentage of clients are those who came with a gift certificate and decided to attend classes on a regular basis.

Attracting high-profile clients

It is worth offering high-ranking people of the city free access or a generous system of discounts. Ideal candidates for this are:

• radio and television presenters
• heads of large organizations
• athletes

Definitely need to work on staffing. Again, outstanding individuals should be offered generous compensation. These people will be the “business card” of your establishment.

Recreation arrangement

Agree, few visitors go to fitness centers only for yoga and aerobics. Singles are trying to make new friends, and families want to spend time usefully. The right decision by the management would be to open its own cafe, a cozy locker room, and a lounge with soft sofas.

If you want to organize a successful sports club, you should skillfully work out marketing policy, be customer-oriented, create all the conditions so that your establishment becomes a favorite for visitors!

After launching a fitness business, the main task for a long time to come remains to attract the maximum number of new clients to the club. This is achieved through a well-thought-out promotion strategy and allows you to promote a fitness club.

It's no secret that a marketing campaign requires careful development and is a labor-intensive process that you, as the owner, will have to deal with. But when the right approach You actually get automated system fitness marketing.

Firstly, you should understand that all successful fitness clubs in their marketing campaigns operate with the same tasks and concepts. Based on these components, a system is built that in the future attracts clients to the fitness club “automatically”.

When forming a promotion strategy sports club Remember that there is a huge variety of gyms and sports centers. Your task is to provide potential consumer USP(Unique Selling Point) - a strong offer that will make it clear that your club stands out from the crowd, that you can provide it with something that your competitors do not have. This message is formed based on several considerations that relate not only to marketing, but also to the organization of the club’s work as a whole.

Read about the new concept of fitness marketing in the article:

1. Choose a Niche

The first step is to determine the niche in which your club will operate. Being a specialist in a particular area is much better than trying to squeeze in among other large halls. Moreover, do not hope that they will give you their clients just like that.

By choosing your niche, you can also present your product to the audience in a better and more targeted manner.

To more accurately target the desired segment, ask yourself 4 questions:

1. Are the basic selection criteria covered by your competitors (for example, the availability of the necessary equipment, a swimming pool, certified coaching staff, and so on)?
2. Are secondary selection criteria covered by your competitors (for example, specific equipment, a pool with a countercurrent, a coach with an international diploma, and so on)?
3. Are your competitors using fitness innovations?
4. Are there competitors in the market that use “pull” positioning? (for example, specialized fitness studios)

For an existing fitness business, the following questions will be relevant:

1. What services are your competitors already providing and what can your club do better?
2. What audience lives or works within walking distance of your fitness club?
3. What services do your specialists provide that are unique to the local market? (perhaps you can quickly train/hire such specialists?)
4. What promotion tools can you use more effectively than your competitors?

The answers to these questions will help us not only determine what we will convey to the audience, but will also automatically distinguish our fitness business from the stream of competitors.

2. Analyze Competitors

Also, don’t be afraid to analyze your competitors’ work. Sometimes other fitness clubs have great ideas that can be implemented in your fitness business. Now we are not talking about plagiarism, but about the introduction of ideas.

Using the appropriate software You can easily analyze the work of your competitors (www. similarweb.com)

Today, the realities are such that the Western fitness business market has stepped far ahead of ours, so this is simply a huge treasure trove of knowledge that can and should be applied here.

Foreign fitness entrepreneurs were able to destroy one of the main stereotypes, namely: we open a fitness club in the center or in residential area- good, we open on the outskirts - bad. Of course, location matters a lot for a fitness business, but how do you ensure that customers are motivated to visit your fitness center no matter how far it is from their home or what the weather is like?

It’s very simple – give them a unique user experience.

Does everyone provide a free guest visit? – And you will provide the potential client many times more during the first training session. Let it be a workout with personal trainer after which you will treat him to a protein shake.

3. Automate the Work

The next step is the introduction of automation systems for the Club’s work, namely:

• Sales management system;
• Customer service system;
• Personnel management system.

Log books and notepads are a thing of the past. A fitness room loses a huge number of regular and potential clients when the administrator is simply unable to find the necessary information in the mountains of waste paper.

Using software not only simplifies the management of a fitness business, but also allows you to work with potential clients with the highest quality possible.

4. We work through Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a very powerful method for generating leads that doesn't cost much.

True, most fitness clubs attract referrals only by offering discount services for existing clients. For example: “25% Discount on the Purchase of a Subscription for Friends of Our Regular Customers.”

Try to create a product or service that does not require additional incentives for your current client to talk about it. Then your main task will only be to provide a convenient mechanism for disseminating positive information about you. Nowadays the most convenient way to do this is via the Internet.

Always consider each of your clients as 10 new ones - with the right strategy, members of your club, without knowing it, will begin to sell your fitness services to their acquaintances, friends, and employees.

Read more about methods for expanding the club’s client flow in the article:

5. We work with the Affiliate Program

How to promote a fitness club through an affiliate program with other business entrepreneurs? Let's say you know that your club is visited mainly by women. You can offer the owners of local hairdressing salons or spa salons, provide their clients with a 10-20% discount on a gym membership, or pure barter: You advertise a spa salon in your club, the owner of a spa salon does the same in his studios.

6. Generating Leads Through Direct Marketing

Sending out flyers by mail is a very popular marketing trend in the West and it really works. In our case, you can send mailings to commercial enterprises via partnership programs with other business entrepreneurs and hand out flyers directly.

In addition to the informative part, the flyer must contain some creative idea. It's easy to post information about a club or a promotion. We need to “hook” a potential client. Remember the last time a simple advertising melody or phrase was spinning in your head - viral advertising can work no worse than any other and its great advantage is that it allows you to interest even an indifferent layman.

An example of a creative approach in fitness marketing

In practice, an option that works well is when you send out not a regular sales flyer, but a personal letter from a fitness trainer or fitness business owner. On this moment There is a serious trend associated with personification! This fully applies to offers that you send to your potential clients by mail.

7. Promoting on the Internet

The first thing to start with is to create fitness club website. But for it to work, it’s not enough to just create a website and mark it as “completed” on the task list. You need to work with him constantly. Your website is like a store window. It must be of high quality and optimized for specific tasks, namely attracting new clients.

You can often see a picture when a visitor lands on a fitness resource and does not understand where he has ended up - downloaded pictures from the “search” instead of live photos of the gym, a lack of reviews and cliche phrases that initially hurt the ear. Essentially, instead of answering the question “Which gym should I go to,” the client receives tons of useless information.

Stop investing your time and money in such work. Provide potential clients only with high-quality visual and informational content.

Instead of sending letters to clients individually, send them using software (we recommend the GetResponse service).

Constant communication with visitors via e-mail will allow you to build trusting relationships already at the initial stages of attracting clients to the club.

Third, targeted fitness advertising on social networks. Social networks are direct access to the target audience. Coverage for advertising campaign simply colossal. However, you should be prepared to invest a certain amount of resources and most likely hire a specialist to advance in this area. Anyone can simply “post” pictures on social networks. Attract real clients who buy fitness services - only a few.

+1. Let's Focus on What We Can Do

Delegate your authority. You don't have to be able to do everything. If you need a quality website or flyer, hire a qualified professional to perform these tasks. This is much more productive than spending time learning everything yourself. Concentrate on yours strengths and hire people who understand areas in which you are not so strong. As a result, you get a powerful team of specialists to develop your fitness business.

Bottom line. We work “On Automatic”

The implementation of the above ideas for promoting a fitness club in practice provides you with an automated... There is no need to sit and rack your brains about how to attract new clients - the mechanism has already been launched and is working “automatically”.

Go here right now to receive 17-page instructions for setting up a Fitness Marketing System in your club.

How to Promote a Fitness Club or Gym and Forget About the Problem of Attracting New Clients Forever

Of everything marketing market Internet advertising is growing fastest, says the Association of Communication Agencies of the Russian Federation. Therefore, without at all detracting from the advantages of outdoor advertising, in our article we will focus specifically on online channels and answer the question of how to attract clients to a fitness club in the summer.

Advertising on social networks

Social networks contain a huge amount of information about potential clients, their preferences, locations, and so on. Therefore, they can be especially precisely configured (targeted) to whom and what will be shown. For example, if a person lives in your city and is a member of several groups dedicated to a healthy lifestyle - bingo! - he is your potential client.

As an example of setting up targeting for finding clients for a fitness club, we present the parameters that were used MarketArts agency in one of my cases:

Audience options:

● Located within a radius of 3 km from the club.
● Live in certain areas.
● Visit competitors' websites.
● They are interested in healthy lifestyle, dancing, yoga, sports, proper nutrition, etc.
● Age from 14 to 40 years.
● Visited your site but did not take any action.

contextual advertising

Here we will talk about Google Adwords and Yandex.Direct. We see contextual advertising in the form of links in the TOP of search engine results, as well as in the format of banners on websites. Once you google, for example, curtains, their advertisements will follow you on all sites :)

Content Marketing

Another effective method attracting clients to a fitness trainer - share useful information with potential clients. First, they will read you and repost your texts, and then they will want to come to you for individual training.

What to write about? Texterra portal names 25 types of content suitable for a sports club. Among them:

● educational (articles, infographics, training);
● motivating (quotes, before/after photos, music selections);
● funny (jokes, memes);
● promoting content (service presentation, feedback, news).

Native advertising

Native advertising is the placement of affiliate articles on third-party sites. They are not purely advertising and although they contain mentions of the company, they are still useful and valuable in themselves. High-quality native materials increase trust in the company and attract more attention than classic banners.

For example, the Meduza portal published a useful text on how to protect children from dangerous sites. The article presented many practical methods, and only one of them mentioned that you can install special anti-virus software from Kaspersky. Here is a useful text that, without advertising slogans, arouses interest in a particular product.

New trends in fitness advertising

Attracting clients to a fitness club does not only happen online. The Biboss portal described 4 more ways to find them offline.

Word of mouth. 10 times cheaper than advertising in the media and just as many times more effective. Unsatisfied customers, of course, can spread bad reviews about you. But good service will help reduce them to a minimum.

Interesting events. These could be holidays, seminars, club meetings, master classes - the main thing is that they apply only to club clients. Make a schedule of events so that clients know about your plans and can schedule participation in an event that interests them. For example, if girls find out in advance that the club will organize an evening in honor of March 8, then in December they will be more likely to decide to buy another subscription for at least three months. Here's what that schedule might look like:

Buddy Referrals (friend invitation). One of the most effective tools searching for new clients for a fitness club. This method attracts more than 100 clients per month. At the same time, you need to encourage the one who brings a friend to your club. This could be one free session of a sauna or swimming pool, additional points, etc.

Attentive attitude towards clients. 68% of people leave fitness clubs due to the indifferent attitude of the staff. Therefore, communication between trainers and administrators and clients should be close. Your staff should be attentive to customer requests and never leave them unanswered.

We save found clients

We've figured out how to attract clients to a fitness studio, but that's only half the battle. They also need to be retained. We will tell you why customers come most often and how to retain them using.

Lack of communication

There are many clients, and everyone needs attention. To ensure that no one is forgotten, many fitness clubs are introducing special programs to automate processes. For example, a cloud CRM system will take on many routine tasks:

• promptly remind the client that it is time to renew the subscription;
• send the client an SMS with a reminder about individual training;
• record the call to the client so that you can listen to it again and clarify the details;
• add the client’s email to the company’s email mailing list - and more.

No change notifications

Training has been cancelled, the pool is under renovation, the gym is flooded - these things happen. But if clients discover this when they arrive at the fitness club, they are unlikely to be satisfied. Thanks to integration with the service, it will be able to quickly, and most importantly automatically, send out alerts to everyone.

Of course, you need to report not only about problems, but also about the events that you are conducting.

Luca Ocevar, entrepreneur, fitness trainer in an article for jasonferruggia.com:
- This is one of the best strategies generating leads for such a business. We held a Sunday boot camp, the proceeds of which went to charity. Anyone could come and work out - and it was in demand, people brought friends to support something positive. No pressure, no sales, just a way for potential clients to try our service and get a feel for the atmosphere.

Schedule confusion

Even the most attentive administrators can make a mistake and accidentally assign several people to a trainer at the same time. This will no longer happen thanks to the built-in SalesapCRM, which allows you to sign up clients for services. Each employee has their own schedule in the calendar, and you can sign up clients in two clicks, indicating the date, time, type of service, duration of the lesson/procedure, etc.

In this case, a client card is attached to each entry. This means you can immediately view the entire history of interaction with him, including correspondence, call records, letters, payments, and so on.

And those who like to sign up for a gym online will love it for your websites. The client simply goes to your website, selects a club branch convenient for him, the time of the visit and the specialist he needs, leaves contact information and confirms the application. The new entry will automatically appear in the calendar of the hall administrators.

Problems with personnel control

The equipment in fitness clubs is the same, but the people are different everywhere. If you have competent and hardworking trainers who work well with students, people will come to you. SalesapCRM allows you to report online about your team’s work:

• how many cold calls did the administrator make,
• how many deals each manager concluded,
• how many services and for what amount each trainer provided, and so on.

As you can see, all the main problems of a fitness club related to customer retention can be solved using a CRM system. But you also need to choose it wisely. We recommend comfortable and functional. You can try it completely free right now!

• Often, to attract clients, fitness clubs, yoga studios, Sport halls, rocking chairs provide the opportunity for a free first visit.
• The classic option is to distribute leaflets. But under no circumstances should they be handed out at the entrance to shopping centers, on the street - it annoys people. One of important factors for clients, this is the location of the club (studio), the opportunity to study close to work or home. Make sure that everything potential clients people who work or live near your establishment have learned about it. Which office centers is there nearby? How do you get ads into the mailboxes of people living in the area?
• Very often people do not go to a specific fitness club, but to a specific trainer or instructor. If you got good specialist, make sure that those who previously studied with him know about this.
• The opening hours of a fitness club are of particular importance for attracting people. For example, some clubs operate successfully late at night. There are also 24-hour clubs, the whole question is in attendance.
• You should have a website with contact information, an address (even better, show a map with a mark) or a page on a social network (VKontakte primarily, if we talk about Russia) that is easy to find (for example, by searching for “fitness [city name]” ).
• Registration in Yandex.Maps has a good effect - in this case, people will be able to find you on the map (for example, next to their metro station).
• Attract users social networks This is possible through targeted advertising (aimed at a specific group of people). If you carefully think about what your target audience is (gender, age, place of residence, interests), then the cost of attracting visitors to your site or group will be relatively low.

• You can give contextual advertising in Google or Yandex, which will bring potential clients to your website. Once you learn the basics, you can do it yourself. The expected queries that people are searching for you for are:

• fitness club [street name]
• fitness club [metro station]
• Gym[Street name]
• yoga [metro station]
• fitness [district name]
• (you can continue on your own)

• Find out if there are large communities on VKontakte or Facebook related to sports and a healthy lifestyle in your city, and establish relationships with them. Become a sponsor of sporting events, there you will find your target audience. Perhaps there are cycling or cross-country skiing events taking place very close by - this is a great opportunity to make a name for yourself.
• Participate in city events (for example, City Day, Sportsman's Day). You can hold a demonstration performance and distribute flyers.

Things to think about

• Remember that the task of advertising is only to bring the client to the doorstep of the establishment. If he doesn’t like the atmosphere, the coach, the class schedule, he will leave, and the advertising costs will be in vain.
• People want to come to a place where they are welcome and where there is an opportunity to socialize. The experience of the “Tonus Club” is indicative - they “We relied on lazy people who want to do fitness without doing anything special.” And another characteristic quote: “A middle-aged woman lacks a place where she is welcome, besides work and home. So that you can communicate with your friends and not think about how you look.” ().
• Fitness club is written like this: fitness club. There is a hyphen between the words “fitness” and “club”. The same applies to the yoga center. Illiteracy will indicate that you are not serious enough about the matter.

Hidden marketing

• You can make friends with a pizza delivery service (they could put your flyer in the box), a cafe, a restaurant (give your flyer along with the menu or place information on the tables).
• If there is a bookstore nearby, you can negotiate with it and include your leaflets in literature on your topic.
• You can negotiate with schools, institutes and post information about yourself there, distribute invitations, etc.
• Organize a “bring a friend” promotion. Encourage those clients who refer their friends and acquaintances.
• You can hold a promotion together with one of the coupon services, but there is an opinion that this will bring you mainly one-time visitors.
• Call companies and businesses and offer them corporate membership. As a rule, employees are happy to visit fitness centers when the employer pays for it. The question may only come down to price - not all companies can afford this.