A fitness marketing plan and regular advertising help increase new membership sales in your health club or studio.

Matt York of IHCC Health Club Consultants shares a few words on fitness marketing plans and advertising to help increase new membership sales in your health club or studio. SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM TO WATCH A SHORT VIDEO ON FITNESS MARKETING AND ADVERTISING PLANNING.

I just finished a phone call with a gym owner who was telling me he just had 4 months of poor traffic and lead flow in his health club. As a result of this he only sold 92 new memberships in the last 4 months despite having the same sales force that had sold an average of 90 new fitness center memberships every month for the past 2 years leading up to this slow period.

I asked him to tell me what he thought was happening with his new membership sales. He did not have an answer for me so I asked him if he had done anything different with his fitness center marketing. He told me the only thing he had done was cut way back on his marketing about 9 months ago but that could not be the problem because they did well for 5 months after that.  I had what I like to call a “smack I should have had a V8” moment with him.

I know as gym owners, managers and sales people you are all very busy this time of the year so I will save the long speech for a one-on-one talk and try to get some points across to you real quick that will help your club be more profitable.

As a health club consultant who has worked with clubs across the country for many years helping with gym promotions, fitness marketing plans, direct mail campaigns, increasing membership sales, advertising budgets, raising and increasing EFTs, membership sales training, customer service training, building profit centers and much more the one thing I have seen that will kill your membership sales the quickest is the “shotgun” approach to marketing that most gyms use.

In a nutshell this approach is just tossing out random marketing whenever the budget allows it; the local newspaper or radio salesman catches the gym owner at the front desk and gets a check from him or during the supposed peak times of the year for new health club membership enrollments.

This is the wrong approach! You must come up with a marketing plan that runs year-round and stick with it!

Why only put your name out during certain times of the year? Keep your health club or studio name out in the community year-round. This is what I call filling the pipeline with potential new member/client traffic. It takes a little time to build that flow of traffic resulting in more new memberships being sold but once your new fitness marketing plan starts working you will sit back and smile as you see your membership sales soar as a result of the steady marketing and promotions you are doing.

In a later post I will address some of the keys to marketing your club with direct mail, corporate memberships and other forms of media.

Now get up from in front of your computer and call a local media rep and get some advertising scheduled!

Until Next Time, Enjoy Life!
Matt York

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Fitness marketing plan and advertising PDF