Ads that get people to stop scrolling and click always have an attractive image and an appealing enough offer.
For the attractive image, ideally smiling happy faces or simple graphics. Happy faces work as humans are wired to look for faces. Once they recognise a face, the next thing is to determine if it’s a friend or foe. So having faces that look like the people you’re trying to attract (or what they aspire to be) work best. Action shots, lifting heavy weights or someone puking in a chalk bucket tend not to work – unless you’re selling puke buckets, in which case feel free to give it a shot! Simple graphics work because they’re a pattern interrupt, they break the normal cycle of what you’ll see while scrolling, so they get attention.
For the appealing offer, you don’t need to offer a free Mercedes with every PT session. Your offer simply needs to be clear enough that it makes sense to someone outside of fitness, and be enticing enough for them to click “learn more”. While CrossFit might build work capacity across broad time and modal domains through constantly varied, functional movement executed at high intensity, none of that makes sense to someone whose brain is in browsing mode. “Fun fitness in a friendly gym” is a lot easier to grasp without using too much brain power.
Here are the four types of ads that work:
FREE
You can offer a Free Intro, Free Assessment, or maybe a free gift with purchase to entice people to submit their details. You don’t need to offer a free week or free personal training session (although I’ve had clients use this before.) The benefit of using this method is you’ll get low cost leads, the drawback is they’re anchored to a low price.
FIXED TERM
Examples of fixed term offers are 21-Day Shred, 6 Week Challenge, & 90-Day Transformation. This helps your audience overcome the fear of failure and fear of commitment. Two drawbacks to this are that some markets have been burned badly by “free” fixed term challenges that asked for a commitment fee (so it wasn’t really free), and it requires expectation setting at the sale and a renewal conversation two thirds of the way through. You can’t wait until the end to ask customers to renew.
QUESTIONS
Examples include “Want to get in shape but hate gyms?” Or “Looking to lose the dad bod?” The benefit of these are they allow you to target your market more specifically that other style of ads. The drawback is in testing which questions work best and you can exclude potential customers if the question doesn’t speak directly to them.
BEGINNER FRIENDLY
Beginner Friendly callouts work best in my opinion. A lot of people are afraid of being judged by their lack of fitness, so this callout puts their mind at ease. The drawback (which is quite low) is beginners need a lot of nurturing to give it a shot. For those who don’t want to target beginners (why wouldn’t you!?) you can use a callout like “Take Your Training To The Next Level”
A note to CrossFit gyms: The words “community” and “family” do not work! While I love the camaraderie and support that group fitness can give people, and The Grant study shows that the number one determinant of our health is the depth of our relationships, unfortunately it doesn’t work for lead generation. If you want to allude to it, use words like “friendly”, “supportive”, “non judgmental” and “welcoming”
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