Marketing in Fitness Post 4 - The Gold's Gym Challenge

Hello again readers of Jtrain Fitness! It is another week, and thus another blog post for my "Marketing in Fitness" series.

This week, I'd like to talk about the Gold's Gym Challenge. The Gold's Gym Challenge is a campaign put on by Gold's Gym that is exclusive to Gold's members. The challenge lasts for 12 weeks, and aims to successfully complete a client's fitness goals with the help of a personal trainer.

Unlike your typical personal training sessions, the Gold's Gym Challenge gives a competition aspect to Gold's' traditional personal training services. Clients who sign up for the challenge receive prizes which can include thousands of dollars. A winner from a male and female group, as well as age groups of 18-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60+ are chosen as winners for prizes. 1st place in each group receives $6,500, 2nd place receives $2,500, and 3rd place receives $1,000.

As someone who used to be a personal trainer for Gold's Gym, I'm familiar with this program and have tried to market it to clients. Managers try to push this program hard when this campaign starts up during various times of the year, and incentivizes their employees to push the program hard for the gym by offering them bonuses for each new member they sign up for the program.

One marketing technique that Gold's uses for this campaign is making it feel like an event. They market the challenge before it even begins to make it feel like some special time of the year that people can participate in, and as if it's a big thing that you want to sign up for before it begins. They also call it a "challenge" and make it competitive by making groups compete against one another to see who will win the prize.

When looking at the imagery associated with the banners, flyers, etc, you see a poorly lit black and white photo of someone who looks sad and beaten down next to an (obviously more-edited and beautified) image of that person happy and in color with slim fitting clothing to make them look leaner. This taps into people's emotions and tries to connect with any kind of self-esteem and body image issues they may inherently have, and show the glowing fit and seemingly healthier individual they can transform into...in just 12 weeks! It's an eye-catching piece of imagery that effectively communicates the message and may inspire people to want to take the challenge in hopes of becoming a case like the one shown.

Gold's also does something both sneaky and smart by making this challenge exclusive to members only. By doing this, they force casual gym goers who are not yet members to sign up if they want to be a part of this seemingly special and exclusive event. It's a great way to generate new customers who will pay monthly gym fees on top of the price for participating in the challenge.

I'm not sure how well the challenge helps Gold's in marketing themselves and generating new customers. The fact that the challenge has been going on frequently makes me think that it is doing an effective job for the company. I think that companies that sell products like personal training could benefit from making campaigns that look like challenges and competitions to inspire their customers and potential future customers from investing in their products.

For more on the Gold's Gym Challenge, please visit: http://www.goldsgym.com/challenge-2016/

-Jtrain

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress?
Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer
it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for 
when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your 
friends about this blog! Follow me on Instagram @jtrain1224 and tell 
your friends to do the same!*
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------