You’ve probably heard of online fitness marketing platforms like workouthero and Fitbit.com. These websites and apps help people track their workouts and provide quick nutrition guides and post-workout routines.

Now, if you’re looking to grow your gym and need some help, read on. We’ll discuss the various ways you can use digital platforms to attract gym-goers, turn them into paying members, and grow your business.

1. Develop a presence on social media.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are just a few of the most popular social media platforms. If you’ve never marketed on these platforms, now is the perfect time to begin. Begin by creating a company page on each of these platforms to establish yourself as an authoritative member of your niche community. You can then engage with users by sharing content that’s relevant and helpful to your followers. Remember: people follow people they know, like, and trust on social media, so be sure to build a good reputation as a brand voice before you launch into any kind of paid marketing campaign.

Establishing a good social media presence takes time, so be patient. Research shows that it can take up to a year before you see any significant impact from your social media marketing. Even then, your impact may be limited to just your immediate social circle. Before you know it, you’ll be able to tap into a network of engaged and knowledgeable people who’ve joined your gym just because they believe in your product or service.

2. Build a community.

Use your social media to create groups and discussions around your subject matter expertise. Doing this can help you engage with potential members who have shared interests with you. You can then provide them with more information about your gym, its amenities, and the services you offer. Your social media strategy should always be about nurturing your existing relationships and expanding your network.

After you’ve done all of this, you can again approach potential members on social media with a pitch about your gym. You can create a hashtag for your announcement and use it in your tweets to increase the chances of your content being seen by potential members. People are more likely to listen to and act on messages that they can relate to, so try to make your content as relevant and personal as possible.

3. Use online marketplaces.

Online marketplaces like Amazon, Ebay, and Shopbop are great places for retail gyms to sell their products. These sites allow businesses to list their products and services and allow members to browse through the available brands and models.

If someone is looking for a gym and happens upon your listed product, they’ll have a perfect chance to learn about your gym and its amenities without having to navigate through your social media pages or emails to get the information. You can also use these sites to research product trends and compare prices before making a purchase decision.

4. Use email marketing.

Email marketing is another tool online retailers and marketplaces use to drive sales. If someone’s visited your website and made a purchase after reading your email, you’ve gained a customer who may be interested in your products. You can then approach them with an email asking why they chose your product over others and possibly even offer them a discount if they’re still within your email campaign.

You can also use email marketing to follow up with potential members who haven’t gone through the full sales process yet. Once they’ve received your initial contact, you can use email to continue to grow your relationship and eventually gain their trust enough to make a purchase from them.

5. Partner with digital influencers.

Influencers are people who have a large social media following and can thus influence the thinking of others. If you’re serious about growing your gym, consider partnering with an influencer to help grow your social media following.

This strategy works well because people are more likely to trust and follow the recommendations of an influential person, as compared to a celebrity or a regular person with no social media following.

Find an influencer who’s relevant to your niche and audience and see if they’ll partner with you to grow your Instagram following. The first step is to determine your target audience. Begin by researching what kinds of workouts they’re most interested in, what activities they enjoy the most, and what features your product offers that they haven’t seen before. Once you’ve established the perfect influencer for your business, you can then work together to create strategies to build your audience on social media.

The advantage of this strategy is that you can be sure that your product or service will be represented by someone who has a considerable audience and can help drive exposure and potential members to your gym. The disadvantage is that you need to work hard to find and partner with the right influencer for your needs.

Become a digital marketer.

If you’ve always wanted to be able to market your gym online but lack the basic skills, now is the perfect time to learn. There are many resources, such as HubSpot and Google’s Digital Marketing & SEO Academy, that can help you learn the ropes.

These courses will teach you the basics of creating websites, utilizing SEO to gain traffic, and analyzing competitors’ websites to see how you can grow your own practice.

6. Use a content marketing strategy.

Traditional marketing, which you may have seen in the form of billboards, radio spots, or magazine advertisements, informs people about your brand and its products or services. Content marketing, which involves creating and distributing relevant, valuable content to attract, convert, and retain customers, is the newer method of marketing. The main difference between the two is that with content marketing, you’re not relying on customers to come back often enough to justify the advertisements. Instead, you’re entrusting your content to do the marketing for you.

Your content may be existing content, such as blog posts, product descriptions, or FAQs, or it may be a series of individually written articles that build on each other. Ideally, your content will be of high quality and entertaining enough to keep readers interested and engaged. Ideally, your content will be of high quality and entertaining enough to keep readers interested and engaged.

No matter what type of content you have, there are simple and effective ways to get people to talk about you and your gym. You can use a tool like Content Samurai to gather ideas from across the web along with engaging social media content (e.g., GIFs, memes, and infographics) to create an appealing pitch for your gym.

7. Measure the success of your strategy.

You can’t truly know if your efforts are paying off until you measure them. Fortunately for you, we’re tech-savvy individuals who love a good data point. So before you know it, you’ll have a spreadsheet with all the metrics that you need to track.

The metrics you choose will depend on your goals and the nature of your business. For example, you may want to track the number of new members you’ve gained through social media or the amount of business you’ve brought in online through your retail website. Once you have a few metrics that you regularly track, you can begin to see the results of your efforts.

At this stage, you may want to shift your tactics and approach. If you gained a lot of new members on social media and want to continue to grow your audience, you may want to consider using a marketing automation platform like HubSpot to help you scale your efforts. If you’re just getting started and want to build your retail website, you may want to focus on getting it to rank high on search engines like Google.

Measuring the success of your strategy doesn’t have to be hard. You just need to keep your eyes open for new ways to track the results of your efforts and make adjustments as needed.