You've got the equipment. You've got the experience and the team. You've got the education. But there is so much noise in the health and fitness industry that you're finding it nearly impossible to stand out. The number one issue for any fitness brand is lack of leads and being able to prove that they're different. It's time to improve your fitness marketing.
With so many false claims, hype, and unreasonable expectations set by poor marketing, it's become harder and harder to set yourself apart. So, how do you draw attention to your brand and generate new and more leads online? We've got five ways to do it...
1. Helpful Blog
Most businesses in the health and fitness industry are making one of two mistakes with their blog - either they aren't blogging (or aren't blogging enough) or they're only taking a self promotional stance with their content. Let me be very clear here - no one cares. No one cares how great you think you are or about the award you just won. They care about how you can help them. They are looking to your blog for information. They want to learn, not read an advertisement. Use your blog to educate your prospects and clients, not to brag or hype yourself up. You've got tons of knowledge so share it. The companies that are going to be most successful in 2017 are those that are more worried about being helpful than they are about forcing sales. So, be HELPFUL!
EXPERT TIP: You're in a VERY competitive space so while we recommend at least four blog posts per month for other industries, we would recommend at least six to eight per month for any company in the health & fitness space.
2. More than just a Free Trial
Most companies in the fitness industry have some sort of offer throughout their site and it's almost always a bottom of the funnel offer. Something like a "FREE Trial" or a "FREE Class" or a "Body Evaluation". These are offers that are only interesting to someone that is a bottom of the funnel prospect. What about all the people that visit your site and are just comparing companies? Or the visitors that are just doing research on what is best for them? Or those that are just learning that they need to make some lifestyle changes? These kinds of offers are completely uninteresting to these people. What ends up happening is these people never convert to a lead on your website so you can never nurture them into becoming a client.
Developing content that is interesting to visitors that are in every stage of the buyer's journey (top, middle, and bottom of the funnel) will help you keep your pipeline full while being helpful. Content that you can develop for each stage include white papers, checklists, infographics, videos, guides, and eBooks. Get creative and think about what would really be useful to someone in each stage. Need some inspiration? Check out our Content Marketing Ideas Using Assets You Already Have blog post!
3. Keyword Focus
With as competitive as the health, wellness, and fitness industries are, it's important to be very deliberate about everything on your website down to the copy on each page. SEO is an important tactic for this industry and doing your research and focusing on specific keywords that you want to rank for on each page on your site is vitally important. Your keywords should be used throughout your copy, in the image alt tags on the page, in titles, and in your urls.
EXPERT TIP: Keyword stuffing is no longer a thing. Don't be that guy. You want to sound like a human when you write your copy while also focusing on your keywords. Search engines have become very smart and they understand pluralization and variations of keyword phrases. So what this means is that you actually can sound like a human without cramming keywords in every chance you get. Be a human, not a robot.
4. Develop your Personas
Who are the people that you are targeting? Do you actually know? Is your target persona, "anyone that wants to get into shape"? No, no it's not. You've got to be much more specific and focused with your personas. Who have you had the most success with? Who do you like to work with most? Who benefits the most from your unique tactics or programs? You can't tell me that a 75-year-old lady that wants to get into shape is an ideal fit for your crossfit gym. Developing your target personas is important to every single thing you do from your marketing material to your equipment.
So have you developed your personas? If not or you need some help further refining them, check out this great tool from HubSpot!
5. Optimize your CTAs
Like we touched on earlier, most fitness companies are pretty good about having calls-to-action throughout their website, but they're all the same "FREE Trial" type offer. Understanding the persona that is likely visiting each page, what they're interested in, and even optimizing your calls-to-action to be SMART content that populates depending on the individual contact that visits each page are great ways to keep your content and CTAs interesting to your visitors and will help you convert more leads.
With so much noise out there from gyms to personal trainers to software programs to fitness plans it's your job to help potential customers weed through the forest. Being helpful is the way that you can set your company apart from the rest. People are searching for answers, not sales pitches. Implementing these five tips will help you start to convert more and more visitors into prospects then you'll have the opportunity to nurture those leads into customers!
Check out how we help businesses in the fitness industry separate themselves, generate and nurture leads, and encourage customers to repurchase and renew memberships at fitnessinbound.com!
