With so many Americans taking an interest in health and wellness, now is the perfect opportunity to grow your fitness business. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of health club clients in the U.S. increased by over 25%!

Like exercise for the body, growth is vital for any fitness business. Expansion can attract new customers, help you invest in state-of-the-art equipment and make a great name for your brand. Whether you recently opened or already have a loyal following, this guide can help you grow even more.

1. Grow Your Fitness Business With the Right Audience

Offering a wide variety of services can boost your gym’s appeal, but you also need things that set you apart. Select several core areas that are essential to your business, and do them better than anyone else. These could be:

• Prenatal exercise classes for pregnant moms
• Complete wellness experiences for people who have depression
• Specialized workouts for people who have chronic pain
• Corporate fitness programs
• Services from certified nutritionists

How To Choose a Profitable Niche

Research competitors to see what they’re offering. Looking for untapped opportunities can be more profitable than declaring an all-out war against other health clubs. At the same time, any niche needs a large enough market to support your investment.

Play to your strengths and passions. As an example, if you love helping seniors stay active, your clients can sense your personal interest and are more likely to choose you over another gym.

2. Build an Amazing Blog

One of the most important ways to grow a fitness business is to feature high-quality blog content on your website. Your brand’s blog helps you attract potential members online and impress clients offline.

Informative, accurate and helpful content can position you as the top source for health and wellness advice in your community. You want your website to be the place people go when they have a question about using proper exercise techniques, improving fat burning or staying motivated.

There’s no need to worry about researching and writing expert blog articles yourself. That’s what our professional health and wellness content writers are for. With an amazing blog, don’t be surprised when tons of new visitors sign up for your newsletter.

3. Make a Great First Impression

Loyal customers are wonderful, but you also need new clients if you want to grow your fitness business continually. Supplement the power of advertising with an extra push to get curious feet walking through your door. Here are a few possibilities:

• Introductory discounts
• Free trial weekends
• Reward points for exercise targets
• Seasonal buy-one-get-one-free membership offers
• Bring a family member for free weeks

How To Be Memorable

Pay attention to your new client experience. Is your team giving potential customers a warm welcome and helping them reach some small fitness goals? Personalized attention can be the difference between a happy new member and a lost opportunity.

One way to improve the experience is to make time for questions. First-time visitors often feel lost when it comes to fitness equipment, goals, techniques and services. By alleviating their fears and providing expert guidance, you can create a positive impression immediately. Having a reserve of blog posts on your website that answered frequently asked questions is a great way to both start ranking on the SERPs and give potential clients the information and confidence they need to buy your products. 

4. Grow Your Fitness Business With a Social Media Community

With a solid social media presence, it’s easier to create a community around your brand. You can interact directly with customers and potential clients online, answering questions, sharing helpful tips and generating enthusiasm for working out. These opportunities can increase your brand’s local reputation considerably.

Whether you share energizing photos on Instagram or informative posts on Facebook, you’re giving people a “behind-the-scenes” look at your team. The laidback feel of social media can appeal to emotions in a way that direct advertising often doesn’t, helping visitors to genuinely like your team from the beginning.

Why Social Media Groups Are Popular in Fitness

Social media networks also benefit clients. Your social media platform can become a type of fitness “support group.” Along with your team sharing recommendations that work, longtime members may feel inspired to offer their own success stories and tips. 

Investing time to personally reply to social media posts can produce good results, but you don’t have to manage everything yourself. Our online content wizards can create interesting, fun and creative social media content for you. They can also share the blogs you post for extra exposure to helpful sales-funnel content. 

6. Create a Lifestyle, Not Just a Gym

Another way to grow your fitness business naturally is to make it a place people like to hang out. Promote a healthy lifestyle with your club in the center. There are many possibilities:

• Group fitness classes
• Couples’ nights
• Fitness competitions or challenges
• Outdoor cycling groups
• Nutrition workshops

Local partnerships can be especially valuable for creating a tight-knit community around your business. You can organize 4K runs for charity, join forces with vegan restaurants or local farmers, offer members discounts for outdoor equipment stores and partner with other businesses dedicated to health.

7. Reward Clients for Referring Friends and Family

Referrals are one of the best ways to increase your customer base. This can happen randomly, such as when thrilled clients give your team glowing reviews on social media after a positive interaction.

To grow your fitness business effectively, though, you should do more than wait with your arms crossed. Create a referral program. Consider these ideas:

• Members receive guest passes each year.
• Clients get a $10 sports equipment gift card for referring three friends.
• Customers get one extra online class code to share.

This type of program gently nudges current clients to tell their friends and family about your business. The idea is to reward your customers and give their friends something good, too.

8. Don’t Ignore Online Possibilities

These days, every company needs an attractive website. Without one, it’s almost impossible for potential customers to learn about your team, your services and the features that make your company so amazing.

High-quality website content is vital to grow a fitness business with virtual classes. Your blog articles and product pages should provide clear answers to the questions visitors have. With attention-grabbing writing, you can get people excited about your services and motivate them to take action.

How To Grow Your Online Fitness Business

If you’re not sure where to start, pay attention to these website essentials for online fitness companies:

• Branding: Create a personality for your brand that makes it unique. Have all of your web pages, products and services follow this distinctive style.
• Content writing: Post amazing blog content that wows customers and gives fitness businesses incredible benefits.
• Product descriptions: Use bullet points and engaging writing to show website visitors exactly what you offer, how it works and why they should choose you.
• Search engine optimization: Work with SEO professionals to connect better with your target audience and rank higher on search results.

What if you already have a website? Make sure to refresh the content every few years. Up-to-date content helps you keep up with modern fitness trends and improves your relevance with search engines.

Take Advantage of Every Opportunity To Grow Your Fitness Business

Tennis champ Arthur Ashe once said: “You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.” Recognizing opportunities for business growth is important, but having the courage and determination to take action is vital for real success.

Push your limits. Be inventive. Seize smart opportunities to grow your fitness business online and offline. Our content creation team is behind you 100%. See how amazing pro fitness blogs can be.

Fitness is your passion, and you want to share it with your community. So do lots of other people, though. According to IBISWorld, there are nearly 113,000 gyms in the United States alone, and that doesn’t even factor in the many other types of companies in the fitness industry.

With so much competition, you must be proactive to bring in clients. Marketing your gym or fitness business is essential. These days, many people use the internet to find gyms or health stores around them. For this reason, it is especially important to learn how to incorporate fitness digital marketing into your advertising strategy.

Create a Robust Online Presence With Fitness Digital Marketing

A statistic on Zippia indicates there are nearly 5 billion active internet users in 2022.  The majority of them use the internet to search for businesses near them, and about half of all users are on at least one social media platform. This makes it vital for your fitness company to have an active online presence.

Optimize Your Website

Think about the products or services you provide and how you want the world to see them. Do you want to keep a strictly professional persona or do you want it to be lighthearted and casual? Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, your website needs to be engaging and feature a few key elements to help the user:

• Logo – A logo brands your business and ensures people recognize your company’s name. Use the branding colors and fonts on social media as well to tie your pages together.
• Home Page – This page should include one or two high-quality photographs and a brief overview of what your company provides.
• Service or Product Pages – Supply more details about your services or products, including information about how to purchase them.
• About Page – To go in depth about your company and how it came to be, create a separate page. This way, you won’t clutter your home page with too much information, and readers can decide whether they want to read more about your company.
• Contact Page – Always include a contact page on your website. Provide your company’s address and phone number as well as a contact form that readers can fill out to get in touch.

Search engine optimization helps direct readers to your website. Use a combination of short keywords and longer phrases, including your location if it’s relevant. In addition to adding keywords in the content itself, put them into your headings, image tags, and links. Remember, though, that keywords aren’t the only thing that matters. Always write for people, not for algorithms. BKA Content specializes in writing engaging, people-focused content, and we offer affordable monthly blog writing packages perfect for fitness businesses like yours. 

Maintain a Blog

Pleased focused Caucasian blonde lady with dumbbells in her hands doing a standing lunge stretch

Blog posts are an excellent way to present yourself as an expert in your industry while providing your current and potential customers with the information they need to better their health. A good blog uses a combination of shorter posts (about 300-500 words) and long-form content (1,000 words or more) to provide information in the forms readers are looking for.

Your blog should use high-quality images and engaging content. Providing a wide range of topics is also important. You can teach readers how to use fitness machines, offer information on how to eat healthily, and give product reviews, just to name a few ideas.

If you aren’t sure where to begin, consider hiring someone to create engaging posts for your blog. BKA Content provides fitness digital writing services to make blog writing simple and effective. These services ensure your brand voice remains consistent and keeps your blog up to date and relevant. Hiring content professionals also leaves you free to focus on other aspects of your business, which means you’ll be more productive as well.

Join Social Media Platforms

A social media presence is essential for any company that wants to climb to the top of its industry and is a key player in fitness digital marketing. At a minimum, your business should have a presence on these sites:

• Facebook – Use this platform to notify followers of new products or services, share links to your blog posts, and interact with other fitness-related companies. Don’t be afraid to share relevant memes from time to time, as followers tend to find this personable.
• Instagram – Instagram is best for posting photos and graphics. Ideas include pictures of upgrades you’ve made, new products, or clients who have used your products and seen results. 
• TikTok – Video content is vital for fitness marketing. TikTok is an excellent way to post video tutorials, help viewers learn about the people behind the business, and show off new products and services. Don’t be afraid to join in the TikTok dance challenges or other trending topics as well. They’re an excellent way to get more people to notice your brand. 

Posting regularly is important and something you can do with a social media calendar. Calendars allow you to create posts in advance, improve hashtag use, upload images and videos, and track your engagement on multiple platforms at once. Content writers can also help you write powerful social media posts on a schedule. 

Collaborate With Fitness Influencers on the Internet

An article on HubSpot indicates that more than 70% of marketers get higher quality traffic from working with social media influencers than they do from other sources. Influencers get paid to review products and services and post about them on social media. It’s important to find influencers who are on the same page as your brand in terms of having the same values and matching your company’s personality.

Finding an influencer as part of your fitness digital marketing plan is easier than it may seem. There are two types: micro-influencers and macro-influencers. Micro-influencers usually have a few thousand followers on social media and are more affordable to hire. Macro-influencers charge more because they typically have tens of thousands of followers.

Search YouTube and TikTok for keywords related to your products or services to find influencers in the fitness industry. Most of them have their business contact information in their bios. From there, you can contact them and negotiate terms if they’re interested. Once you find an influencer, you can even use them as a blog subject by showcasing the people who are using your products and providing some information about them.

Remember Your Current Clients

Too often, business owners get so caught up in trying to bring in new clients that they forget about their current ones. The result is no real gain in business since the new clients are only replacing the ones who leave. If you want to retain customers, it’s important to keep marketing to the ones you already have in addition to marketing to new ones.

There are several marketing tactics you can use to help you retain clients. Start with a monthly newsletter that provides links to news in the fitness industry, updates on the happenings in your company, and a discount or promotion of some sort.

Marketing to current clients needs to go beyond email, though. Take it to social media as well. Have your clients been accomplishing big fitness goals? Feature them on your website or create a social media post that shows off their accomplishments. This not only boosts your current client’s confidence and shows them you care about your customers but potentially brings in new people who want to meet the same goals.

Let Us Help You With Your Fitness Digital Marketing Needs

Fitness digital marketing is vital for helping your company to grow and thrive. You don’t need to do it all alone, though. While you’re busy handling other aspects of your business, we can handle creating the content you need to build your brand. Get in touch with BKA Content today so we can develop a customized plan for you.​