Google Ads
for gyms.

Gym searches are mostly local and mostly specific. Someone in Charlestown types 'gym near me open 24 hours'. Someone in Penrith types 'boxing classes penrith'. Someone in Erina types 'reformer pilates erina price'. Each of those people wants something you might sell, this week.

The same words also bring in people who will never join. 'Gym jobs Gosford', 'personal trainer course', 'pilates reformer for sale' and 'gym workout at home' all contain the words you bid on. If your keywords are broad, Google can show your ad for them, and you pay for every click.

Here's how the searches usually split for a gym or studio. The table is a pattern, not data from an account. Your own search terms report shows the real split.

Google Ads has two location options. 'Presence or interest' reaches people in your area and people who've shown interest in it. 'Presence' reaches only people who are in the places you target. Google says broad geo targeting is recommended as a best practice on Search, and suggests 'Presence' when you want to reach only people in specific locations.

For a gym membership, I'd usually pick 'Presence'. A member has to get to you three or four times a week. Someone in Melbourne searching 'gym terrigal' is probably planning a holiday, and they won't sign a 12-month membership. If you sell visitor passes, give them their own campaign with 'Presence or interest' and its own budget, so the two don't mix.

Then draw the area around the drive, not the postcode. A club in Tuggerah pulls from Wyong, Berkeley Vale and Chittaway Bay, but people rarely cross the bridge at peak hour to train. Look at where your members live, then target that, not a neat 20 km circle.

Add location assets so the address and distance show with the ad. Google pulls them from your Business Profile, and locations marked closed there won't show, so keep the profile current.

In Google Ads, open Insights and reports, then Search terms, pick the last 30 or 90 days, and copy the list. Paste it below. The sorter puts each search in a bucket and writes the negatives to add. The starting list is made up.

A negative keyword stops your ad showing for searches that contain it. The catch: Google says negative keywords won't match close variants or other expansions. If you add 'job', your ad can still show for 'jobs'. If you add 'course', it can still show for 'courses'. Add each singular, plural and common spelling yourself.

Broad match is the default for negatives. A one-word broad negative like 'jobs' blocks any search with that word in it, in any order. That's usually what a gym wants for jobs, courses, certificates and equipment. Use phrase or exact match for negatives only when a single word would block good searches too. 'Free' is the classic: block 'free workout' as a phrase, but not 'free trial'.

Check the report every fortnight for the first two months, then monthly. New waste turns up every season. In January it's 'home gym equipment' and 'free workout plan'. Before winter it's 'indoor exercise ideas'. Those people are worth reaching with a post, maybe. Not with a paid click.

The best gym ads answer what the buyer is already worried about: the price, the term and how to leave. 'From $17.95 a week. No joining fee in November. 12-month or month-to-month.' tells someone more in one line than 'Transform your life'. The how people choose a gym page goes through the checks buyers make.

Be careful with 'no lock-in'. In 2014 the ACCC warned gyms that 'No Contracts' can mislead when members still have to give written notice, keep paying through a notice period, pay upfront, or get charged for another period if they don't give notice. If you have any of those, say what the terms are instead. Plain terms in an ad also put off people who'd cancel in week two, which saves you money.

Match the landing page to the search. Someone who typed 'reformer pilates erina' should land on the Erina reformer page, with the timetable and the class price, not the home page of a five-club group. The SEO page for gyms has a tool that lists the pages worth building.

Plenty of gym leads ring. Call assets add your number to the ad, and you can set the number to appear only when your business can accept calls. Turn on call reporting and Google can count calls from ads as conversions. Set a minimum call length so a wrong number doesn't count as a lead.

Then close the loop. A trial booking isn't a member. With offline conversion imports, the Google click ID is saved with the lead, and when the sale happens later at your office or over the phone, you send it back so Google knows which clicks turned into members. Most gym software can export joins with a date. Without this, bidding learns to find people who book trials, not people who pay.

One policy note for remarketing. Google's health in personalised advertising policy lists physical and mental health conditions, chronic conditions and invasive procedures as sensitive, and advertiser lists such as customer match can't be used to promote them. A general gym membership isn't on that list. A program pitched at managing a condition might be, so check before you build an audience for it.

New year is real for gyms: in Canstar's survey of more than 1,300 gym-goers, one in four made getting fit their last New Year's resolution. Searches and costs both climb in January, because every gym in the area bids at once.

Plan for it rather than reacting to it. Put more budget into January and early February, keep the ads tight to 'near me' and suburb searches, and make sure the front desk can answer the phone. Then hold a steady, smaller budget for the rest of the year, when clicks are cheaper and the people searching have often already tried something else. The gym budget page works out how much a join can cost before it stops paying.