How to Create Fitness Content That Builds Real Loyalty

Ever wondered why your fitness studio's marketing feels flat despite using those recommended content templates? You're not alone. The truth is, generic content creates generic results, and in today's crowded fitness market, that's simply not enough.

The real power lies in authentic storytelling—sharing your studio's ups and downs, your personal fitness journey, and the real experiences of your trainers and members. This episode breaks down how studios that embrace authentic content creation have increased their client inquiries by a stunning 35%. Why? Because when potential members see that you're not claiming perfection but simply doing your best, they connect with your brand on a deeper level.

We explore strategic approaches to content creation tailored to different stages of the member journey. Pre-sale content should cast a wider net with origin stories and behind-the-scenes glimpses, while member-focused content needs to address specific needs and challenges. For busy studio owners, we provide practical strategies to manage content creation without it consuming all your time—including how to transform your trainers into powerful brand advocates without adding to your marketing expenses.

Perhaps most valuable is our system for capturing and leveraging client success stories. With a simple in-studio setup for collecting video testimonials, you can build a content library that strengthens your credibility across all platforms. This isn't just about getting more likes—it's about creating sustainable growth through authentic community building.

Ready to move beyond generic templates and create content that truly reflects what makes your studio special? Listen now, and don't forget to share your thoughts on building sustainable lead flow through member advocacy in the comments below. As always, stay gritty!

Chapters

• 0:00 The Problem With Generic Content
• 2:11 Types of Authentic Studio Content
• 5:55 Time Management Strategies for Owners
• 10:09 Leveraging Client Stories for Credibility
• 11:35 Building Sustainability Through Authenticity

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

They give you these pre-made templates, you post it up there.

Speaker 0: 0:03

Nothing really happens.

Speaker 0: 0:04

It's very generic, but this really fails to build a connection that's meaningful with most of your members. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Fit to Crit Cast. I'm your host, zach Coleman, and today we're gonna talk about content mastery how you can really start to build that authentic content that can start attracting your ideal loyal members. Even when your expertise is clear, fitness studios usually still struggle with consistently producing engaging, authentic content. Without strong content, your brand will start to remain visible. There's just so much content out there right now and in today's crowded market, it becomes even harder for studios to be really seen by their ideal members. But externally, with all their messaging and their content increased their client inquiry count by an average of 35%, you know, initially most studios' content becomes very generic or inconsistent. I mean, I bet you've done this already. Right, you've gone in and you've bought one of those gym owners that say, hey, build our content, this is what works for us. They give you these pre-made templates, this pre-made content. You post it up there. Nothing really happened. It's very generic, same old challenges, same old retention rate, same old high churn rate, but this really fails to build a connection that's meaningful with most of your members and your potential members. When you start to shift to a much more residency of not just posting consistently but also building authentic content, you're sharing real stories, not just with what your business struggles, but also your fitness journey, your trainer's fitness journeys, and this transformation helps them feel more connected to your community and it sets you apart from all of your competition. Your audience will start to quickly grow more authentically. You'll start to be able to build more retention and they start to look at you as more of an authority. One they already know that you're not perfect. You're not trying to be. You have more mistakes as you continue to go through your growing pains that they see as part of you trying to do your best. But two, you're not just like every other studio out there. So how do you really go through that and build authentic content?

Speaker 0: 2:40

So today we're going to go through three main things. We're going to talk about the types of authentic content that you can do for your fitness studio to really attract and engage with your ideal audience. Some consistent strategies for you as studio owners, for you to manage your limited time, especially when it comes to posting and writing content and really how to start leveraging your trainers and client stories to strengthen your brand credibility, to get you out of the grind work to be that brand that does all of the marketing and all of the posting, etc. Etc. Etc. So let's first talk about the types of authentic content that you can do for your fitness studio that really attract and engage your ideal members. Well, first and foremost, when you look at content on a scale when it comes to marketing, where is it in your funnel? You have to first think are we doing this from a pre sale client acquisition, our member acquisition kind of funnel? Are we doing this from a membership retention type? Those are two different types of content and, depending on where a member is in their journey pre-sale, post-sale is really going to determine the types of content that you want to post here.

Speaker 0: 3:53

For instance, if you're doing pre-sale, talk about your stories. Have a much broader type set of content that you can utilize. Talk about the business, talk about your ups and downs, talk about family. Talk about things that are broader so that you can utilize. Talk about the business. Talk about your ups and downs, talk about family. Talk about things that are broader so that you can broaden your reach towards who's seeing this type of content, compared to members that are going to be a little bit more niched. And you also have to look at content on a scale of where is it in the journey, like I said before. So you have two different types of email. So the types of content that I see work best. If we're talking about emails, you can have a pre-sale type engagement where you talk about certain types of content, talk about the story of the studio opening, talking about the story of how it got branded, building the studio space. Leverage that type of information for not just your pre sale but for maybe some of those members that are still on the fence and you're you're holding in your funnel for you know, upwards a year to see if they sign right. Leverage that type of stuff where your post sale content could be daily workouts, weekly workouts. If you're a smaller, if you're doing group classes, it could be having trainer specific type content. Utilizing blog content is a great way to leverage both those. You're not just writing content for people that aren't members, but you're also writing content for people that are members, so you can recycle that content from two different perspectives.

Speaker 0: 5:26

Now, the type of content that you write is going to be niche, but I would stick away from just talking about the basics. Don't just talk about workouts, don't just talk about nutrition. That stuff is a basic and, yes, you may need it, especially for your audience, especially for beginners. But depending on what your audience is and the loyal members that you want to probably put through a longer journey than just two to three months, you're probably going to want to have much deeper type content for them, how to use, kind of go on the role of what's going to be really niche for the type of audience I have, and so you're probably going to want to create an ICP, probably have an understanding of who your audience is. For instance, if you're talking to moms, workouts moms can do from home, if you can't make it to the gym, you wanna pick content that's really related. And if you are also a mom, how do you build your stories and authentically place them in while you open this studio? So the types of authentic content really come around to it really is gonna be specific for your studio and its growth.

Speaker 0: 6:34

But I would 100% say that also comes down to what your niche is. Find a nice combination of two different traits. So look at the demo. Females, you know, maybe from 30 to 30, 40, we'll say that's a demo and the psychological side. You know they're a mom and they don't have that much time. So how do you correlate both of those and put it into an authentic message? And then you can add a story on top of it. Stories probably wouldn't be great for blogs. I would probably highly leave the stories to social media posts and first touch points for your audience and leave more of the tips and the tricks for members and or pre-sale engagement if they're on the fence Now, consistent strategies for you to help managing your time.

Speaker 0: 7:25

One of the biggest things I really see when it comes to studio owners is they bring all these trainers in. They're still in operations. They think they need to do marketing all themselves. So what do they do? They just do all their social media themselves. Let me tell you something that a lot of people don't understand. When you are spending money on advertising, you are spending money on on a platform to display your content to a larger amount of people. Am I saying that you need to go paid? No, but what I am saying is that think about that, in terms of delegation, you are now paying $10 to have something be seen by thousands of people, where you do one post and you see it's seen by 200, 300 people. Right, they may be more targeted because they're your followers, but in today's day and age you need to think about that in terms of paid advertisement and how that works for your audience.

Speaker 0: 8:18

Now, moving to a much more paid advertisement approach, I probably would say wait until you're at least half a million and you can have a thousand dollar budget to really put towards it from a paid advertisement perspective. But if you're looking to really kind of raise organic and start to build that platform, think about how you can start leveraging your existing trainers to become the advocates to post on your behalf. So start coming up with either an SOP on how you promote your stories, how your trainers promote their stories, how they match with the brand guidelines of said studio, and then start I'm not going to say demanding but start putting into the culture that your trainers have to post on the platform once a day. I mean I think that's. That's great. That's a great way to get started on building that community and that authenticity and get you out of managing your time from moving away from marketing tasks.

Speaker 0: 9:11

Yes, you can hire a marketing agency, but I promise you like, if you're going to hack and slash the buying a marketing or hiring two or three different marketing agencies one to do this to do that do that. You're only going to be separating out a lot of communication where one studio can kind of really help with that on. On the vice versa perspective, if you're bringing someone in house to do it from a freelance role, remember they're just doers. They'll just take what you want and do that. You may need to be at a point where you need more expertise and so just really think about where you're at in your growth cycle, what you can afford when it comes to marketing. I would 100% say that stick to about 5% to 10% of your gross revenue for your marketing budget and then, yes, if you need to delegate that out separately, great. But also do not look at your trainer and put that in the marketing expense. Right, that's still a trainer, there's still operations, etc. Etc.

Speaker 0: 10:05

So how do you start to leverage client stories to strengthen your brand recognition? I mean, this is easy, you know. I would highly recommend that you put either a spot in your studio, buy a camera, buy a spot, make just a little spot where, and not just getting Google reviews, but you allow someone to come in and say, hey, would you give us a video testimonial? And you have everything already kind of set up so they can just go leave a video testimonial for you in said studio with a certain backdrop. Nothing wrong with that, you know, you can add some sort of disclaimer to it. But you can use those stories to build more credibility to you. You can chop it up, you can put it on your website. You can leverage these stories from a large visual perspective from you from advertisement, use these as advertisement, place them into advertisements and it really helps build the credibility for other members to see these on your Google business profile, your social media account, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 0: 11:03

So leverage not just the client success story, but leverage how you can get those client success stories. That's your first step towards building a solid system. How do you get these client success stories and how do you do that on repeat and on a consistent manner? You know, overall, mastering authentic content will significantly expand not just your reach and your visibility, but your community, your, your advocacy and your overall retention rate overall, as you can continue to try to make it to the next level.

Speaker 0: 11:35

It may not seem like it now. You may not be able to see that touch point and how it's changing, but it is. I promise you, and positioning yourself as that authority in your local community will only boost your membership growth. I and help you to build more of that sustainability. Again, I'm Zach Coleman. This is the Fit to Grit cast. I'd love for you to go down in the comment box below. What do you think about building a sustainable lead flow? What do you think about growing your studio based off of the advocacy of your existing members? I love your thought process on it below. If you've done it before, again, stay gritty.