How Gym Owners Can Overcome These 8 Business Obstacles

Running a gym is not easy. It takes hard work and patience to build up a successful business. Owning a business doing the things you love is a fulfilling and rewarding experience. As a gym owner, you put your heart and soul into your business. You work harder than you ever have before. There are many obstacles that gym owners like you are challenged by every day. But they can be overcome.

This article will detail the challenges you face as a gym owner. And it will give you some ideas to help you improve your business marketing. Let’s start by looking at the 8 most common obstacles gym owners like you face.

1. Gym owners do too many things at once

As a gym owner, you have many different tasks to keep track of. You've got marketing, client acquisition, accounting, keeping track of payments, and more. Not to mention training clients, instructing classes, and keeping up with your own training routine. That’s a lot of tasks that you have to manage. Don’t overload yourself. Trying to do too many things puts a lot of stress on you, which can be tough to deal with… especially for new gym owners.

Delegating tasks and automation will help free up your time to focus on other things. It’ll relieve your stress. Don’t be afraid to let someone else handle tasks for you. It’s important to seek help when needed… You can’t do everything yourself. Nor should you try!

You’re a business owner. Not a business owner, accountant, financial advisor, receptionist, marketer, copywriter, salesperson, and trainer. That’s enough work for an entire team!

Remember why you wanted to open a gym: To help clients live healthy lives. To bring more people the gift of fitness. And so on. Keep this in mind as you operate your business. This thought can get lost among everything else that you do for your business each day.

2. Facility maintenance

Maintaining a clean gym requires dedication and hard work around the clock. Add in trying to maintain functioning equipment and you’ve got a lot to keep track of! Both of these challenges can be safety concerns that put clients at risk… And you.

Hire a janitor to help keep the gym clean… No one likes to walk into a stinky locker room. Make an annual schedule for equipment repair. Being proactive in your gym maintenance routine is key to keeping your gym equipment in good shape. It helps you retain your clients and keeps them happy to work out at your gym. And you won’t need to replace equipment as often.

3. Keeping a pulse on the competition

As a gym owner, you most likely face stiff competition in your area. From all the other small business gyms in the area to the big, chain gyms. These businesses are competing for the same clientele.

Paying attention to what your competition is doing gives you valuable information. You can see where you stack up among your competition. There’s a lot that you can learn from what other gyms are doing… And if those things are working for them. You can then react to the things that are working for them by copying their strategies. Or you can go in a different direction if they didn’t work for that gym. Going a different direction can also make your gym stand out from the crowd.

By keeping your pulse on the competition, you ensure that you won’t be left behind. You won’t be losing clients and not knowing why. If you take action after researching your competition, you’ll be able to stay one step ahead of what they are doing.

Keeping up with the industry and local trends helps you keep your gym relevant. It keeps clients coming back to your gym and helps bring in new clients too.

4. Defining your target audience

Knowing who your audience is helps you cater directly to them. Are you a gym that is for everyone? Is your gym a powerlifting gym for the serious lifter? Or maybe your gym is dedicated to group classes.

If you know who your audience is, you can appeal to their gym needs. Your website can answer questions they may have. It can also challenge objections they may have.

Knowing your target audience helps you define what’s unique about your gym. Having a unique selling point gives your gym an edge over the competition. It makes your gym stand out… And it’ll bring more attention to your gym over all the cookie-cutter gyms in your area.

You can also reduce your competition. Let’s say you’re a hardcore powerlifting gym. You no longer have to compete with the local gyms that are trying to bring in clients for their barre classes. Or the gyms looking for clients to fill up the cardio machines. You’re only competing with gyms looking for the hardcore powerlifters and barbell beasts. It’s much easier to corner the market in your area by defining your target audience.

5. Creating consistent revenue

This is one of the biggest challenges you face as a gym owner. If you aren’t bringing in enough money to pay off your expenses, then your gym is doomed to fail. Let’s prevent that from happening.

Consistent revenue allows you to pay the bills, pay employees, keep the lights on, and keep the gym open. It is crucial to your gym surviving and thriving.

Creating consistent revenue comes down to two main things. These things are: bringing in new clients and retaining your existing clients. The next two sections will dive into these challenges.

6. Getting new clients

Bringing in new clients to your gym is what helps it grow. You need to convince prospective clients why they should join your gym. You need to show them how your business is going to improve their life. And you need to do this while speaking to the right people. If you’re speaking to the wrong audience, then it’s a waste of your time and money. Getting your message to the right people at the right time is a tough task. But doing some research on your target audience will help you learn how to reach them.

To get new clients, you’re going to need to do some marketing. Later in this article, you’ll learn some marketing ideas you can use to bring in new clients. Many of these ideas will also help you retain your current clients.

7. Keeping your existing clientele

After you bring in new clients, you need to build up a client base. You’ve got to convince your clients why they should stay with you. There are numerous gyms in your area, each of which could lure your client away. Or your client could stop going to a gym altogether. These are both problems you should try to avoid.

To retain your clientele, keep them engaged. And keep them happy, too. Having a positive association with your gym will keep your clients happy to stay working out at your gym. Each client you retain is an income stream you get to keep. Keeping your existing clientele is how you build consistent revenue.

8. Marketing for gym owners

Learning about marketing is one of the best things you can do to build your business. Hiring professionals to help you out is another option you can use to build your business if you’re too busy.

Marketing is what gets your business seen by potential clients. Marketing grows your business. It’s crucial to your business’s survival. It could be the difference in making a profit this month or not. Being able to purchase new equipment or not. Being able to open an additional location or not. And of course, adding new clients or not.

Effective marketing relies on knowing why people spend money: To avoid pain or to gain pleasure. Market your gym as the solution to your prospective client’s pain. Show them how you can solve their problems and help them reach their goals. Your marketing should also show them how they can build confidence, increase their attractiveness, build strength, lose fat, and so on. And how they’ll create a healthier lifestyle by choosing your gym.

In general, keep your marketing positive. You want to have people associate your gym with good feelings. This will keep them happy, helping you retain them as clients.

A good marketing strategy helps you grow a business that thrives. Marketing benefits you, no matter your business goals. Marketing can be tricky because there are so many marketing options to choose from. But that’s what makes it fun. You get a lot of creative freedom to try new strategies and grow your business the way you want to.

Let’s take a look at some ideas to add to your current marketing strategy…

Here are 16 marketing ideas for gym owners:

1. Create social media profiles

Most people nowadays are on social media. Most businesses now use social media as well. Going to where your prospective clients are allows you to bring your services to them. This makes it easier for your prospective clients to find you. Using social media for your business can do many things for you including:

Helping you connect with your target audience
Increase website visitors
Increase sales
Help you research your competitors
Retaining clients

Social media is versatile. There are many different things you can use your gym’s social media accounts for.

Here are some ideas for you to use social media:

Promote client success stories
Run polls
Start conversations with clients and prospects
Get feedback from clients
Build community
Share motivational quotes
Share tips that can help your clients
Show off your gym space and equipment
Give news and updates to clients

2. Create a blog

Creating a blog is a valuable addition to your marketing plan. It’s a great tool to get more traffic (website visitors) to your website. And it gets more clients into your gym. According to Cybex, a renowned gym equipment manufacturer, having an active blog on your website brings in 55% more visitors.

Blogs help relieve stress, anxiety and fear that a prospective client may have about going to a gym. Blogs can help make your prospective client warm up to the possibility of going to the gym if they’ve never been to one before. It can also convince a client of another gym that yours is better, causing them to switch to your gym.

A blog also gives your prospects valuable information that they can use in their fitness plan. Here are some ideas you can use for your blog:

Workout guides
Exercise how-to guides
Nutrition tips
Programming tips
Cutting and bulking strategies
Weight loss plans
Injury prevention tips
Client transformation stories

There’s an endless amount of valuable content you can provide your clients.

Blogs also help your search engine visibility. The more pages you have on your website, the more that the search engine can find and promote. Writing great content increases the number of people who will see your website. It also establishes the expertise of your business. It shows potential clients that you know what you’re talking about.

3. Use email marketing

Building an email list is a great way to market to both your existing clientele and prospective clients. It allows you to market specifically to people who are interested in your services… Your target audience. Email marketing helps you build a relationship with your target audience. You can use it to lead prospects to your blog, social media, and so on. It could also be used to send out an email newsletter with updates about your business, such as new products, classes, equipment, hours, and so on.

Email marketing is an efficient marketing tool. It’s also cost-effective. Especially compared to paid advertising. According to Mailchimp, for every $1 that’s spent on email marketing, it has a return on investment (ROI) of $38 (26). That’s a very good indicator that sending emails is worth the investment.

Be sure to include an unsubscribe button on your emails. It may seem counterintuitive, but you want people to unsubscribe if they’re not interested in your services. You don’t want an angry prospect sending you emails trying to unsubscribe because there is no unsubscribe button on your emails.

4. Create a landing page

Landing pages are an effective tool to build your email marketing. According to Mailchimp, a landing page is a standalone web page that clients “land” on after clicking on an email, ad, or another website (19). These landing pages are hosted on your website. They offer prospective clients one thing, typically for free. This can be in the form of free content, articles, ebooks, guides, free classes, free trial memberships, and more.

A good landing page includes a strong call-to-action or CTA. A strong CTA compels the prospect to do something, such as give you their email address in return for something. Getting their email address allows you to market to them, and to communicate with them when needed. It’s important to only have one CTA on your landing page. Why? Because when you give more choices to the prospective client, you make it more difficult for them to make a decision and take action. This reduces the effectiveness of the landing page.

Here’s an example of a landing page. Notice how it has one CTA that asks for the prospect to give their email address in return for a free article. Simple, but effective.

5. Create a pop-up page

A pop-up page can be used for several things such as newsletter subscriptions, offering a free guide, and more. A prospective client provides their email address, and in exchange, they receive whatever it is your pop-up page offers to them.

Getting an email address from a prospective client allows you to directly market to them. It also shows you that they are interested in your services. Pop-up pages are similar to landing pages, but typically have less writing on them. Pop-up pages also have more navigation features to exit off the page compared to landing pages.

Make sure that you provide an easy way to close out of the pop-up page. People can get frustrated if there isn’t an easy way to exit out of these pages.

6. Create a sales page

A sales page is the final push that convinces your prospects to take action. It provides the last bit of information the prospect needs to go from “I’ve heard of your services, but I’m not ready to buy yet,” to “Sign me up!” Sales pages are the driving force that gets your website visitors to invest in a gym membership or other services you offer.

A great sales page provides a juicy hook to reel in your prospect. It tells them who your products or services are for… In other words, it defines your target audience. The sales page can answer frequently asked questions. It can also challenge objections that the prospect may have about your products or services. The sales page details the benefits that the prospect will receive from making the purchase. And finally, the sales page lists the pricing for the product or service.

7. Optimize your website using SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is an important tool every business should use on their website. SEO helps increase your audience. You essentially make small changes to your website to make it more user and search engine-friendly. An optimized website will help search engines find, index, and promote your website.

By making your website more search engine friendly, your website will be ranked higher. Having a higher ranking makes the search engine display your website higher up on the search results. This means more people are likely to find your website … Bringing you more potential clients. Not many people are going to scroll through page after page of search results to find what they’re searching for. They’re going to click on the first website, and maybe the next few after that.

There are a lot of things you can do to optimize your website. But a little bit goes a long way. Check out this guide from the Google developer’s website to learn more about the things you can do to improve your website’s SEO.

8. Keep your website modern

Your website says a lot about your gym. It gives prospective clients a good idea about the vibe of your gym. Your website can also indicate how well you keep up with your facility maintenance. Updating your website is cost-effective. It costs far less to renovate your website than it does to renovate your facility. If your website is outdated, then it’s a sign that you may not be keeping up with the times. It can even make prospective clients question if you’re still in business.

A fresh website is aesthetically pleasing. It’s inviting to your website visitors. Most outdated websites look unprofessional. They tend to be clunky and not user-friendly. And they can even drive potential clients away.

Another important way to keep your website modern is to make it mobile-friendly. Most internet users are using their smartphones to visit websites. If your website is difficult to use on a mobile device, then it will drive your prospective clients away.

9. Write your website copy focused on your prospects

Effective website copy (writing) is prospect-focused, meaning that the writing is tailored to what your prospect is looking for. Why? Because your prospective clients don’t care about the awards your gym has earned. They don’t care about how long you’ve been in business. How many clients you’ve served. And so on.

Your prospects care about what your business can do for them. They want to know how your business can improve their lives. They want to know what’s in it for them.

To show prospective clients why they should choose your gym, you should write copy that sells the benefits of your business, not the features. Here’s an example of how you can do this: let's take the examples I listed that your clients don’t care about. Your awards, years in business, and clients served.

If you rewrote this example to sell benefits, you might say: “You can rely on us to help you reach your fitness goals. When working out with us, you’ll be getting the best gym experience in town. Our strong community of supportive trainers and clients will help you learn the basics of weightlifting if you’re just starting out. Gym-goers like you have been making life-changing fitness transformations for over 30 years at our gym. We’ve helped over 3,000 members of our community lose weight, build muscle, and create healthy lifestyles that last. We’ll be able to help you reach any fitness goal you may have.”

10. Use paid advertising

This can be an expensive marketing option. But it can be a valuable addition to your marketing strategy. You can use this option to market directly to your target audience. But you could also use it to market to a broader audience. There are many effective ways that you could use this as part of your marketing strategy. Here are some advertising ideas that could help you bring in new clients:

Google Adwords
Facebook ads
Listing websites
Cardio consoles (in your gym)
Local Newspapers
Posters and flyers

If you’re going to use paid advertising, make sure you have the budget to do it. The cost for implementing this marketing idea can add up quickly. A bit of planning can make your advertising cost-efficient and effective.

11. Use direct mail

Despite common misconceptions, direct mail is not dead. It’s alive and well! Direct mail is exciting! People love to open their mail. According to the Data & Marketing Association, direct mail has an open rate of 90% compared to the 20-30% open rate of emails (24). Direct mail gets opened.

Keep this in mind because if your message is not opened, then your prospective clients aren’t going to see your message. If your target audience isn’t the most tech-savvy, then they may not receive your marketing messages… unless you use direct mail.

Direct mail is an effective marketing method that is on par with any digital marketing method. Direct mail produces a 29% return on investment, compared to the 30% ROI of email and 16% for online ads (24).

12. Offer a free class or trial membership

Offering a freebie is an effective strategy to bring in new clients. And it’s also a great way to get existing clients to try other services you offer. People love free stuff. The gesture of a free gift goes a long way towards building client relationships and growing your business. It helps warm your prospects up to doing business with you. And it can lead to your clients doing more business with you.

A free class or one-day membership is best used in combination with a landing page, sales page, or as a gift for signing up for your newsletter.

However, be careful with offering free classes or trial memberships. Don’t offer too many free things. This can reduce the perceived value the offer may have. Stick to one or two free gifts. And make sure that you have the budget to offer it. A free piece of content such as a how-to guide typically works well as a cost-effective freebie if you’re on a tight budget.

Be sure to list the value the prospective client is receiving. This will show them that what you’re offering is valuable and they should give it a shot. So, if you were offering a free class, state that the prospect is receiving a $50 value by attending one of your classes for free.

13. Organize events

This is another tool you can use to build your community. There are many different things you could do. You could host local events at your gym, outside your gym in the community, or even online. Each option helps build the culture of your gym. It brings your clients together to have fun. And building the culture of your gym helps boost your client retention rate!

You could also host competitions. Hosting a competition can help you get clients of other gyms in through your doors. Courses, workshops, and seminars are also opportunities to bring prospective clients into your gym. These ideas can also give these prospective clients a better idea of your services, gym culture, and more if you’re hosting an online event. It may convince them to switch to your gym.

14. Give weekly fitness tips

Posting weekly fitness tips is an effective strategy to create content on your social media. It provides valuable information to your clients for Free! Your clients will appreciate it! This can also help you and your trainers develop a better relationship with each of your clients. You can ask them if they tried your weekly tip. And you can answer questions they may have about how the tip can help them. Weekly fitness tips help start conversations with your clients.

Posting weekly helps keep your social media active, which helps potential clients know that you’re in business. This can also help promote your business in search engines.

15. Create monthly challenges

Monthly challenges build your gym community. They help clients feel like they belong at your gym. These monthly challenges are a great activity to energize your gym’s atmosphere. These challenges give your clients something to work towards each month. You could even give a prize to the winner or top 3 participants of the challenge! People love prizes.

16. Use Referrals

Your clients will love this idea. Bringing in a friend or family member can help them enjoy their workout more. It gives them something to bond over. And it gives you more potential clients. They’ll already be familiar with your gym and services after they’ve gone with their friend or family member who is already one of your clients.

Using word of mouth to spread awareness of your gym is free. It requires little effort. But it can be so effective. Prospects are 4 times more likely to sign up for your gym membership after they’ve been referred to it by a friend or family member (25). This also helps you build your gym community and keep your clients.

Overcoming obstacles

Many of these marketing ideas are free to implement. So, why not give some of these ideas a shot? You have nothing to lose. Feel free to check out the links below to learn more about marketing for gym owners. The value that effective marketing can provide for your business is priceless. More website visitors. More clients. Increased profit. And more lives improved by the power of fitness.

Overcoming the obstacles in your way makes being a gym owner so worth it. Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks… Assemble a team to help you. You don’t need to take on everything on your own.

Make time for yourself to relax or do things you enjoy outside of your business every week. The last thing you want is to burn out and lose your motivation for owning a gym. That’ll have negative ripple effects across all aspects of your business. Staying motivated will help you build a great gym culture, happy clients, and a thriving business!

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