This article explores many strategies a marketer in the health and wellness sector can employ to expand membership, raise income, and, most importantly, keep customers coming back.
Introduction
Have you ever tried to determine how your clients learned about your fitness business? You can use such a poll to determine what causes the majority of your traffic.
But even without performing a survey, if questioned, the majority of members will disclose that they found you online. This might have come about through chats with friends and family via a chat app like WhatsApp, through the obvious and well-known search engine Google, one of their social networking sites, or by referrals from friends on social media.
Additionally, you will need to market to specific members based on the needs they desire to be met. Depending on the services you are providing, you need to know what will work and what won't.
The latest digital marketing strategy will involve several steps that help your health and fitness business achieve its long-term and short-term objectives through various Internet marketing platforms.
These include owned, paid, and earned media, all of which work toward attaining that objective.
1. Market Research
If you don't know where you are and where you're going, no campaign or strategy will work. The first leg of this journey is the focus of this chapter.
Perform market research first. The information you gather is crucial because it will enable you to:
➼ For your marketing initiatives, provide materials that are compelling.
➼ Choose your target audience.
➼ Identify new goods or services based on the needs of your customers.
➼ To avoid losing leads, position your brand.
➼ Keep abreast of new industry trends
You can learn about the needs of your customers, the needs of your company, and what your competitors are doing by conducting market research.
Find out what makes your wellness business unique. Do you excel at kickboxing, fitness exercises, corporate wellness initiatives, and the dissemination of health and fitness knowledge, among other things? What are the company's background, principles, objectives, mission, and vision? How do your customers view your business?
Create a precise definition of your target audience next. The fact that most wellness businesses target multiple demographics without explicitly communicating with one is the one factor in their failure.
You can cater to a variety of audiences, but your service delivery must have a unifying theme. The items and services you provide should be centred on a service that your excel.
The particular set of people you want to receive your marketing message is known as your target audience. They are the ones who will probably visit your gym. They share various traits with one another, such as demography and behaviour.
You may better understand your audience's demands by segmenting, targeting, and positioning your audience.
You may now create a marketing strategy using the data gathered. For instance, the diagram below depicts six market categories for a fitness centre.
These customer profiles might want to increase their social life, slim down, look better, perform better, get healthier, or get more fit for sports.
Discover the interests, routines, and interests of your target audience to ensure correct categorization. Equally significant criteria are their employment, demographics, online behaviours (do they follow specific brands and through what channels? ), and what motivates their purchasing decisions (emotion or reason).
Ask current consumers what they think of your brand and what they think you should change after determining who your target demographic is.
You should also interview prospective clients who are part of your target market. Discover why clients quit coming to your business if you can find them.
Finding out what your rivals are doing better than you require conducting research on your competition. Why do they profit more than you do? What tools are they employing to increase visitors, how are their advertising and online presence performing, and where are they focusing their efforts?
After conducting your market research, you ought to have discovered which fitness programmes you excel at, who your target market is, and what sets you apart from your rivals. Therefore, if your fitness business excels in fitness activities for women, for example, you already know a portion of your target market.
Your website, social media presence, and organisational culture should be shaped by it. Even if this isn't everything you have to offer, your knowledge of workouts specifically tailored for women will set you apart from the competition.
Must Read: Role of Digital Marketing in Healthcare Industry
2. Health and Wellness Website
Think of your health and fitness business' website as its foundation. It serves as the online home of your business. You can advertise your distinctive goods and services to prospective and current customers there, provide educational and interesting content, and assist them in overcoming obstacles and attaining their health objectives.
It's simple to create a stunning website, but has it been search engine optimised? Do you consistently receive leads and customers? If not, it's time to use search engine optimization to optimise the website of your business (SEO).
The four pillars of SEO, according to Smart Insights, are as follows:
➼ Technical SEO: Can crawlers and indexers access your content?
➼ Do you have interesting and enlightening content aimed at your ideal clientele?
➼ Are the HTML and content of your website optimised?
➼ Off-page SEO: How are you establishing your site's authority to raise its search engine rankings?
The proper page names, meta descriptions, headers, pictures, and URL structures are necessary for on-page SEO. Additionally, it entails enhancing your website's exposure, site structure, and loading time.
In order to increase your site's authority, use off-page SEO. By obtaining inbound links from reputable and pertinent websites, producing worthwhile material, and disseminating it to other websites, you can achieve this. Your internet visibility and search engine rankings will increase as a result of the inbound links you receive from the material.
Your website must be mobile-friendly as well. The URL should be the same across all platforms. In addition to being easy for Google to crawl and index, responsive design also gives your customers a terrific browsing experience on any device.
Search Engine Optimized Content
Creating useful and captivating content that is centred on the requirements and desires of your target audience is always an essential component of a successful SEO strategy. With the correct content, you can draw in visitors who are most likely to become paying clients.
Create a blog on your website and provide informative, non-promotional posts on the problems your customers face. Describe the issues your clients face, offer answers, and only then explain how your services can help them overcome these obstacles.
A wonderful area to get leads is on your blog. Offer content that guides prospective customers through the purchasing process. Learn what they are looking for online, then produce in-depth articles about those subjects.
Display your knowledge of the subjects and offer solutions. Until they are ready to buy, nurture these leads with excellent content throughout their buying cycle. Calls to action can be used to send customers to landing pages that will produce leads. (There should be a form on the landing page that the lead must fill out in order to receive an offer.)
Create research reports, e-books, and whitepapers for your audience to download from your website (this is also an effective way of building a mailing list). Upload instructional films, host webinars, distribute free goods, etc.
To meet the varying needs of your target audience, the content you offer should be diverse. The customer should be entertained, educated, and intrigued.
Find out which kind of content are most effective with your audience by doing research. Maybe you should make more videos if diet and exercise how-to videos attracted more visitors than a business e-book on wellbeing.
Your chance to convert visitors into leads is increased when you use interesting content. For instance, visitors can enter their information in exchange for your white paper's content on the forms they complete out to download it.
It's crucial to keep in mind that the material you produce should be targeted at your ideal client. It facilitates their way of life. For instance, a corporate wellness app to increase employee engagement at work or a white paper that offers health and fitness advice are both excellent ways to interact with your customers.
You'll find the ideal customer by conducting research on your desired audience.
3. Social Media
Currently, there are over 3 billion users of social media, of which up to 3.26 billion access it using mobile devices.
Examine the influence and development of the social media networks that are currently or have been available in the past.
As you can see, there are a lot of platforms out there, making it difficult to decide which ones are best for your business. The location and preferred information types of your target will have been revealed through your market research, nevertheless.
If they are accessible through Facebook, you must make your page searchable. Your company name should match the name that appears on your page. Fill up the company information with specific details.
Then ask them to like the page by inviting their friends, family, and previous customers. The Like, Recommend, and Share buttons on your page should encourage interaction. Finally, publish interesting material that improves the lives of your customers.
Also Read: Social Media Wellness Communities: Connecting Hearts
4. Multi-channel Advertising
You need to have control over as many touchpoints as you can if you want to keep your clients interested. Touchpoints are how customers find your company on social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
It's a conversation that might alter the customer's perception of your product or service. The touchpoint may take place before to, during, or following the sale.
More touchpoints are needed in marketing today to close a deal. It is insufficient to produce a monthly podcast, make promotional blog posts, employ internet advertisements, or apply conventional marketing strategies. You must take far more action if you want to grab and hold your clients' interest.
You must think about the following in order to succeed in marketing:
➼ Identifying the social media channels that your potential consumer uses by deploying targeted ads.
➼ Utilising external influencers to attract visitors to your website.
➼ Spreading your message by submitting articles to outside publications with your byline.
➼ Using podcasts and videos.
➼ Providing news releases on the company's accomplishments, accolades, contests, etc. to keep the customers updated.
➼ Posting free e-books and white papers that give customers more information As an illustration, providing complimentary dietary guidance that complements your purchased fitness services
➼ Utilising visuals such as infographics, memes, and high-quality photographs of quotes.
➼ Utilising in-person activities like hiking, sporting events, team-building activities, etc.
Customer-focused integrated digital marketing techniques are great. Apply them throughout the whole consumer purchasing journey across several channels.
Keep in mind to include a call-to-action on the landing page you choose for your paid advertising. It can entail downloading the workplace wellness app, enrolling in the men's exercise class, or becoming a subscriber to the health and fitness publication.
To retarget your leads, use retargeting. Without being intrusive, retargeting enables you to interact with existing clients on other channels they use.
5. Automation
You can run your fitness business more easily and profitably by taking advantage of automation. You can automate parts of your procedures with the help of various software programmes. Through the integration of such software with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can successfully use it to streamline your business processes.
Let's examine the advantages of automation for health and fitness businesses in greater detail.
Customers can schedule and pay for their fitness sessions online using a desktop or a smartphone. Not only will it help your clients, but it will also make scheduling simpler, relieve your team of desk duties, and improve the quality of service you provide to your clients. An iPad at the front desk allows guests to check themselves in, saving you the expense of hiring a front desk staff.
Lead nurturing is greatly facilitated by automated marketing. Sending valuable, pertinent, and carefully targeted messages to potential clients aids in the development of connections. Using timely delivery of tailored email messages, automation enables you to keep your potential consumer interested and informed. The sales cycle is shortened thanks to efficient lead nurturing. You can manage their data, create lead collection forms, run automated campaigns, and send them specific messages.
Without having to contact your clients, automation enables you to keep track of payments. You receive notifications when a card is set to expire, when payments have been made, or when a membership term is about to expire. m in order to check in.
Communication with customers is made simpler by automation. You spend less time communicating with clients on a weekly or daily basis by using automatic SMS messaging and emails. With the push of a button, automation preserves one-on-one communication.
With a rewards programme, you can please your customers. Pick actions that let customers earn incentives, such as writing reviews, enrolling in a course, or making a purchase. After that, your automated system thanks your clients for their loyalty.
Automation makes it simple to engage and manage clients. Clients have access to a library of fitness videos, nutritional guidelines, and essential exercises, among other things. While you keep an eye on their development, they can print them out as well.
6. Evaluation of Your Digital Marketing Plan
You can identify what's working and what isn't by measuring. For better outcomes, you can then enhance, delete, or adjust.
Establish a success metric after first deciding what you want to improve. For instance, to double the number of people who join gyms during the following three months.
Examine the performance of the programmes you put in place so far and make adjustments as needed. Continue with the ones that assist you in reaching your objectives, and change or enhance the ones that don't. For instance, ascertain:
Which channel is the main source of traffic?
Can you turn these visits into leads?
How have overall sales changed from one month ago?
Do your marketing efforts yield a return on your investment?
How do most visitors arrive at your website?
Do you receive recurring business?
Make a final assessment of your success in meeting the benchmarks you've specified. If not, figure out what needs to be done differently and make sure your changes have a lasting impact.
Must Read: Local SEO: Boosting Health Clinics & Wellness Centers
The information you gather will enable you to identify areas that want improvement. Do you need to work on your SEO strategies, concentrate on one type of content, increase your social media engagements, or alter the time of your email marketing campaigns?
To learn what's working, use data from services like Google Analytics.
Keep track of conversions, bounce rates, interaction, and organic search reach on social media. Do you have more people signing up for the new fitness classes, or does the traffic come from the articles about nutrition and health?
Your top priority should be to focus on whatever is increasing conversions. To enhance conversion rates, you should work hard to improve other programs.
Final Thoughts - Health and Fitness Digital Marketing Guide
The way the health and fitness sector markets its goods and services to prospective customers needs to alter. The research shown above demonstrates how crucial digital marketing is for attracting and keeping customers. Without a digital marketing strategy and by ear, health and fitness businesses will continue to lose out to rivals.
You can employ a variety of digital marketing strategies, as demonstrated above, but the key is understanding how to adapt them to your particular line of work.
Every digital marketing strategy must be thoroughly considered and assessed. For instance, tailoring content, retargeting, using Facebook ads, and using email automation are just a few examples.
Knowing your strengths and focusing on them will help you gain more memberships. The next thing you can do is thoroughly research your rivals to identify a void that you can fill. Finding out what your clients need and meeting that need is the final crucial tactic.
It's about anticipating your customers' wants and meeting them adequately and promptly using data and insights from your digital marketing plan. retaining their interest with educational content and giving them all the assistance they require to convince them to select you over a home training regimen.
In conclusion
The way that companies and brands advertise their goods and services has been altered by digital marketing.
Traditional marketing strategies appear to have lost ground as businesses increasingly use digital platforms and approaches to attract clients and increase revenue.
The $27 billion health and fitness business has not been left behind.
As more people embrace better lifestyles, they progressively turn to fitness as a means of maintaining their physical fitness.
The majority of individuals are now experimenting with various exercise regimens, including home-based fitness routines, because convenience is a major consideration.
People today prefer to access online exercise solutions over physically visiting a health and fitness club, which is a sign of the times in which we live.
Workout videos can be found on YouTube in countless numbers.
You don't even need to have bulky equipment for the majority of these. All you need is some room in your home or workplace.
This industry is up against competition from internet retailers, brick and mortar stores, and even wearables like the well-known Fitbit, which allows users to track their activities, exercise, diet, weight, and even sleep.
Since then, it has been clear that fitness clubs are now competing with the proliferation of in-house health and fitness equipment as well as the soaring popularity of at-home training DVDs.
There is a revolution in home fitness that raises concerns that individuals will soon stop going to gyms and fitness centres and solely want to exercise at home.
Nowadays, connected home exercise equipment is readily available to the public. Now, you may exercise in your own home by using a bike, weights, a treadmill, dumbbells, and a rowing machine.
This easily accessible equipment can be used in conjunction with a flexible, always-available online personal trainer.
Traditional fitness businesses find it difficult to improve product sales and membership due to these and other issues in the health and fitness sector.
The industry has also been overrun by rivals, fitness and health articles, and instructional videos.
Ranking well on search engines has grown difficult, let alone standing out from the competition.
Therefore, market participants need to radically alter their marketing strategies. This white paper examines how business stakeholders may use digital marketing to successfully address issues brought on by technology. One word may adequately describe the solution: technology. Yes, you need to become a techie to level the playing field and win challenges that use technology. But let's examine this response in greater detail to learn how to use technology to your advantage rather than against you.
