Turn Your Gym's Social Media Into a Lead Generation Machine

The average gym gets 28.9% of its leads from social media.

Most gym owners leave them on the table by posting the wrong things—or worse, nothing at all.

Today, Two-Brain CEO John Franklin walks through a simple social media system gym owners can use to get more prospects onto their page and convert them into paying members.

He gives you side-by-side comparisons of real gyms’ pages, showing you what attracts leads and what doesn’t.

He also presents examples of gym owners who are crushing it on social right now, such as:

- Joseph Strada, who built an audience by leaning into his love of White Monster.
- Anthony Wu, who gets one to two new small group clients from social every month with under 100 followers.
- Elvis Fisher, whose fun karaoke video became a magnet for new members.

Plus, he hands you DM scripts for starting conversations with new followers, re-engaging old members and turning comments into clients.

Watch this episode and walk away with a clear posting plan, real examples to model and word-for-word scripts to start generating more gym leads from social media today.

Links

Gym Owners United

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3:14 - Convert leads from social

5:47 - Create social proof

9:58 - Make prospects like you

12:57 - Build authority

14:27 - 3x5 story method

Transcript

0:03

28.9. That is the percentage of all gym leads that come from social media across every gym we surveyed in our Two Brain Business State of the Industry report. And if you're a gym owner who's posting on social media right now but isn't necessarily happy with the results, this video is for you. I'm going to break down the system the best Two Brain gyms are using to get prospects onto their social media and then convert them into paying members. But before we do that, we need to talk about our primary advantage as independent gym owners. And that's us. I want to start by saying people buy from people. So one of the biggest mistakes we see gym owners making is they're not showcasing themselves and their coaches on their social media feed often enough. To illustrate this point, I want to bring up two gym social medias. Let's look at Zenith Fitness first. You'll notice some of the things on here are basically. Canva templates. So this is a weekly schedule which is geared towards members. This is a gym closure alert. There's some quotes, but I'm not really seeing a lot of faces. I don't know who's running the show. I don't really understand who the gym is for. There's nothing particularly compelling on here that screams, this gym's for me. Compare that to the Fort New York City run by Dan and Kyle. They're a small group personal training gym, and they generate a ton of leads from their social media. And one of the things we noticed right off the bat is that we see a lot of faces. So the first thing you see are the owners, Dan and Kyle. And we can see this is the fort. It shows how they train and how to get started. Under here, you also see faces. And what they're doing here is they're answering prospect questions and talking about the style of training they do, which makes this very compelling funnel, right? The goal of our social media is twofold. It's to help people discover our gym and then make them more likely to be a buyer. In this day and age, the way people look for a gym is pretty straightforward. Right? They're going to open up a browser. They're going to pull up their phone. They're going to write gym near me. And then they're going to get three results. And they're going to click on all three of them. They're going to read the reviews. They're going to look at the photos on Google. They're going to bop over to the website to make sure that the gym offers the service they're looking for. And then the next thing they do is they're going to go to the gym's. Instagram and or Facebook to get a general vibe check. So your social media can be a huge help in getting people to buy faster, or it can be a hindrance. If you're doing it wrong. Now, most people get overwhelmed when it comes to social media, they try and set up a crazy cadence of like posting every day, or they'll post consistently, but they'll do what I call checkbox content, where you just make something to make something that day. And there really isn't any strategy or rhyme or reason behind what they're doing. I think a simple system that allows you to post for a long period of time is really helpful. And so there are three unique buckets of content that we recommend for Instagram that you can just reuse on Facebook. And we've aptly named these the big three. And so we have conversion content, connection content, and value content. And we're going to get into what each one of those are and give some examples. The first and most important is conversion content. And all conversion content is, is content that makes people more likely to buy from you. Now, if you take nothing from this video, except for the next thing I'm going to tell you, it'll be worth the price of admission. The most compelling piece of conversion content you can make is a series of pinned posts. Because we mentioned when a prospect looks for a gym, the thing they're going to do is they're going to go from Google to your website to Instagram. So they've done a little bit of research. And so we have this huge opportunity on the top of our Instagram profile to showcase what we're all about and show people how to do business with us. And I'm going to pull the Forts Essential 3 because they do a phenomenal job of this. So the first video in the pinpost sequence should simply state who you are, what you do, and who you help. So are you a CrossFit? Are you a personal training gym? What type of training do you do? Do you work one-on-one, small group, big group? And then who do you help? Be specific here. Do you want to work with busy moms or do you work with busy dads? Do you work with children? Do you work with young adults? Whatever it is, be specific here. Do you work with busy moms or do you prefer people over 60? The more detail you can give, the more likely someone who's watching it and fits into that niche is going to say, hey, this place is for me. The next video is simply what kind of training you do and what a session looks like. So if you're a CrossFit gym, explain what CrossFit is. If a session is 45 minutes long, talk about what goes on in those 45 minutes. Is there a warmup? Is there a cool down? Whatever makes your gym unique and the style of training you do, you need to showcase that the same way you would if someone came into your gym, you're holding them by the hand and explaining what's going on in the class. And the third video of the sequence is the most important. It's not going to get the most likes, but it's going to get you the most members. So you got to tell prospects exactly what you want them to do to do business with you. So is the next step in the process booking a call with you where you ask them a couple questions or do they need to go on your site, find a calendar and book a time to come into the gym? This is also a great place to talk about your scheduling and pricing and wean people out who aren't a great fit. Doing this basically pre-sells people. So by the time they get on the phone or have that sales conversation with you, they're essentially pre-sold. Even if you make no other piece of Instagram content, just put together this essential three, pin it to the top of your profile, and I guarantee you're going to convert more people than you otherwise would if you had nothing there. And now the next piece of connection content is the piece that we'll do on a recurring basis. And this is social proof. And all social proof is, is evidence that you deliver on the promise you're making. So if you're promising a fun hour of working out, your social proof should showcase how fun your gym is. If you are a place people go to transform, your social proof needs to show that you help people actually transform. And the way most gym owners do social proof now is they'll take like a sentence from a Google review and they'll just put it on a Canva template and they'll post that. And while that's okay, it's only slightly better than nothing. I'm going to show you a nice spin you can put on it to make it a little more compelling. What I recommend doing is when someone has a good transformation, you're going to ask them for a review or you're going to ask them to capture a piece of social proof, just get their coach and them together, have them hold a whiteboard and snap a picture. Now, ultimate performance is where I got this idea. And what they do is they just write after the fact on the whiteboard, the thing that this person accomplished. And the reason I love this is it showcases the type of members who go to the gym. So you can see that this gym is clearly for women in their fifties and sixties. And what they're offering is transformation because this one's about this person's weight. This one says that this person is in the best shape of their life. And this person got their first pull up at age 65. The secondary benefit is it showcases your coaches. If you are selling training, like your coaches and you, you are the product, so you should be visible. And so looking at this, you can see that they're in uniform, they're fit looking, they look very professional and it bodes well on the service. And so someone who's looking for a high end personal training service is going to respond to something like this a lot more than they would just like a static image with a quote saying, I got my first pull up at the age of 65. Now, while static is great, video is always more compelling and video testimonials do not have to be overly complicated. And I'm sure, I'm sure you've run into like the situation where you go to do a video testimonial of a member, you pull up the camera and the person just freezes because they're not used to being on camera all the time. This is a learned skillset. So one way you can make it easier for the client is by having the coach in the frame with them. And so you can see here, this Eric Connor doing an interview with one of his members and just asking her questions casually. And I gave you some scripts here you can use. So one of them is just like a before and after. So you ask, what's the thing you were struggling with when you joined the gym? What's the biggest change you've noticed since you've joined? And if someone was on the fence, what would you say to them about joining? Just simple and easy. Ask those questions and it's all done. Next one. If you're doing group training and the culture and community is a big selling point, you can just say, what's one thing that keeps you coming back here every week? Can you share a moment in the gym where you felt really proud of yourself? And then how would you describe the vibe here to a friend? And that one's got some great golden nuggets in there because not only does it make for good Instagram content, it also helps you in your marketing. The final one is just like a short and punchy question. So it's, you know, what surprised you most about joining the gym? And this one's really powerful. How has being a part of this community changed your life? And so for a cadence here, just pull one or two members and do one of these sequences, whichever one resonates more with the type of gym you have. And over time, you're going to have this big backlog of social proof. And you can do this cool thing where you just like overlay the question. So let's say, how has being a part of this gym changed your life? And then you can stitch together like seven or eight member answers on the back end. And it creates this really powerful piece of social proof that showcases you deliver on the result that you are promising people. Now, if I haven't made this clear yet, I want you to be present in the videos. You are the unique advantage. You are the edge over whatever corporate chain you're competing against. So if you are selling coaching, if you are selling training, you are part of the product. You should be visible. People should know who they're doing business with, and they should want to do business with you because you're awesome. Now that we have a system for moving prospects down the funnel, we got to make prospects like us more. And that's where, connection content comes in. It's simply stuff that makes prospects want to do business with you. And I have some great examples here. So the first one, this is Mike Brannis of Stoked Athletics. He had a staff meeting and all he did was put out a vert pad and every one of the coaches at the staff meeting did a max vert jump, which caused all the members to start commenting and made for this really popular piece of content that showcases the gym. And it showed that they're fun. This is. Joe Strada of Unleashed Strength. And so he runs a power lifting gym and he loves white monster. So a lot of his content revolves around his love of white monster. And guess what? His audience and his avatar, they love white monster too. And so it makes them like Joe and want to do business with Joe and showcases like, oh, this spot is for me. The owner of this gym gets me. This over here is Elvis Fisher. He did this karaoke video where he pretended to sing and it was really bad and it showed vulnerability and just shows that he's a fun guy and he's selling like a fun class experience. So if someone's shopping to gyms and he's on Instagram having fun and showcasing how fun his gym is and the other gym is not, who's the prospect going to do business with all things considered, right? And that's all connection content is. Like it's getting people to warm up to you. Another example I like is this is Anthony Wu and he does a day in the life series. So this one's called day 40 of building his gym and all he does is showcase him opening the gym, what the workout looks like for the day, and then he'll showcase some member results and he stitches those together and makes a really nice reel and he does not have a huge fault. I think he had less than a hundred followers when I pulled this piece of content and he was telling me he was getting one to two people from social every single month, paying small groups. Group training prices. So lifetime value is massive for his gym. Now, I know a lot of you don't like video. It doesn't feel natural. It's a learned skill set. So another thing you can do is carousels. And all that is, is a sequence of photos with some text on them. The key to carousels is telling a story and keeping it simple, right? Make it really readable and hook into the prospect's emotions. This is a good one by Elsie John talking about how running a gym is really hard. But then she talks about all the rewarding elements of running a gym, like getting your first member, hiring your first coach, having someone trust you, training their kids, changing a life, having someone hit their goals, having someone lose a hundred pounds, and just made for this really viral piece of content that showcases all the hard parts of gym ownership. But like the reason we go through that struggle, and it's just like a great thing to do and something you can do consistently. Now, we've talked about conversion content, which is getting people down the funnel. We've talked about connection content, which makes people like us. The last piece is building authority. And that is what value content is. And a great way to find ideas for value content is you get asked questions by your members all the time. If you're getting a question asked to you two or three times, that's probably a clear signal that a lot of your prospects have that question as well. And you should make a piece of content around it. Here are some good examples of solving problems for prospects using connection content. So this one says, Steve, how do you lose fat while traveling? I'm sure you guys get asked that all the time. This one is someone who targets golfers and says, gain 10 yards with this speed workout. Golfers want to drive the ball further. He shows you how to do it. This person targets busy moms. This is called how to get a workout in with a newborn. So you get the idea. It's just something that showcases your authority and convinces prospects that you can solve the problems that they are having. And that's it. That's the big three. Those are the primary buckets of content that you should be posting on your feed. If you are starting off on social, I recommend a very simple cadence. It's one piece of conversion content per week. So that's going to be social proof in any of the formats we mentioned. One piece of connection content. So this is something that showcases your awesome community or makes people like you as a business owner. And the final piece is one piece of value content that builds domain authority and showcases you as the expert. Now that we have our Instagram and Facebook posts sorted out, the next thing we need to talk about is stories. I want you to assume that everybody that's looking at your feed posts has no idea about your business, what it is, who you serve, and you want to make that content towards strangers. Now stories is where you can build connection with your existing clients and people who know and like your business. I recommend a much higher cadence for stories because they're way easier to make and they only last for 24 hours. And there's so much interesting stuff going on in your gym already. So the cadence I recommend here, it's called a three by five method. So you're just going to do three stories a day, five days a week. And here are some examples of things you can show just behind the scenes, setting up for class, what the workout is, the community and culture of your gym. You know, so if you got a group of people who likes to hang out after the 12 PM class, like show them, uh, any member highlights. So someone PRs or does something special. Any of the testimonial questions, those are great stories. You can just reuse those micro-education stuff. So that's like you get asked a question or you're doing a Q three or four times during the day, just pop a story on there. And so that way you've solved that for the people who are coming in later in the day doing that workout. And then the final piece is if you're offering coaching services, showcase your coaches, they probably have awesome personalities and your members probably love them already. So, uh, think of the, the feed as discoverability and think of the stories as where we build deeper connection. Now, posts and stories are just the tip of the iceberg. It goes down in the DMS. I have this saying within two brain that more conversations equals more conversion. If a gym owner asked me, Hey, how do I get more leads? Or I'm not happy with my lead flow. The first question I always ask is how many people did you talk to today about your gym? And the answer is almost always zero. So we need to have a system for manufacturing conversations and DMS are a great way to do that. If you're posting consistently, you're going to be getting comments and follows. You should be reaching out to everybody who follows you. And here's like a simple script. You can follow. You can just say, Hey, Steve, thanks for following us. We appreciate it. We hope we're going to motivate you. What are you doing for your fitness now? And if they respond, just have a regular conversation. If someone comments on one of your posts, let's say you showcase one of your members results. You just say, Hey, Sally, I saw you like the post with. Debra. We love Debra. How do you know her? And then you just got a conversation going. If you don't have a ton of follows or likes, you can reach out to old members. Something like, Hey, Steve, we just did the 12 PM class. Everyone was asking about you. How are you doing? Reaching out to alumni is a great way to build connections, show your old members you care. And it's an easy way to win them back as well, because when they want to go back to the gym, you are going to be top of mind. And then there's nothing wrong with starting conversations with existing members. So if you've shown, if you've exhausted your follows, you've exhausted your comments, you've exhausted your alumni, just reach out to an existing member and say, Hey, I really appreciate you, Stacey, being a part of the gym. Uh, every time you show up, it makes my day. And if you're going to make their day and they're going to be a lot more likely to refer into your gym. So I recommend at least three conversations a day. And if you do that over the course of the year, you're going to have over a thousand conversations that you otherwise wouldn't have. And while every day is not going to lead to new members, if you were just doing this consistently, I guarantee a year from now, you will have more members. And if you didn't do this, let's review the cadence one more time. We're just going to do three reels per week using the big three content buckets. Then we're going to do three stories per day, showing behind the scenes five days a week. And finally, we're going to start three conversations per day because we know more conversations equals more conversions. Next week, we're going to be talking about content and the following week, we're going to be talking about ads. And what you're going to learn is if your social media funnel is dialed, your content funnel and your ads funnel are going to work a lot better. So if you want to get that information, subscribe to run a profitable gym and like this video. So more gym owners can find it and I'll catch you next week for everything you need to know about gym content.