Industries · Fitness
A gym membership is a subscription, so acquisition cost has to be read against churn.
If members leave at four months, the acquisition cost that works at twelve months quietly bankrupts you.
Four things that decide a fitness account.
Churn sets the ceiling on what you can spend
Average membership length is the number that decides everything else. Long retention justifies aggressive acquisition; short retention makes the same spend fatal. Almost no gym we look at has connected the two.
Trials convert far better than memberships
Selling a free week or an intro class removes the commitment that stops the signup. The tradeoff is that trial-to-member conversion becomes the metric that matters, and it lives inside the club, not inside the ad account.
The radius is small and non-negotiable
People do not commute to a gym for long. Realistic catchment is a few miles, and campaigns that spend outside it are buying visitors who will never make it a habit.
January is not a strategy
New year demand is real and everyone bids into it. The members acquired then also churn hardest. Steady spend across the year usually produces better retention economics than a January surge.
02
What the searches look like
Gym-near-me searches are high intent and tightly local. Class and modality searches — pilates, CrossFit, personal training — carry clearer motivation and better retention. Meta drives most fitness discovery, because joining a gym is an intention long before it is a search.
Specific to this trade.
- 01Tight radius targeting sized to realistic travel, not the whole city
- 02Trial and intro-class offers as the primary conversion
- 03Trial-to-member conversion tracked as the number that matters
- 04Campaigns split by modality where you offer more than one
- 05Steady year-round budget rather than a January-heavy spend
04
What ads can’t fix
Paid media cannot fix retention. If members leave inside three months, more signups accelerate the loss instead of covering it. Retention is a floor-level experience problem — we would rather tell you that than sell you a bigger January.
Fifteen minutes on your fitness market.
We will tell you roughly what a lead costs in your area and whether we think we can beat what you are paying now.
15 minutes. If we can't help, we'll say so.