The Dos and Don'ts of Running a Fitness Campaign on Facebook

With more than 1.7 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide, including 167 million daily active users in the U.S. and Canada, the number of potential new studio members is practically infinite. But there’s more that goes into running a successful fitness campaign on Facebook than it seems — it takes a little bit of knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Here are the dos and don’ts to use in every fitness campaign.  

Do: Know your target audience and cater to them

First things first: Know who you’re dealing with. You want to attract people to your fitness studio who bring you revenue … and if you don’t crunch the numbers before starting a Facebook campaign, you could lose money.

Take a look at your current member base. Which people spring for the highest membership tier? Which ones stay with your studio the longest? The common denominator between each of these groups is your ideal customer.   

Let’s say, for example, that you own an indoor cycling studio. The studio attracts significantly more women than men, but your students who are 30+ years old tend to buy larger ride packages. There’s also a group of students who are all moms, and they tend to take more classes during the week than other members.

In this scenario, your ideal customer is a new mom who is 30 or older. So a successful Facebook campaign would appeal to that new mom, including your Facebook image, verbiage, and more.

Don’t: Get too specific with your targeting

Where most studios go wrong is when they get really niche with Facebook’s ad targeting feature. This tools offers a variety of ways to make your audience very specific:

But taking advantage of all of these filters isn’t necessarily the best for a Facebook campaign. The more filters added, the smaller the audience becomes … which means fewer people see your ad. We always make sure to target at least 40,000 people in a campaign, but 50,000 or above is even better. So be careful not to limit your audience too narrowly.

Do: Use Images of Your Own Studio

Your audience is the most important part of a Facebook campaign, but your ad is a close second. This is the element of your campaign that your target audience sees, and it’s usually going to be their first impression of you.

A great way to do this is to use photos of your own studio in your Facebook ads rather than stock images. Focus on photos that show members in the middle of a class. This way, people can see your studio and workouts before they even sign up.

Don’t: Rely on just one ad

For your Facebook campaign to be as successful as possible, run a few different ads in a practice called A/B Testing. Not only does this increase the chances of your audience seeing your ad, but you might find that one of the ads performs better than others. Here’s an example from one of the fitness studios we work with:

Ads A and B were part of one campaign with the same audience and budget, but the images and call to action (CTA) were different, as was the CTA’s font size. During a set period, Ad A got 55 clicks, while Ad B got only 5 during the same time.

That data helps you make better decisions about what ads to use in your Facebook campaign, and ultimately, gets you more (and better) leads.

Do: Have a really great offer

One factor that strongly influences the success of your campaign is the offer you choose to promote. For the fitness studios we’ve worked with, we found that an offer of 1-2 free weeks works best for a cold audience. 

“Now wait a minute,” you’re probably thinking, “Why would I give away free workouts to someone who probably won’t be back after the free pass expires?”

People like free. The reason a free pass for new students who haven’t ever been to your studio before works better than a paid offer (like 30 days for $30, or 10 spin sessions for $80) is that more people are likely to claim it — and more claimed offers means more people walking through your doors. Once they’re there, it’s up to you to sell them on how awesome your studio is so that they’ll come back … but we’ll get to that part later.

Don’t: Take leads to your website

Once people see your Facebook ad and click on it, they are taken to a web page where they claim your offer. But you don’t want to send those people to your studio’s website to sign up for the offer. Here’s why:

On a website, there’s links to the team page, schedule, blog, and social media profiles. You probably have some engaging images that grab visitors’ attention, and you may even have a video of people working out that plays automatically. It’s distracting. And when someone just wants to redeem a free week offer, you want it to be as easy and simple as possible - without any distractors.

For opt-ins like this, it’s better to send people to a simple landing page that’s specifically dedicated to that offer. Studies have found that people are 115% more likely to convert when taken to a landing page than when sent to a website … and those conversions increase 80% more when the landing page includes a video.

Do: Nail down a solid sales process before launch

So before you set your Facebook campaign live, make sure that you have a good sales process in place to handle your influx of leads. Integrate your landing pages with an automated service like Infusionsoft or Mailchimp to stay on top of each lead who claims your offer. Make sure your staff knows how to properly follow up with leads, show first-time visitors around your studio, and close sales.

Without good processes like these in place your leads can slip through the cracks, which makes your campaign less successful than it could be.

Don’t: Let those leads get away

Start by calling your leads as soon as they claim the offer — within 5-15 minutes is ideal and gets the best results. Ask when they can come in for their first workout, and get them on the schedule while you have them on the phone. If you can’t reach them via phone, email them. You can even send them a text message once you have permission.  

Next, the majority of sales are made somewhere between the 5th and 8th touch, so it’s super important to keep following up with them until they buy or they ask you to stop.

If you follow these tips, you’re sure to see some major results for your fitness studio. The studios we work with that follow these dos and don’ts generally get 200 or more leads each month, and even sign as many as 50 sales in a month. To learn more about the program these studios are in, contact us here.

Mike Arce is the Founder and CEO of Loud Rumor, an online marketing agency that helps local businesses grow and get more customers. Through our proven program, Fit FLAVER, Mike has been able to combine his passion for both the fitness industry and marketing. Using Facebook advertising, landing pages, video, and more, he and his team generate 100 - 200 unique leads per studio each month.