Don’t Market Your Affiliate Gym Without This Key Component

The ability to attract new athletes is critical to your box’s success. You might offer the best programming, coaching and equipment in your city, but if you’re not properly marketing your box, you simply won’t have athletes to train.

To ensure your marketing efforts and money aren’t going to waste, you need to have very specific descriptions of who your ideal athlete is. These descriptions are called personas. Personas include key attributes such as age, gender, location, job, interests, values and challenges. Personas must answer questions like:

• How old is your ideal athlete?
• Is your ideal athlete a man, woman or both genders?
• Where do they work or go to school?
• What do they do for fun?
• What neighborhood do they live in?
• What are their goals for doing this type of workout?
• What could be preventing them from joining your box?
• How much money are they willing to spend on a membership each month?

You might be asking yourself, “do I really need personas?” The answer is yes! Here’s why personas are critical to the success of your marketing efforts:

• 71% of businesses who exceed revenue and leads goals have documented personas
• 3-4 personas usually account for over 90% of a business’s sales
• Persona-driven marketing is 3x more effective

When creating personas, the best place to get started is by asking your current athletes why they chose your box. You might hear responses such as cost or coaches, but dive deeper to find the true driving factor.

• Cost: why is this so important?
• Quality of instruction: what exactly do they like about your coaches?
• Availability: why do the hours of operation work for them?
• Location: how far would they be willing to drive to get to your box?
• Meets needs: what specific needs?

If you offer a wide range of programs at your box, you’ll likely need multiple personas. For example, a box that offers a kid’s program, women’s only classes, Olympic weightlifting, a BodyFit program and general WODs should develop, at minimum, five different personas.

Have fun with your personas! Be sure to give each of them a creative name, like Weightlifting Wendy, for women who strictly want to attend weightlifting classes, or BodyFit Brad, for those individuals who are only interested in barbell-free classes. Utilize the template below to get started.

Once you have developed your unique personas, you’ll be able to tailor the messaging, imagery and targeting for all of your marketing campaigns to your specific target athletes.

Personas are the necessary first step in creating a successful marketing strategy. Looking for additional tips to take your marketing efforts to the next level? Get your copy of our 10 Step Marketing Guide for Affiliate Gyms.