COMMUNITY WEEK/REFER A FRIEND | Marketing Campaign

The target audience for this campaign is the friends & family of your existing members and also spread a net for potentials to give your gym a try for a free week.

GOAL:
1) Get 2nd sphere leads into the gym and...
2) Build a “warmer” lead list.

EXECUTION:
A strong referral marketing campaign involves any or all of the following:
Consistent, Frequent Messaging
Member Involvement
Consistent Follow-Up

Graphics:

We've made it much easier for you to customize the marketing campaign graphics. Instead of providing jpgs that you can't revise, we've created our graphics in Canva so you can now replace photos, logos, and also the text.

We are now offering templates you can pull into your free version of Canva and customize. From there you can easily resize the graphics for whatever platform you want to share them on.

Community Week Canva Graphic Templates For You To Use:

Instagram Post #1 template >
Instagram Post #2 template >
Instagram Story #1 template >
Instagram Story #2 template >
Facebook/Web Banner #1 template >
Facebook/Web Banner #2 template >

See the example templates below from Canva that you can easily customize.

Steps to set-up:

Use the links above to access, customize, and download the creative assets from Canva.

Create your offer for this campaign.

Add Landing pages to the site. We have a video tutorial below how to do this.

Add the email templates we've written for you to the email or text message service of your choice. Be sure to follow up with your leads until they say "no!"

Make sure you make it easy for people to sign up.

Tell everyone about it! Share the graphics on social media, email your mailing list, run a paid ad and have your members refer others.

Possible Offers:

For your best offer option, we recommend giving out cold hard cash. This is what most people who might refer will respond to.

The best possible scenario you will have for your gym referral program is that you have lots and lots of members bringing in lots and lots of referrals. That’s where the benefit of giving out cash instead of membership months makes the difference. If someone gets a free month of membership for every referral, it might not be worth the effort. However, if you’re giving out cash, someone could potentially make a couple extra hundred bucks per month just by becoming your de facto salesperson. If you give out $50 for every referral that comes in your door, and someone gets 10 referrals a month, that’s $500. That’s a nice chunk of change for them to put towards their rent, car, etc.

This second offer option is good, but the higher you can make the %, the better. Ideally giving away a month membership if a member refers another who signs up will yield the best results.

EXAMPLE COPY:
Refer someone during Community Week and you'll get 50% off your upcoming monthly membership AND they'll get 50% off too!*

*Refer multiple people and for each person who signs up, you'll receive another 50% off, making your next month free (2 referrals) and the following month half off (3 referrals).

This last option is good as well, just not as good as giving out cash. For each of your referrals that sign up for a membership, you will be rewarded $50 in “Gym Bucks” that can be used toward your next month’s membership fee(s) or toward gear, apparel, or drinks.

There is no limit within each month of how many referrals you may bring in or how many $50 rewards of “Gym Bucks”. If your referrals/rewards exceed the cost of your following month’s membership fees, the balance of your rewards can be deducted from the next month of membership.

If you have pre-paid for a multi-month membership, your referral rewards can be used toward future purchases of pre-paid memberships or can be considered “Gym Bucks” for use toward gear, apparel, or drinks. You may also gift your referral rewards to another member for use toward their membership fees.


Make sure to include the offer in your social media posts.

COMMUNITY WEEK EXECUTION TIMELINE:

4 Weeks Out: Membership Awareness Phase

Announce Community Week before and after every class
Possibly pass out “tickets” to your members to give to their friends.
Attach a monetary value to the “ticket” - whatever your drop-in rate is

2 Weeks Out: Announcement Phase #1

Use the Landing Page we provided on your website that allows you to capture signup/contact information.
Include the logo graphic or use the Facebook Event graphic
Include any details around your time/date, etc.
Include a signup form, if possible.
Create a Facebook Event - share with your members-only Facebook Group & publicly as your gym & personal accounts.
Request that your members and coaches share the event on their social channels
BE SURE THAT ALL CALLS-TO-ACTION POINT BACK TO YOUR EVENT REGISTRATION. THE GOAL HERE IS TO GATHER CONTACT INFORMATION
Prepare and customize your email campaign (located at the end of this checklist) with the appropriate dates, links, and information
Seek out local media outlets and influencers to share your event - focus on the positive aspects of what you’re doing to better health and community. You’ll probably be rejected the first time around, but be persistent. When a media outlet is looking for a similar story in the future, they’ll remember you.

1 Week Out: Announcement Phase #2

Initiate the first two emails of the event-based email campaign you’ve created in your email service or CRM (Mailchimp, etc)
If you have your contacts tagged by interest, you’ll want to send to these leads.
If your contacts are not tagged, don’t worry! Send it out to EVERYONE and make it clear that this is a week-long community event that is free to all.
Post at least 2 pieces of content per week in the 2 weeks leading up to the event. Here are some examples of good, fun content: "A picture of your members having fun in the gym", “Feature a Member”, "A short blog article about the benefits others has seen in your gym", "A short blog post giving a shout-out to your past featured athletes - ask them to share"
*Remember: The key here is to make sure everyone is made aware of the event at least 5 times. Also, always make sure that you’re directing them to the landing page registration link (capture contact info).

The Week Of

Put someone in charge of taking pictures during the entire week
You’ll want to continue to build interest throughout the week.
Final announcements and encourage shares on Social Media.
Prepare your space to be visually appealing; everything in plain sight, registration area is clearly marked, name tags, plenty of waivers ready, someone assigned for check-in.
Your goal is to give an OUTSTANDING experience
Set up a drawing for a free week - collect “warmer” contact info. Make sure this is clearly marked and made known.
Sincerely thank your participants, members who brought friends, and coaches in EVERY class.
Have a FUN workout!

Post-Workout
Re-draw attention to the free Week Drawing - we want to make sure that they come back for future events.
Mingle, have fun, and see if anyone has any questions.
Wrapping up a class
Shine a light on the “FUN” and accessible factors of your gym. Ask a member or two to share a brief “transformation” story to make things like “coaching” and “community” more tangible for your guests.
Send everyone home with a business or promo card or goodie bag from the gym.

Day After Class

Initiate “Follow-Up” email (located at the bottom of this packet). Be sure that all links and customizations are relevant.

Monday After

Import all your new leads from the event registration, drawings, sign-in’s, and waivers into your CRM or email service account. Be sure to tag them as having attended your Community Week event. (Note: Anybody who registered via your landing page is already in your CRM)
Send a re-cap email with celebrations and numbers.
Share pictures of the week on Social Media.

Week After

Initiate all attendees who are not members of your gym into a “Lead Nurturing” email campaign encouraging them to begin on-ramp (indicated scarcity and urgency).
Circle back around with your members and coaches, thanking them for a successful event.

Landing Pages:

The Landing Page is where people sign up for your offer. It has two jobs:

1. Excite people about your offer:
Display your offer in big, bold text to get them excited to claim it. And showcase the main selling points of your gym to build their interest in joining.

2. Make it easy for people to claim the offer:
The offer form is placed at the top of the page so people can immediately see it when they land on the page. And the title and subtext explain exactly what a person should do on the page: Claim the offer.

There are two landing pages with this campaign:

The Main Landing Page

And a Thank You Page that people will be directed to upon signup

Paid Ads

Step 1: Facebook Ad

Facebook Ads allow you to target people who are interested in fitness training in your local area to drive them to your Offer Page.
Below is a pre-built Facebook Ad and Target Audience that you can use for your ads.

If you haven’t really run Facebook ads before, we recommend just posting this ad as a post on your Facebook gym page, then using the Ads Manager on your business page to run an ad on the existing post you just made based on the audience below. (Facebook tutorial to help).

1. Ad

Text
Start with a short, exciting sentence to pull people in. Then show a call-to-action to tell them to SAVE $50 or whatever your offer is. Then show the aspects of your Community Week in a bullet list, with eye-catching emojis, so it’s easy for them to read. And finish by telling them that the offer ends soon to create a sense of urgency.

SAMPLE TEXT: Join us for a free week. Become a member and you’ll receive [add your offer here]
👍 Safety-Focused Classes & Equipment
🥇 Only the best Instruction & Coaching
🏋️ Supportive Peers to Workout and Laugh With

Image
Use an exciting, eye-catching image preferably of someone in your gym. If not, use one of the graphics we included.

Headline
This headline format, Limited-Time Workout Offer – SAVE $50!, does a great job of immediately drawing people in and exciting them. Having SAVE in all-caps draws people’s attention to it. They’ll then see how much money they’ll save, which gets them excited and keeps them reading all the way to the end – where the Call-to-Action is for them to click.

SAMPLE HEADLINE: Limited-Time Workout Offer - SAVE $50 [Replace “Save over $50” with your offer]

Newsfeed Link Description
Provide a sentence or two with some extra details on your Community Week and gym.

SAMPLE TEXT: Join us for a free week of workouts during our Community Week. Meet some new friends, find some accountability, and gain some confidence and energy.

Call-to-Action
This is the button people click on the Ad to be taken to your Offer Page.

Facebook only gives you a few options for this. For limited-time offer campaigns like this, Sign Up performs best as it’s the text option that’s closest to the action people are taking – signing up for your limited-time offer

Website URL:
[Copy/paste the landing page url you added to your website, similar to this: www.yoursite.com/community-week]

2. Target audience

Here’s the targeting we recommend:

Interests/Behaviour Targeting

Facebook’s Interest and Behavior targeting allows you to show your Ad to people who are interested in specific things and activities. Their system has become very sophisticated and is now able to target the right people incredibly accurately.

We recommend using Facebook’s Fitness Interests:
Physical exercise
Physical fitness
Weight Loss

Age, Gender, Language and Location Targeting
Age, Gender, Location and Language targeting should reflect who your most common members are. If you generally serve people in their 20’s and 30’s, then you should target people in that age group. If you’re unsure which Location to target, we recommend targeting people within a 30-minute drive of your own location: This is a close enough distance for most people to be content with driving to you.

Why are Facebook Ads effective for this Campaign?
The reason they’re effective is because they’re shown to people who are interested in fitness training in your area. Facebook is great at knowing people’s interests based on their behavior, which is what makes their Ad targeting so effective.

Google Adwords, on the other hand, don’t work well for limited-time offers. This is generally because people don’t search on Google for limited-time offers. And the ones who do search for giveaways are just people who are interested in getting something for cheap, and are not always the best customers as they are so price-sensitive.

Email Template

Post Date: When you launch campaign

Emails:
______ Presents: Community Week
Community Week – 3 Days Until Kickoff!
Thanks for Joining our Community Week

EMAIL 1:

SUBJECT LINE: [Gym Name] Presents: Community Week
Hi there,

We are pleased to invite you to our upcoming Community Week from [Date] to [Date]. This event is open to everyone [18] and older who lives in [city]. You don’t need to be a member to attend!

During Community Week, members are encouraged to bring friends, family, co-workers, and loved ones to try out the gym for free to see what all the fun is about!

Be sure to reserve your spot today.

Register here > [Link to Register]

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

To your health.
[Gym Owner]

EMAIL 2:

SUBJECT LINE: Community Week – 3 Days Until Kickoff!

Once a year we open our doors to all of [CITY] to try [GYM] free for a week. If you are a member, now’s your chance to bring a friend or co-worker to check out your stomping grounds!

Community Week is designed for people brand new to [workout type] and will be instructed by our top-notch coaches here at [GYM]

It’s going to be a great week! Don’t miss out. Register below to let us know you will be joining in on the fun.

Register here > [Link to Register]

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

To your health.
[Gym Owner]

EMAIL 3:

SUBJECT LINE: Thanks for attending Community Week!

We wanted to send you a quick thank-you for attending our annual Community Week. Hopefully, you got a good idea of what we’re all about - fun, community, and fitness.

We would love to have you join us for our regular classes. We are all about fostering a sense of community at our gym and think you would fit in perfectly.

As a thank you for attending our Community Week, we’re a special deal for Community Week attendees through the end of [MONTH].

[ADD OFFER HERE: If you schedule your intro before , we’ll offer $___ off your On-Ramp or first package of Private Coaching Sessions.]

We’ll only offer this to the first [6] people to respond, so be sure to schedule today.

If you have any questions at all, please let us know.

Again, thanks for joining us last week!

To your health.
[Gym Owner]

Updated on: 19/06/2023