How do we fill our gym with new members?

The number one question in the minds of many gym owners: how to get new members for your gym (without pissing off your current members). The truth is, running a gym is fun and rewarding, but it isn’t without its challenges. Aside from maintaining equipment, scheduling classes, managing employees, and keeping existing members happy, you also need to focus on getting new members.

The good news is that you have access to everyone who could ever become a member at your gym at your fingertips.

That’s right: I’m talking about Facebook.

Right now, your potential members are scrolling through Facebook on their phones. They might be checking local listings of items, commenting on someone’s photo of their kids, watching gangster cat videos from TikTok or any number of things.

If you want more members, all you need to do is grab their attention, speak to them and get them in your gym.

In this post, I’m going to outline three proven campaigns that are working for gyms right now.

Full disclaimer: these strategies will help you to fill your gym with new members without annoying your current members. We specialise in running these types of growth campaigns, and we can do it for you. We set up all of the ads, email lists, bots and the bits in between, and deliver you piping hot potential members as a service – all you need to do is wow them with your facilities and classes.

The campaigns we’re going to look at today work for a few reasons.

The first reason is the offer. We offer a free week at a minimum. Discounts aren’t enough anymore. People want to see everything that they can get, so a free week offers that. I cover more reasons about why giving something for free and adding more value is better than discounts here.

So… Ready to rock and roll?

Fill Your Gym With New Members:

The Campaigns

Here are 3 proven campaigns that are working right now.

1. Bring A Buddy

This is an alternative twist to the ‘bring a buddy’ campaign you’re used to. In the usual campaign, most gyms give their members a few ‘free week passes’ to hand out to their friends. The aim is that your members bring their friends and their friends join.

These campaigns have varying degrees of success.

This campaign I’m suggesting targets potential members.

The idea is that you offer two free passes. One for the person seeing the ad on Facebook, and one for their friend.

Here’s an example:

(Note: This is not a live ad. 1: I wouldn’t recommend using a celebrity in an ad – other memes can work. I would actually recommend some good photos or videos of your gym or staff. 2: We can’t explicitly say ‘tag your friends’ as Facebook will penalise the ad. Instead we use indirect language.)

When someone comments on it, you send them a free 7-day buddy pass. We have a system that automates all of this saving you time.

The psychology behind this promotion is gyms can be scary for new members. Of course, gyms aren’t scary, but if you’re unfit and out of shape, they can be really intimidating. Therefore, offering new people the chance to bring a friend makes the whole experience much less intimidating.

But that’s not all.

This campaign also has a few built-in benefits that make this campaign super-effective.

One – you’re marketing two potential members each time the advert is viewed, and…

Two – this type of campaign has the intrinsic ability to go viral.

And going viral is a good thing. You see, every time someone reacts to a post or an ad on Facebook, people on their friends list see it as well.

So, if you indirectly ask people to tag their friends in the ad? You’re going to get a lot of reach from just one ad.

The potential to fill your gym with new members with this one campaign is huge.

2. Celebrate With Us!

Offering your members something for their birthday – such as a free shake and PT session – is a good way to keep your members involved, happy and loyal.

But have you thought about offering people a free two week pass for their birthday?

The idea is that you wish people a happy birthday and offer them a 2-week all-access pass on you for their birthday. You could even throw in a free shake or something extra.

The reason this works is because it’s personalised. It’s not an offer that anyone can claim. It’s only for people whose birthday is coming up.

This campaign also has built-in viral features where you get people to comment on the ad with their birthday in order to claim their gift. Like the campaign before, every time someone comments, the ad gets shown to more people, increasing your reach and the ROI of the ad.

This is a campaign that you can use each month to fill your gym with new members.

3. VIP All Access Pass

This is your run of a mill offer with something different. Right now, most gyms aren’t running Facebook ads. If they are running ads, they are offering one of two things:

One – A free week’s pass.

Two – A discount on the fees.

And perhaps a mix of both.

The problem with these offers is that they don’t really do anything anymore.

I read something once that a good offer (I mean a really good jaw-dropping offer) should make people in your industry think that you’re crazy.

This could be anything, such as: “Don’t pay us anything until you lose weight.”

Crazy, right?

If you’re struggling to think of what to offer, you could go all out with the value, so if a gym normally offers a week free, you could offer an ‘all-access pass’:

• 10 days free
• Unlimited classes
• Unlimited swimming pool use
• A complimentary PT session
• A complimentary 10-minute nutrition session

You might think that you’re giving too much away, but think about it:

You’re giving people a lot of time to get to know you and your gym. You’re giving them so much time that you’ll probably start to feel like friends.

Add that to the fact that you’re giving them a trial to two premium services, and you’re on to a winner. For one, you make them feel like a VIP. For two, they may see how much of an impact these premium services offer, and may sign up for them after joining your gym.

So, you’re not just filling your gym with new members; you’re also selling premium services.

Making These Campaigns Work For You

Hopefully this has given you a few ideas of what to do.

A few years ago, people hated seeing adverts on Facebook.

Now?

People actually like it because Facebook shows them adverts that are actually interesting.

That puts you in a powerful position.

By showing people who want to join a gym your amazing offer, you are really doing them a favour.

And to find which offers work the best, you have to experiment. I would recommend trying one or two of the campaigns out for a couple of months, evaluating the results and trying out another campaign.

We run these types of campaigns for our clients, and if you’re wondering if they would work for you gym, I would suggest that you schedule a call with us – especially if you’ve tried running ads before.

• When we run these campaigns for clients, we take care of everything.
• We set up the ads, targeting and the variations.
• We test different images, videos and copy.
• We test different targeting parameters.
• We create the messenger bots, email lists, calendars and everything in between to create a seamless conversion machine that delivers high quality potential members to you.

All you need to do is wow them in your gym and do a bit of follow up.

If you want to schedule a quick strategy call with us, click the button below.