Blog 17: Health Club Marketing Hasn’t Changed Part 1

Health clubs frequently fall into patterns when it comes to health club marketing. Sadly, most health clubs have a handful of ideas and a few “go-to” mediums of delivery when it comes to attracting new health club members. Discounted memberships, one free week, free personal training sessions, etc. delivered via e-mails, newspaper ads, etc. are the staples of the health club industry.

The tragedy of limited knowledge and innovation of health club marketing is that you can easily fall victim to numerous external circumstances like new or improved competition, the economy, etc., and suddenly the health club is now in serious trouble and possibly on the verge of bankruptcy; all, because the education and knowledge of health club marketing were very limited, or worse, non-existent.

Think of it as going into battle against one hundred enemies having only a handful of arrows in your quiver. In this scenario, when faced with the real threat of possible failure and the fight or flight response kicks in, it is understandable why most health club marketers choose to flee (even if only internally) and “hope” things get better tomorrow or even worse, they tell themselves “January we will make up for it”, as opposed to reaching into their quiver for new arrows.

The key to avoiding this pitfall is to experiment with numerous mediums and campaigns for marketing your health club. Let’s take for example; we want to prepare a health club marketing strategy for 2014. In this example, we will use a health club starting their health club marketing for the year in July. Unless you are MMC® (www.healthclubmarketingmmc.com), you probably won’t be acquiring in new health club members in large numbers during this month so you’ll want to start setting yourself up for September onward. You could start with a little educational health club marketing to your existing lists with some bi-monthly (blasting your email list more than twice a month is list suicide unless you have something extremely important to share with your health club members) tips on improving your health and fitness with some indoor exercises performed at the club before enjoying your outdoor summer activities..

Educational health club marketing (also Branding) is a highly effective way to connect with your health club members and prospects without always trying to sell them something. At this time you are just planting seeds and if what you are sharing with them has value they will share it with their friends and it will start creating a buzz about your health club.

The key point I want to make here is always to have a variety of health club marketing ideas and mediums in your quiver in case one ( health club campaign or medium) performs poorly, you can immediately move on to another.

Be innovative with your health club marketing campaigns and you will grow your health club and your health and fitness career.

For more free tips on increasing your health club membership base through health club marketing, health club promotions, professional health club membership sales, and advancing your health and fitness career visit us today @ www.healthclubmarketingmmc.com or call 904-448-5727.