So, your fitness club is finally offering a mobile app to its members—that’s great! Your next step? Start spreading the word about it.
A gym mobile app is a great asset for your members and your staff. But if nobody is really using it, all those benefits will go to waste. In the final article of our Power of Mobile series, we’ve put together some ideas for promoting your mobile fitness app to help you get it off the ground.
1. Email Campaign
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your members. Considering 99% of email users check their inbox every day, the likelihood that your audience will see an email about your app is high.
Set up an email campaign to inform members about your app and the perks of using it. To generate even more buzz, start your campaign before the app is even released. This will help build excitement and anticipation, resulting in more users sooner. Be sure to link to your app in the app store in your emails to make it as easy as possible for members to download it.
Pro Tip: With ASF’s Club OS integration, you can build and send emails faster and more effectively. Club OS allows you to personalize and segment emails so you can get the most compelling message to the right audience, as well as automate campaigns to reduce your workload.
2. Website Content
Giving your gym mobile app an online presence will help legitimize it. Think about it—if you heard about a new app or business and googled it to learn more but nothing came up, would you trust it? Most people wouldn’t. Adding content about your app to your website will also make it discoverable by search engines, increasing the chances of it being found.
There are a few different ways you can promote your app on your website. Creating a landing page will be one of the most useful and effective ways to add promotional content. A dedicated landing page is the perfect way to outline all of your app’s benefits and incorporate a lot of keywords onto your site that can help searchers discover it. You can also send people to your landing page from your email campaign and other digital ads.
Other options for app promotion can include a section on your homepage, a pop-up, a banner, a blog article, and so on.
3. Social Media
82% of the U.S. population is on social media, which means most of your audience is too. You’re probably already aware of that and engaging with members on various platforms, so advertising your new mobile app via social media should be easy.
You can choose to stick with organic social media promotion, use paid promotion, or combine the two strategies. The main difference is that organic social advertising is free—you’re simply posting content about your app on your social media pages to your existing audience—while you spend money to get your content in front of a larger audience with paid social ads. Both are effective methods for spreading the word about your app where your audience is already paying attention.
4. Offer Incentives
Incentivizing members to download and use your app is a great way to get your foot in the door. Once they start using the app and enjoying its benefits, retention will follow suit. You can think of it as a bribe—if you download our app, we’ll give you X. From there, your app and its amazing features should do the rest of the work to make them stay.
Here are a few incentive ideas for persuading members to download your club’s mobile app:
- Get five free guest passes when you use mobile club check-in 20 times
- The member who books the most classes on mobile during the month gets a free three-class pack
- Receive a complimentary personal training session if you log 15 workouts in 30 days
- The member who logs the most workouts during the month gets a free bag of branded swag
5. Word of Mouth
Word of mouth is a tried-and-true advertising technique. It also happens to be easy, free, and more effective than paid ads, yielding an average of five times the sales. People trust their friends and other people they know when it comes to business recommendations more than any ad they see online.
Start spreading the word about your mobile app right at your club. The more you get the word out, the more members will start using the app and recommending it to their friends at the gym. Have your staff talk about the app at the front desk when people check in, during training sessions, and during fitness classes. They shouldn’t just mention it randomly, but tie it back to a benefit that the audience would be interested in— such as reserving space in fitness classes and booking personal training sessions.
ASF Mobile Puts the Club Experience in Your Members’ Hands
When you have a mobile app that sells itself, promoting it is a breeze. ASF mobile comes equipped with all the features your members want and employees need.
Members can use ASF Mobile to take control of their club experience with self-check-in, class booking, PT session scheduling and payment, and workout tracking. Trainers can use the app to chat with clients directly, track their progress, send customized workout and nutrition plans, and more.