When it comes to fitness clubs, conventional wisdom often focuses on NewYear’s resolutions as the prime opportunity to attract new members. However, recent research challenges this notion, revealing that younger generations are increasingly leveraging Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions for their fitness journey.
When executed well, Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing can lead to impressive membership gains.
Here’s what we learned from analyzing more than five million consumer households we engaged across META (Facebook/Instagram), Programmatic Display, and DirectMail.
Comparatively, clients investing in Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns spent 84% of what they invested in January for New Year’s, illustrating a growing trend towards balanced investment in both key promotional periods.
While META and Programmatic Display campaigns shone brightly, their combined use created a synergistic effect. All clients running ProgrammaticDisplay campaigns in November also used META, indicating that the two channels work exceptionally well together.
This year, we recommend adding YouTube into your mix. Although YouTube might not drive immediate clicks or form submissions, its presence significantly enhances the performance of other digital channels. Our observations show that YouTube ads boost the effectiveness of META andProgrammatic Display by 20-40% on average, leading to more leads and new members.
To truly capitalize on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s crucial to execute flawlessly on a well-planned strategy.
Evergreen ads are your core, consistent messages that run continuously before and between promotions. They keep your brand visible and top-of-mind, setting the stage for your targeted holiday campaigns.
Investing in high-quality content and design is not just a nice-to-have; it’s a game changer. As our data shows, clubs that go the extra mile in content, design, and strategic scheduling (don’t forget to warm those digital ads up) see substantial returns in new memberships and reduced CPAs.
A common myth is that you need to slash prices dramatically or give away the farm to make your holiday campaigns pop. While it’s crucial to serve up an irresistible offer, here’s how you can keep it smart and savvy:
Reimagine your usual offers as Black Friday or Cyber Monday specials. The key is to make consumers feel like they’re scoring a deal—It’s all about participating in the psychological frenzy where consumers expect every deal to be a big deal and buy on impulse.
The key takeaway? Embrace the full potential of these high-impact marketing periods. Your audience is out there, ready to jump into their fitness journey. The question is, are you ready to grab their attention with a well-oiled marketing machine?
At Instinctive Insights, we don’t just execute thoughtful marketing campaigns and make pretty ads, we leverage data science and proprietary targeting algorithms (yup, we wrote the code ourselves) to ensure a fitness club’s ads are seen by consumers most likely to engage and become a new member.
We deliver results. Period. We don’t make clients sign annual contracts(because we deliver results and don’t need to). We’re also very proud of our 95% client retention rate in 2023 (we’re sitting at 97% so far this year).
Contact Instinctive Insights and turn this Black Friday and Cyber Monday into a fitness frenzy—where the only thing that’s going to get a sweaty workout is your membership sales!
