What a member
is worth.

Ask how much a small business should spend on marketing and you'll hear a percentage of revenue, often with no source behind it. For a gym, a percentage misses the point. Two clubs with the same revenue can have members who stay four months or four years. The second can afford to spend far more to find each one.

So work backwards. Start with what one new member brings in, decide how much of that you're willing to spend to get them, and the budget falls out of how many members you want. It also tells you when to stop: when a join costs more than it's worth.

Four numbers, all from your own systems:

• The fee, as charged: weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Use what a typical new member pays, not the headline price.
• GST. If you're registered, one-eleventh of a GST-inclusive fee goes to the ATO, so take it out before you count it.
• How long members stay. Pull the people who joined 12 to 24 months ago and count how many months each paid. The average is your number.
• The cost of serving them: rent, staff, equipment, software, cleaning and power, as a share of fees. Your accountant can give you a rough figure from last year's accounts.

Members don't pay once. They pay every week until they leave. That makes the average stay the most important number in the sum, and the one most gyms guess. If a member at $18 a week stays 8 months, their fees come to about $620, including GST. If they stay 14 months, it's about $1,090. Same ad, same join, very different value.

A Canstar survey published in January 2026 put the average spend on gym memberships at $77 a month. If your fee is in that range, every extra month a member stays adds about that much in fees, less GST and costs. That's why the first month matters so much. An induction, a plan and a check-in in week three are marketing spend too. They just don't show up in the ads account.

Put in your own numbers. The starting values are made up, so change every one.

Once you know what a join can cost, split the budget by job. This is a typical order for an independent gym or studio, not a rule. Test it against your own joins.

Google Ads works on an average daily budget. Google says to divide a monthly budget by 30.4 to get it. On a busy day, a campaign can spend up to twice the average daily budget, but over a month you won't be charged more than 30.4 times the daily amount.

For gyms, that matters in January. If you want to spend more in the new year rush, raise the daily budget for those weeks, then lower it again. Don't leave a high budget on through winter and hope for the best. The Google Ads page for gyms covers which searches to spend it on.

A trial isn't free for the gym. It uses a coach's time, a class spot and a front desk welcome. If 4 in 10 trials join, each trial booking is worth 40% of a join, and the most you can pay for one falls accordingly. The calculator shows it.

Trials are also where the rules are changing. New laws will require ongoing notices when introductory or discounted periods end, and businesses that let people sign up online will have to let them cancel online. A trial that ends with a conversation, not a surprise charge, is easier to run under those rules and converts better anyway.