How to Advertise Your Gym on Social Media Effectively
If you can advertise your gym on social media effectively, you can make a huge impact on your gym’s growth. Social media advertising is one of the fastest-growing marketing trends with 9 out of 10 businesses employing some form of a marketing campaign on social media platforms.
Some of the merits of social media advertising include improved brand recognition, brand loyalty, improved conversion rates, better search engine ranking, and a reduction in your overall marketing cost.
But, jockeying for potential customers’ attention while gaining a competitive advantage over competitors is not easy. So, if you’re looking for a winning strategy to advertise your gym on social media and drive new customers, you’ve come to the right place.
We have discussed marketing on social media as a personal trainer previously including specific details on how to market as a fitness coach on Instagram. Below, we share some of the social media marketing tips to promote your gym effectively!
Top 7 Tips To Successfully Advertise Your Gym on Social Media
1. Spark Conversations on Social Media Through User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) can be in the form of text, reviews, images, or videos that are created by consumers and not anyone related (such as affiliates) to your business or your official representative.
In the fitness industry, it could be a video showing a person’s improvement over time or someone speaking about the fitness studio.
Other forms of UGC are: before and after transformation pictures, personal workout videos, and testimonials for anything from software reviews to in-depth reviews like this one about an exceptional gym locker room experience.
This kind of content helps humanize your marketing efforts because it tends to be more relatable. It’s just a genuine reflection of what the service would be like in real life.
2. Pick Your Social Media Advertising Space Wisely
Just because there are many social networks does not mean that you should use all of them. To maximize your return on investment and achieve real business results, choose where you need to place your ads.
You can identify this by knowing where your target group is most engaged, most accessible, and most concentrated. Let’s say, you’re targeting moms and working professionals. This group often loves Facebook and spends the most time there.
Are you targeting mature users who are well-focused on the latest information and news? Then, choose Twitter. Targeting the younger demographic? Instagram is extremely popular. YouTube is another visual favorite to upload different workout techniques!
Below are some social media network characteristics that could be useful as you develop your plan to advertise your gym on social media.
- Instagram: high-resolution photos, stories, quotes
- Facebook: videos, motion graphics, and curated content
- Twitter: news, blog posts, and GIFs
- LinkedIn: jobs, company news, and professional content
- Pinterest: step-by-step photo guides and infographics
3. Find the Right People, Right Time, and Right Place
There are many ways to market your gym, but your efforts, time, and resources could go down the drain if you’re not targeting the right audience, at the right time, and in the right place. Playing a guessing game is not good enough and will waste your valuable time.
To be exact, your marketing funnel should be targeting the right person with the right content at the right time, using the right format and language, and on the right device. Analytics would be your best bet to narrow down your target market. So, pay attention to these metrics: hashtag engagement, paid vs. organic likes, click-throughs, and reach.
With the power of hyper-targeting, you can now thoughtfully identify your target audience and communicate with them in personalized ways. This allows you to stand out from your competition and reap the benefit of having profitable long-term customer relationships.
4. Be Smartly Consistent, But Don’t Bombard Your Social Media Audience with Promos
Effective communication of your brand message and business philosophy is important and can help you cultivate a loyal customer following. However, don’t fall into the trap of bombarding your audience with marketing messages every single day.
In fact, more than half (57%) of consumers are taking steps to avoid brands or businesses that bombard them with poorly targeted communications. Keep in mind as a gym owner that you need to be earning the right to contact your customers. This means that you need to show relevance by using data to tailor communications and use the most appropriate channel to deliver these messages.
5. Tap the Power of Social Media Influencers
Individual voices known as influencers have been trending and are highly preferreded for one reason. The audience finds them trustworthy and relatable. Owing to this, you can also tap the power of influencers to endorse your brand.
To use influencer marketing to grow your gym, you may do a:
- Collaboration
- Paid promotion, or
- Exchange deal
The first option involves creating content with your chosen social media influencer. Your goal is to increase your gym’s visibility and engagement by putting an influential or famous figure in your content.
A paid promotion, as you may have already guessed, is simply paying the influencer to promote your gym. You’ll have a good ROI once you pick the right influencer.
The last option is giving the influencer something in exchange for the promotion. It can be vouchers, free gym membership, or merchandise.
6. Go Live (Social Broadcasting)
Live streaming is growing fast. In fact, live videos hold users’ attention 10 to 20x longer compared to pre-recorded content.
And according to Livestream, 82% of social media users prefer a live video from a brand to social posts. You have enormous potential to advertise your gym on social media through Livestream classes, online workouts, class booking schedules, health and fitness tips, and recipes.
Find that unique idea to push your marketing message to a wider audience and connect potential members through shared interest and passion!
7. Make Sure Your Fitness Business is Visible Online
Pair your social marketing advertising efforts with making sure that your business is visible online. This helps you to fully utilize your gym’s online presence.
Some ways to make your business visible online are by creating high-quality content, making your content easily shareable, optimizing your images, creating active profiles on social media outlets, improving your business website navigation, and having as many backlinks to your website as possible.
Final Thoughts on How to Advertise Your Gym on Social Media
Social media is where people spend time, and where your target audience is. What’s more interesting, these people want to learn more about you.
Not only is social media your vital marketing weapon, but it will also boost engagement with your prospective and current clients. If it sounds all too complicated for you, you could hire a social media virtual assistant to help you manage your profiles.
And once your members begin to comment, share, and like your posts with their friends, your fitness brand or gym popularity will soar!
