An Easy Guide To Fitness Content Marketing That Gets Results

Content marketing is a well-established strategy for fitness businesses – 89% of B2B, and 86% of B2C organizations use it. But not all types of content produce leads, sales, and strong business results, so the right approach is crucial…

In this article, we outline how to use content marketing to drive leads, sales, and brand awareness for your fitness business.

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 create impactful content for gyms, fitness brands, and training companies. Learn more about our content marketing services.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a great strategy for attracting, engaging, and converting new customers. It involves providing useful resources to your audience that turn them into paying clients.

This could be educational blog posts, how-to videos, email newsletters, infographics, podcasts, or anything else that provides value.

When approached in a strategic way, content marketing creates a sales funnel that drives customers through the purchasing journey. It can turn complete strangers into raving fans of your fitness business in a very short amount of time. It allows you to precisely target your ideal client, build awareness, establish your credibility, create demand, capture leads, and generate sales.

The content approach differs from traditional fitness marketing because it’s not about promoting products and services outright – it does it more subtly.

Traditional marketing typically focuses on presenting the features and benefits of something so that people want to buy it. Adverts, sales promotions, and gym flyers would all fall neatly into this category. These things are all important, but they aren’t enough in the competitive world of fitness…

Content marketing focuses on providing value so that you become the ‘go-to’ brand in your industry. This establishes you as a credible market leader and is much more powerful than old-school approaches to fitness marketing.

Free Fitness Marketing Guide

Learn which fitness marketing strategies produce the best results (so you can focus on what actually works).

Content Marketing Benefits For Fitness Brands

Content marketing has lots of benefits for health and fitness businesses like gyms, equipment companies, and online training platforms…

• Traffic – Generates more traffic to your website via search engines and social shares
• SEO – Enables you to target more keywords throughout your site, which also increases traffic
• Lead Generation – Provides an opportunity to educate people about your services, and create demand, without being blatantly ‘salesy’
• Speeds Up Conversion – Moves customers to make a purchasing decision more quickly
• Email Capture – Allows you to offer bonus materials in exchange for an email address
• Social Media – Gives you more ammunition to post on your social networks
• Conversation – Opens up more opportunities for interactions, via comments and social shares
• Relationships – Builds relationships with a targeted audience by creating interest and trust
• Loyalty – Ever-changing content gives customers and prospects a reason to return
• Brand – Increases awareness of your brand, as well as products or services
• Credibility – Helps position you as a credible authority in your sector
• Value – Enables you to provide additional value, and reach more people with your message

All of these aspects are hugely beneficial for your marketing campaigns. However, there are two that are vitally important for health and fitness businesses in particular…

Credibility

The health and fitness industry has a bit of a mixed reputation. Faddy diets, dodgy weight loss pills, pushy sales techniques, dishonest marketing – there’s no shortage of reasons to distrust our sector. This is hugely frustrating when you’re one of the good guys, with an offering that can genuinely help people.

Content marketing can help build and demonstrate your credibility (even in a sea of dodgy competitors). Here are some ideas of how you can utilise it…

• Why not create an infographic that explains the science behind your product in a visually interesting way?
• Or write a series of blog posts featuring client success stories?
• Or publish a mini guide about dispelling common myths in your sector?

There are so many ways to tell your story through content marketing, whilst positioning yourself or your brand as a credible authority.

You might also like… health and wellness content marketing strategies or how to build a fitness brand.

Loyalty

Many businesses in our industry have a high turnover of customers. This is particularly true of gyms, fitness studios, and health clubs, which are constantly fighting the retention battle. People get bored, busy, or just find their wellness journey too tough and give up.

But content marketing can help keep them interested, engaged, and support them with their struggles. Here are some examples of how you can leverage it…

• Could you create a fitness ebook that helps clients reach their goals faster?
• A cheat sheet about how to overcome a common barrier?
• A video demonstrating advanced techniques to help people progress further?
• A printable workout tracker that keeps them motivated and consistent?

Content marketing is an ideal way to increase retention and loyalty. It’s an ideal way to share your knowledge and experience with prospective clients and existing customers, while also differentiating yourself from the competition.

Content Marketing Ideas For Fitness Brands

Content marketing can involve blog posts, instructional videos, infographics, or any number of other formats. But however you communicate it, your content must be valuable. This means it should either be educational (helpful, practical, answering questions) or entertaining (funny, interesting, a good story).

Here are some proven content marketing ideas that work well for fitness businesses…

1. Workout videos
2. How to achieve X fitness goal (video, blog post, or ebook)
3. Exercise technique videos
4. The scientific benefits of X training approach or product (video, blog post, email newsletter)
5. 5 reasons X is vital for [insert your target audience] (video, blog post, email newsletter)
6. Downloadable workout program or planner PDF
7. 3 biggest mistakes beginners make when it comes to [insert your training specialism] (video, blog post)
8. Achieve X fitness goal in 30 days (video series or email course)
9. 5 myths about [insert your training specialism or a popular workout method] (video, blog post)
10. High protein, keto, paleo, or other diet-specific shopping lists (blog post or PDF)

You can use these content ideas to showcase your expertise, highlight the benefits of a product, explain how to use it, and ultimately educate people about why they need to sign up or purchase your offering. But it’s not just about coming up with ideas in the right format – content marketing is most effective when you have a well-thought-out strategy behind it…

Creating an Effective Fitness Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing can help you attract new leads, engage with them to build a relationship, and then convert them into paying members. These 3 stages are at the core of the marketing process.

However, most fitness businesses rush straight from ‘attract’ to ‘convert’. It might seem like a quicker shortcut, but it also results in a much lower conversion rate and is less effective overall…

ATTRACT ⇒ Engage ⇒ Convert

Valuable content can attract new leads in many ways.

• Someone might search for a phrase online and find your blog article on Google.
• A video you create can get shared on Facebook and seen by an infinite number of new people.
• They may type an exercise into Pinterest and then see your ‘how-to’ infographic.

By creating truly valuable content, you’ll rank higher on Google, be shared across social media more often, and reach new people.

The best content types for attracting new audiences either:

• Solve a common problem – such as ‘how to achieve X fitness goal’ or ‘why you’re not losing weight despite exercising daily’.
• Are highly visual – like infographics or videos with eye-catching thumbnails.
• Feel unexpected – because they’re surprising, controversial, or go against conventional wisdom.

Attract ⇒ ENGAGE ⇒ Convert

Once you’ve attracted new people to your content, use it to engage with them. People buy from businesses they know, like, and trust, so this is where engagement plays a big role.

The very fact that your content is valuable and helpful will help establish trust. It’ll position you as a credible authority on your chosen topic.

You can also mix in other fitness marketing ideas that help people get to know and like you. Create content that:

• Solves a specific problem – such as ‘how to progress to full body push-ups’ or ‘why your ankles hurt after running (and how to prevent it)’.
• Educates people about benefits – related to your offering such as ‘why HIIT torches twice the calories of steady-state cardio’ or ‘the science behind the 15-minute workout that transforms your health and physique’.
• Tells customer stories – that outline their fitness goal, the challenge they faced in achieving it, and how your products or services helped them.
• Tells your own story – why you started the business, the problem you’re trying to solve for people, or your brand’s values and why they matter.
• Demonstrates your credentials or expertise – explain your backstory or those of your team members (including your experience and qualifications) or answer client FAQs.

Attract ⇒ Engage ⇒ CONVERT

Once people are convinced by your free content, it’s much easier to convert them into paying customers. They’re much more likely to sign up if they already trust you and know that you provide value. They’ll often think “if they’re giving this away for free, imagine how good their paid service must be”.

So, include ‘lead magnets’ or ‘content upgrades’ to capture people’s contact info. Aim for content that solves a small problem immediately and is super-high quality, so that they’ll be willing to hand over an email address or phone number in return.

Here’s a list of fitness-themed lead magnet ideas that you can use…

Get Help With Your Fitness Content Marketing

Content marketing helps attract, engage, and convert new leads into paying clients. It’s an easy way to differentiate your fitness business in a crowded and competitive market. If you don’t have time to create content or aren’t sure how to approach it strategically, we can help…

We’re a specialist health and fitness content marketing agency that creates expert-written blog articles, emails, content strategies, and more. Your content will be developed by a chartered marketer, qualified nutritionist, and personal trainer with 15+ years of experience.

Learn more about our fitness content creation services.

Our ready-made fitness marketing templates make it quick and easy to promote your fitness business effectively. Generate consistent leads, sign-ups, and sales revenue for your gym, fitness studio, or personal training business.

You’ll get 30+ resources covering…

These affordable templates are the same resources we use with our own clients. The bundle includes all the essentials you need to promote your business and sign up more customers. Learn more here.