Information is key to making any decision within your business. Knowing how to market, what works and what does not, and where the best return on investment (ROI) is for your gym or fitness center can help you spend your marketing budget wisely. To know that, you must consider analytics. Local SEO analytics for gyms can provide you with essential information about opportunities to market and reach your most likely customers.
The impact of efficient analytics and cost-effective marketing strategies can have an incredible impact on your business. Analytics can help you create localized content that gets leads without being expensive or out of your budget. The key is knowing how to use analytics for gyms and, most importantly, how to apply that information to your marketing decision-making.
Understanding Local Consumer Behavior
If you have a gym within a large community, competing is hard to do. You could throw a lot of money into marketing your gym and hope you get a few leads. Or, you can make better decisions based on what your most likely gym patrons need to know and hear to make the decision to work with you.
There is a high level of importance in analyzing local customer behavior and trends. While you may know how to reach some potential gym clients, bringing in a steady stream of targeted clients who are likely to purchase gym memberships on an ongoing basis takes understanding your local market very well.
By utilizing analytics to identify popular local search queries and how your clients are finding your business, you can then reach more people in the same way. Analytics helps you to learn how your local customers behave, trends in how they search for information or what they are looking for, and what pain points you can resolve to get them to become your clients.
With all of the data available to you through analytics, you can then tailor content based on local customer preferences. That delivers results. It means the marketing on your gym is going to go further and achieve more of the results you need.
Set Goals and KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are specific goals or metrics that you can monitor over time to gauge how well your marketing campaigns are going. To do this, you need to define specific goals you hope to achieve with your localized content to build a larger online presence. No matter what your KPIs are, tracking them over time allows you to see how changes in your digital marketing campaign can actually trigger improved results.
There are numerous KPIs you can track – and you should choose those that you feel are most likely impacting your conversion rate or the number of people who visit your website and come into the gym and become your clients. Some of the most important digital marketing KPIs for gyms include:
- The number of check-ins per month
- The engagement with social media posts that you have
- The number of photos uploaded to Google Business Profile
- The number of new reviews you get
Your gym has KPIs you can track as well. You may look at the number of visits your clients have. You could monitor the number of visits to watch for a decline, which could indicate they may not come back in a few weeks. You can track your KPIs online in much the same way. If you notice there is a substantial uptick in the number of people looking for a specific type of workout or style of fitness, you can adjust your marketing to attract those people to your gym.
Identify the KPIs that are relevant to your location. Some examples may also include:
- Gym membership growth rate
- Gym membership retention rates
- Gym equipment usage rate
- Engagement on social media
Once you define what you wish to monitor, you’ll need to establish measurable objectives. For example, you may wish to try out several different digital marketing campaigns to get new sign-ups. To do that, you need to track what’s happening now – how many people sign up for a membership with the current promotion and then track the same figure over time to see what changes.
Track Local SEO Performance
Use analytics to monitor local search rankings. You can use this data to help you know how well you are competing against other gyms and fitness centers in the area. How are you ranking in searches for various local terms? Make sure to consider more than just keywords like “gyms in Your City” but also fitness centers, workout centers, and so on.
Measure organic traffic that comes to your site from local searches like this. Organic traffic is the number of people who search for a service you offer online and get to your website because of how visible your website is.
Monitor KPIs for various local search terms applicable to your business. Then, as you go, adjust your SEO strategies, as well as overall marketing, to align with what creates results. You’ll see the numbers tell the story of what works and what does not.
Analyze Customer Engagement
You can also use analytics to track customer engagement. That’s a way to measure how often your posts or other marketing strategies are engaged with by your prospective target. You want to create content that people actually like and, even better, share with others. Tracking user engagement on localized content allows you to see what really is working – what do people respond to?
Monitor customer interactions in every way, but especially on social media platforms. For gyms, being present on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms allows you to reach people who are most likely to want your services. Monitor what they interact with – what types of posts get the most views? What type of posts get the most comments?
Then, go further by monitoring click-through rates. For example, if you plan to run a promotion to increase the number of members at your gym, you can monitor how many people click on your ad to get to your site, providing you with some indication of how desirable that content is. You can monitor promotional and local strategies, including ad campaigns and newsletters.
Remember, the goal of analytics is not just to calculate numbers but to create clear details about how you can improve. You’ll learn what people in your area respond to by how engaged they are with your content.
Assess Local Advertising ROI
Most gyms will need to use paid advertising as a way to drive some visitors to their website and to get people looking for a gym to sign up. Just throwing a lot of money at advertising isn’t wise or financially sustainable. This is where analytics can help you.
Utilize analytics to measure how effective your local advertising campaigns are. What is working? What is not? What are people clicking on that ultimately become members of your gym?
By calculating the ROI on your local marketing efforts, you get the most out of every strategy you desire. You will find some marketing methods don’t work as well as others, but because gym marketing is a very localized process, you need to be sure you are creating KPIs and monitoring changes over time. That allows you to allocate budgets based on high-performing campaigns. Why spend money on a campaign that’s not going to yield the best results?
Implement Geotargeting Strategies
Though most gyms are membership-based, it’s very effective to use analytics to help you with geotargeting. This allows you to position ads at just the right time for those within a local area. It can allow you to get people in the door right away.
For example, you may find that people within a few miles of your location are looking for a new gym. With geotargeting, you can send a specific message or promotion to them to encourage them to visit. Tailor your promotions specifically on your local demographics so you get better results. The benefit here is that you can get maximum results without overspending on a large audience that may not be willing to make the trip to your gym.
Budget-Friendly Adjustments
Yet another opportunity is making adjustments to your gym marketing strategies over time. All of this data, clearly outlined and graphed for you, allows you to make cost-effective changes over time based on the insights they provide. This allows you to benefit in two key ways. The first is that you can adjust your promotions and offers based on what’s working. The second is that it can help you to avoid mistakes that lead to marketing waste.
Analytics allows you to make better decisions. This enables your gym to stay agile within your budget within your most likely customer pool. Analytics continue to change, giving you always clear direction on how to market for a gym.
Finding the Right Tools to Monitor the Data
The core part of success with local SEO analytics for gyms is having a tool to help you master the process. Most gym owners don’t have time to pull up these figures easily on their own. At Surefire Local, we offer the tools you need to get results. You can use a range of tools, including Google Analytics, to help you. However, Surefire Local is a powerhouse that does it all for you.
Localizing your online marketing is essential. Doing so in a way that’s based on results makes your ROI even more impressive. To utilize local analytics for gyms, tap into the tools Surefire Local has to offer. We help small businesses establish their online presence by creating local signals that allow you to monitor what people are talking about and what their needs are.
With Surefire Local, you gain access to helpful tools for building your website, building local SEO optimizations, building a strong review system, and creating social media engagement. Reach out to us now to learn how we can make a difference in the way you market your local business.
Set up a Surefire Local demo now.