Marketing Ideas for Health Clubs & Gyms

Do you need health club marketing ideas to help you increase membership and customer loyalty? If so, you've come to the right place. We have compiled a list of marketing strategies for fitness clubs and gyms that will help you increase your exposure and grow your business.

More Americans visit health clubs and gyms today than ever before. If you own a fitness club, this is certainly good news. But there's also a lot of competition due to an ever-increasing number of health clubs (especially in big and medium-sized cities).

This is why an effective marketing program is so important for business owners in this competitive industry.

21 Marketing Strategies for Gyms and Fitness Clubs

  1. If your health club just opened, hold an open house so people can come in and work out for free.
  2. Hire a fitness personality or famous athelete to come and speak at the grand opening of your club.
  3. Offer discounted rates for people who join during the first 30 days, or waive the sign-up fee.
  4. Offer some free personal training sessions for new members.
  5. Direct mail postcards are perfectly suited for health club marketing because you can target a certain area around your club.
  6. If you use the postcard marketing strategy, be sure to include some color photos of your club and the equipment you offer, pictures of an aerobics or spinning class, or whatever is relevant to your club.
  7. Good ideas and unique services can help you generate word-of-mouth marketing and buzz. For example, when a new gym opened in my area, a lot of people were talking about the cario room "theater" that showed movies.
  8. Develop a member-referral program, through which your current members get some type of bonus or reward for brining in new members. People like to recruit workout partners anyway, so why not give them an incentive to do so?
  9. Broaden your fitness club marketing program to include some public relations. Distribute press releases about your opening to local news outlets. Write exercise and fitness articles for the health section of your local newspaper.
  10. To coincide with the last marketing idea you could also distribute your press release online. You could use PRWeb for this purpose.
  11. Many neighborhoods and communities these days have some type of community newsletter that gets mailed to the residents each month. These newsletters almost always have advertising opportunities for local business owners. It could be a valuable marketing tool for your health club or gym — and for a good price!
  12. If you offer a new or unique type of health club technique, try to get your local TV news to cover it. Invite them over to witness the procedure. Most local news channels have a health segment where they cover such things. I recently saw a gym on the news explaining a new tooth whitening procedure. What a great marketing idea for local exposure!
  13. As an Internet marketing strategy, hire a search engine marketing consultant to improve your website's ranking in the major search engines like Google. This will increase the online exposure for your health club practice.
  14. Another Internet marketing option: Advertise your website with Yahoo Sponsored Search or Google's AdWords. You could put yourself onto the first page of keyword search results almost instantly, if you bid wisely.
  15. List your health club website in a variety of web directories. This will increase the number of links coming in to your site, which has a direct (and positive) impact on your search engine rankings. This in turn means more traffic and more patients.
  16. Create a health club marketing schedule for yourself. Try to do at least one thing each day to promote your practice. Experiment with new ideas on a regular basis by adding them to your schedule.
  17. Do some research to find out what your competitors are doing, in terms of self-promotion. This can often be an excellent source of marketing ideas and inspiration. Ask yourself, "How can I adopt the same technique but make it even better?"
  18. Join your local chamber of commerce or other business organizations. This can be useful for networking purposes.
  19. Continue your health club marketing education by reading up on the ideas and options mentioned in this article, as well as the general concepts of business promotion. Read at least one book each year on the subject of small business marketing.

Which of these health club marketing ideas are right for you? That's something you'll have to find out for yourself, through personal experimentation. But one thing is for sure — after visiting this website, you'll never again be at a loss for options or ideas!