5 Tips for Developing the Right Texting Content for Your Fitness Center

When it comes time to create a text message marketing campaign for your fitness center, it is important to develop content that resonates with your customers. Relevant text message content ensures that you meet your goals for the campaign and your business. Even though text messages are short-form content, what you write still matters. By focusing on a few key elements, you will have a much stronger foundation on which to build your text marketing campaign.

Creating a persona

Get your team together to develop several key personas to represent your main client groups.

The best marketing content is personalized for the audience to ensure it is relevant and provides value. What is the best way to build content targeted to a particular audience? By creating buyer personas.

A buyer persona represents a particular group of potential customers. You build the persona based on demographics, shopping patterns, buying habits, and behavior patterns of your customers. Most likely, your business will have several personas representing the varied clientele of your establishment.

For example, you might have a persona who is a single woman in her 20s who enjoys yoga. Another persona might be a man in his 50s who mostly uses the fitness machines to keep in shape. The marketing content that you create for these personas will be different.

Targeting the messages

Building buyer personas is only the first step. You want to make sure that the messages you create are targeted to your different audiences. It is easy to do this by creating lists out of your subscriber list based on demographics, client behaviors, and more. Then, you can link your buyer personas to your subscriber lists and develop messages customized to the likes, needs, and wants of the group.

The most impactful messages are customized for the audience. You might have some messages that you send to your whole subscriber list, but most of your messages should be targeted to specific personas. Even if you are sending messages with the same deal or discount to both groups, your content will be different. For example:

• Ready to get more flexible? Enjoy 20 percent off our yoga packages for a limited time. Show this text in person or click here to redeem.
• Improve your fitness without breaking the bank using this 20 percent off coupon on our monthly membership. Show this text in store or click here.

As you can see, you’re offering the same deal to both groups. However, the message customizes the deal to something that might resonate with the customers and thus make it more likely they will take advantage of it.

Remaining relevant

It is essential that every message you send out is relevant to your audience. To do this, focus on the needs, wants, and desires of your audience and build from there. Why should your content remain relevant? If people get messages that they do not find relevant, they will quickly opt out of your program.

A texting campaign gives you a reason to engage with your customers. If your fitness club members have developed a relationship with you via text and other channels, then they will be more likely to become loyal patrons of your center. However, you have to demonstrate that you know what they want and need continually. One way to do this is to provide messages that are relevant to them.

Sticking to 160 characters

As you’re creating content for you texting campaign, be sure to stick to 160 characters per message. There are a few key reasons for this. For one, the data is sent in 160-character chunks, even through some smartphones make it appear as though longer messages go through. When you try to send a longer message, it might come as two or more texts. It is possible that messages will arrive in the wrong order, confusing your customers. Plus, your customer may be charged for every text they receive. You do not want to inconvenience them by sending more messages than necessary.

Another key reason to keep it short is that it meets the expectations of customers. Texting is considered a short-form content medium. Those who sign up for your campaign do so with the expectation that you will send quick and short messages. If you send long ones, they might decide to opt-out because it is not what they want.

Focusing on value first

Show your clients that you care about them with your SMS marketing program.

As with any marketing campaign, you will find a better return with texting if you focus on providing value first and then promotion of your business. If you create something that continually provides your clients with something of value, such as offers and deals on classes or membership, exclusive access, fitness or nutrition tips, and customer service or transactional messages, then they have a reason to communicate with you via text message. They will also see your fitness center as client-centric, not profit-centered.

By following these simple tips, you will create a stronger text marketing campaign that will help you to achieve your business goals.

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Categories: Text Message Marketing Tips