The bloodstream guide to fabulous fitness marketing
Part 1: 10 Top Tips
1. Never underestimate the power of the brand
People may default to their nearest gym or yoga studio, but they will walk / drive further to you and past your competitors if you etch your brand into their memory with positive associations. And they’ll go right past you to your competitors if you don’t! Nail down how you want your brand to feel (e.g. clean and premium; fast & furious; zen luxury), create distinctive brand assets (e.g. logo, tagline, colour palette, imagery style, key brand words) to reflect that feeling, and use the hell out of them – consistently and unabashedly. This is an exercise in rapid memory recall. Delivering your brand with clarity and consistency in tone and personality trains people’s brains to remember your brand when they think about which studio / gym to join – a form of branding muscle memory!
2. Don’t overstuff your marketing with features and benefits
There are soooo many reasons to join a gym – all the latest ’cutting-edge’ equipment, motivational classes, passionate staff, luxury changing rooms, etc. etc. etc. It can be tempting to plaster that list everywhere to persuade people to choose you. But it would likely have the opposite effect of making people skip over the blah blah blah – or no effect at all.
If you have a knock-out, genuine innovation that legitimately sets you apart, shout about it. But stay focused. If you’re doing brand marketing to drive awareness, assess whether any features or benefits are necessary or whether your marketing will stand out more if it’s clean and well-branded with a simple message / feeling. If you’re doing lower funnel, direct response comms / promotions, keep it short and punchy. The optimum number of persuasive messages / selling points is 3. Any more than that becomes wallpaper – the logic being that at 3, people mentally identify a pattern of having a good number of reasons to buy. Beyond this is the feeling of being overly sold to and thus switching off. There are many articles and studies on this subject – here are 3:
“In several experiments, people were most receptive to a sales pitch for a product—whether it was a cereal, shampoo, restaurant, date, or politician—when presented with three selling points. Beyond three, scepticism increased markedly.”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2277117
“This article posits that in settings where consumers know that the message source has a persuasion motive, the optimal number of positive claims is three. More claims are better until the fourth claim, at which time consumers’ persuasion knowledge causes them to see all the claims with scepticism.”
“A study done on the effectiveness of a wide variety of advertisements found three was the optimal number of reasons given to choose the product.”
3. Send a BIG signal with signage
With many gyms being off-high-street, hidden away in tower blocks, or down in basements, letting people know you’re there is critical. There are too many frustrating examples of gyms and yoga studios in high-traffic locations that don’t use it to their advantage.
We’re not talking the bigger the better. If your brand aesthetic is subtle and classy, create signage impact with consistent colour, clear stand-out logo and simple but impactful brand image. But whatever you do, recognise the enormous value of signage to signal your presence and constantly remind people you’re there. Don’t forget that the majority of people are not looking to join a gym / studio right now but will be at some point – so staying top of mind is key.
Of course, there are often restrictions to making your façade signage bold, and some landlords won’t allow it at all. If that’s the case, find creative ways around it and invest if you need to. You’ll reap the reward in the long term. Look for nearby properties to brand (phone boxes, billboards, bus shelters) and make yourself present in the local vicinity (collabs with local businesses, street installations, local pop-up events). Such strategic placements will help your brand be ubiquitous and are effective subliminal ‘drops’ in people’s minds.
Apart from sheer visibility and constant reminders, the more professional and brand-consistent your signage, the better the impression your gym / studio will give and the more likely to attract walk-ins.
There’s a gym up there, but you’d hardly know it
There’s a gym in here and you couldn’t miss it
4. Embrace common copy
Even the most seasoned copywriters fall prey to their egos. What reads and sounds great to you may not be what’s best for your audience – especially in the fitness industry where there are so many niche terms and acronyms that may not be known by the masses (GX, AMRAP, DOMS, Plyometric, etc). So it’s always important to identify your audience AND identify with them. Is your copy too obscure? Are your points of reference so specific that they may be lost on the general population? Are you being overly smart? Sometimes the most impactful copy requires ‘dumbing it down’ so that it resonates with everyone. And this is what the cleverest copywriters understand and accept.
5. Keep it real
In-house talent should be leveraged at every opportunity - why use models when your own team is way more fit-for-purpose? You're likely to have a group of authentic, great-looking people with a wide diversity in talent that you can call on whenever required. Take the time to get to know as many of them as possible so you can assess their skills and suitability, which will extend your creative possibilities to no end. After choosing the talent for your shoots, it's important to achieve an authentic representation - clinical, posed and static imagery is your enemy. Make the talent work HARD and you'll be rewarded with more compelling imagery that will resonate with your audience on a more visceral, emotional level.
6. Stick to a template
Many fitness companies create their collaterals by throwing key elements together seemingly randomly for each piece of work. It's critical to maintain consistency of design elements such as logos, logo placement, colour palette and fonts across all collaterals. Set up a template and stick to it - at least for the duration of a campaign. And in the case of in-house visuals (like digital screens inside your clubs), it should endure for longer periods. This will not only help with brand building and recognition, it will also enhance people’s ability to digest the information more effectively, save designers unnecessary production time, and create a visually cleaner studio environment.
7. Collaborate to accumulate
Fitness is a lifestyle choice and benefits enormously from being marketed in lifestyle contexts. This is where partnership marketing comes in. Look at the many brands in your target customers’ lives, narrow down those that match yours in terms of complementary services and brand positioning, and work out authentic ways to collaborate. NOT just by advertising to their customers or visa versa, but via activities such as co-hosted events, mutually beneficial offers, co-created videos, limited-edition products. There are huge opportunities to amplify your brand to a new audience in a desirable context.
The bloodstream team identified Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s national airline carrier, as a great match for PURE Yoga and successfully worked with the two brands over several years. This included creating collaborative wellness content for Cathay’s in-flight entertainment, communicating mutually beneficial offers to the brands’ customers, and unveiling the world’s first yoga studio in a business class lounge. It was a great added benefit to Cathay’s passengers, a mutually beneficial brand association, and a PR-driving machine – with global media coverage from Forbes, South China Morning Post, The Guardian, Business Traveller, Financial Times, Vogue and Stuff magazine.
The Sanctuary by PURE Yoga in Cathay Pacific’s ‘The Pier’ Business lounge
8. Reach the masses
Fitness is no longer a niche industry, and gym membership penetration continues to rise across most markets around the world. Yet many fitness brands focus only on uber-targeted, direct response marketing tactics like fitness-specific audience ads on socials and low-funnel SEM terms. These are not wrong – but rather than only thinking “How can I efficiently reach people who are in the market right now to join a gym?”, expand that with “How can I effectively harness the people who are currently in the market and also reach the largest possible audience who will be ready to buy a membership at some point soon.” This gives you short-term sales whilst future-proofing your business in the longer term. The more effective, sustained and distinctive your long-term activities are, the more likely people are to choose you when they’re ready to buy.
Sound EXPENSIVE? Mass reach doesn’t need to cost the earth. Sure, leverage the effective mass-reach ads on media like TV and billboards. But you can also use tactics like PR (tell your story in newsworthy ways) and partnerships (collaborations with complementary brands that generate mutual benefits) to reach a wider audience and build your brand.
9. Be readily accessible
There’s a sea of fitness choices out there and you might do everything right in terms of nailing your brand and marketing efforts, but fall at the last hurdle because it’s simply not easy or obvious enough how / where to buy.
Pay attention to minimising friction and maximising availability – clear pricing structure without too many options (3 is a proven optimal number!); simple channels for enquiries (online FAQ and chat function; clear phone number); online purchasing with minimal clicks; prominent calls-to-action on your website and your performance marketing communications; an always-on SEM and SEO strategy; inclusion in key fitness / wellness guides (preferably via PR - media relations)
10. Get referral right
Over 50% of new members often come via referral from existing ones. So it’s crucial that the right incentives are in place and your programme is effectively marketed. Points to think about:
- An incentive is best when shared – something for the referrer and something for the referee. The referrer may be more likely to refer if they can tell their friend they’ll get something exclusive (a discount, bonus month, gift, etc.) via the referral
- Money is always a great incentive (and what people say most incentivises them to refer), but you can also consider aesthetic tangible stuff like tech gadgets
- Think about volume AND quality of referrals – i.e. should you only offer an incentive for successful referrals, or should you give lower-level incentives to get any sort of referral?
- Make it easy peasy. Ideally, one click from the referrer to either generate a voucher / ePoster that they can message to the referee or submit their friends’ details
- Make it fun – cold, hard referral programmes can come across as clinical and money-grabbing. Make it richer with special duo classes and PT sessions, events and partner brands to engage your members’ friends in a warmer way. Even if they don’t join now, they’ll have had a good experience and memory of your brand
- Get the referral word out – through your app, your website, your socials, your in-club screens. If your programme’s good, it’ll be a broader marketing tool for your business. And get some social proof going by openly celebrating members who’ve successfully referred the most.
Part two of the bloodstream guide to fabulous fitness marketing... watch this space.