Create a Gym Marketing Plan With Examples & PDF Templates

03.04.2024
Сообщение от admin

Creating a professional gym marketing plan is essential for generating revenue. Every health club, fitness centre, and boutique studio needs a strategy for attracting gym members (and keeping them loyal). So, we’ve put together this guide on preparing a marketing plan for your fitness business.

In this article – learn how to write your own gym marketing plan from scratch, with examples and templates to follow (including a PDF download).

We’re a specialist fitness marketing agency with 15+ years of industry experience, so we know first-hand what works (and what doesn’t!). We’ve helped gyms, fitness studios, and personal trainers to successfully promote their businesses, so our digital marketing strategies are tried and tested.

Fitness Marketing Fundamentals [Online Course]

How To Structure a Gym Marketing Plan

Writing a marketing plan is one of the first things we do with our gym clients, so we’ve created loads over the years. Having tested different structures and formats, we’ve found that a simple 5-part plan is the most effective approach. This is because it allows you to capture the most important elements of your gym marketing strategy on a single page.

A gym marketing plan should include your objectives, strategies, tactics, and how you’ll measure the results. We also recommend including your overarching business goal at the top of it to ensure that all your marketing efforts align with it. So your 5-part marketing plan should cover…

Business goal – the #1 thing your gym wants to achieve
Objective(s) – the goal of your marketing efforts specifically
Strategies – what you’ll do to achieve your marketing objective
Tactics – the activities and channels you’ll use to do it
Measurement – how you’ll track the results of your marketing efforts

Here’s an example gym marketing plan template that shows you how to structure these elements…

While a one-page marketing plan might sound overly simplistic, it’s actually one of the things that makes it so effective. You can print it on a single piece of paper and stick it next to your computer or pin it to your noticeboard. Being able to refer to it at a glance will help you stay focused on the core marketing activities in your strategy.

What Your Gym Marketing Plan Needs To Include

Whether you’re writing a marketing plan for a fitness center, health club, or boutique studio, it should contain the same five sections. The content and details will differ depending on the type of business, but the structure remains the same.

Let’s look at what each of the five sections of your marketing plan needs to include…

1 – Goal

Most gym businesses will have an overall goal related to revenue and/or profit. But if you’re a social enterprise or non-profit, then your over-arching goal may be around the number of people who benefit from your services. The goal is usually defined by senior management, so plug it into the top section.

Example: Increase revenue 10% by the end of the financial year.

In our experience, including the business goal at the top of your plan ensures that your marketing efforts support it. It’s easy to get excited by a creative marketing idea and lose sight of whether it’ll directly contribute to your results. But having the business goal front and center helps keep your marketing activities aligned with it.

2 – Objectives

The key to any successful fitness marketing strategy is having clear objectives. So identify 1-3 marketing objectives that will help achieve the overall business goal.

For example, if you want to increase gym revenue then you could look at…

Increasing the number of clients you sell to
Increasing your pricing
Up-selling additional products or services to existing clients
A combination of all these approaches

Examples of marketing objectives for a gym could include attracting 20 new members per month or increasing retention to 80%.

50 Fitness Marketing Templates

3 – Strategies

Strategies outline what you’ll do to achieve these objectives. If you want to increase the number of clients you have, then you could…

Increase the number of leads you generate
Increase the proportion of sales tours that convert
Target a niche audience
Position yourself as a specialist
Partner with industry leaders

Think high-level here, so things like audience targeting, brand positioning, or increasing leads and conversions.

Marketing strategies for gyms often involve increasing the number of membership leads or boosting tour conversions so that more people sign up. Health and wellness marketing strategies also need to address credibility, since many people are distrustful of fitness fads and diets.

4 – Tactics

The tactics section is about how you’ll execute your strategies. This is the most detailed part, where you cover the entire marketing mix for gym studios (product, place, promotion, and price).

What channels will you use to communicate with your target audience? Will you produce promotional materials, digital assets, or create experiences through hosting events? Here are some of the most effective marketing tactics for gyms and fitness centers…

Website marketing & search-engine optimisation
Pay-per-click Google ads
Social media marketing on Instagram or Facebook
Community events
Email marketing
Fitness challenges
Content marketing
Product and group exercise class launch events

Define deliverables (such as ebooks, brochures, adverts, etc) and communication methods (social media, email, advertising platforms, etc) in your plan.

For more marketing ideas and promotional tactics, download our free ebook…

Fitness Marketing Ideas Mini-Guide

25 fitness marketing ideas for your gym, studio, or online business. Attract new members, get more PT clients & boost your fitness blog.

5 – Measurements

Lastly, you’ll need to define how each marketing activity will be measured. This is all about tracking results and identifying areas for improvement.

How will you know whether your gym or fitness club’s marketing efforts have been successful? Where can you improve? How will you decide if it’s worth repeating?

Make sure your measurements link back to your objectives. Although clicks, reach, and attendee numbers are interesting, they may not always be the best indicators to measure.

For example, if your goal is to generate new leads, then the measure of success should be around how many people’s contact info you captured, and ultimately, the number of leads produced!

Fitness Marketing Fundamentals [Online Course]

Gym Marketing Plan PDF Template

So, now you know exactly how to create an effective gym marketing plan. Including the five elements above will ensure your marketing contributes to your business goals and actually gets you results.

To help you get started, we’ve put together a gym marketing plan PDF template that you can download to save time. It includes sample plans for gym studios, fitness centres, and health clubs. Plus examples for personal trainers, health bloggers, and fitness equipment manufacturers too.

Fitness Marketing Plan Template & Worksheets

You can access it as part of our Fitness Marketing Templates Bundle which includes professionally designed promotional materials and time-saving cheat sheets too.

Writing a marketing plan for a gym doesn’t need to be complicated or daunting. By following the approach we’ve laid out here, you can create an effective strategy in no time! From there, it’s about creating a fitness content plan and executing on it!

Gym Marketing Templates & More

Our ready-made templates make it quicker, cheaper, and easier to promote your gym business. They can improve the effectiveness of your sales and marketing campaigns. If you aren’t an experienced marketer, then templates also provide a useful guide for you to follow.