Unlock the Power of Partnership Marketing for Fitness Studios: Proven Strategies for Gym Owners

Partnership marketing is a strategy that sees your gym or fitness studio collaborating with complementary businesses, influencers or technology providers. In the process you gain access to the partner’s customers or followers, and they gain access to yours.

When done well, partnership marketing is the ultimate win-win for your fitness business. It can expose your brand to new audiences, it can help you build trust and credibility within those audiences, and it can ultimately help you to attract more members and make more money.

In this guide we’ll break down partnership marketing in the fitness industry, to help you understand what it is, how it works, and how you might leverage this mutually beneficial form of marketing.

Why partnership marketing works for fitness studios

In a lot of ways fitness businesses are uniquely suited to partnership marketing.

Gyms are places where people go to better themselves: to get fitter, healthier and happier. But exercise is only one part of truly holistic health and wellness. Recovery, sleep, nutrition and other elements play key roles too.

By partnering with complementary businesses like nutritionists, supplement stores, physios, recovery centres, sports retailers and local juice bars, you help your members to achieve this more holistic form of health.

These partnerships are mutually beneficial too: that juice bar gains access to your members, who might enjoy a nice deal like ‘buy four juices, get the fifth free’. Your fitness studio, meanwhile, gains access to the juice bar’s customer base: their loyalty card holders might enjoy a discounted membership or access to a two-week free trial.

Partnership marketing takes other forms too:

• Influencer partnerships: Partnering with social media personalities and fitness bloggers, exchanging a gym membership or perks for promotion through their profiles and channels.
• Tech partnerships: Partnering with fitness device or app companies to enhance your member experience, offering greater convenience, gamified exercise, access to real-time workout data and more.

Partnership marketing can be a DIY and cost-effective way to grow the reach of your fitness studio. Without any ad spots to buy or external specialists to hire, you can enjoy effective fitness studio marketing on a budget.

But that’s not to say it’s easy. To truly unlock the power of partnership marketing, you need to approach it strategically, identifying the right partners and securing deals that are mutually beneficial.

Types of partnerships for gyms

What do effective marketing partnerships look like for a modern fitness business? In short, a lot of different things. A good partner is simply an organization or individual who has ready access to potential gym members.

Let’s take a closer look at the three main partner types: businesses, influencers and tech.

Local business collaborations

The first step in how to partner with local businesses for gym marketing: find the right business. You want a partner that doesn’t compete with your gym, but that complements it with products and services that your members will be interested in, and that ideally aid them in reaching their fitness and body goals. You can then work to develop joint promotions, cross-discounts or referral programs with those partners.

The good news? You’ve got plenty of options:

• Supplement/health food stores: A gym can promote exclusive discounts on supplements or healthy snacks for members, while the store can display gym flyers and offer a special gym sign-up deal.
• Cafes and juice bars: Consider creating a post-workout deal, like a discounted protein smoothie with a gym card, that encourages cafe customers to become members, and members to become cafe customers.
• Recovery and wellness businesses: Refer members to massage therapists, physios and recovery centres, in return for those businesses doing the same for you with their clientele.
• Sports retailers: Provide member-exclusive discounts in exchange for the retailer showcasing gym promotions in-store or through their mailing list.
• Local sports clubs: Offer pre-season strength and conditioning programs for teams in return for advertising on game days and in club marketing materials.

Influencer and blogger partnerships

Fitness influencers are a social media phenomenon. It makes sense, because most people enjoy watching beautiful people doing impressive things. With their ability to generate incredible reach and engagement online, securing a partnership with the right influencer can be a huge coup for your business.

Influencer marketing for fitness studios begins with finding an influencer who resonates with your target audience. The best aren’t global celebrities with millions of followers, but local social media stars who are happy to create content within your space, and to do so in exchange for a free membership and a few other perks.

Ask your current members who they tend to follow. Prioritize influencers who have highly engaged audiences. And before you reach out, spend a few weeks establishing familiarity and trust by liking, sharing and commenting on their posts.

Fitness app and tech partnerships

From screens on treadmills to smart watches on wrists, digital tech is becoming ever-present in modern gyms. By partnering with technology providers, you can enhance the experience you offer your members in a way that gets them sharing the good news about your fitness studio.

By partnering with GymMaster, for example, you can offer members 24/7 access to your gym via their smartphone. You also offer them a branded app where they can book classes, manage their membership and track their progress towards their fitness goals.

By filling your fitness studio with smart, AI-powered gym equipment, you grant every member access to their own personal trainer, and you empower your members to more precisely track their workouts, helping them to achieve better health and fitness outcomes (which they’ll be keen to share online, for super-effective social media marketing).

How to build successful partnerships

How do you find the ideal partner, reach out to them, and begin collaborating with them? The basic process is as follows:

1. Understand your goals: Are you looking to boost brand awareness? Attract more members? Promote a specific challenge or event?
2. Identify the right partners: Look for partners who have a similar target audience to you, but who won’t compete directly with you.
3. Craft a tailored pitch: Send an email or DM introducing your gym and outlining a specific, mutually beneficial collaboration idea.
4. Lock in the details: If the partner is open to the idea, agree on the specifics of the partnership, and consider drawing up a contract or official agreement to set the terms in stone.
5. Promote the collaboration: Tell the world about your new partnership via email, social media posts and posters displayed throughout your gym.

Real-world partnership success stories

Looking for some partnership marketing inspo? Here are some gyms who have shown the way.

The Fitness Passport

A boutique fitness studio in Austin, Texas, developed a network of seven complementary local businesses, including a café, chiropractor, nail salon and fashion retailer, then created a “Fitness Passport” that allowed members to enjoy perks at each partner business. In return, those businesses advertised the gym to their customers.

The effort was a huge success. The gym saw a 22% increase in new memberships, 40% of which came directly via a referral from a partner.

F45 gets influential

F45, the global HIIT-focused gym franchise, decided to test just how effective influencer partnerships might be. They got a selection of US franchises to partner with influencers who had a strong presence in their local communities. The influencers were tasked with promoting F45’s new class offerings.

The test was a resounding success, with many participating franchises reporting a 30% increase in enrollments during the campaign period.

Integrating partnerships with local SEO

On top of driving direct exposure, your partnership marketing efforts can help you grow your business visibility in indirect ways too.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is built on what Google calls E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. One of the key ways to measure all of these factors, but particularly the latter two, is through backlinks and citations, as this shows that other sites and internet users view the source as a trustworthy authority.

Partnership marketing can earn you more of these backlinks and citations, as partners link to your site and tag you in social media posts.

Partnerships can be particularly valuable in terms of local SEO, because being referenced or tagged by other verified local businesses increases your credibility, which helps to improve your ranking in map results.

Measuring partnership success

To ensure your partnerships are delivering value, it’s important to track clear KPIs. These metrics will vary depending on whether it’s a business, influencer or technology partnership, but a few of the most important metrics to keep an eye on include:

• New memberships: Track total new sign-ups, and the percentage that are coming from each partner. You can either ask as part of the sign-up form (‘how did you hear about us?'), or use a partner-specific promo code or landing page.
• Referral traffic: Monitor how many website visits come from partner sites or shared links. Google Analytics, specifically the Acquisition > Referrals section, can help you to track traffic accurately.
• Social media engagement: track reach, impressions, likes, shares, comments and follower growth from joint campaigns or tagged content using Meta Business Suite or TikTok Analytics.
• Event participation: Track RSVPs or attendance numbers for co-hosted events or workshops.
• Technology uptake: Track how many members are using any new technologies and features that you implement.

It’s wise to review these KPIs monthly or post-campaign, crunching the numbers to draw out insights that can inform future partnerships and drive better outcomes.

GymMaster: your partnership marketing partner

Partnership marketing represents an incredible opportunity for your gym or fitness business. It’s an ultra-effective way to expand your reach to potential members that would otherwise be difficult to reach. It helps you to establish instant familiarity and trust by associating your brand with an organization or influencer that people are already comfortable with.

It also helps you to offer an enhanced and more holistic experience to your current members, by granting them access to a range of partner perks and better tech, like the GymMaster Member App.

But GymMaster’s holistic gym management software can do so much more. Our Marketing and Retention Tools can also assist with your partnership marketing efforts, by allowing you to:

• Accept new sign-ups directly through your website, and helping you to identify where they came from.
• Send automated, personalized messages to members and prospects about new partnerships.
• Monitor member visitation and technology use patterns.
• Monitor email open, bounce and unsubscribe rates, and track social media performance.
• Create discounted memberships or concession passes in seconds.

By implementing cutting-edge partnership marketing plans, you can attract new members and build loyalty within your existing member base. And by implementing the right technology, you can enjoy a real return on investment, through serious and sustained growth for your gym.

Ready to up your marketing game? Let’s get to it.