The health and wellness industry has grown into global proportions, resulting in a saturated competition for the adoration and loyalty of a vast sea of consumers. Now, it’s not enough for newly-established health clubs to just come up with run-down-the-mill marketing strategies for fitness centers as the demand for creative and innovative marketing campaigns grew — and it’s not just because of the increasing competition.
A New Approach
Admittedly, a large majority of the human population don’t really enjoy working out or living a healthy lifestyle. In fact, only 20% of the American population meets the physical activity guidelines while the remaining 80% seems hard to persuade.
And though there are people who are more than interested in ditching their old ways of Netflix night-ins, they’re often stopped by the fear of risking hard-earned money that don’t really work. This anxiety could possibly root from the nature of fitness-related products not providing immediate benefit. Most services offered such as gym memberships are long-term investments and it doesn’t really coincide with the need of Millennials for instant gratification.
What does this showcase? A disconnection between those health-conscious individuals promoting a healthier way of living and those they hope to reach. Seeing this need for a new approach resulted in the concept of Fitness Marketing.
This approach initially focused on leveraging the presence of a problem and the offer of a solution until practitioners realised that it only gives consumers a temporary motivation to spend money — is it really okay to make people feel bad about themselves just to earn cash? Not really.
It later on brought them to their second approach, tapping into the need of pleasure and positioning working out as an enjoyable activity. Marketing experts realized that majority of consumers want confidence and a long, healthy life. They are often motivated by their need to feel strong and to feel part of a community. A large number of people who hope to join health clubs want to have fun and feel accomplished after every session. The positive factors of health clubs became the centre of fitness advertisements.
Steps in Achieving Creative Marketing For Fitness Clubs
So now that we’ve covered the basics of this new approach, how does one start planning their marketing strategies?
First and foremost, it’s critical that you set goals and plan for your brand’s future. Goal setting and planning is a critical step for it covers assessing your current marketing campaigns, your brand’s current position and the target market you hope to reach. This information will serve as the pillars of your entire strategy and will forecast the tactics you will use from now on. Only can you proceed in the fun part of coming up with creative fitness marketing ideas once you and your team gain a clear idea on how you can measure your campaign’s success.
The next thing is to relate the goals and plans discussed from earlier to the objectives, strategies and tactics of your fitness marketing campaign. It’s important to make sure that you and your team go through the aforementioned basic elements of your strategy before diving into event ideas or social media schemes.
Once you’ve ensured that its basics coincide with your overall set of goals and plans, you can now list down the different channels and implementations you would be using. You can kickstart your innovative fitness marketing by coming up with seasonal promotions you can offer both existing and possible customers. You and your team can also brainstorm ideas for workshops or event launches can reintroduce your brand to your local community. Majority of fitness clubs also branched out of the common path of promotions and events by giving Digital Marketing a try!
Your brand probably has dipped its toes into online marketing by having its own Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts that attracts new clients and increases retention. But it’s time that you go the extra mile of running fitness advertisements on Facebook to gain more traction.
You can also develop an email marketing effort by starting your own newsletter subscription and offering lead magnets such as free workout guides or healthy meal plans!
If your health club already has a website, make sure it’s updated enough to feature on-page fundamentals for SEO. And if you’re still planning on building one, give content marketing a try and explore how you can use blogs to boost your Google ranking.
Coming Together, Working Together
Implementing an entire fitness marketing for a health club can be a bit too much for those not really well-versed on the matter and for the newbies of the wellness industry — but that’s alright. Developing your first ever wellness marketing strategy can be your crash-course into effective brand promotions. Should you ever need a little extra hand on your tasks, there’s no shame in asking for help.
Marketing experts like the ones working behind Creatitive are there to help you and guide you in curating a creative fitness marketing campaign for your health club!
