If you’re a regular visitor to the www.cuecd.com website, then you already know that we specialize in bringing you FREE health club marketing ideas that won’t cost you an arm and a leg to implement. Our team of experts has been hard at work again putting together a health club marketing plan you can use to boost sales and profits in November!
Here you’ll learn how to sell gym memberships in November, and best of all these health club marketing ideas are completely FREE!
The first, and perhaps most effective, health club marketing idea for November is to help generate awareness of the benefits of exercise. You can do this by utilizing some of the existing “national months” and then educating the public about how regular exercise can help them avoid life-threatening disease.
For example, November is American Diabetes Month (www.diabetes.org) and nothing fits a health club marketing plan better than diabetes prevention! According to the American Diabetes Association, “You can prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes through a healthy lifestyle. Change your diet, increase your level of physical activity, maintain a healthy weight...with these positive steps, you can stay healthier longer and reduce your risk of diabetes.”
This is a golden opportunity for you, as a gym owner, to not only help educate the public about how to prevent diabetes but also to sell more fitness center memberships!
To start, teach your existing gym members about the warning signs of diabetes. Put up posters or host a class about this dangerous disease. Encourage them to talk with their friends and family who may be at risk.
To really jump-start this health club marketing idea you may even want to invite anyone who been diagnosed with diabetes to exercise in your gym for free throughout November! How many of those people will turn into paying members? Even those who don’t eventually join your fitness center will still learn more about how to treat their disease!
Of course, for every class you offer on diabetes prevention you’ll create a carefully worded press release and inform the local media. The newspapers and local television news love this kind of story, and you’ll be rewarded for your efforts with free publicity!
There are other opportunities in November for you to educate the public about dangerous diseases and invite them to exercise in your gym as a tool to prevent those diseases:
Lung Cancer Awareness Month www.lungcanceralliance.org
While regular exercise won’t prevent lung cancer from smoking, it is still true that exercise can help prevent certain types of cancers.
A great health club marketing idea is to research and write an original article on how regular exercise can help prevent certain cancers. Submit this article to the local newspaper, and if (when) it gets printed you’ll gain instant free publicity from the author’s box. The author’s box is a small blurb at the end of the article telling about you and your business. Whenever you write an article for any publication, you should always include an author’s biography box where you list your credentials, affiliations and contact information.
Be careful to write an educational article and not just a thinly veiled advertisement for your gym, or the newspaper won’t print it. For an example of how such an article should look, go here: www.associatedcontent.com/article/1994482/can_exercise_help_prevent_cancer.html
Great American Smokeout www.cancer.org
Sponsored by the American Cancer Society, the Great American Smokeout provides a fantastic health club marketing plan you can use to really help people while you’re increasing sales revenues at the same time.
Plan a kick-off meeting where you will have a local doctor, or somebody from the local American Cancer Society, as a guest speaker. Invite everyone in the community who is trying to quit smoking, and turn the health club into a real resource for information! Announce that anyone who is trying to quit smoking to use your gym for free throughout November.
Of course, you’ll need to create a press release to advertise the meeting, as well as provide weekly press releases updating the community of the progress people are making as they quit smoking. Try to personalize the story by including quotes from local folks and pictures of people exercising.
The goal here is to get a series of at least four free articles in the local newspaper, get a lot of new people exercising in your gym, and best of all actually help people quit smoking. At the end of the month, some of those who were coming for free in November will join as regular members. Others won’t join, but for years to come they’ll still be a walking advertisement for you every time they tell the story of how they finally quit smoking! Health club marketing ideas just don’t get any better than this!
National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month www.alz.org
Alzheimer’s “is a progressive and fatal brain disease. As many as 5.3 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease” (source: www.alz.org).
While the research is not yet accepted by all physicians, there is a growing number of those who believe that regular exercise can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. That being the case, a smart health club marketing plan is to educate the local community about how exercise is important in Alzheimer’s prevention.
Here again it’s a good idea to write an original article on the subject, and then submit that article to the local newspaper for them to print. The benefit to the newspaper is that they get to publish a local, timely and relevant article at no cost. The benefit to you is that everyone reading that article will basically be reading a free advertisement for your health club!
For a great example of how to write an article detailing the link between exercise and Alzheimer’s prevention, go here: www.associatedcontent.com/article/1982808/can_exercise_help_prevent_alzheimers.html
National Adoption Month www.childwelfare.gov
If you’re thinking that adopting children really has nothing to do with exercise, then you’re not thinking as an entrepreneur. The National Adoption Month is a worthy event that is designed to help people who need it: kids in foster care. When you, as a gym owner, participate in a worthy cause (in ANY worthy cause) you automatically win.
Go to www.childwelfare.gov and download the National Adoption Month Toolkit. Find out how you can help with this effort. Then do it.
At the same time, you’re going to be telling the local media what you’re doing. Include pictures, personal stories, and lots of quotes. The end result is that you’ll help kids and gain a mountain of free publicity!
National Family Caregivers Month www.thefamilycaregiver.org
National Hospice Palliative Care Month www.nhpco.org
These two events, National Family Caregivers Month and National Hospice Palliative Care Month, provide you with a golden opportunity to advertise your fitness center.
To create a health club marketing plan that will include these two events, you’ll need to create a letter honoring caregivers and/or hospice workers. It may look something like this:
++++++++++++++++++++
ABC Health Club
In honor of National Hospice Palliative Care Month
we would like to provide you with this gift certificate.
Valid for FREE membership throughout November!
Simply present this certificate at the front desk to get started today!
No obligation, No commitment, No fees of any kind!
It's just our way of saying "thanks" for all that you do to keep (your town) healthy!
ABC Health Club - 123 Main Street - Anytown, USA - 555.867.5309
++++++++++++++++++++
What you're really doing here is giving away a 1-month free pass, which is most likely something you do from time to time anyway. The 'national months' just give you an excuse to personalize the free passes and make them 'special'. It's simple and effective. The best part is that, once the recipient begins using their certificate, you have an entire month to 'sell' them on a full membership!
Thanksgiving
Of course, any list of health club marketing ideas for November that didn’t include Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be complete, now would it?
Thanksgiving, one of the all-time favorite American holidays, provides a tremendous opportunity for gym owners to advertise the benefits of regular exercise.
You can start by coming up with some catchy advertising slogans to use this month, which you can put on your fitness center sign or on posters in the windows. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
“The only thing that needs to be stuffed this year is the turkey. Join ABC Health Club today!”
“Can’t believe you ate the whole thing? We can help. Join ABC Health Club today!”
“Pumpkin pie piled high? We can help. Join ABC Health Club today!”
Another great health club marketing idea, especially if you have a reader-board sign out on a busy road, is to post a different holiday weight loss tip every single day. The regulars who drive by your business will look forward to reading the tip of the day, and you will slowly gain a reputation as a gym that knows what it’s talking about when it comes to weight loss! Need some ideas to help you get started? Here are a few articles that are guaranteed to give you more than fifty holiday weight loss tips you can use for advertising:
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2053117/holiday_weight_loss_programs.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2151881/holiday_diet_tips_to_lose_weight.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2163953/top_10_weight_loss_tips_for_women.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2163921/top_10_health_tips_for_easy_weight.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2163891/top_10_fitness_tips_for_weight_loss.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2163853/top_10_exercise_tips_for_rapid_weight.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2163829/top_10_diet_tips_for_weight_loss_success.html
With just a little imagination, you can find literally dozens of other health club marketing ideas that incorporate a Thanksgiving theme. How about hosting a food drive for the local Salvation Army? After all, they need donations now more than ever and you’ll pick up some free publicity if you handle the press releases correctly. Or how about setting up a completely silly event like turkey bowling, where it’s just for fun and as prizes you award free weeks of gym membership?
By now you’re getting the idea. A good health club marketing plan doesn’t have to cost a lot to be effective. Find a cause, promote it, and then tell the media what you’ve done. It really is that simple. Hopefully this article has given you the ideas you need to get going, because the time to take action is NOW.
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