We all know that advertising your fitness studio is an essential part of maintaining and growing your business.

But let’s be real, you didn’t open up a studio to spend all your time learning to become a marketing expert, while juggling a million other responsibilities.

More importantly, advertising can be costly and time consuming. So, you’ll want to make sure you get the best bang for your buck (and time) when coming up with ads for your boutique fitness studio or gym.  

Lucky for you, at Xplor Mariana Tek, we’re all about making life easier for boutique fitness studio owners. We understand your time is scarce, so we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of 7 fitness ad ideas and examples that you can use as inspiration for your future marketing campaigns.  

We’ll also cover four (not-so-obvious) reasons why fitness studios need to advertise and share some critical tips to help make your ad campaigns successful.

Why do Fitness Studios Need to Advertise?

While the answer to this question may seem obvious, it’s important that we highlight key factors impacting today’s landscape that influence how you should market your fitness business.

Need to stand out in a competitive market? Our software for fitness studios offers tools to help you create effective marketing campaigns that drive results. 

1. To Stay Relevant Against in an Increasingly Competitive Environment

Did you know that the number of fitness studios and gyms in the United States has grown by over 50% in the last decade alone? That means there are now more fitness businesses than ever before, all competing for the same clients.  

Not to mention, the advent of promotional tools like Groupon and ClassPass combined with economic challenges have made customers more price sensitive.  

With increased competition, comes increased marketing costs. Making it even more important to focus on the right marketing strategies for your fitness business.

2. To Attract, Retain, and Convert New Leads to Full Time Clients

It all starts with awareness. If no one knows your fitness studio exists, how will they become clients? By getting more visibility in your community and generating more leads, your fitness studio can then leverage effective marketing tactics to convert those leads into customers and returning clients.  
We’ll get to some detailed marketing and advertising ideas for fitness studios further down in this article, but here are a few high-level examples of ways you can turn your leads into returning clients:

  • Promotions
  • Automated Marketing
  • Contests
  • Social Media
  • Community Events

3. To Overcome Seasonal Slumps in the Fitness Industry

Like any businesses, your fitness studio can expect peaks and valleys throughout the year due to seasonality.  

You’ve seen it all before – a massive uptick in participation after the New Year, summertime slowdowns because of holidays, and everything in between.  

Tactical and proactive fitness advertising strategies can help you keep your momentum going and avoid significant lulls caused by seasonality.

Example:

‍Bad news: You’re likely going to lose some momentum from your New Year rush as you start heading into the spring calendar.
Good news: You can leverage ad tactics and marketing campaigns to manage this slump. Fitness challenges are a common, tried-and-true marketing idea used by fitness studios to help with this exact scenario.

4. To Expand the Reach of Your Fitness Promotions

Chances are you’re already advertising your fitness studio in some capacity.  

But have you ever heard the marketing terms “paid, earned, and owned media” thrown around?  

  • Paid: As the name implies, is the mix of paid channels that you might use to advertise. Social ads, search ads, paid content promotions, Influencers, etc.
  • Earned: This includes things like mentions on blog posts, social media, review sites, news articles, etc.
  • ‍Owned: Channels like your website, blog, email distribution list, and mobile app.  

Known by many as the “marketing trifecta,” this media mix illustrates all the different ways you can market your fitness studio. And all the different ways your competitors are likely advertising too!  

You might be a rockstar at marketing your fitness studio through earned media, but the buck doesn’t stop there. Your marketing needs to continuously evolve and expand to keep your studio relevant in a highly competitive market.

  • Key Takeaway: Don’t put all your marketing eggs in one basket. It’s important that you leverage all three marketing media categories, but also manage how they intersect with one another to reach more people than you are today.

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Fitness Studio Advertising 101: 4 Tips to Get the Most out of Your Ads

There are so many different ways you can advertise your fitness studio. New marketing strategies are popping up every day – IE: Meme Marketing (we’ll talk more about this later!)

Regardless of what you are promoting and how you choose to do it, it’s important you consider these five fundamental tips for your fitness studio’s marketing activities:

Advertising Tip 1: Tell a Compelling Story Through Content Frameworks that Convert

Don’t underestimate the power of words. As you already know, marketing is complex and being an effective marketer requires a lot of skill, knowledge, and practice.

But most marketing pundits will agree on one thing – Copywriting is the #1 skill every marketer needs to be successful.

‍So, how do you create compelling copy for your fitness studios’ ads?  

Use proven marketing content models to build out your content!

Some commonly used marketing content models include:

  1. AIDA (Attention, Information, Desire, Action)
  2. PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve)
  3. Before-After-Bridge

These are just a few of the many content models you can use to create compelling copy and boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Ever heard of ChatGPT? Of course, you have! You can ask ChatGPT to create marketing copy using content models.  

Tip

For example, if you want to create email copy promoting your 30-day Yoga Challenge using the AIDA model, you can ask ChatGPT the following prompt: “Write a marketing email promoting a 30-day yoga studio challenge starting on May 1st using the PAS content model.” ChatGPT can help tremendously with your marketing efforts. But always be sure to personalize the content to align with your gym or studio’s brand.

Advertising Tip 2: Provide Value to Your Audience

Whether you’re promoting a limited time offer, trying to drive traffic to your blog, or trying to increase class participation, you need to make sure that what you are advertising provides value to your target audience.  

How to Determine What’s Valuable:

It’s easy to assume what your clients or target audience think would be valuable. But the most effective marketers, don’t assume – they ask.

Before coming up with advertising ideas for your fitness studio and running campaigns, create surveys and gather responses from your existing clients and/or lead list.

You can use free tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to create your survey before sending out through your various distribution channels.  

Xplor Mariana Tek’s all-in-one boutique software includes powerful marketing features that make it easy to:

Tip

Create and segment contacts in your database for targeted email sends & Set up automated triggers that prompt survey emails to send when a specific action occurs  

How to Communicate Value:

Regardless of the channels you use to promote your campaign, you’re going to have a lot of noise to cut through. The content models we shared earlier will help you compel your audience, but you need to capture their attention first.

Always try to lead with the value of your fitness studio promotions through the different marketing channels you are using to advertise. For example:

  • Social Media Ads: Show the value in your graphics + as early as possible in your text. ‍
  • Email Marketing: Clearly communicate the value of your offer in the subject line. ‍
  • Landing Pages: Use headlines and above-the-fold content to clearly highlight your offer in the first few seconds someone lands on the page. ‍
  • In-App Ads: If you’re using Xplor Mariana Tek as your fitness studio software platform, you can advertise retail and promotions through your booking app using the popular In-App-Ads Feature. Use this real-estate carefully to capture attention and drive clicks to your promo.
Mariana Tek’s In-App Ads.

Advertising Tip 3: Leverage Social Proof

If you’re old enough to have lived through the dark ages of phone book advertising and the wild west of false, unsubstantiated claims (The world’s best X) … you’ve witnessed the substantial change in buying habits made possible by the world wide web.

What’s the first thing anyone does evaluating a product or service? Reach for their smartphone and start searching for reviews. Isn’t that what you do?

As someone looking to advertise your fitness business, you need to actively collect reviews and testimonials, and integrate them into your marketing efforts.

Social proof goes a long way!  

Calling back to our point about the marketing trifecta

Tip

Don’t forget that testimonials and reviews can exist as earned media (third party review sites + social media mentions) and owned media (written and video testimonials collected by you). Be sure to take advantage of both method types in your marketing strategy.

Advertising Tip 4: Have a Clear Call to Action

Finally, your fitness ads need to clearly showcase what your audience should do next by way of a clear, actionable CTA (call-to-action). For example:

  • Get 15% Off Your Class Pack
  • Claim Your Discount
  • Try a Free Class

There’s ton of CTA best-practice information available on the web, but here are a few key things you should always do:

  • Keep it Brief: Try to avoid long-winded, overly descriptive sentences. ‍
  • Keep it Focused: Resist any and all urges to bundle multiple things into one CTA. You should have one CTA with one outcome for your fitness promotion or campaign. ‍
  • Use Actionable Language: Use verbs whenever possible in your CTA text. Tests show that actionable language helps increase clicks on CTAs.  ‍
  • Make it Stand Out: What’s a campaign without results? Your CTA is the bridge between all the hard work you did to promote your fitness ad campaign and the results you’re trying to get. Use contrasting colors and strategic placement to make it stand out in all your marketing efforts.  

Example: In this post from Hot 8 Yoga they use bright, beautiful photos to promote an irresistible offer: 25% off for life. This CTA couldn’t be any clearer. Not only is the CTA the focal point of their graphic, it’s also prominently displayed in the post’s text.  

7 Fitness Studio and Gym Ad Ideas (with Examples)

With so many gyms, personal trainers, and fitness studios fighting for customers’ attention, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd.

There are many creative and effective fitness advertising ideas and examples that studios can use to increase their visibility and attract new customers, and just as many channels to promote them on.

Below, we’ll highlight 7 effective fitness studio and gym advertising ideas you can use in your marketing mix with real-world fitness studio and gym ad examples for added inspiration.

1. User-Generated Content

In most cases, the clients you are supporting in achieving their health and wellness goals are your #1 fans (and promoters).  

They’re probably already posting about their classes, instructors, and fitness progress – you can add fuel to this fire and turn your clients social posting activities into powerful, organic advertising for your gym or fitness studio.  

There are many ways you can encourage clients to spread the word on social about your studio and the impact it is having on their lives.  

Here are a few ways to take advantage of user-generated content to promote your fitness studio:

  • Run a fitness challenge and encourage participants to post their updates, progress, and results on social media.
  • Host a bring-a-friend month where clients can bring a guest for free to your classes and ask that they spread the word through their social networks.
  • Ask that your clients share a testimonial video on their social accounts about why they love your studio or their instructors.
  • Encourage clients to post before, progress, and after photos to social media to stay motivated on achieving their fitness goals (if they are comfortable doing so, of course).
  • Spotlight your clients’ milestones and ask them to proudly share them on social media.

Your studio is positively impacting the lives of your clients. Many of them will gladly promote your gym or studio if you simply ask. But you’re almost always guaranteed to increase your results by offering participants some sort of incentive.  

All of the user-generated advertising ideas above can be tied back to a contest or reward, and you should definitely consider doing so to get the most out of your efforts.

Real-World Fitness Advertising Example: Pure Barre NYC member, @ladylikelessons, shared a heartfelt message to her social media followers after completing her 500th Pure Barre class.

Attached to the post, a picture of her name getting added to the wall of other members that have achieved the same tremendous feat!

The celebration of this milestone is a naturally shareable event for user-generated content! Pure Barre NYC made the most of this special moment by reposting their client’s post to their own social media accounts.

🤔 Did you Know: Xplor Mariana Tek’s custom-branded client app shares milestones with clients so they can celebrate and share their results with friends!

2. Influencer Marketing

Influencers – a word you hear on a daily basis.  
Probably because Influencer Marketing has grown to become a $21.1 billion dollar industry!    

Before you start worrying about the hefty price tags of trying this type of ad strategy, rest easy knowing that you don’t have to break the bank to run a successful influencer marketing campaign for your gym or fitness studio.  

In fact, as a local business, you’ll want to get really narrow with your pool of potential influencers and focus on local, “nano-influencers.” AKA, folks with less than 10K followers.

PLUS, you may have influencers working at your studio already – hint: those amazing, popular and influential instructors running your classes! Like any marketing strategy, you’ll need to pick the right influencer(s) for your target audience.  

How, you ask?  

You can leverage tools like upfluence and Brandwatch to filter influencers in your area that align with:

  • Your budget
  • Your target audience
  • Your brand and values

If you’re new to influencer marketing, be sure to start small and have the right tracking in place to measure the success of your campaign.  

Tip

And don’t get discouraged if your ads don’t get the results you hoped for right away. You’ll want to run a few tests before ruling out this ad idea for your fitness studio.  

Real-World Fitness Advertising Example:

Harry French is one of those spin instructors with a larger-than-life personality and a massive social following to match it. His TikTok on using War Drums in a class targeted spin audiences specifically – riders who love to work out to a strong beat!  

And he makes it easy for his followers to book classes at RITE Studios by advertising the spin studio site link directly on his social media profiles.

3. Contests

Marketing is the only place where having something go “viral” is a good thing. Unfortunately, viral fame isn’t too easy to achieve.

Don’t lose hope.  

While your dreams of trending on Twitter and BuzzFeed might be a long shot, you can still achieve effective and worthwhile virality by running contests for your fitness studio.  

Contests are fantastic way to advertise your gym or boutique fitness studio for a few reasons:

  1. You can easily amplify the visibility of your studio by requiring folks to engaged with and follow on your social media accounts – instantly gaining visibility to the connections of your participants. Or you can require that participants subscribe to your newsletter, to be entered in the draw.
  2. You have complete control over your costs – it doesn’t take much more than an enticing prize and a little effort to set up and manage your campaign.
  3. They don’t take a lot of effort to run and can have a big impact – they are easy to set up, but even easier if you use a low-cost contesting tool like KingSumo (a software designed exclusively for running contests).  

Real-World Fitness Marketing Example: Vancouver-Based Yoga & Pilates Studio, Jaybird, joined forces with a local restaurant to run a highly effective Instagram Contest together.  

Here’s what they did:

  • They offered a combined prize of a $100 restaurant gift card & 3-class pass to their studio. By doing so, they offered a more enticing (and engaging) prize without having to give up more of their own services for free.
  • They instructed their combined social media following of 20,000+ people to:
    • Follow both brands on Instagram
    • Like the post
    • Tag their friends (1 entry per tag)

The results?  

In just 2 weeks, they were able to generate 363 likes, almost 1,000 tagged comments, and reaped the benefits of new followers and increased exposure.  

3 classes for all that engagement – a pretty good trade off if you ask us.

4. Community Events

Hosting local events is a proven way to engage with local community members and advertise your fitness studio or gym.  

By offering free classes or hosting charity events, gyms and fitness studios can effectively showcase their services and generate goodwill.

Real-World Fitness Marketing Example: OrangeTheory franchises are all about community events. Take, for instance, this free event in Denver hosted by OrangeTheory Fitness Union Station.  

Here’s what they did:

  1. They offered a free 1-hour session to showcase their services.
  2. They joined forces with a local hotel to host the event and other local businesses to supply snacks and brunch after the event. 
  3. They leveraged a free eventbrite page to manage RSVPs and promote their event to eventbrite’s’ local user base.

Ultimately, they are supporting local businesses in their community and gaining exposure through a low-cost event.

Leveraging the free eventbrite platform’s user base to gain more visibility is the icing on the cake.  

5. Limited Time Offers

Limited time offers can be an effective strategy for fitness businesses looking to boost sales and drive customer engagement through email marketing.  

By creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity, limited time offers can motivate subscribers to take action and make a purchase.  

For example, a gym or fitness studio could offer a discounted membership rate or free merch for subscribers who sign up within a specific timeframe.  

This not only incentivizes folks to take action but also creates a sense of urgency to act quickly.  

When used with effective email marketing tactics like powerful subject lines and compelling calls-to-action, limited time offers can help fitness businesses increase conversions and drive revenue.

Real-World Fitness Marketing Example: This limited time offer email from Pure Pilates Austin ticks all the boxes of an effective fitness studio ad.  

  • They got straight to the point with their promotion
  • They clearly communicated their offer
  • They leveraged a double-ended referral program to entice both their clients and their friends to take advantage of it
  • They clearly stated the time limit which created urgency around the offer
  • They ran the campaign right before the winter holiday lull

Effortlessly advertise your fitness studio with Xplor Mariana Tek.

Tip

Check out Xplor Mariana Tek’s marketing automation suite to effortlessly nurture new leads, convert first-timers to full-timers and boost your earning potential.

  • Hyper-segment and personalize your outreach with integrated client booking data
  • Build responsive emails with schedule blocks, featured staff, events, and more
  • Understand how marketing campaigns are performing with detailed engagement reports

Mariana Tek’s all-in-one fitness studio management platform makes it easy to delight your customers, drive revenue, and take control of your fitness business. Request your demo now!

6. Trending Memes

Meme’s have become a universal language on social media. So much so that brands everywhere are starting to adopt trending memes into their marketing strategies.  

Brands everywhere are taking to “Meme Marketing” because it’s:  

  • Low-effort (and can be high-reward)
  • Engaging and sharable
  • Appealing to young adults and social media users
  • Trendy and relevant

In just a few minutes, you can create a meme to advertise your gym or fitness studio using a generator like imgflip. No graphic design experience needed.  

Be warned, though. Not all memes are created equally. If you’re considering this marketing idea for your fitness business, be sure to:

  • Keep the meme relevant to your brand
  • Avoid overdoing it
  • Tread carefully with anything that could be seen as offensive or obscene (IE: Will Smith Slap memes)
  • Time your meme while the trend is still hot

Real-World Fitness Marketing Example: Remember the “Little Miss” meme craze from 2022? The Edge Fitness Clubs absolutely nailed this trend by creating “Little Miss” characters that light-heartedly poked fun at the different types of clients at their Gym.

7.  Strut Your Stuff

Your classes, your instructors, your studio space, your clients… all of these are things that people love seeing in their social media feeds and hearing about.  

You are making a difference in people’s lives, and folks love to see that. So, give them what they want and showcase all the incredible things you are doing.

  • Take group pictures after classes and tag your members (always ask for permission and let them know you’ll be sharing the pictures publicly)
  • Showcase your instructors and fun facts about them
  • Celebrate your clients for completing challenges, crushing personal goals, or reaching special milestones
  • Tell your studio’s origin story
  • Give virtual tours of your space
  • Take pictures and videos of your classes

Real-World Fitness Marketing Example: 305 Fitness knows all about strutting their stuff! Here you can see that they snapped a quick shot of all their smiling clients after an endorphin-boosting class, tagged them, and highlighted their free day pass promotion.

Final Thoughts

We hope you found these fitness studio & gym advertisement ideas helpful and are already started brainstorming ways to apply these strategies into your gym or fitness studio’s marketing mix.  

We’ll leave you with one final takeaway: Don’t stop trying new things. Experiment with different types of advertising and if one doesn’t work well for your studio – learn from it and move on the next ad idea!  

Also remember that there are plenty of free resources out there if none of these suggestions appeal to you at first glance; just do some research online before deciding on what works best for your gym or studio’s needs (and budget).  

Xplor Mariana Tek’s all-in-one boutique fitness software helps studios take control of their business, drive more revenue, and delight clients all from one powerful platform.  

Learn More About Mariana Tek Today!

Looking for creative ways to advertise your fitness studio? Check out 7 Fitness Studio & Gym Advertisement Ideas with Examples to find inspiration and grow your client base.

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by Xplor Mariana Tek

  • First published: April 17 2024

    Written by: Xplor Mariana Tek