7 Facebook Tips for Fitness Businesses

Despite all of the hand-wringing people have done with respect to Facebook, it still remains a marketing powerhouse for small businesses. More so than any other social network, with the possible exception of Instagram (owned by Facebook), Facebook is the best place to connect with your members and get the word out about your fitness business.

Lest you think Facebook is only about getting likes and shares, it’s important to realize that Facebook is an extremely cost-effective marketing tool. In this post, we’re going to detail 7 tips and strategies that can help you see some real results when working with Facebook.

Create a Facebook Business Page

This seems like a no-brainer, and it is. After all, if you’re trying to build your community within your business, you need a place for people to gather.

Setting up a Facebook Business page is super easy and intuitive. When you sign up all you functionally need is your business name, address, and a few pictures. Of course, you’ll want to fill out all of the details, add your descriptions, and complete your about section before you start posting.

Post with a Purpose

I know, I know, you want to scream your message from the rooftops over and over again until everyone hears it. You’re pumped about your business and everyone else should be too. However, if you post every hour and every day about your business, you’ll just be white noise in your prospects timeline.

To really set yourself up for success, post with intent. You shouldn’t post just to post. You should post for a reason. That being said, promotional posts should make up only 25% of your total posts. Non-promo posts can highlight an instructor, a committed member who reached a goal or training tips.

Looking for more marketing tips? Check out our 10-Step Marketing Guide today!

Use Your Story

You know how I mentioned previously that you shouldn’t post every hour of every day? You still shouldn’t, but if you feel compelled to share more you should use your story. By using your story people are “opting-in” to see more about your business.  These posts should be fun, engaging, inspiring or goofy, anything that can give people a more in-depth look at your business and the vibe you want to put out.

Be Responsive

Among the reasons businesses set up Facebook Business pages is that it allows you to have a two-way conversation with your members and prospects. By having a conversation, you’re not only more engaging to members, it also provides them an opportunity to ask questions instead of just looking up information on a static webpage.

This allows you to use Facebook as a customer service channel in addition to a marketing platform. People love immediacy, so the faster you can respond to your prospects and members the better. Facebook knows this, which is why they urge the business using their platform to respond to questions as quickly as possible.

Establish a Community Page

This is by no means a requirement, but savvy business owners can leverage a community page in addition to their business page as an incentive to members. You can close your community page off to the public making it invitation only. Doing this will allow you to only invite members of your gym.

Within your community page, you can post member-only events, discuss programming, or even offer the ability for members to ask training questions that you and your staff can answer. This is a great way to foster a community within your gym and potentially boost your retention numbers.

Measure What Matters

With social media platforms, it can be tough to avoid getting wrapped up in vanity metrics. How many people liked your post or how many retweets you get are of limited real value, but those endorphins sure do feel good.

Chances are the metrics that matter to your business are how many prospects you get and how many memberships you can sell. With that in mind, you should be tying the “success” of your Facebook posts to those metrics. However, with only ~25% of your posts being promotional in nature, it’s important not to eschew engagement posts because they don’t net you any direct profit. As with all things, balance is essential.

Test Out Facebook Ads 

Facebook has a lot of options for monetizing various types of posts and ads, and if done right they can be a tremendous lead driver. Our experience managing Facebook and Google Ads for Zen Planner customers has shown us that Facebook Ads are the best way to get a solid ROI. Boosted posts do nothing aside from boost your vanity metrics and Google Ads are often too pricey to provide a good value.

Our advice? Start small and optimize based on the data you see. If you find that an ad is performing well and another is performing poorly, dig in and find out why. Is it different audience segments? Different ad copy/design? Time of day? All of these factor into the effectiveness of your ads.

We could probably go 100-deep on tips, tactics and strategies for Facebook success, but by implementing these seven strategies you are setting yourself up for success.

Check out our 10 Step Marketing Guide for more tips on how to market your fitness business.