The Power of Google Adwords For Your Fitness Business

Did you know that over 90% of all online search occurs in Google, and the average person turns to google for answers approximately three to four times a day! What did we do without Google, right?! So with 5.6 billion searches occurring every day, there is no doubt that advertising on the Google platform is a smart way to get your brand in front of consumers…providing you are effectively targeting the right audience, at the right time, with the right message of course.

If you have not yet tried Google Adwords for your fitness business, or perhaps have tried with limited success, then read on. 

Here’s an introduction to what Google Adwords is, how it works, and why it can be a powerful marketing tool for your gym, fitness centre or personal training business. 

What is Google Adwords?

Google Adwords is the advertising platform for Google. It’s where you can bid to appear in a prime position on Google search results pages. 

Why is it effective?

When someone is actively searching for a service relative to yours, you can deliver a marketing message that appears at the top of their search results and encourage them to click through to learn more. For example, someone may type in ‘Best Gym in Buderim’. If you appear as the very first result with an ad that says ‘Come join the best gym in Buderim’ you will have an excellent chance of getting a prospective lead onto your website to find out more. 

75% of people won’t even click past the first page of Google search results. So getting your ad front and centre is going to give you the best possible chance of getting people to your site. 

The key advantage of Google Adwords is that you pay per click. So that means you aren’t spending money on people seeing your ad, you are spending money on people taking action. Smart use of budget right?!

Can anyone use Google Adwords?

Yes, anyone can create a Google Adwords account and start creating ads and joining the auction place. However, if you want your budget to work for you and to deliver results for your business, it does take a little know-how. 

How does it work?

In an ideal world, you would set up some ads that promote your gym or fitness business, assign a budget, send the ads live and then sit back and let the leads roll in. Unfortunately, you aren’t the only person out there trying to win business. It’s a very competitive landscape, due to the power of this tool. Your ad delivery and appearance in the prime positions of the Google results page will be determined by your ad ranking. The ad ranking is set based on not only the bid you have placed on the search term but also a quality score given to you by Google. Which means, it doesn’t always come down to the highest bidder (great news for the little guys!). (P.S we can help you with google adwords if you are interested, click here!)

Search terms

The very first thing that any potential advertiser should do is identify the search terms they would like to bid for. Spend some time as a gym owner or fitness centre owner to understand what people are searching for in relation to fitness in your area, the competitiveness of the search terms, and then build yourself a list of search terms that would give you the best possible chance of success. 

We recommend using Google’s free keyword planner tool. You can input your website, or let Google know the service that you offer, and it will provide back to you some suggestions. Your best bet is to look for search terms that are getting a decent volume of searches each month but are not ranking highly competitive. If your budget is tight, then low to medium competition will suit you the best.

You can get very savvy with your search terms. Do you want to only appear when someone types in the search terms exactly i.e. ‘best gym Maroochydore’ or do you want to appear when someone uses those search terms in a broader sense i.e. ‘who has the best gym in Maroochydore Queensland’, or even phrase match where maybe there is an extra word before or after the search term. The more precise you can level down on exactly how you want to target, the better your budget will be spent. 

The Google Auction

So when you think of an auction in the sense of advertisers trying to get their ad in front of prospective customers, you would assume that the bidder with the biggest budget would win right? Well good news, Google providers a very competitive landscape whereby it doesn’t just come down to budget. Google will consider your budget AND the quality of your ad. So they will look at the quality and relevance of your keywords and ad copy, the quality of the landing page you are sending people to from the ad, your expected CTR and your historical importance. Therefore it can pay to spend some time building out a quality ad and landing page. 

How much will your ad cost?

You will only pay 1 cent more than the ad placed one below you in the ranking system. The calculation looks something like this:

Ad Rank of Ad Below You / Your quality score +$0.01 = your actual Cost Per Click

There’s a great visual representation here:  https://blog.tryadhawk.com/google-adwords/how-google-adwords-works/

So how much should you Pay Per Click, and allocate for the total budget?

Two ways to do this. You can look at the Cost Per Click estimate provided by google against search terms in their free keyword planning tool mentioned earlier. You’ll get a good guide here on what you will need to spend to get a result. 

The other way is to think about the value of a conversion for you. Do you know your conversion rate from leads on your website? i.e. for every 15 enquiries do you get 1 sale? That’s 6.6% conversion (if you don’t know your conversion aim low say 2% as a start). 

Let’s say your fitness members pay $60 per month, and on average they stay for 12 months. So their lifetime value is $720, the profit per member is likely around $400. You know that for every 15 leads you get, you get 1 sale. If you divide $400/25 leads, you get $16. That should be your absolute maximum bid, and you likely will spend much less. 

Until you start running your ads you don’t really know how many clicks you will generate, how many will go on to convert, so once this happens you should reassess your budget based on what you need to spend to get the results you want.

Test, Learn, Optimise

Data is a powerful weapon in the digital age we live in. Like all digital marketing, you should not expect to set your ads live and the magic will just happen. Observe, monitor, use the data and optimise. 

Look at:

– What keywords are working for you

-Which copy on ads is getting the highest engagement

-Where your budget is best spent based on CPC and conversion rate 

Types of Google Ads

Whilst search ads are the most popular type of ad in Google, they do offer some other options too. Display ads, video ads (youtube) and application-based ads which can also be very valuable in getting your fitness brand in front of potential customers cost-effectively and engagingly.

A few words of advice

1. Work within your means. Set yourself a total fixed budget to get yourself up and running and to trial what does and doesn’t work for your fitness business on Google Ads. 
2. Do the upfront work to make this worthwhile. Spend some time determining what keywords you are going to go after and then put some real thought into creating quality ads, and sending these ads to a high-quality website. You don’t need to implement 100’s of ads. Don’t overcomplicate things, just make your message clear. 
3. Be patient, don’t expect to start generating thousands of leads overnight. Again, test, learn and optimise. 

If you haven’t worked in Google Adwords before than the information above may be completely new and to be honest a little overwhelming. Google offers some excellent resources if you are keen to know more, and they even have free account managers who can work with you to build and optimise your campaign:

https://ads.google.com/home/how-it-works/

If Google Adwords Campaigns sound like something you should be doing but you don’t have the time or expertise to do it, then why not make an enquiry with More Gym Members here, and let us do the marketing for you.