How to Make Local Content Marketing Work for Your Fitness Studio
If you’ve read any of my blogs, you’ll already know that I am a HUGE advocate for all the reasons that fitness and yoga studios need to have a website. However, in all the excitement of getting your website up and running, one thing can sometimes get overlooked — your long-term content marketing plan.
Yes, you want to focus on making your website look amazing, but after that website is built, you want it to keep working for your business too. The trick is being strategic about what activities you choose to put your marketing budget towards & having a plan to do it in a way that’s both relevant to your studio AND sustainable.
So where do you begin? Start writing blogs? Hire an SEO agency? Launch a Google Ad campaign? The truth is that there are many different approaches for content marketing with a local focus, and the good news is you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars each month to be effective.
Why content marketing matters for your local fitness business
Back in 2020 video content exploded on the scene due to sheer necessity. As a result, fitness content marketing is something the industry has slowly woken up to and started to embrace in multiple ways.
However, as I mentioned above, where studios often fall short is not clearly focusing on strategies that are geared toward local businesses. Most of the talk of content marketing out on the internet is focused on non-local businesses (physical products, digital products & courses etc), so studio owners are often steered in the wrong direction or don’t see why it’s necessary and relevant.
This often results in fitness studio owners putting effort in the wrong places — like randomly blogging recipes that no one reads… or the people who do read them aren’t anywhere near the actual studio location, so there’s no hope of them becoming a client — totally defeating the purpose!
Content marketing is something that can be very much worth the time and effort required — but only if it’s done with the right goals in mind.
Fitness Content Marketing Isn’t Just About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
When I speak with clients about content marketing, a common misconception is that your best bet for local reach is hiring an agency focused on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)—they basically equate the term ‘content marketing’ with SEO. In reality, increased visibility in search is only one potential outcome of good content.
In fact, there are only a handful of money-making keyword phrases that show local buying intent (ie. Pilates studio near me, Pilates class near me etc.), and those can and should be optimized for within the main pages of your website.
The SEO that matters most to your local business primarily happens via your Google Business Profile, foundational optimizations of your core website pages, and link building—not your blog.
The bottom line: not all traffic is relevant traffic.
Studios can spend a lot of money hiring SEO agencies whose approach is better suited for non-local businesses (ie. long-tail keywords with no local context). So if you’re hiring out SEO to help with your fitness content marketing, make sure you ask specifically how the proposed SEO strategy will attract LOCAL clients.
While SEO is important, the most important parts for a local business can be done without recurring costs. Optimize your Google Business Profile, show it some love regularly and hire a web designer or SEO consultant for a one-time project to optimize the core pages of your website.
Then, you can focus on other areas or opportunity to use content within your business.
Content Marketing Ideas for Fitness Studios
At this point you’re probably wondering where it DOES make sense to invest in content marketing for your local fitness business...
The good news is that now that you’re not spending thousands of dollars a month to have an SEO agency create blog posts for you, you can take the time and money you would have spent on ongoing SEO services and invest in other marketing options. Here are some options for you to consider:
#1. Buy Google Ads
You can buy a heck of a lot of ad space for the cost of keeping an SEO agency on retainer. What’s great about Google Ads is that you can focus your ad spend on your local area and keywords with high buying intent. Google Ads can help people reach more potential clients, reach more people in your local market and ideally, generate more leads for your studio. Best of all, Google Ads are measurable so you can see if your targeting is effective and adjust accordingly if needed.
#2. Create Locally Relevant Content
If you want to be found locally, why not write about local things? Blogging can still be a good tool in your content marketing strategy and provides an ideal opportunity to talk about events going on in your local area or promote other local businesses that are complementary to what you do.
For example, the area I’m located in hosts the Lincoln Marathon (and half marathon) and it’s a banner event every spring. Participation in the event is huge, attracting everyone from beginners to hard-core runners. With that in mind, a good blog post might be about workouts, exercise, stretches, nutrition, mindset, etc. for marathon training, with specific reference to the local event.
If you approach these articles from a place of actually wanting to be helpful and putting out good information (as opposed to making sure it has the right keywords) you’ll proudly share the content with prospects and clients and it will establish your expertise in real life. Having locally relevant content on your site also makes it easy to collaborate with local media who might be looking for expert interviews.
#3. Try Email Marketing
Fitness content marketing is about more than just writing blogs. Email marketing can be leveraged in a multitude of ways to connect with your prospects and existing clients by providing relevant, helpful information on a consistent basis. Email marketing has many benefits, including building your credibility, making your brand more recognizable, driving traffic to your website, and more. It also gives you a direct communication channel with your audience, allowing you to both promote your services and educate them — while also helping with your overall retention.
Email marketing doesn’t just have to be a weekly or biweekly newsletter, although having a schedule and sticking to it will help train your audience to expect to hear from you at regular intervals. Some possible ways to leverage your email marketing can include:
A welcome series for new clients.
Sharing your new video-on-demand releases.
Promoting upcoming events.
Educating on current promotions/sales.
#4. Focus on Evergreen Content
If you’re new to content marketing you may not be too familiar with the idea of evergreen content. However, trust me when I say that fitness and yoga studios are prime candidates to leverage this strategy!
Evergreen content is anything that stays relevant over a long period of time. That means that long after you made the content available, it’s still valuable to your audience. This matters with regard to managing the resources of your studio because the longer a piece of content can stay “current”, the less content you’ll need to continue creating.
When creating fitness content marketing pieces that are evergreen, consider focusing on items like how-to guides, lists, tips and tricks, beginner video series, product reviews, and more. People love to be able to download and save this sort of content, so creating them in PDF format is a great approach. You can definitely post this content on your website, but you can also use it to send to new clients, as printable handouts at promotional events and more!
#5. Answer all the Frequently Asked Questions
You may be wondering how answering questions is part of your fitness content marketing strategy, but it absolutely is!
First off, having great FAQs not only helps save you time by minimizing the staff workload of responding to questions. Secondly, it makes you look like a total pro when you can link someone to a well-written article you already have about the exact topic they have questions about.
An important element of local content marketing is establishing yourself as an authority, and what better way to do that than by answering questions they have before they even ask?
Pro tip: The FAQ page of your website is often heavily favored by Google for the amount of helpful information it includes, so don’t overlook this page! You can also repurpose those FAQs on your Google Business Profile.
#6. Uplevel Your Website Copy
As I talked about earlier, if you want to be found locally, optimizing your website is critical. Your fitness website should have not only a strong design but also great copywriting that is strategically done.
Unlike hiring an SEO agency on an ongoing basis, most fitness website designers can be hired on a project basis, making this something you can tackle as part of your overall marketing strategy before you start implementing other ideas.
When I work with clients on website design, we always look at their website copy to see if there is an opportunity for it to be optimized and more aligned to support attracting the right clients in their local area.
