What are the Smartest Ways to Attract New Gym Members?

Choosing the right marketing channels is key to building a successful strategy for your gym. It’s what helps drive qualified leads through the door, boosting both your cash flow and profits. That’s why knowing which channels attract the most members—and why they work—is crucial.

best marketing channels for your gym

To make this process easier, we’re breaking down everything you need to know, including:

  • What marketing channels are
  • How your marketing plan ties into them
  • The 5 best channels for attracting members
  • Why they’re effective
  • The pros and cons of each
  • Best practices for maximizing your results

Let’s get started. 👇

What is a Marketing Channel?

Marketing channels are the platforms, tools, and strategies gym owners use to promote their services and connect with potential members. While online channels dominate today, traditional methods like direct mail, print ads, and in-person events are still widely used to:

  • Build brand awareness
  • Communicate with prospects or clients
  • Engage current or potential customers
  • Drive member sign-ups
know marketing channels for your gym

A marketing channel’s effectiveness depends on how well it aligns with your business goals and connects with your target audience’s interests, needs, and behaviors. Leveraging multiple channels can also boost your gym’s visibility and discoverability.

What Role Does a Marketing Plan Play in Using Marketing Channels?

A marketing plan is essential for effectively using marketing channels to promote your gym and attract new members.

maximize your gym marketing channels

Think of it as your roadmap, guiding you to target the right audience and acquire qualified leads. To keep everything aligned with your marketing objectives, your plan should assign clear strategiestactics, and goals to each channel.

With a well-designed marketing plan, you can allocate resources efficiently and tailor your messages to fit your potential members’ preferences and behaviors. It also enables you to evaluate each channel’s performance by setting milestones, a clear budget for each channel, and key performance metrics.

Ultimately, a well-thought-out marketing plan ensures you can tap into each channel’s full potential to attractconvert, and retain new gym members.

The 5 Best Marketing Channels for Attracting Members

A successful marketing strategy depends on selecting the right channels to connect with and engage potential members.

top 5 marketing channels for gym owners

Here are five of the most powerful marketing channels for bringing in more qualified leads: 👇

1. Social Media

Social media is a preferred marketing channel for many gym owners. The most valuable platforms for reaching potential gym members are FacebookInstagram, and TikTok. These visually driven platforms let you showcase workout routines, fitness tips, member transformations, and gym tours. You can even host live podcasts or exercise classes to build a larger following.

To segment your target audience, Facebook and Instagram let you tailor content by location, interests, and demographics. Meanwhile, TikTok’s short videos are perfect for quick exercise demos or fitness challenges.

social media for your gym business

The primary advantages of using social media in your marketing strategy include:

  • Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have billions of users, giving your gym access to a huge and diverse audience. Social media is often much more affordable than traditional advertising.
  • Social media allows you to engage directly with potential members through comments, messages, polls, and stories. This helps you build relationships quickly and foster a loyal community.
  • Social media platforms offer detailed analytics to monitor ad performance, audience engagement, and reach. These insights let you track your campaigns’ success and adjust your content in real-time.

Social media channels also come with some disadvantages, such as:

  • Maintaining an active and engaging social media presence demands consistent content creation, interaction, and monitoring. This can take up significant time and mental energy, making it challenging if your work schedule is already tight.
  • Social media allows mostly unfiltered visitor comments (except for hate speech). Since negative feedback or reviews can harm your brand image, it’s essential to have a plan in place to handle them appropriately.
  • The fitness space on social media is crowded, with many businesses competing for attention. Unless you have a unique, appealing niche, you may need to spend more on advertising to stand out.

2. Paid Search Engine Advertising

Search engines like Google offer your business the advantage of appearing at the top of search results when potential members search for terms like “gym near me.” This boosts your visibility above all organic results, helping you capture attention quickly.

You can also use remarketing ads to target visitors who left your website without signing up, encouraging them to return. For even better results, optimizing your website with local SEO can help you rank higher in organic searches for gym-related terms in your area.

paid ads for your gym

There are clear advantages to using paid search engine advertising as part of your marketing strategy, including:

  • Paid search ads let you reach specific audiences based on location, search queries, and demographics. Using search terms like “gyms near me” or “personal training gyms” increases your chances of attracting qualified leads.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) takes time to deliver results, even if you partner with Kilo. However, paid search put your gym at the top of search engine results instantly, which gives you faster visibility and a quicker return on investment (ROI).
  • Search engine platforms provide in-depth analytics, allowing you to monitor clicks, engagement, conversations, and ROI. These insights help you to optimize your campaigns for better performance and more efficient spending.

Despite the quick exposure, precision, and other benefits paid search ads, there are some disadvantages to keep in mind:

  • Although you control the budget, your costs can quickly escalate, especially in competitive markets where gym-related keywords are pricey. If not carefully managed, paid ads can become costly with minimal returns.
  • Paid search ads only work as long as you continue funding them. Unlike long-term strategies like SEO, which build organic traffic over time, paid ads stop delivering results once you stop paying.
  • To get a strong ROI, paid search campaigns need continuous monitoring and optimization. You’ll need to adjust bids, refine keywords, and analyze performance regularly to avoid poor outcomes.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing is an excellent marketing channel for nurturing leads and re-engaging potential members. It allows you to offer sign-up deals, share fitness tips, and highlight member success stories.

As mentioned earlier, remarketing is a strategy to convert recent visitors who left without signing up. Email marketing gives you the opportunity to reconnect with these prospects by offering discounts, added benefits, or other compelling reasons to join your gym.

email marketing for your gym

Email marketing is not only a great complement to other channels, but it also offers several key advantages:

  • Email marketing lets you accomplish a range of tasks at a minimal cost compared to traditional advertising. You can send promotional content, newsletters, updates, and sales pitches for far less than most channels, especially if you use gym management software like The Kilo Stack.
  • With email marketing, you can segment your audience and tailor content based on demographics, interests, membership status, and previous behavior. For example, you can send revised class schedules to attendees, special discounts to non-members, or personalized fitness advice to members based on their goals.
  • A well-managed email marketing campaign can deliver a high return on investment. By sending relevant and engaging content at a low cost, you can boost member retention, referrals, upsells, and class sign-ups. Plus, email platforms offer detailed analytics to track open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.

However, email marketing has its unique set of disadvantages and challenges. Here are the most significant:

  • Many potential members receive dozens, if not hundreds, of emails each day. This makes it difficult for your messages to stand out. If your emails aren’t interesting or relevant, recipients may ignore, delete, or mark them as spam.
  • Due to the prevalence of junk mail and fraud, email marketing is heavily regulated by laws like the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and GDPR in Europe. This is why you must get permission before emailing prospects and make unsubscribing easy. Misleading content is also discouraged, and non-compliance can lead to legal trouble or brand damage.
  • Email marketing is best suited for long-term engagement. Since not all subscribers will act on every campaign, it’s less effective for short-term results. It works better as part of a balanced strategy alongside paid search or social media ads.

4. Referral Programs

Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful channel for gyms that have world-class communities and deliver exceptional customer experiences. When your gym provides these qualities, members naturally want to share the benefits with their friends and family.

You can encourage this by offering incentives like discounts, membership upgrades, complimentary services, or even cash rewards. These incentives can be highly effective in motivating members to invite new prospects to your gym.

referral programs for your gym

In addition to attracting new members, referral programs deliver other key benefits:

  • Encouraging current members to bring in new ones reduces the need for expensive marketing campaigns. Incentives for referrals are often much more affordable than traditional paid advertising.
  • As your membership base grows, so does the potential for more referrals. A well-run referral program can create a cycle of ongoing growth and maximize ROI.
  • Referral programs are easy to measure and track. You can monitor how many new members come from referrals, assess the program’s effectiveness, and make adjustments as needed.

Although referral programs offer many benefits, there are a few potential drawbacks to consider:

  • Some gyms rely too heavily, or even exclusively, on referrals for growth. While this might work for some, it can limit your gym’s growth potential and overall profitability.
  • Offering rewards for referrals can lead to members referring people just to earn the incentives, regardless of whether the individuals are genuinely interested in joining. These insincere referrals can reduce the effectiveness of your program and bring in less qualified leads.
  • As your gym grows, managing a referral program can become more complex. You may need additional resources to track referrals, manage rewards, and evaluate the program’s impact. However, you can avoid these scaling issues by automating workflows with a gym management system like The Kilo Stack.

5. Local Partnerships

Leveraging the trust and loyalty that neighboring businesses have built with their customers is a smart way to use local partnerships as a marketing channel to attract new members. This approach works particularly well with businesses that share your gym’s target audience. By collaborating on joint events, offering discounts, or providing freebies, you can boost your gym’s visibility and attract potential members.

local partnerships for your gym

Using local partnerships to attract new members offers several advantages. Here are three key benefits:

  • Partnering with businesses like health food stores, physical therapy clinics, or juice bars exposes your gym to a highly targeted audience. These businesses attract fitness and wellness-minded customers, making them valuable referral sources for your gym—and vice versa.
  • Local partnerships typically require minimal financial investment, with partners often sharing the costs of cross-promotions, events, and other marketing activities. This helps you avoid the high expenses of traditional advertising.
  • Collaborating with health and fitness service providers, such as massage therapists, nutritionists, or sports apparel stores, adds value for your members. These partnerships can enrich the member experience, increase retention, and strengthen customer loyalty.

Local partnerships can be an effective marketing channel, but it’s important to consider the potential risks and drawbacks:

  • As with any partnership, conflicts can arise between partners, especially if your partner offers similar services or has different goals. For example, if you co-sponsor an event and your partner displays posters of competing gyms, it could cause tension if there’s no mutual understanding upfront.
  • Unlike digital marketing channels, it can be difficult to measure the performance of local partnerships. Without gym management software like The Kilo Stack, tracking new members from a specific partner can be challenging, making it harder to calculate ROI and optimize your efforts.
  • Local partnerships work well for attracting members from the local community, but if you’re aiming to expand beyond the local area, this channel may have limited impact on reaching a broader audience.

Getting the Best Results for Your Marketing Channels

Although choosing the best marketing channels is essential to attracting new members, focusing on these three elements can further boost your success:

  1. Consistency: Regular engagement and contributions are necessary for each channel to effectively bring in new members.
  2. Compelling offers: Create irresistible incentives or promotions, such as a free first-month or discounts for couples, to drive sign-ups.
  3. Monitoring progress: Track key metrics like click-through rates, website visits, and conversions to see which channels are delivering the most new members.

best practices for your gym marketing channels

Additionally, you can increase the success of your selected marketing channels by streamlining workflows with gym management software and website design, like what Kilo provides.

For example, Kilo helps you maximize results by offering tools to boost member acquisition. It also centralizes member data, automates marketing campaigns, streamlines lead management, optimizes website SEO, and provides detailed performance analytics.

maximize your gym marketing channels with kilo

Moving Ahead

Choosing the most effective marketing channels is crucial for driving new member growth at your gym. After reviewing the details of these five channels, you’ll have a clearer idea of which ones align best with your strategy and strengths.

To take your efforts further, you can also book a call with a Kilo team member to learn how our gym management software and marketing automation products can optimize your member sign-up results.

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