Let’s go out on a limb and assume that you have some kind of online presence for your gym, studio or personal training business. It could be a website, blog, your Facebook page, or all three. But are you taking advantage of landing pages as a lead generation and conversion tool?
According to Marketing Sherpa, 68% of B2B businesses are using landing pages to attract new leads. Considering that the best landing pages often serve as a link between a consumer’s first impression of your business and an eventual sale, this is one part of your gym’s marketing funnel you want to get right. If you’re new to creating landing pages, the good news is that it is far less complicated than a standard website, requiring some basic planning and creativity up front.
Let’s explore some landing page best practices, and how you can put this valuable tool to work for your fitness business. We’ve included a few landing page examples so you can see how other businesses are using them to share an enticing offer and attract prospective customers.
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Why create a landing page?
When done right, your landing page serves to introduce prospective clients to a single product, service or piece of content, and to convert these leads into paying members. Unlike your website, which provides a lot of information and a multitude of menu items for visitors to click (and get distracted by), your landing page offers just one page of targeted information.
By directing visitors to take a single action (‘Sign Up’, ‘Download’), your landing page is designed for fast consumption and immediate decision making. This means you have to think about the best way to get people engaged within just a few second of hitting your page.
A sample yoga studio landing page created using MemberTracker’s build-in template.
Choosing a goal for your page
The great thing about creating a landing page is that you only need to come up with one goal that will further your sales – either immediately or as part of your long game – and reflect this on your page. For example, a new CrossFit gym might want to increase signups to their Intro Class, so they make this the focus of their landing page. Their campaign moves people to the page (perhaps from a Facebook ad or email campaign), encourages signups and follows up with an email series that moves them from the Intro Class to Fundamentals.
A Pilates studio’s goal might be to entice visitors to download an eBook on the benefits of Pilates for women. Once a lead’s email address is collected via the landing page, the studio follows up with an email series that converts this person to a week-long trial membership.
Take Action: Write down the goal of your landing page, along with the follow-up actions you will take to convert the leads you attract into paying clients.
Think of your landing page as the first or second rung in a ladder that leads upward toward a sale for your gym. Those who show an interest in your landing page offer are ready for the next rung in your ladder, which might be an email series, a free class or a consultation with one of your trainers.
Conceptualizing design and layout
Once you have an idea of what you’ll be offering through your page and what your follow-up actions will be, it’s time to decide how you want your landing page to look. Luckily, a simple landing page trumps an overly-showy one every time.
There are a few basic elements of every landing page, which you’ll want to include for success:
Headline: Your headline is often the first thing people see when visiting your landing page, and basically represents your value proposition. Make it bold, stating a clear benefit to joining your gym. Or, address a pain point (“Not enough time to work out?”) and then provide the solution (“Our 20-minutes-a-day program is the answer”). This great article from Copyblogger explains nine headline formulas that have been proven to convert.
Unbounce’s headline is bold, unambiguous and even makes readers feel good about themselves!
Body copy: Drawing out your headline in greater detail, the descriptive text on your landing page should be both clear and persuasive. This isn’t the place to show off your recent award or to discuss the best way to do the latest yoga pose. Get straight to the point, reinforcing the benefits of your offer and telling readers what they’ll receive. Find a balance between describing features and benefits, all the while keeping your CTA in mind.
The below-the-fold copy on Muck Rack’s landing page is laid out in simple fashion, providing visitors with key benefits related to the product at hand.
Call-to-action: Many marketers argue that this is the most important part of your landing page. This usually takes the shape of a button or lead form. Your CTA tells visitors, in just a few words, what they should do to get ‘X’ offer. Some effective examples are “Sign Up”, “Download Now” and “Start Your Free Week”. The CTA button is usually placed below the name and email fields if it’s part of a form.
Five Star manages to differentiate its CTA with the word ‘Reserve’, while still being clear on the action to be taken.
Header image: The imagery you use on your landing page should reinforce a key benefit and your CTA; otherwise it doesn’t serve any real purpose. Ideally your page will have no more than one or two strong images; you don’t want to take away from your copy and CTA. Read this detailed guide from kickofflabs on choosing the perfect background image.
fitmob’s header image gets to the heart of the benefit they offer: fun, hassle-free access to fitness classes.
Social proof: In case you need convincing as to why social proof – or testimonials – go a long way in convincing your landing page visitors, read the first couple paragraphs of this post from Hubspot. The most common type of social proof, which has been used for decades without fail, is the customer testimonial. They also work great on landing pages because of their brief, to-the-point nature.
H. Bloom makes great use of their below-the-fold space to showcase testimonials from respected media outlets.
Take Action: Sketch out a rough design for your landing page, including the five elements described above. You can always change it up later!
So, how do you go about actually getting your landing page online? Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are two feasible options for the small business owner:
- If you have a designer or especially web-savvy member of your team, an obvious choice is to ask him or her to put together a simple landing page. You can collaborate on all aspects, combining business savvy and technical knowledge.
- There are several software solutions on the market that allow you to design a landing page faster than you can do 20 pushups (ok, maybe not that fast). Prices vary, so do your research and decide on a plan that works for your needs and your budget. We personally like Leadpages, as it offers lots of templates, is fairly simple to master and is competitively priced.
Here are a couple of articles to get you thinking more about overall design and layout:
Leadpages takes readers through five effective landing page types, complete with visual examples of each: https://blog.leadpages.net/5-types-of-landing-pages-that-every-small-business-owner-needs/
Hubspot provides a rundown of 15 of the best landing page design examples out there (admittedly, none are in the fitness industry, but you can still learn something from the layouts and language): http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/landing-page-examples-list
With competition steadily growing within the health and fitness space, there’s no better time to make landing pages part of your online sales funnel. Start with one, test, note what works and build from there. Make sure to keep track of leads who sign up on your page, following up with another enticing offer to get them through your doors. The beauty of landing pages is that they can be used to promote pretty much any aspect of your business – the decision is yours!
Try MemberTracker management software FREE for 30 days and get your gym’s landing page up and running in minutes! Other features include mobile attendance tracking and online payment management.
