It’s not a secret that the past few years have seen a serious upswing in the fitness industry.
Whether you run a CrossFit gym, teach HIIT classes, or own a yoga studio, one thing is clear: it’s a competitive space.
So what’s the best way to stand out? With unique fitness marketing strategies. Let’s dive in.
What We’ll Cover:
- SEO for Fitness Marketing
- Social Media for Fitness Marketing
- Importance of Branding for Fitness Companies
- Content for Your Fitness Marketing Strategy
- Email for Fitness Marketing
- How to Use YouTube for Your Fitness Marketing
- Paid Media Marketing for Fitness Companies
- Influencer Marketing for Fitness Companies
- Other Fitness Marketing Strategies
- FAQs: Fitness Marketing
1. SEO for Fitness Marketing
Before you look into fancy marketing tricks and tactics, you need to make sure you’ve mastered the basics: SEO.
More than likely, your fitness company is attached to a physical location. Whether it’s a standalone gym, a multi-location gym, or even a franchise, a strong handle on your local SEO is what will get feet through the door.
The basics of local SEO look something like this:
- Reviews: These include reviews on platforms like Google that show what your current and past customers have to say about your business.
- Google Business Profile: To enhance your SEO, you must also create a Google Business Profile that includes accurate, relevant information about your company, including your address, contact info, website URL, and other details.
- Yelp: Having reviews and listings on Yelp can also give your business a boost in search engine rankings, as this is a website with high authority.
- Online Directories: Additionally, you should have listings in multiple online directories to further increase SEO value, including platforms like city-data.com, Storeboard, Local.com, and more.
- Website and Social Optimization: Keep your company’s website and social media profiles consistently optimized to perform better in organic search results.
- Local Links: You may also develop a strong link-building campaign that entails getting high-quality backlinks to your website on other sites for relevant local businesses. Doing so can improve your local SEO while also getting more traffic from prospective new customers.
Perhaps one of the biggest factors here is reviews. Reviews are huge for fitness businesses. And one of the best ways to advertise is to let your happy customers do it for you. Ask your customers to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, your website, anywhere. The more positive reviews, the better.
2. Social Media for Fitness Marketing
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, home workouts and workout plans are on the rise. In fact, they represent a great way to market yourself where your customers spend most of their time – on their smartphones.
Video Content for Your Social Media
Take your fitness marketing digital by incorporating video content. Video marketing is one of the most powerful tools, and there are plenty of ways to use it to your advantage.
For instance, you could create video content around workouts, equipment, apparel, gear, nutritious recipes, and much more.
Upload your short-form videos as Reels to Instagram or Shorts to YouTube. Additionally, experiment with long-form video on YouTube.
You can also get your customers to “check-in” with location services, on Facebook or through an app, indicating which of your facilities they visit.
Build an App to Boost Your Fitness Marketing Efforts
If you choose to build an app you can use it to connect customers with personal trainers and upload accountability trackers, set goals, create an exercise library, separate workouts by home-based and gym-based, etc.
Apps like Fitness Builder, Nike Training Club, and FitPlan offer users workouts of the day or specific workout plans to take with them so they’re ready when they enter the gym.
Through your app, you can further drive more engagement with giveaways and contests. An example here could include a contest that encourages customers to share their workout routines or unique techniques, ending with an equipment giveaway for the best workout or technique.
If you want to take it a step further, consider building a Google Action or Alexa Skill. These are the apps of voice search, and perform like an app would on a smartphone, only they’re activated via voice and use digital assistants to deliver information.
Your Action or Skill could lead users through workouts, deliver a workout calendar or session, or essentially perform any of the functions used in a smartphone app.
3. Importance of Branding for Fitness Companies
Before you begin churning out more fitness marketing ideas, you’ll need to establish your brand.
It all comes down to a strong, unique value proposition: What can you offer your customers that they won’t find with competitors?
Start by creating a cohesive branding experience across all of your content and messaging:
- Colors & Typography: Whatever colors and fonts you choose, keep them consistent across your marketing, which will make those combinations uniquely yours.
- Copy: Use the right voice and tone that align with the nature of your brand.
If you undergo rebranding at any point, you’ll want to ensure it carries across your entire content marketing strategy, from your logos and ads to videos and images.
Bold Branding with Lululemon
Lululemon is one of the top activewear brands today. While the color scheme and typography the company uses are simple and minimalist, the company uses high-quality images to promote its many products.
The company’s website features appealing images of models donning pants, shirts, jackets, and accessories with Lululemon’s unique style, showcasing its many aesthetically pleasing designs.
Of course, the company also has a unique manifesto featuring an original typographic design that sets its brand identity apart.
Working with the right fitness marketing companies can help fitness brands with their unique value proposition and brand image. Meanwhile, you can focus on growing your business.
4. Content For Your Fitness Marketing Strategy
At the end of the day, good SEO rules always apply: valuable content will win.
It’s true that the fitness industry is full of fad diets, sham theories, and quick fixes (celery juice, anyone?). While that kind of content might prove momentarily popular, as soon as it’s disproven, your company’s credibility will suffer as well. That’s why fads typically aren’t among the best ideas.
Focus instead on what we call evergreen content: content that stays relevant over time. This kind of content tends to rank high in search engines and offers more value to readers.
Topics for evergreen content:
- Specific workout plans
- Step-by-step healthy recipes
- Advice on supplements
- General dieting tips
Specific examples of evergreen blog content:
- “How to Get Started at the Gym”
- “How to Successfully Track Your Macros”
- “The 5 Best Exercises for Building Your Quads”
All of these can and should be added to and updated over time, but they’re topics that will continue to be important in the industry and won’t lose relevance.
Unique Content by Nerd Fitness
Nerd Fitness is a company dedicated to bringing trustworthy information on how to create long-term, stable fitness routines.
Check out a few of their article titles:
- How to Work Out in Small Spaces (The “No Space” Workout)
- Paleo Diet Beginner Guide: 7 Things to Know Before Eating Like a Caveman!
- The Ultimate Skinny Guy’s Guide to Bulking Up Fast: How to Bulk Like the Hulk
Not only are they all intriguing titles in their own right, but they call out to the site’s specific, niche audience, like the people who were on board as soon as “Hulk” was mentioned and have a vested interest in how skinny nerds can get super strong.
Be sure to diversify your content. For example, you could schedule one health-related blog post per week, along with a couple of articles about workout routines or other fitness topics and a few social media posts. Taking this approach will help ensure you post varied content that connects with audiences in different ways and on multiple platforms.
A few tips:
- Create themes for your content
- Create a content calendar (and stick to it)
- Start with 1-2, in-depth articles a week
- Use email and social media to promote your content
5. Email for Fitness Marketing
You’ve probably heard a lot lately about personalization in marketing. The concept of personalization must extend to your email marketing too.
Plain old personalization doesn’t cut it; It’s not enough to simply address your customers by name anymore. You need a strategy in place to segment your audience to better address their personal interests.
You can segment your audiences using signup forms with fields that include differentiating information. In the process, you might include fields like “How did you hear about us?” or those asking about occupation, all of which could give you some clear identifiers to help create different audience segments.
Based on the different audiences, you can personalize your email content to connect with them. For example, the type of content you push to single parents who don’t have a lot of time to work out might be different than the content you put in front of college students.
You should also automate your emails according to your recipients’ position in the sales funnel. The emails you send to those at the top level will consist of different content and be more frequent than those moving toward the bottom of the funnel.
There are plenty of pieces of content you can use in your email marketing, too. Fitness marketing emails could consist of weekly newsletters that increase and maintain engagement, announcements about events or company updates, coupons for free or discounted offers, abandoned cart reminders, and much more.
For some assistance with developing and maintaining your email campaigns, consider enlisting the help of a fitness marketing company with experience handling email marketing strategies.
6. YouTube for Fitness Marketing
As mentioned, video marketing is a critical component of marketing campaigns in the fitness space.
Video content remains extremely popular among all audience types, with YouTube alone attracting around 2.1 billion users.
There are many types of video content you can use to communicate with audiences across platforms, including:
- Q&As with your staff or industry experts through live-streaming
- Playlists of popular workout videos, recipes, or other content
- Live workouts that get audiences to follow along, like a personal training session
- Various resources, such as guides to proper health, workout routines, and more
- Cooking videos that demonstrate how to put together healthy meals, smoothies, or other recipes
When developing your video marketing campaigns, you’ll definitely need to target YouTube. This platform is highly visual and is a general hub for all things video content, including fitness topics.
7. Paid Media Marketing for Fitness Companies
Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are also important for fitness brands, as they supplement SEO efforts to get more search traffic and reach people through ads.
Multiple paid media channels can help you attract new customers, including Local Services Ads that appear across the web in front of relevant audiences. These ads appear in search engines and can land you above competitors on Google.
You could also incorporate social ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere to reach social media audiences.
Meanwhile, retargeting ads could reconnect with users who visit your website without completing a purchase, eventually bringing them back.
8. Influencer Marketing for Fitness Companies
Another great way to appeal to your audiences is by connecting with influencers in your niche.
Influencer marketing continues to grow in popularity as influencers’ audiences also grow. As such, they provide a great opportunity for fitness brands to partner with them, giving these companies the chance to reach audiences they might otherwise struggle to attract.
The key is finding the right influencer for your company. There are plenty of places to look for influencers who can work with you based on your unique niche and offerings.
You can start by conducting searches on sites like YouTube to find relevant influencers in the fitness space. Simply enter a relevant term such as “fitness influencers” and you’ll find a number of personalities, many of whom have large and regularly engaged audiences.
Once you find the ideal influencer, you can begin communicating with them to build rapport. Consider making an offer, such as a free product in exchange for a product review. A compelling offer can get the influencer on board.
That influencer could then create a video and share your offerings or brand with their audience, giving you exposure that potentially reaches millions of viewers.
9. Other Fitness Marketing Strategies
As you build your marketing strategy, there are other ways to go about it.
Some additional ideas include:
- Client Referral Systems: Encourage your clients and customers to spread the word by offering them something in return, maybe it’s a complimentary workout, a free canister of pre-workout, or a discount code.
- Cross-Promotion: Consider partnering with like-minded companies to help promote each other. Think vitamin companies, fitness trackers, clothing brands, etc.
- Host Events: Hold a series of live workouts, experiment with the benefits of fundraisers and more.
- Create the Best Deal: Bring value to your customers by offering them the best deal, with the most value.
- Use Urgency and FOMO: By launching promotions with deadlines, you’ll create the fear of missing out in your most loyal customers.
- Testimonials: Differentiate your brand from competitors by showcasing personal stories and experiences to create an emotional connection with your potential customers.
- User-Generated Content: Sometimes content generated by users is more relatable and trustworthy than branded content. UGC serves as social proof of your brand’s effectiveness.
FAQs About Fitness Marketing
1. How big is the fitness market?
According to Statista, the fitness market today is worth over $30 billion, with that projected to increase in the years ahead.
2. Why do I need a fitness marketing agency?
Fitness marketing companies can help you get the best results from your strategies, covering all aspects such as SEO, paid media, video marketing, social media, and more, allowing you to spend more time on core business.
Get Help With Your Fitness Marketing from Ignite Visibility
Want to succeed with your fitness marketing campaigns? You may need some outside help from a dependable fitness marketing company.
With some assistance from the experts at Ignite Visibility, you can develop winning strategies that yield consistently great results.
We’ll help with every element of your campaigns, including:
- Video marketing and creative design
- SEO and PPC
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Influencer marketing
To learn more about what we can do for you, get in touch with our health and fitness marketing agency today.
