As much as you want to take care of existing customers, it’s also critical to bring in new people if you want to grow your business. Before you sign them up, you need to make them aware that your gym exists, and social media is one of the top ways you can do that. In this article we take a look at how you can use social media to find new clients.

The first question is whether you have funds for paid promotion. A general benchmark is that you need to spend at least $900 per month for a paid strategy to be effective.

Organic is not just an aisle in the supermarket

The golden rule for social media is consistency! You must commit to posting regularly across your chosen channels (the most popular are Facebook and Instagram, but TikTok is quickly on the rise). To begin with, you should be posting at least once a day for several months. You can expand this out to several posts a day if you have the capacity and are successfully growing your audience.

The goal is for your target audience to always have the possibility of encountering your content, no matter the time of day. Besides consistent posting, you should also aim to put out the same level of quality posts. Keep the voice, tone and style the same to ensure that your content becomes immediately recognisable.

Facebook’s Creator Studio can be a great help here. You can use it to manage all of your Facebook page posts, messages and insights in one place.

While your content must always be the same quality, you do want to change it up in what you’re posting. Photo after photo is not going to keep people engaged. Switch it up with videos, moving or 360 photos or other formats.

In-person events for promotion on social

While we’re talking about online platforms, it’s also important to connect with the community and other local businesses through events.

There are some great opportunities to partner with a compatible business to host an event. Pulling this off successfully not only gets your gym in front of the community, it also can provide tons of great content for your social platforms.

You can also encourage attendees to post their own content and tag you for more visibility.

You could host a free weekly workout in the local park, or even do something not solely health and fitness related.

Stretching your paid budget to the max

Having a budget for paid promotion on social media can give your business a huge leg up. If you’re going to be running ads or boosting posts, it’s important to understand some marketing basics:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion

Unpacking and understanding these will ensure that you don’t overspend or waste funds. Maximise return on investment by targeting people with the right message, at the right time on the right channel.

Firstly, your aim will be to make your potential clients aware of your business. You want to make it clear what your unique value proposition is and how you are able to solve your clients’ specific problems. This needs to be communicated clearly through any ad assets you create. You can’t expect a lot of quality leads from this kind of ad as it’s targeting general awareness to help you find your audience.

Next, after you’ve managed to interact or at least get in front of a potential customer a few times you move to the Consideration stage. At this point, they’re likely seriously considering giving you a try, so you want to serve ads or posts that reinforce or continue to position your brand effectively. You could run testimonial ads to show how much value existing clients get from your gym.

Finally, your most aggressive and compelling ad should be used when you reach the Consideration phase. They’ve seen your messaging and they are seriously thinking of joining your gym. This is the right time to offer a discount or coupon as a part of your ad to get them to become a paying customer.

Again, if you’re planning on running paid promotions, ensure it is fully integrated with your organic strategy.

Finding the right partner in terms of your personal trainer software is also key to running a successful fitness business and many will provide guidance on how to grow and retain clients. For more information, start here.