As a gym owner, you need to find new audiences for the services that you offer and inbound membership marketing has proven to be an excellent & efficient way to assist with reaching new prospects. So let’s go over some effective ways that you can utilize inbound marketing to reel in some new members, as well as, some additional strategies.
1. Free-Trials
– This is a no brainer of course and I am sure you already offer free trials to your visitors that express interest in your gym, but what is your process for them? For example, do you offer a user-friendly sign up form that your visitors can easily access or do they have to call you to set it up? Obviously, you want to make this sign up process as fluid as possible for your prospects.
Here’s a nice example of a user-friendly online sign up form where you can see the whole process from A to Z. See how quickly as well as seamlessly a user can not only sign up for a free trial online, but even select the class they wish to try. This feature on our gym management platform, of course, is definitely a nice to have and in today’s online world a must. The cool thing about it allows the gym owner to choose which classes they want to offer for free trials. This gives you the gym owner a lot of control over your schedule so that if you want to handle these free trials, you can set them up to line up with your timing. The other nice aspect of this specific free trial feature is the automated emails that are sent to your prospect that submits the form online. This is key because you will be immediately notified via email that someone has signed up for a specific class on a certain day. Customize your message in the email that gets delivered, and now you have a real value add for you online marketing tool set to save you time.
2. Referrals
– Goes without saying that referrals will most likely be the backbone of your new member acquisition stream. So how can you make this channel more effective for your gym? Just like the free trial example, the key here is making the process as easy as possible for all parties and you need to create a nice incentive. You have to make referrals worth your member’s time. How?
You have to offer them a nice reward of course and one that they will be willing to go after. Many gyms falter here because they don’t make the reward worth it. Don’t skimp here! Let’s just think about this for a second. Your most valuable asset at your gym for acquiring new members is without a doubt your gym community and your staff. Keep your staff and members happy and they will in turn pass on the message to others that your gym is worth checking out right? So make sure that you are spending quality time with your gym community and not stuck behind your desk first of all and provide your members with a nice carrot. Be sure to remind your members too in your communication with them about your referral program. Make sure they are in the know.
3. SEO
– Optimizing your site for search engines which basically means you make your site as search engine friendly as possible is definitely the most efficient inbound or online marketing activity you can invest in. Of course, you can have a pro help you out, but these days you can get the lionshare of it done on your own. By making sure that your site has some basic SEO tactics covered like using meta tags on each page, making sure you are listed on Google’s local business directory and using a combination of your local geography plus relevant keywords you should rank well.
If your site is WordPress which is pretty common these days, then you should use a plug-in called Yoast SEO. It’s super easy to install and use. Once you have added and activated this plug-in, you will see on each page that you can easily add your meta tags under the Snippet Editor. Just click the Edit Snippet button and you will see the forms to fill in for your SEO Title tag and your description tag. You will have these for each page on your site and it’s very important you fill in information here for each of your pages. Your most important page on your site of course is your homepage, so be sure to choose a very effective SEO Title & Description. We recommend that you use your local city/town name, state, your top keywords and then your gym’s name. Here’s an example: Boston, MA CrossFit Gym | Hero CrossFit. The reason we recommend using your town & then state first is because Google uses geographic location for all if its searches and you want to make sure you utilize this key component to provide your search rank a boost.
Make sure that your business is listed and verified on Google’s local business listing. This is not only vital to making sure your gym will be listed on Google, but it also gets you listed on Google Maps which is once again another reason why geography is so important in search. Follow this link to list your business on Google.
4. Events
– Add some color to your gym by throwing a competition or fitness & nutrition challenge! Why? Events like this are a goldmine for many reasons.
First of all, competitions and challenges are simply fun for your members and even your coaches. They also provide a wonderful balance between being competitive and learning. Your community can gain so much from these! Additionally, these type of events are also great marketing tools for your gym and a phenomenal way to entice and introduce a new potential member to CrossFit and your gym. Finally, these events make you money.
We hope these 4 tactics help your gym get stronger!
TRIIB Team
If you would like to learn more about TRIIB’s gym management software and how its tools like the ones mentioned in this post can help your gym, then please email us at sales@triib.com. To learn more about our online free-trial and drop-in functionality that comes with our Standard gym software, please view our post – TRIIB Drop-In & Free Trial Overview.
