How to Increase Gym Membership in 6 Simple Steps

22 Jul 2024

Get more members through the door with these top tips:

Focus On Your Niche
Encourage Staff to Sell
Set Up a Referral Program
Set Clients a Challenge
Promote Your Gym with Tech
Follow Up on Fitness Leads

When you’re operating a gym, regular clients keep your business running. The best way to ensure healthy growth for your fitness centre or gym is to increase membership numbers because committed members pay every month for access to their favourite exercise facilities. Around 10.3 million people in the UK are gym members¹ so you should have no problem finding a captive audience for your sales tactics.

So, with all those potential sign-ups out there, here’s how to increase gym membership with a few simple tips on feeling the burn of business promotion.

1. Focus on Your Niche

There’s plenty of competition for fitness clubs in most regions – one member is worth on average about £40 a month². To capture your share of those sign-ups, you need to show potential clients how your gym differs from competitors.

Do some research to identify your primary clientele based on:

The times they attend
The classes they take
Their age ranges
Their occupation

You might find a strong customer base among the young professionals who hit the weights before and after work; the moms who primarily work out during school hours, or perhaps seniors who love attending group classes. Focus your marketing efforts on your most prominent group.

You’ll likely find yourself with a mixture of clients, but you should tailor specific marketing and membership recruitment to each group separately to maximise your advertising and outreach.

Craft marketing materials that cater to each specific client group, so people considering multiple gym options in town can immediately identify yours as the best option to find their crowd.

Do you wan to attract more loyal customers and increase your brand awareness? Find out how.

2. Encourage Staff to Sell

Nobody knows the ins and outs of your gym better than your employees. So, when it’s time to turn interested visitors into fully-fledged members, your staff are the people who can make it happen. Teach them some of the basics of sales, like upsells and cross-sells, so they can steer the conversation towards joining your gym. Make sure your staff knows the class schedule, equipment, and supplements on sale so that they can answer any question a customer might have – or at least point them towards someone who can.

Trying to steer customers towards a long-term commitment like gym membership can be an especially daunting task for someone who isn’t a seasoned salesperson, so be sure to give employees some incentives for signing up new members, like a bonus check or points toward a big prize.

3. Set Up a Referral Program

Use current clients to find new prospects by setting up a referral program that rewards gym members when they recommend your facility to friends and family. One easy way to implement this is to offer a reward whenever someone successfully refers a new client. You could offer:

A free month of gym membership
A one-on-one session with a private trainer
Free entry to a group class
A water bottle, gym bag or other swag.

Keep in mind that the better the reward, the more willing members might be to refer their friends.

Drive referrals by holding in-gym guest events and encourage members to bring their friends. People considering a gym membership can check out your facilities before committing, and the presence of a friend who is already a happy client helps visitors feel comfortable about signing up right away. If the visitor is new to the gym environment, offer them short training sessions to help them feel confident about joining. Offer sample classes and free fitness assessments at a “friends and family” event to encourage new signups.

Discounts on multiple memberships are another way to get current members to bring in friends or family members. Offer a 10 to 50 per cent discount for the first few months when two or more people sign up together to encourage group signups. Once the discount period ends, you end up with multiple long-term clients paying full price instead of just one.

4. Set Clients a Challenge

Challenges and contests are a way to encourage new gym members to stay for the long haul. Set up a weight loss challenge with daily or weekly weigh-ins over a 12 or 16-week period to get new members motivated about coming to the gym regularly. Challenge members to track the miles they log on the treadmills or elliptical machines and encourage repeat visits to break their PBs. Offer prizes for gym members who lose the most weight or log the most miles, or reward everyone who meets specific goals, such as 100 miles logged, or 10 pounds weight lost.

As well as increased commitment from current members, challenges and contests also help you attract more gym customers. Picking a gym is an emotional and financial commitment, so setting a challenge for everyone who attends your fitness centre gives the place an aura of energy and excitement that attracts people looking for some workout motivation. Active challenges and successful contest winners make good news stories, so let local publications know about your plans before you start and get free publicity.

5. Promote Your Gym with Tech

Technology can simplify the entire process of marketing your gym and increasing your membership base. Create a fully interactive website to offer gym visits, sell memberships, and maintain an active social media presence. Always respond quickly to comments on your social media page, and address any concerns posted online right away so negative reviews don’t harm your gym’s reputation.

Localised social media ads let you reach everyone from fitness fanatics to first-time exercisers in your town, city, or region. Most social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, let you target your advertising to a specific geographic area, so you don’t waste money or time promoting your gym to users across the country.

Pump up your marketing efforts by encouraging current members to promote your gym online, too. Establish hashtags that clients can use on selfies and ask current members to post reviews of your fitness centre online. Set up online check-ins so clients can show off their workouts and provide free advertising every time they step through the door.

Technology also helps you develop a community around your fitness club, which can drive new memberships and keep current members engaged. Consider developing an app for your gym that friends could use to track each other’s workout progress or set up a Facebook group for gym members to ask and answer fitness questions.

6. Follow Up on Fitness Leads

For our final tip on how to increase gym membership, we recommend contacting those who show an interest in your gym to help turn potential clients into long-term members. Collect email addresses from interested individuals and offer an opt-in text service or email list to let people know about upcoming promotions and events. Use a specialised software system or database to track potential clients and send follow-up messages regularly.

Keep in mind that your goal is to drive long-term memberships, not just to bring in short-term clients who leave after their trial period is done. Creating promotions and programs that excite new clients and turn them into committed gym members helps ensure the long-term success of your business.

If you’re ready to boost your fitness centre marketing efforts and attract more gym customers, find out how Groupon works to help you reach potential customers and turn them into paying clients.