As print and television ads fade from relevance, club owners need to find new ways to reach potential new members. Digital marketing through outlets like Facebook can be a huge asset to your club’s marketing strategy and a great source of lead generation.

In this blog, we’ll tell you about the importance of Facebook advertising and walk you through the basics of building a campaign for your club.

Why Facebook Ads?

Facebook is currently the most used social media platform by a considerable margin, with 2.74 billion monthly active users. That means that more than 35% of people on the planet are active on Facebook on a monthly basis. Your members are no exception.

Statistics show that the average user spends 34 minutes on Facebook per day and clicks on 12 ads per month. Instead of playing the game of chance with traditional advertising, Facebook gives you the ability to engage potential new members where they spend the most time.

Another major benefit to Facebook advertising is the platform’s detailed ad targeting options. You can target based on age, location, gender, interests, and even online behavior. If you know your audience, you can reach the exact group of people you want to market to.

What Facebook Ads Should I Run for My Club?

Choosing what to advertise for your club is as simple as identifying your goals. You might want to bring in more members for a new class you’re offering, advertise your club’s childcare options or generate brand awareness. Facebook advertising has campaign structures and ad types for almost any goal you have.

For the purpose of this blog, let’s use the following example:

Your club wants to advertise its new HIIT program. You believe that introducing a new program attached to an offer for membership to your club will bring in new members. Your goal is to begin running Facebook ads touting the benefits of HIIT and showcasing your club’s HIIT program.

How to Create a Facebook Ad

1. Choose Your Campaign Objective  

Choosing the right campaign objective is crucial to your Facebook advertising campaign’s success. Facebook optimizes your campaign based on the objective you select and shows your ads to the users that are most likely to click on them.

In our example of showcasing your club’s HIIT program to drive new members, you’ll want to choose “Conversions” as your campaign objective.

This will let Facebook know to show your ads to people who will most likely click your CTA button and take advantage of the offer you are advertising, a.k.a. those who will are most likely to “convert” on your ad.

2. Choose Your Targeting Information

Choosing targeting is arguably the most important step in the creation of your ad. By targeting group most likely to engage with your ad, you set your entire campaign up for success.

At first, choosing between the vast array of targeting options can seem confusing but more often than not, you can keep it simple.

The first is location. Don’t forget this step! Since your goal is to bring members into your club’s physical location, you’ll want to set your location to your area. If you forget to set your location, you’ll be advertising to people all over the world, totally wasting your ad spend. You can set your ad to display to Facebook users any distance from your club, however, we recommend a 10-mile radius as a good distance to start with.

The second is  age and gender. These options vary based on what you’re advertising, but for most fitness marketing applications, you can use a similar range for all your ads.

For our HIIT example, let’s use All Genders, ages 22-50.

Additional targeting criteria include Interest-Based Targeting. This is a great way to narrow your targeting and get directly to people who may be interested in what you’re offering.  

For our HIIT example, you could add interest-based targeting criteria for “HIIT” or “High Intensity Interval Training”. Facebook users often list their interests on their profile by liking pages, joining groups or following influencers. The algorithm will search these interests to find people who are interested in HIIT and display your ads to them.

3. Create Your Ad  

Next is the most creative part of the process, building your ad. This includes your ad copy, asset (picture or video), headline and CTA (Call To Action). The goal of any good Facebook ad is to make your point quickly and simply, get users to click on your ad and eventually, sign up.

Below, we’ll break down the parts of a Facebook ad and how create each one.

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Ad Copy

Your ad copy comes first when users are reading your ad. It appears right above your creative asset.

When writing your ad copy, your goal should be to get to the point as quickly as possible. We all know how easy it is to scroll past an ad without reading it. Making your offer right off the bat is a great way to interrupt the mindless swiping we all do on a day-to-day basis.

Additionally, Facebook will truncate your ad copy after a certain number of characters and users will have to click “Read More” to see all of your ad copy. To avoid truncation, keep your copy to a tight 125 characters or below.

Here’s an example for our HIIT class: From AMRAPs to EMOM, introducing HIIT @ Fireburgh Hills! Join now and get 15% off your first month of membership.

Asset

Your asset comes directly after your ad copy and will be the best way to catch potential new members. Creating an image or video that conveys your offer while staying eye-catching is the key to your ad’s success.

At first blush, it may go without saying, but when creating your image or video, it’s important to make sure it appeals to your target market for the ad. If your goal is to bring in adults ages 20-50 for a HIIT class, you probably shouldn’t feature kids doing yoga or a water aerobics class. Make sure your source picture or video is indicative of what you’re offering and you’re already off to a great start.

While ads with videos often perform better than static images, we understand that it may be difficult to have a video ready for every ad. Images will do just fine if that’s what you have on hand, just remember the following guidelines when creating an image for your ad:

• Image dimensions: 1080x1080
• File type: PNG or JPG
• Image composition: Images

Headline

Your headline appears at the bottom of your ad, directly adjacent to your CTA button. It should be no more than 25 characters. The headline is your final opportunity to promote your offer and add that last little bit of motivation for users to click your CTA.

Like your ad copy, the goal here is efficiency and simplicity. You should aim to state your offer and influence them to click in as few characters as you can to avoid truncation.

Here’s an example for our HIIT class ad: Get 15% off your 1st month!

CTA

Every Facebook ad has a Call-to-Action button that sends users to a specific page on your website. This button acts as the opt-in for users to find out more about what you’re offering in your ad.

While Facebook does limit what your CTA button says, it offers a wide variety of options for you to choose from. Many of the options likely won’t apply to businesses in the fitness industry, so we recommend one of the following choices for your ad:

• Contact Us
• Learn More
• Sign Up

That’s it! You’ve built your first Facebook ad, and you’re ready to start your campaign.

Once you’ve created your first campaign on Facebook, you can begin to learn what works with your audience and what doesn’t. Creating two or more sets of copy, assets or headlines and testing them against each other is a great way to refine your approach to Facebook advertising and create more effective ads.

Ultimately, your Facebook ads are not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Finding success is an iterative process and will require some testing. If done well, Facebook ads can provide a helpful boost to your other tactics, including email marketing and Instagram advertising.

Though it may seem intimidating on the surface, this guide can help you ease into the process and start your first campaign. From there, you can learn from each campaign and find out what works best for your club and your community.

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