In recent years, the health and wellness industry has grown in popularity. Meditation is now being promoted as a productivity technique by CEOs. The hotel chains have all launched fitness brands as their revenue has increased tremendously.

It’s critical to your business’s success. It helps nurture a good relationship with your target audience and allows you to seek them out and convert them into customers.

Unfortunately, many fitness companies hit a wall when they discover that marketing needs to continue. Because it is not a one-time event, this discovery might be frightening.

Here are a few gym marketing suggestions to make the ever-changing gym marketing process somewhat less daunting:

#1 – Gym Referral Program

The key to a powerful gym referral program is incentivizing referrals to benefit both the referring client and the person receiving the referral. In other words, if you provide a current customer with free fitness classes, if they refer someone new to you, be sure to inform them that the friend they referred will also get free training.

This makes your client feel like they’re getting a steal with their buddy, giving it more clout and value as an “influencer” with “special access.”

People enjoy sharing and recommending things that make them feel important and “in the know.”

A secondary benefit is that your referral source tracking will improve because those who are referred feel compelled to mention who referred them to obtain the exclusive offer.

#2 – Friend/Partner Pricing

This is similar relative to a referral program. Many people would accept if you approached all of your past training clients and offered them discounted pricing to bring a friend or spouse/partner with them (which can also be just the excuse some customers have been waiting for to get their spouse/partner into the gym!).

The primary benefit for you as the trainer is that you may boost your hourly wage without having to coach any additional hours because they will be working out simultaneously.

#3 – Gym Rewards Program

A gym rewards program can help you incentivize all the actions you want your clients to undertake as fitness brand ambassadors and promote on your behalf.

You may set up a complex points system in which customers can earn various points for performing actions like sharing your gym page on social media posts, liking your gym’s Facebook page or Instagram business account, writing a review on Yelp, or checking in to the gym.

But, of course, the most significant point value should go to referring a friend to the facility.

On the other hand, an extensive, over-the-top referral program might sometimes backfire. Sometimes the most straightforward solution is to provide a direct and immediate exchange of one action for one reward.

Place a small table near your door with gym shirts, protein bars, energy drinks, and other such goods, along with a sign that reads, “Like and share our Facebook page right now on your phone for one free item.”

You may even have your front-desk workers train new members to do this as part of the onboarding process.

#4 – Gym Co-Marketing

Consider a gym co-marketing campaign as a bi-directional referral program. Consider the local businesses near your fitness club, for example. You’re likely to have other small companies in your shopping plaza or within walking distance seeking new consumers/clients.

If you live near a supplement store, ask if you can put up some fliers and “special discount” referral cards in their stores and offer to do the same at your gym.

The same principles apply when structuring a successful personal trainer/gym referral program: the more you can make the referred individual and the referrer feel as if they are getting inside information on a special deal, the better your co-marketing campaign will be.

You can do the same for yourself. Inquire about giving your members 10% off everything in the store, and you’ll feel better about suggesting them to your fitness center consumers.

If you want to go all out, you may hire a full-time employee to develop, manage, and implement a comprehensive “gym perks” program that offers your members numerous discounts and savings from various local fitness businesses while also increasing the visibility of your gym and raising the likelihood of other firms suggesting new clients.

This is a fantastic approach if you want to learn how to increase the number of referrals for your gym or personal training.

A note of caution:

This is particularly effective if you concentrate on locating other co-marketing partners who provide complementary goods or services to your members’ interests.

Yes, you may develop connections with the gym owner-operators of your area’s fast-food restaurants and get your members discounts on burgers, fries, and pizza.

Still, a more effective method for promoting your gym brand could be to contact local health food stores, healthy eateries, chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, and other businesses.

#5 – Barter Agreement

When you collaborate with other local businesses or service providers to exchange services on a swap/trade basis, you could arrange with a chiropractor to provide an alignment in exchange for a personal training session or a masseuse to offer a massage in return for access to a gym.

Don’t be scared to experiment. There’s rarely a better way to sample local items so you can tell your clients what they should try, but make sure you talk with your tax advisor about any tax reporting concerns related to barter transactions.

#6 – Community Events

Why not join together and organize a fantastic event for your area now that you’ve hopefully started building connections with other regional firms?

A gym or fitness business has a natural synergy with any community celebration centered on fun, family, health, and fitness themes. Organize a community health fair and an event for the whole family.

At your event, you may offer free meals (discuss with local restaurants, vendors, and food trucks), blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol screenings, fun games for the kids, obstacle courses and fitness challenges, boot camp workouts, and other fitness competitions, local music, flu vaccinations, giveaways to benefit a cause or charity/local cause partnership (fundraiser), etc.

#7 – Professional Referral Network

So, this is a little unique from your typical gym client referral plan in that it works similarly to a co-marketing program where you and other businesses in the area advertise each other to your members/clients/customers.

Furthermore, establishing a professional referral network is significant and distinct enough to deserve special attention.

This is one of the most incredible gym membership marketing ideas because if you plan, you won’t see immediate results, but you will notice them for years to come.

A professional referral network is a networking strategy in which you seek other professionals to recommend individuals for personal training. For example, when one of their customers needs a recommendation for a gym or a personal trainer, you hope to be the first person that comes to mind.

Physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists, doctors, corporate wellness directors (sometimes companies will even pay for gym memberships and personal training), and other professionals with similar jobs who encounter individuals looking to improve their health, fitness, or lifestyle are all good options.

Naturally, YOU want to be the person they turn to for advice.

So, how are you going to do this? First, it’s worth adopting the standard pharmaceutical sales rep model.

You should:

• Show up in person.
• Establishing a connection with your audience is a critical component of long-term success.
• Demonstrate your worth (naturally, credentials and experience will play a role here, especially for doctors and physical therapists who must believe they are sending their patients to a competent expert).
• Make it entertaining (Could you drop off some goodies and gym freebies at a physical therapist’s office, just like a pill-pushing pharmaceutical rep, and be sure to get excellent results? You’ll never know until you try.)

You can make new friends and influence people in medical and other professional offices.

#8 – Walk the Gym Floor

There are only a few ways to get people excited about joining your fitness program. One of the most low-tech yet effective marketing ideas for fitness training is to stroll around the gym, start conversations with other new gym members, and then invite them personally to attend one of your workouts.

Yes, you may distribute literature, make a fitness blog post or hang up a poster in the office, but there’s something special about a personal invitation that can produce results that might amaze you. Make sure to place the request from their standpoint:

“YOU would enjoy our Zumba session.”

“YOU would be an excellent HIIT student.”

“We need more athletes to do your plyometric exercises.”

For increasing personal training clients, you must similarly apply the same strategy. For example, personal trainers have long used striking up conversations with individuals in the gym to sell specialized sessions.

However, gym owners should be wary of being only self-interested, mercenary, and businesslike.

Although you may not always be the party’s life, if you genuinely form connections with others, demonstrate that you care about them, and show an interest in their fitness challenge, people will at least be courteous when they reject you.

Kidding! You’ll hear some nos, but if you do things right, you’ll listen to more yeses in the fitness industry than you may think!

To handle a gym, there are an infinite number of marketing strategies to pick from, but it’s up to you to select some of the most common ones. The retention of members as customers may enhance the company. You should never be scared to experiment with new gym marketing ideas in your line of work, such as digital marketing. Even though it may seem complex, it doesn’t have to be.

See for yourself which fitness marketing strategy works for your personal training business and implement them to see results.