Ideas for fitness centers....

I just watched Pain and Gain yesterday and the fitness club in the movie offered free memberships to strippers which brought in more male members. I thought as I was watching it, what a great idea!

Offering free memberships is indeed a good way to start and get your name known. Most of the time, people are attracted to something free, especially when they don't have to do anything except signup.

FREE - An evergreen word for growing business.

I joined my local fitness club last September because they waived the annual membership fee. When introducing myself to trainers in the gym I make sure I ask them about what hey do outside of working for the gym and many of them have dreams of doing their own thing or are actually doing something about it.

One of the common factors though is that I'm yet to see one that's truly leveraging themselves and I'm more than happy to give them what I refer to as "Recommendations for consideration" and of course, I do this for FREE.

Using this approach I've become known as the person to talk to when you want to develop your own marketing plan for your private sessions, and, I've done two bits of work for the gym itself.

I made sure that the work can only be used by my location and there's potential to offer similar marketing consulting services to other local branches of the same chain.

But it all starts with talking to the right people and giving value up front, and that value could be as simple as explaining what Wordpress is and why having hosting should be considered by the fitness lady or guy you're talking to (with an end goal being to get introduced or recommended to someone of influence in the management of the gym)

Just how I've done it and I hope it helps.

Thanks for the feedback so far...

Just to be clear, I have been brought on board as the Marketing Director for the 3 locations. I have worked in Fitness for around 8 years doing sales/marketing and have done some freelance things as well.

I was just wanting to get some feedback on what/and if anybody has worked helping a fitness owner for example with their marketing or maybe a warrior who has owned a gym. What type of marketing/advertising worked well for you to bring in leads and convert them into paying members.

Cheers

Regarding Memberships come up with a special trial membership

Advertise with charities like the Red Cross, a blood drive. they will do a lot of advertising for this plus give donors some great gifts. Your cost, just your time.

Someof the fitness clubs around here offer sun tanning, massages, daycare, 24 hour access. Check out Planet Fitness.

What about getting a sports star to sign autographs?

Or if you need to stay within a budget get a Stripper in her off hours.

I work a niche where the first thing I do is have the owner/manager resurrect their past customer list. (most never follow up with past customers) New customers are good, but old customers are better.

Get those old and new customers into an autoresponder, write 7 good responders, then leave a low link to your membership. I don't advise my clients to drop the price or give away stuff other than information. Add value to the Gym instead.

Get rid of the ugly guys working there and get some pros in there that look the part. (I'd only have gals working at my gym, bar or whatever, but that's another technique that is under used and that I can't figure out.)

At the Gym I belong to they hold sanctioned lifts, they have exercise classes, dance and that stuff.

All those things should go to your lists as invites.

Videos work well. Collect the email optin with the videos.

You could use and iPad and aWeber to build your list by collecting email optins at the gym. If I hired the optin person the conversion rate would be 100% Or she'd be replaced.

If you get rid of the business card website and turn it into an email collecting machine, send relevant info often, invite people instead of sell them and add value to the gym, you'll fill that place in no time.

I think a free trial is better and if they want to continue, they'll have to pay for it. I agree that you should hire people that look the part. Make everything presentable to attract them to signup.

I'm currently working on developing my own slimming program which include some effective exercises that bring me a very good results. The owner of the gym that I used to go was so pleased with my results that he even offering me partnership to open new gym under different name. They put my pictures at a sign desk and show new customers "before and after" and they got many signups for yearly memberships. So based on that I will suggest to collect pictures of most successful members (in return for free membership), print on large banners and put near entrance to the gym, it will say mach-mach more than unknown strippers. People looking for solutions to loose weight, and pictures with actual results will bring you more respect and interest.
Also would advice to negotiate with Organic supply stores if you can put printed pictures "before and after" with gym address and phone number near cashier counter.

two for ones - hand out flyers to complimentary businesses and via attractive men and women street teams

ryan lee

LA Boxing Westminster - make it a fun experience that gets results and referrals - I don't know if Mike would consult or not, he owns these gyms and About | GKIC-Colorado

welcyon is targeting people over 50 yrs old. Going to be a big market, they just have a couple locations now. Current gyms should be developing programs for the boomer/senior market as its a huge growing demographic.

A lot of fitness centers are now using SMS mobile marketing as a vehicle to remind members about the following events:

- Fitness Classes
- Special Deals/Coupons
- Past due payment reminders
- Weekly health tips