Marketing Excellence: How Top Gyms Get Leads to Book, Show and Buy

Every month, Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper shares real gym data and actionable tips from top performers. In July 2025, it's all about marketing excellence.

Today on “Run a Profitable Gym," Chris presents the leaderboards for three key marketing metrics that tell you if your sales funnel is leaky or locked down: 

• Set rate
• Show rate 
• Close rate

Instead of just buying more ads, these Top 10 CEOs refined their systems so more leads booked appointments, more prospects showed up and more people committed to memberships.

Six gyms made all three leaderboards, proving their marketing systems are A+.

From logging 400+ monthly follow-ups to rehearsing every sales consultation, our leaders share their secrets. Chris reveals exactly how these world-class gyms filled their calendars with No Sweat Intros, nurtured leads so they actually walked through the door and closed sales using the Prescriptive Model.

Tune in to for practical tactics you can use today to tighten your gym’s marketing and sales processes.

Links

Gym Owners United

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3:04 - Set rate leaderboard

4:10 - Show rate leaderboard

5:56 - Close rate leaderboard

6:56 - What excellence in marketing means

9:26 - Lead-nurture strategies

12:33 - Product-market fit

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Imagine you're a gym in Ireland. And last month, 65 people signed up for your service. That's not the number of leads that you got. It's not the number of people who booked an appointment. It's not the number of people who showed up for an appointment. 65 people bought. They signed up. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And every month, we publish something called the Leaderboard Show. We highlight one of the key metrics that we track and coach you on in Two Brain Business. And then we interview the top people from each leaderboard. And we say, how'd you do that? And then we share that with you for free because I want you out there climbing the mountain. I want you building a bigger gym that can provide a better income for your family, a better opportunity for your coaches, and a better longer term success story for your clients. This month we're talking about marketing metrics. Quite often people will come up to me online or in person even maybe it's through gym owners united.com that's our free group and they'll send me a message and they'll be like coop i just need more leads or how do i get more clients and what a good mentor or coach will do is they'll break the problem down and identify you know where's the funnel actually leaking here so instead of just upping your ad spend and telling you how to get more leads, what we like to do is say, where's the actual problem? And so we measure three different metrics that fall at different places in your marketing funnel. The first is your set rate. How many of your leads went on your website and booked an appointment? They set a time to talk to you. If you've got lots of leads and and they're going on your website, but they're not booking appointments, you got a website problem. And this month, I'm gonna tell you what the best gyms are doing to increase the number of people who book an appointment from their website. That's called their set rate. The next metric we're gonna track is the show rate. How many people who booked an appointment actually showed up? And this is how we measure your lead nurture. So instead of just guessing, like, ah, you need better lead nurture, we're gonna actually measure it and tell you whether that's where you should be focused or not. That's where your funnel is leaking, or maybe it's not. And the number of people who show up for an appointment out of the total who booked an appointment, that's your set rate. And I'm gonna give you some tips on that today too. That's your show rate. And finally, The number of people who show up for your appointment and buy, that is your close rate. A lot of gyms will say, oh, I've got this huge close rate. It's 80%. It's 100%. But they're not getting many leads. And so when you're only getting three people through your funnel and they're all referrals from your clients, yes, your close rate should be 100%. But if you're actually building out your marketing funnels and you're getting some leads from web traffic and some from social media and some from your content and some from referrals, well, you're going to have some holes to fix. And that's what we're here to do today. Don't just take my advice. I'm sharing advice from the top gyms in the world for set rate, show rate, and close rate today. You can learn from them. You can implement exactly what they did. And of course, the number one thing they did was got on a call to talk about mentorship with Two Brain Business. So let's start with the set rate. This is our top 10 leaderboard, and I love the international flavor here. So first in 10th place with 38 appointments booked, that is their set rate as a gym in the Netherlands. In 9th, 8th, and 7th, each with 39 appointments booked last month, are three different gyms in the USA. In 6th place, also I guess with 39 booked last month, is a gym from New Zealand. In 5th place, with 51 No Sweat Intros booked last month, is a gym from Belgium. In 4th place, also with 51, is a gym in the US. In 3rd place, with 60 appointments booked last month, is a gym from Canada. Respect. In second place with 65 appointments booked last month is a gym from Ireland. And in first place with 71 appointments booked last month is a gym from Spain. That's how many people came on their website and booked an appointment. That's important because it tells you Here's what the best websites in the world can produce. Is your website measuring up? If it's not, it's time to talk to your website provider about how can I get more appointments booked? Now let's move on to show rate. How many of those people who booked an appointment actually showed up? Now keep in mind that the order might change here because the gyms who are great at getting appointments booked might not be also the best at getting people to show up. And so that's their weak link that they can work on. You see how that works? So in 10th place, a gym in the US had 26 people show up and so did a gym in Belgium in ninth place. In eighth and seventh place, two other gyms, both from the U.S., had 27 people show up for their appointments. In sixth place, a gym had 35 people show up for their appointments. In fifth place, a gym in New Zealand had 44 show up for their appointments. In fourth place, another gym in the U.S. had 44 show up. In third place, a gym in Spain had 53 people show up for their appointments. And in second place, a gym in Canada had 60 people show up for their appointments. And in first place, a gym in Ireland had 65 people show up for their appointments. That's incredible. Now, if you're tracking these or if you're watching the YouTube video or if you're reading the blog post and you're looking at these charts, you'll notice that the gyms in the top three shift around a little bit. The ones that are getting the most appointments booked might not be the same ones who are getting these people to show. So if you are wondering about your lead nurture and how good it is what you do is you look at this list and you say like, am I getting 26, 44, 65 people to actually show up for their appointments? If not, it's time to work on your lead nurture. First, are you calling people after they book an appointment? Second, are you sending them texts? Are you using a system like GLM to respond to people when you're at home at sleep or can't get to your phone? And that's the key to lead nurture. There's a lot of tips here and I have a great guide on lead nurture in gymownersunited.com. If you want it, just go in there and search for it. You'll find it. Next, how many people actually bought? This is my favorite leaderboard all month. And the reason this is my favorite leaderboard all month is because these are lives changed. They're not sales made. They're not conversions. It's lives changed. I love it so much. So a gym in the U.S. changed 17 lives. And they changed those lives by coaching the person to commit to themselves with money. 20 lives saved, changed in New Zealand, 22 in Portugal, 26 in Spain, 31 in the US, 32 in another gym in the US, 41 in another gym in the US, 43 in another gym in New Zealand, 60 in Canada, 60 people came into the gym and they met with a coach and the coach coached them to commit to changing their lives. And they signed up for the gym and 65 in Ireland. That's outstanding. 65 lives changed in one micro gym because their coaches understood how to coach somebody to commit to changing their lives. In other words, they knew how to sell. Now, these are marketing metrics, so I want to tell you what excellence in marketing actually means. There are six gyms that made all three boards out of 10 spots on each board. That's amazing. This indicates that their marketing systems are world-class. They're generating a significant number of leads up here at the top of the funnel. Then they're following up and nurturing lots of leads to book appointments mid-funnel. They're getting those people to show up mid-funnel, and they're closing sales using the prescriptive model that we teach at Two Brain. That means they're helping more people to change their lives with fitness. They are coaching people to come to the gym. They're coaching people to show up for their appointment. They're coaching people to commit. Now, if you combine these excellent marketing stats with other KPIs, and it's easy to see how the best gyms in the world operate. So for example, two of the gyms on the close rate leaderboard have ARM stats over$400. Their average member is paying them over$400 a month. So they're acquiring lots of high value clients. Industry leading length of engagement then creates huge lifetime value. The people who come in are likely to sign up. They're likely to pay you what you're worth, and they're likely to stay. Some of the marketing leaders appeared also on the most recent revenue leaderboard, and that's how they did it. ARM times LEG equals revenue. Sound pricing and operations ensure careers for their staff. They have a great profit margin, which supports the business and generates substantial income for the owner who doesn't burn out and quit, but usually winds up buying out his three closest competitors who don't know with their metrics down the street. And that's because gym metrics are interconnected. Just like I think runners should deadlift, I think people who are great at marketing should be also greater retention marketing is an area of focus and you you know this you can't coach anybody to squat if you can't first coach them to sign up for your service and that's why we teach new gym owners in two brain how to create market and sell high value services that get results for clients and support world-class gyms instead of just trying to pump an infinite head count into your group coaching classes and in our growth group at two brain more and more gym owners are taking advantage of office hours to dramatically improve their marketing and and their sales. They can get on and role play sales. These weekly group sessions don't take the place of one-on-one mentorship, but they allow gym owners to work with experts to improve very specific areas of their business, like sales and marketing. We have specialists who come into our groups every single week on top of the one-on-one mentoring and coach you through the biggest sticking points in your business. Now I want to talk about lead nurture for a moment, because this is really an area of focus for a lot of our gyms. One gym owner said, when they click your ad, now you have their contact and it's my job to get them in the door, so I focus on that. Another said, A third said, A third said, The fourth said, when somebody books and we don't know who they are, we were at an office hours with Nick Habich and he taught us to reach out and say, hey, I'm just between clients and I saw your booking come through. I wanted to introduce myself. And then we can confirm the time with them and we give them an idea of how the no sweat intro goes to build trust. Another one said, when we are lead nurturing four hours before the appointment, we confirm, hey, person just wanted to confirm for 4 p.m. And if they don't confirm, I'll usually call them an hour before the appointment. Another said, our client success manager. This is a dedicated person dedicated to lead nurture and retention. She's great at following up with no sweat intros. She messages each person early on in the morning of their appointment as a reminder, which definitely helps with our show rate. Another leader said it's pretty rare for someone to come in for no sweat intro and not sign up for at least a membership. The hard part is always getting them through the door in the first place, but when they do show up, we have a high chance of success because we've practiced this so much. Another said, I have a counter app on my phone i use this to be consistent in my follow-ups as of today i'm at 217 prospect follow-ups this month it's a slow time and so i'll do 30 to 40 during today and i do follow up on the phone or on text another person said phone call is my favorite if they don't answer i'll send a video text for april and may i did 400 follow-ups for the month isn't that wild you might not even feel like i want to do 400 you know you maybe you don't want to do that many but the reality is that these gym owners know what it's going to take to grow their business and they act on it. Another theme was professionalizing their sales. They understand that sales is the first act of coaching. This person said, I rehearse every no sweat intro before the actual appointment. I watched Nick Habich's videos in the toolkit. Hey, we've actually got a role play tool coming for our clients too. Another said, we use a separate assessment room for the no sweat intro. Brilliant. A third said, we're an access gym that also offers coaching. Sometimes we have walk-ins who want to sign up for a on the spot before doing an NSI. And when that happens, we still book them for an NSI afterward to upsell programming or coaching. So if you've got an access, Jim, take a note of that. This person said, I have a sales background, door to door in college. I've noticed that the new leads through Facebook are a bit colder. So I revamped our sales process for these new colder leads. I keep track of every single contact point on a Google sheet. I call the leads immediately to set up the NSI and I follow a script on the call. Now, the last group of leaders mentioned product market fit. I thought it was worth including here. This person said, we've evolved over three years in business with our marketing and website. We market now more toward personal training, and we're bringing in the avatar for this particular product. Another said, turning on lead ads has actually increased our number of leads. That's what they're supposed to do. They said, we're a bit different in that what we're targeting is moms of kids, but this is as a sports performance gym. And Leighton Bingham, a Two Brain Marketing helped us craft the ads. This person said, we are a kids sports performance gym, so we're not selling to the person who will attend the gym, and we actually start with a workout. My partner does the welcome, gives the tour, and asks how we can help, one-on-one or group. And then I talk to the parent about schedule and the kids do a workout. The trainer makes them laugh and builds rapport through the workout. This is a fun and evaluative process, and my partner gets the child to say how much fun it was, and this makes the closing that much simpler. For a value-add follow-up, I send a video of the athletes to the mom. Now, another group don't do the sales themselves. They don't do the lead nourish themselves. They delegate that to their staff. And they said, it came down to our team really nailing their roles. We've got three of us focused on lead gen, no sweat intros and retention and everything clicks. Another said, my gym manager runs most of our NSIs and is very consistent with conversions. Hey, if your gym manager is better at closing sales than you are, by all means, put them in front of the NSIs. Another person said, we've trained staff to go through the workout with the kids. And sometimes we we have two or three going at the same time. Then I can stagger the clothes with the parents. I want to talk about the four funnels that we use at Two Brain. Every gym needs four funnels. And the reason is that sometimes one funnel can really take off while another is lagging, but it won't matter because you're drawing from four different wells. So here's one example. This person said, our paid ads didn't perform that well last month, but our referral funnel more than made up for it. So they got on the leaderboard for appointments booked, appointments showed, and appointments closed. And on the same month, their ads stopped performing as well as they normally do it's going to take them some time to fix their ads but while they're doing that they ramped up their referral funnel and the same number of people are coming in and they're closing the same number imagine if you had like only one funnel or you're just kind of haphazardly doing some marketing sometimes kind of what happens when that stops working you're done you don't have any of these your leads can go to zero your appointments book can go to zero and now it's a panic before that happens get on a call with a mentor and build four marketing funnels the last piece of advice that these leaders shared with you and wanted me to share with you was this. It's about focus. And this person said, look, to an extent, I can't control how many people sign up, but I can control how much effort I put in. What she was saying here is that when I've got my funnels built and I understand these different metrics of set rate, show rate, and close rate, I can easily pinpoint where I need to work harder and fix a problem before it happens. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. And if you want to ask questions about this stuff, just go to gymownersunited.com. It's our free group that we do as a public service for about 11,000 gym owners worldwide. There's some great sharing in there. There's some great support in there. And I'm in there with our team of mentors every single day, answering questions and giving out free tools to help. I'll see you in there. And thank you for serving humanity.