10 Social Media Advertising Ideas for Promoting Your Gym on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and More
Social media marketing for gyms has become a huge industry over the past few years. If you’re a gym owner, I can guarantee that you’re getting pestered by digital advertising companies, claiming they can make your business explode on Facebook. Well guess what…You don’t need them, you can do it yourself!
Advertising your gym on social media neither needs to break your bank, nor take up too much of your time. Time is money in the business world, so quit wasting your time scrolling through news feeds and start making Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram work for your gym. It’s 2018 and social media marketing for your fitness business is more important now than ever. It doesn’t matter if you’re a personal trainer promoting your fitness classes or your the social media manager of a yoga studio, there are plenty of good ways to promote your gym on Facebook & other social media sites.
Below you’ll find 10 simple digital advertising techniques for gym, box, studio or fitness class.
1. Start an Athlete of the Month Club to Generate Word of Mouth
If you’re looking to increase the “share-ability” of your gym’s Facebook content, there’s no better way than creating an Athlete of the Month Club. Every month, pick out one of your students that is performing especially well. Write up a quick bio, take their picture, and post it to Facebook. You can GUARANTEE that the person who was chosen is going to share that post on their own Facebook wall, thus introducing your gym to all of this person’s friends. Write something up that both promotes your gym as well as lauds the member. Remember, an athlete of the month club is both about applauding your current members, while also getting the word out about the effectiveness of your fitness business. Social media made “sharing” so second nature that most of us do it without even thinking. See a funny picture, share it. Read a cool article, share it. Get ‘Athlete of the Month’ at your gym, share it.
2. Post Your FitnessTexter Banner to Get More Leads
Converting Facebook fans into new members is what FitnessTexter is all about. Once you sign up for your FitnessTexter free trial, we send you a Facebook banner that advertises your promotional offer. All you need to do is post this banner on your Facebook wall. It will instantly be shown in the newsfeed of your Facebook fans and you’ll start to generate “sign-ups” right away. A “sign-up” is when someone texts your coupon code to 95577 and receives your promotional offer coupon. Using FitnessTexter is a super simple way to promote your gym on Facebook. Simply add your texting code to your Facebook ads and status updates and you’ll start generating more gym member leads in on time. You can use FitnessTexter on any social media channel. Get that keyword in front of as many eyes as possible and watch the leads start to roll in!
3. Post Pictures of Workouts and Athletes to Encourage Social Sharing
This one goes hand in hand with the Athlete of the Month club. You want to get your current members to start sharing your business on their personal FB page. One of the easiest ways to increase your studio’s visibility on social media is to increase the amount of pictures that you’re posting. We’re not talking about those cliche “Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body” pictures. We’re talking about pictures of your facility, your members, your workouts, etc. There are so many of those generic “Don’t Be Lazy” Facebook pictures out there that people just look right past them. However, if you start posting pictures of people that attend your gym, those people are likely to “like” or “share” that picture on their own wall, thus increasing your visibility. And ‘Likes’ are worth a lot! You can also post your workouts online and then have your current members share it and “show off” the workout they just completed. Let’s face it. People love bragging about their workouts, you might as well leverage it and use it to promote your gym.
4. Actively Communicate with Facebook Fans
One of the best things that you can learn from big brands and how they manage their social media is that they’re constantly communicating with their customers. The point of businesses using Facebook is to encourage communication between brands and people. Fitness marketing on Facebook is no different. If someone communicates with your business and you fail to reply to their message or complaint about your business, it will get noticed. If people are commenting on your photos and you’re NOT replying to these comments, they’ll eventually realize that you’re not that in touch with your audience. Make sure to reply to every single post on your wall, every single picture comment, etc. This shows that you’re actively involved with your business and that you care about your clientele. Write something from the heart, not an auto-response and you’ll get much better feedback from your members. Take DoggieDashboard for an example. They’re very active when it comes to answering Facebook posts. Also, because there are so many new social media cues when it comes to develop PageRank on Google, having an active Facebook comments section and page will help show Google that you’re an active business. This will cause them to give you a little bump in PageRank in searches.
5. Curate Great Content on Pinterest
Not many fitness businesses are using Pinterest and we think there’s something wrong about that. Pinterest is a great way to curate content that current and future members will find interesting. Instead of sharing every single health article on your Facebook page (and boring the heck out of your Facebook fans as a result), why not start curating a business-specific Pinterst page? Here you’ll be able to “pin” as many articles and pictures as you want. If you curate interesting articles or images, you’ll eventually gain a following.
There are two types of people who will be visiting your Pinterest page. Those that live in your geographic area and might consider joining your gym/studio because they find your content very interesting and appreciate your passion for fitness. If you’re promoting your fitness classes on Pinterest, you might want to create a pinboard with personal fitness articles, dieting goals, etc. There are also people visiting your page that might not even live in the same city/state/country. However, if these people start linking to your website because of your great content, you’ll start seeing an increase in search engine rankings. It’s a win-win situation for business owners to be on Pinterest, that’s for sure.
6. Leverage a Social Media Management Tools like Hootsuite
One of the best ways to level up your social media fitness marketing is to start using social media management tool. First and foremost, there’s HootSuite. It’s the go-to leader in this category. You can spend a couple hours every weekend planning your social media posts for the upcoming week and then it’s done. No more wasting time every single day looking for articles. If you find a relevant article that will help promote your gym, great, upload it on the fly. But, with HootSuite, all your base articles are already loaded and ready to start publishing. Using a social media management tool for your gym will also free up your hands for more vital business tasks. Unless you have a full-time social media manager, you’re not going to want to spend every day managing your Facebook posts and Instagram messaging. Using a tool like Hootsuite, you can time everything out and relax a little.
7. Create an Instagram Hashtag for Gym Members
If you’re a new gym, this might not be the best fitness marketing tip. However, if you’ve got a decent membership base, it might be worth the effort. Sit down with your marketing team and develop a hashtag for your business. This is going to piggyback on our tip above about posting more pictures in order to promote your gym on social media. Now, with your custom hashtag, when your members start posting mirror pics and booty shots, your gym name will be showing up alongside those toned glutes.
8. Have a Social Media Free Membership Giveaway
Last but not least, the good old free membership social media giveaway. When it comes to promoting your gym on Facebook, this one is a no-brainer. Wait until you’ve got a decent-sized Facebook fan count. You don’t want to be the joke of social media. You can either do a Likes contest, a Shares contest, or something in between. Either way, offer up a free month of membership to whichever current member does the best job promoting your gym on their Facebook feeds. Maybe you see how many Shares a member can get, who knows. Think up something fun and then get out there and starting kicking some social media fitness marketing butt!
9. Create a SnapChat Account & Post Mid-Workout Snaps
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really understand SnapChat that well. Maybe it’s because i’m already over 30 years old and it’s a younger generation thing. All I know for sure is that my younger cousins are Snap experts and I feel like a stone age Flintstone when it comes to snapping. However, it seems like every year, there is a must-have social media marketing tool. For 2018, I’d say that tool is going to be SnapChat. More and more businesses are jumping on the bandwagon and advertising their business via this medium. Why not give it a shot with your gym? Create a Snapchat business account and start posting workout clips and other fun videos for your gym. There isn’t an easier way to promote your gym on social media than 5 second funny video clips. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get a viral video going as well, no never know. If you need fun Snapchat marketing ideas, check out this list of possible video ideas.
10. Use Facebook Live to Stream an Entire Workout Session and Generate Buzz
Facebook Live got a bad rap in 2017, and for good reason. However, maybe 2018 will be the year that Facebook Live finds its focus and starts to become a tool for social media marketing. During your next fitness class, ask your students if they would mind being part of a workout live stream. If you get okays from everyone, set up your camera on a tripod (or have someone film it) and start the workout. You’ll surely generate an online crowd of people reading your current workout, posting comments to cheer on their friends that they can see, the list goes on. With social media promotion, you gotta try a a lot of ideas to see what sticks. Give it a run!
Image Credits:
Unity Gym
