How To Create a Fitness Marketing Plan For Your Business

Creating a fitness marketing plan for your business is the single most effective way to improve your results. While most fitness businesses aren’t short of promotional ideas, surprisingly few have a strategic plan behind what they’re doing.

In this article – learn how to create a fitness marketing plan for you gym, studio, or PT business (plus promotional strategies, tactics, and ideas that you can use).

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 marketing strategies are tried and tested.

Having a strategic fitness marketing plan gives you a huge competitive advantage. While other businesses are being reactive about their promotional activities, everything you’re doing will be supporting your business goals. Here’s how to do it well…

Fitness Marketing Objectives, Strategies & Tactics

Let’s start with an overview of the 3 fundamental parts of any fitness marketing plan…

1. Objectives ⇒ WHY are you marketing?
2. Strategies ⇒ WHAT are you going to do?
3. Tactics ⇒ HOW will you execute it?

Now let’s dig into each of these areas in a bit more detail…

#1 – Objectives ⇒ Why?

Identifying your objective or ‘why’ is a crucial first step. In order for marketing to make a significant impact on your business, everything you do needs to be aligned with your end goal.

But if you don’t have a defined objective, then how can you work towards it? Unless you know your destination, it’s very difficult to get there.

When it comes to fitness marketing objectives, there are a few themes that we hear consistently from clients…

• I want to build credibility in my niche area
• We want to launch a new program or online course
• I want to attract more clients or members
• We want to keep existing clients loyal

Do any of these apply to you? Once you know your theme, you need to get specific and make it measurable. How many clients do you want? What % loyalty are you aiming for? By what deadline?

Here are some examples of specific and measurable objectives…

• Build credibility ⇒ Get featured in 5 industry publications or websites by 31st December.
• Launch program ⇒ Launch course and gain 20 students in the first month.
• Attract clients ⇒ Attract 10 new clients within the next 2 months.
• Maintain loyalty ⇒ Increase retention to 70% by 31st July.

#2 – Strategies ⇒ What?

Now you know your end marketing goal, you can define WHAT you’ll do to achieve it. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so you’ll need to tailor your approach based on your own specific objectives.

• If you’re trying to build credibility then an educational approach is probably best.
• If engagement is your goal, then an entertaining and interactive approach might be ideal.
• But if you’re trying to attract new clients, then a mixture of educational and inspiring content would be better.

Here are a few examples of fitness marketing strategies that you can adapt to your own business…

Build credibility

Building credibility is about establishing trust and positioning yourself as an authority. You can do this by…

• Hosting polls and surveys, then publishing results
• Summarising or evaluating scientific journal articles
• Educating through tips, tricks, and time-saving hacks
• Educating by clarifying facts v.v fiction
• Promoting your credentials, qualifications, or experience
• Providing social proof and case studies

Launch new programs or online courses

Launching a new product involves building buzz and excitement, communicating the benefits, and getting people to purchase. Ways to do this include…

• Sharing teasers, snippets, and behind-the-scenes sneak peeks
• Getting member input on the format or naming of new classes
• Counting down the days or hours until launch
• Telling stories about why you developed your solution
• Describing what people actually get for signing up (features and benefits)
• Addressing objections
• Sharing quotes or testimonials from beta testers or founding students

Attract more clients

If you’re already selling a product or service, then it never hurts to have more customers. Here are some marketing strategies for gyms and personal trainers that’ll help…

• Encouraging referrals
• Running competitions and fitness challenges
• Building relationships
• Answering FAQs
• Networking with other social media accounts who share the same target audience
• Motivating and inspiring followers to take action
• Advertising, promotions, or sponsored posts

Maintain loyalty

Existing clients need a reason to stay loyal. So, motivate them to keep working towards their goals, and surprise them with extra bonuses. Effective loyalty marketing strategies for fitness centers and health clubs include…

• Providing exclusive bonuses like recipes, meal plans, shopping lists
• Sharing motivational quotes and photos
• Previewing future releases like workout videos or new classes
• Running community challenges
• Publishing inspirational success stories from other clients
• Addressing their problems or issues
• Offering exclusive access to you or your team (e.g. live video Q&A)

It’s much cheaper and easier to generate repeat business, then spend time and money attracting new customers. Not to mention the fact that they’ve already invested in your business, so deserve to be looked after!

Once you have an idea of your fitness and wellness marketing strategies (aka WHAT you’ll do to achieve your goals), you can move on to brainstorming exactly HOW you’ll do it…

#3 – Tactics ⇒ How

When most people write a fitness marketing plan, they usually jump straight to this stage. We all want ideas that we can implement quickly to get results straight away.

But it’s crucial that we go through the first two strategic steps first, to ensure that the ideas we come up with are aligned with our bigger business goals. Otherwise, we’ll waste time and money on marketing activities that don’t actually move us in the right direction.

So, now you know exactly what you’re trying to do, you can brainstorm ideas for HOW to actually do it. This is where you get really specific about exactly the kind of activity you’re going to do, the format you’ll use, and platform you’ll promote through.

When writing a marketing plan for your gym or PT business, don’t be tempted to go off topic. There are so many things we could do but if your ideas don’t align with your objective and strategies, then park them for another time.

We find it useful to put our ideas into the following structure…

Purpose + Format + Platform

Here are some practical examples of fitness marketing tactics…

• Address common fitness objections with a ‘time-saving tricks’ article on the Facebook
• Run referral competition where people enter by tagging friends on Instagram
• Provide motivational case studies in infographic format on the blog and Pinterest
• Share testimonials in video format via Youtube
• Provide exclusive recipe bonus in ebook format via the blog and Facebook
• Share inspirational photos of previous clients using before and after collages on Instagram

By following this structure, you’ll include all the fundamental elements of a strong marketing tactic. Here are some more formats and platform ideas to help you with your planning…

• Facebook Marketing Ideas For Fitness Businesses
• Fitness Business Instagram Guide
• Pinterest Marketing For Fitness Brands
• YouTube For Fitness Businesses
• TikTok Marketing Guide

Write Your Strategic Fitness Marketing Plan

By following these steps you can create a fitness marketing plan that helps you achieve your business goals. Aligning your objectives (why), strategies (what), and tactics (how) will make your marketing activities MUCH more effective.

If you’d like more guidance and step-by-step resources, then check out our Fitness Marketing Kit. It includes four done-for-you fitness marketing plan examples for personal trainers, gyms and studios, online creators like bloggers and influencers, and product companies. Plus a blank template that you can use to write your own.

Get The Fitness Marketing Roadmap

Your All-in-One Toolkit to Attract, Engage, and Convert More Clients – Tailored Specifically for Fitness Businesses Like Yours!

The Fitness Marketing & Lead Generation Roadmap is a comprehensive resource designed for gyms, personal trainers, and online fitness businesses. It’s packed with video workshops, marketing templates, step-by-step guides, cheat sheets, and more. We cover:

• Fitness Marketing Strategy: Build a solid foundation and plan for success.
• Lead Generation: Attract more clients with effective tactics.
• Social Media: Boost your online presence and engagement.
• Email Marketing: Nurture leads and convert them into loyal customers.
• Advertising & Promotion: Get your message out there efficiently.
• Content Marketing: Create compelling content that resonates with your audience.