The Fit to Grit Cast

This Social Strategy Keeps Fitness Studio Clients Coming Back

• Zachary Colman

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Frustrated with social media marketing that doesn't deliver results for your fitness studio? You're not alone. The problem isn't social media itself—it's how you're using it.

Most studio owners experience what I call "marketing fatigue"—spending thousands on agencies and content creation with minimal return. The mistake? Treating social platforms as pure sales channels rather than retention tools. According to HubSpot research, brands that engage followers meaningfully see 33% higher client retention rates. That's the opportunity most studios miss.

Your most powerful marketing asset isn't fancy ads or heavily edited content—it's your trainers. These instructors already have authentic relationships with your members and understand your offerings intimately. By structuring your social strategy around them, you create a sustainable ecosystem where each trainer becomes an advocate for specific class types while contributing to the overall studio brand.

Think of your studio like a sports team: individual players (trainers) build personal followings while strengthening team (studio) loyalty. This approach protects you when trainers inevitably leave, as members develop connections to both individuals and the broader community. It's also cost-effective—rather than paying expensive agencies, compensate trainers slightly above market rate to include content creation in their roles.

The implementation is straightforward: align trainers with specific content areas, establish brand guidelines that maintain consistency while allowing authentic expression, and track engagement alongside retention metrics. By making incremental improvements and focusing on building genuine community rather than chasing transactions, you'll develop a social presence that actually drives business growth.

Ready to transform your studio's approach to social media? Subscribe to the Fit to Grit cast for more actionable strategies that blend fitness expertise with practical marketing advice. Leave a review or hit that subscribe button to stay connected with content that helps you cut through the marketing noise and build a thriving fitness community.

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Speaker 0:

never really been a fan of social media. It's not that I don't like social media. I mean, we're on YouTube right now. I feel like it's being utilized completely wrong, especially in the industry of studios. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. I am your host, zach Coleman, and we're going to talk about something a little bit that I think is on everyone's mind how do you craft content that really drives engagement and conversion? Though we're going to do it with a little bit of a twist, we're going to talk about it in returns of something that a lot of people don't realize can be utilized for social media, which is retention. And so we're going to dive into a little bit here on how to really shift from that self-promotion type mythology to more of a community building type strategy. We're going to talk about some proven content creation formulas really resonate and can help you start converting a little bit, and we're going to just dive in. I'll give you some practical tips to elevate that engagement and drive better and measure that growth from all different types of social media. So I want to be clear off the top here that I've never really been a fan of social media. It's not that I don't like social media. I mean we're on YouTube right now. It's that I feel like it's being utilized completely wrong, especially in the industry of studios. Right now I see a very big shift in people understanding that social media shouldn't be meant for transactional type approaches, especially in the studio realm if you're smaller and is much more beneficial for the big box in the large studios and or e-com brands, and so we have partners that we utilize for studios that still want to use social media. I mean it still works. But I wanted to be clear on that right off the bat, because I think a lot of people think it's the end, all mean all to growing in today's society, when in reality they need to start thinking about it for more of a community building effort. So we're going to talk a little bit about some practical tips to kind of elevate that engagement and how you can start utilizing it to drive better growth. According to a study by HubSpot, actually, brands that actively engage with their followers in a much more meaningful and personalized way see 33% higher client retention and even possibly improve conversion rate. So that's how you can kind of see how you could start leveraging it from both perspectives, a lot like.

Speaker 0:

If you've talked on our previous episodes, I talk a lot about utilizing Google search and GBP for that mixed effort of pre-sale and post-sale retention rate right. So we're gonna talk a lot about that and how that study really is showing promise on starting to utilize any type of social media, depending on who your audience is in much more of a community building way, a value driven way, I think Alex Hermosi and all the big fish that you may watch they will talk about just bring a lot of value. I think what they're really saying is build loyalty with your existing audience and leverage that and then eventually they'll buy right, or they'll buy more or they'll stay longer. If you have a membership and that's really what the whole premise of retention really is right how can you grow up and grow by 33% without naturally thinking that social media is going to be the end all meet, all you know what I see a lot of frustration from most studio owners in particular is they're creating social media content that rarely converts. It doesn't convert because that's not what it's really meant to do, or they're not really generating meaningful relationships by it. That's really what it comes down to and that's a frustration that I hear from a lot of studio owners what I call marketing fatigue.

Speaker 0:

What is marketing fatigue? You know, especially in the studio realm. This is really when you're at a point where you're trying a million different things yourself. You have six different agencies or you hired some VA or some basement dweller marketer for cheap because you thought that they knew what they were doing. In reality, they're just outsourcing to what we call white label companies. I'm sorry, that's just what they're doing and they're basically glorified salesmen. So nothing against them, they're just the start. But a lot of them don't know marketing. So I think it's easy and that's where the I think the taboo has come from, which has caused you to have this marketing fatigue that makes you think that you need to be just like the large fish, you need to be like Nike, and I see it big. I've seen it from both ends, funny enough.

Speaker 0:

Tell you a story right now before we dive into our three topics. I've seen everything. Got in contact with a studio a couple weeks ago that I looked at their stuff and I'm like this is the first time I've seen one studio One. They didn't have three, they didn't have four, they didn't have five, they didn't have 20, they weren't a big box franchise. They customized everything, which is, at the end of the day, I think that's great if it helps processes and workflow and the continued growth of multiple studios. But they had one, and so I was looking at it. I think they were spending $10,000 a month. They hired some dude from Nike to come in and take over marketing and basically created a website that was built with an app program. It doesn't really matter how they did it, it's just. I looked at it and I'm like man, you are not. This is great, but you have to go through those stages. And so they were hitting marketing fatigue, spending all this money, things aren't working and what are you supposed to do with that, right?

Speaker 0:

So I just wanted to bring that story out there, because the marketing fatigue is real and for you to really build that retention and really to grow content that has engagement, you're going to have to take a step back and realize the impact that social media can make from a long term perspective and stop thinking as an as a transactional and start thinking about it as a community builder. I think part of that marketing fatigue I see the struggle, right. You build 250 pieces of content. You have an agency doing this over here and I see it all the time. Companies that I'm like you've been doing social media, you've been doing content for 10 years and you have not grown. I'm like maybe it's time that you realize that that's not going to bring your clients and it's use it as an engagement standpoint and or cut back on it until you get big enough. And that's part of the marketing fatigue. That's what happens when everyone thinks they need to do Facebook ads and social media ads. Let's dive into those three topics before I go on this continued rant about how frustrated I get with this marketing fatigue scenario. I see it all the time.

Speaker 0:

How do you shift from a community building effort from you know, just like a self promotional type situation? Well, there's nothing wrong with doing CTAs, there's nothing wrong with doing self promotions, but you need to start looking at it as a community building effort. So, depending on where your audience is in the studio, you know a lot of people use WhatsApp to like do client communication. I hate WhatsApp personally, but you can utilize WhatsApp or you can utilize honestly what social media is meant for as a communication system and leverage that as your own little internal spot for people in your studio. So, for instance, taking an Instagram account and, you know, creating a group chat in studio and then allowing the members to follow you once they start, and leverage your social media, your social media strategy around that.

Speaker 0:

On one of our previous episodes I talked about leveraging existing members for that retention on creating, you know, events in studio events or in studio challenges met for existing audiences, and so think about it that way Maybe you promote an event only for your members that you can say, hey, member promotion just for your members, come in, we're doing this special class just for members. Give a happy birthday, do something like that to your team. But I think a big community builder on social media is leverage your trainers. Either allow your trainers to be a group admins and or allow them on the account or make sure that they're following the brand and the messaging and leveraging their accounts as part of your account to kind of leverage them to help bring in more members, and so that's a great way for you to save money and have that be part of your trainers jobs. You know we do have partners that focus on sales strategy on trainers, and I think that there's a big thing to say about personal trainers within the studio environment being your brand advocates to bring more members in. They might as well be. I mean, they're the ones doing, they're the ones that are building their personal brand. So leverage that. It's very similar to a sports team and, as you are aware, I used to work in the sports side, so it has that same, has that same concept.

Speaker 0:

So if you're a yoga teacher, for instance, or you own a yoga studio, leverage your existing members. I'm going to use a story here, because this story came up right. I was talking to someone who just bought a studio and they were kind of in a desperation mode because they bought the studio and then the yoga instructor who owned the studio left. They took half the clients with them when they left. No one wanted to go there anymore. So that showcases the power of building diversification between your trainers to allow them to be your advocates and giving them certain power to bring in, but then allowing the brand as a whole to be what keeps the people in, based off of the behaviors and the values that you create. So that's kind of how you can start shifting to thinking about much more of a community building type thought process.

Speaker 0:

Think about it for your social media, for existing members. Create one channel or a chat within, like your Instagram or your TikTok, whatever the channel you prefer, and utilize that as your communication hub for your existing members for that. So what are some proven content creation formulas that can really resonate and help really convert? Great content creation formulas like let's go back, because we're talking about community building side of things. I'm going to have this be a complete post sale type strategy, because I want you to start thinking about the community side of utilizing social media, not necessarily transactional. So content creation formulas.

Speaker 0:

So, first and foremost, you have trainers. Your trainer should be your advocates, and so I would sit down and I would look at all of the different types of classes you are. You have the different types of offerings you have with those classes, and then I would basically allow your personal trainers to kind of be the advocates somewhat around each of those topics. And so, for instance, if you have a personal trainer who focuses on certain type of yoga classes, maybe it's more high performance yoga classes versus meditational type yoga classes. Maybe they have. Those are different types of messaging. Those are different types of people that want to focus on that within your yoga studio.

Speaker 0:

So focus on having those personal trainers be that, be the advocate for that type of messaging, for that type of language, of course, around, make sure they're sticking within the values and the brand and then come up with a strategy for either a content creator to focus that on their account or join account. This is a way for you to leverage the trainers in your studio to be your advocates for growth and, if one leaves, easily be able to transition that person to another person. So that's a way that you can start building higher retention, because people are going to fall in love with their trainers as part of the studio and you need to kind of combine those in a way so that the people don't leave once people leave, right Once your trainers leave. So that is a content creation type of formula. It's not written down, of course, but you can kind of look at that. So, step-by-step process there take your personal trainers, all of them, take all of your classes and make sure that you're they're aligned with certain types of class structures, class formulas, situations of that nature, different types of classes, make sure that that person becomes the advocate, that personal trainer becomes the advocate for that type of content and then just have them come out with a strategy where you're just saying, hey, have them post once a day or before a class, or once every other day, and have that be showing the life of and or showing the class or just showing a tip around that type of class. And if you do that with six trainers, you now have a free content. You now have a strategy that you could have spent probably spent $10,000 on, and then now you're having your trainers do the heavy lifting and have that be a part of their package, maybe pay them an extra dollar or $2 per session above market standard or your competitors to do that, and that way you're not hiring a social media marketing company to do all this work right now. Now, once you get into multiple studios, that becomes a little more challenging, and so you of course have to come up with a plan of attack and then make that consistent within the brand and make that be a structure that you emphasize with all. Or that's when you hire a social media management company to leverage all the accounts and do the posting right. So that would be a creation type formula for you, and then just have them pick certain types of situations within their day Because they're a personal brand. Have them just talk about the different types of classes, the different types of stuff. They know it the most. So have them do it. Take that content creation and also work with whoever's working on your SEO.

Speaker 0:

Mostly, the hard part is you're probably going to be able to get away with having trainers do your social media posts, but you will have a much harder time to have them write a 15 word, 1500 word article on Google. Right so for Google and to bring in more advocacy and retention on Google. Right so for Google and to bring in more advocacy and retention. So I would say that at that point of view, that's when you would hire an agency that focuses on writing fitness related content. You know us, for instance, all of our writers. One of my writers, for instance, is a yoga instructor, so he focuses on that. So whenever he writes about fitness content, he knows what to write about. So he has that understanding. It's much easier. He knows the audience, and so you would take those personal trainers. You would have them be on the website in a specific manner, but also have them be the authors, and then you would have someone like us ghostwrite those types of articles for them so you can move up higher in the rankings, but you're building that advocacy in multiple spots, and so that's more of a strategy and less to a formula. But those are formulas right there that are going to get you higher rankings and better social media engagement and retention by utilizing your personal trainers within the ecosystem of your marketing, and so that would be considered, I think, a formula right there. It's something that we really like to live by with what we do for our clients.

Speaker 0:

Now, practical tips to elevate engagement and drive measurable growth. Elevate engagement your studio that, basically, is gonna have multiple personal brands. Basically, you're very similar A studio. I look very similar to a sports team, I'll be honest with you. You have a different pricing model, yes, but your trainers are your personal brands and so leverage them, and so they are gonna be the ones that drive more engagement because they're gonna be more real around authenticity. So utilize that for engagement.

Speaker 0:

And this goes back to the last point. Utilize the personal brand side as the engagement and then sprinkle in once a week, twice a week, a more so call to action type posts offered changes, maybe a challenge, maybe an event, maybe going to a community event, things of that nature like sprinkle those in those call to actions to get people to schedule a call with you, but utilizing your, your all of your trainers, as an ecosystem around the old brand, as long as it's all consistent and they follow the same branding vision and the same brand messaging parameters, which you could easily create around a strategy right? So that would be a way that I would start elevating your engagement and to drive measurable growth. Start following that engagement, looking at the metrics of that engagement every month. Have your trainers, as part of their goals, their goal metrics to say for their growth. You know we run very heavily internally on the EOS system with growth and scorecards, and so leverage your trainers for that perspective.

Speaker 0:

And so, if you're going in, you're talking to your trainers how do you provide more, how do more people come into your classes? And you're tracking numbers around that also track. Maybe you have a metric for social media engagement, and so follow that engagement to show the higher the engagement levels, the more people are invested in your studio, which is going to affect retention, and so then you could look at the retention number of your studio, which is going to affect retention, and so then you could look at the retention number of your studio and track that. Make sure that churn rate's going down or that the retention rate's going up, and then track that, see if it's working, and then you can do 1% better every month, right? All right, maybe let's do a. Seems like this is working. Why don't you focus more on this? Why don't you focus more on that? And that is a way. Right there, studios, I think, can start to elevate their engagement and really start to drive measurable growth instead of just posting on social media, hoping someone jumps on a call or hoping someone effectively becomes a member.

Speaker 0:

There's a lot we talked about in this, so just to just to summarize what we really went into today we talked a lot about retention. We dove into moving from a community building type mindset for for your online presence, from moving away from a self promotion and transactional type system. We talked a little bit about formulas and how how you can resonate to convert better and build better retention through utilizing your trainers and building a community hub on Instagram and allowing your personal trainers to be the advocates for posting around a formula of their particular group types and classes and how that can be part of their personal brand perspective within the overall ecosystem of the studio. I talked about some practical tips to elevate engagement utilizing the personal trainers, setting a goal to track engagement levels and then utilizing those engagement levels to kind of take a step back and see how that could really build growth within the retention of your existing members. Again, that was a long one. I'm getting winded. This is Zach Coleman.

Speaker 0:

This was another episode of the Fit to Grit cast. Again, I'd love for all of you, go down, look in the box below. If you're listening to this, leave a review. We'd love if you could support the channel and if it's on YouTube, just subscribe. Go in and lift that subscribe button. For us. That's a good one. Lift it. Lift it up and push it and subscribe so that you can get more involved with us and what we're doing. Hope you guys all have a good one and stay gritty.

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Zach Colman

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