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What to Do Before Spending a Dollar on Paid Gym Marketing
Host Dan Cotton shares the five-step foundation every cheer gym needs in place before paid ads, plus tips for getting more from your budget once you do start spending.
Marketing Has Changed
Welcome to another episode of the Cheer Biz Podcast. Host Dan Cotton takes the mic solo to tackle a question every gym owner faces: what should you do before putting a single dollar into paid marketing? You hear all the time that you need to market your gym, he says, and he has said it himself, but there are important steps to take first.
Dan opens by inviting listeners to join the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners groups on Facebook, and to attend a Cheer Biz Accelerator event where he and Danielle can put their eyes on your business and help you scale. The topic comes from a marketing class at a recent accelerator event that the team rebuilt from scratch, because marketing has changed so much.
Paid Ads Are a Bloodbath
Dan describes paid marketing today as brutal. Meta was once a place where a few dollars could produce results, but now, by his own informal test one evening, roughly one in four posts in a feed comes from someone you actually follow, and the rest are ads and sponsored content. Buyer behavior has shifted, and an ad has to interrupt the scroll to be noticed. Reaching cold buyers who know nothing about you is harder than ever.
Costs are climbing, too. A $50 ad budget producing a flood of clicks and purchases is very unlikely. Dan says an average cost of acquisition around $13 for service businesses is actually excellent, and he sees figures of $35, $60, and even $90 in service-based industries, though not necessarily in cheer. Because dollars are so valuable, a foundation needs to be in place first.
Step One: A Functional Website
The first requirement, which Dan emphasized slowly and dramatically into the microphone, is a functional website. By his own admittedly made-up estimate, 70 to 80 percent of the industry still lacks one. The websites he sees from gyms seeking advice or attending the accelerator are often terrible, and owners know it. They say their site is bad, that they have heard his advice but do not know how to do it, or that they paid someone who did a poor job.
Dan says anyone who argues websites do not matter is wrong, and they matter more today than two years ago. People are moving from Google to ChatGPT for search, while many still use Google, so gyms need SEO and AEO, or answer engine optimization, to be found in both. Where owners once stripped text from their sites, AI tools now favor text, so a site needs real descriptions, real information, and real reviews. It should also be ADA compliant. If you do not have a functional website, he says, do not spend a dollar on marketing.
Steps Two and Three: CRM and Tracking
Step two is a way to gather leads. A beautiful website that cannot capture visitors’ information is a billboard on the internet. Dan recommends a CRM, such as NextGen Engine, that lets people opt in, receive automated responses, and be engaged with. He has spoken with owners spending on marketing and getting no enrollments, only to find that their site sends people straight to iClass Pro, Jackrabbit, Fallout, Sports Engine, or another class management system. Those are not CRMs. His plea is to stop sending prospects directly there, because gyms that capture leads will outperform those that do not.
Step three is analytics and tracking across the website and CRM. If your tools do not tell you how people behave, you will not know where to put more money. Marketing, Dan explains, is less like math and more like art and feeling with a little science and magic. What works at one gym may not at another, or even from year to year. A special that produced about 40 enrollments last year drew only 19 when run again at the same time this year, and he knows that only because everything is tracked.
Steps Four and Five: Social Presence and Reviews
Step four is an active social media presence with real content, not only Canva graphics or ChatGPT images. Dan urges owners to move away from AI slop and show who they are, using high-quality videos, iPhone clips, and talking-to-camera posts so people can get to know them. Be active on at least one channel, and ideally Facebook and Instagram. Prospects will look for you, and if there is no sign you exist on social media, they are unlikely to buy.
Step five is reviews. If you do not have a Google Business Profile, create one and start collecting reviews. AI search tools love reviews, and with trust at a historic low, people want to hear from others who have been to your business. Dan reads reviews before buying on Amazon, and he treats bad ones as a prompt to look for red flags, not an automatic dealbreaker. With a finite marketing budget, all five pieces should be in place so every dollar goes further.
Getting Ninja-Level With Your Ads
Once the foundation is ready, Dan offers several tips for spending well. First, install your pixels, including the Facebook Pixel and, if you run Google Ads, the Google Pixel, so you can see what happens after someone clicks and retarget them. Second, let your organic social media guide you. The posts and videos with the most engagement, shares, and positive comments are the best candidates for paid campaigns.
Third, write your own copy. Dan says copy straight from ChatGPT, emojis and all, has become white noise that people are trained to ignore. AI can get you 60 to 70 percent of the way, but add the human touch and grab attention early. Finally, make ads look like organic posts, so viewers have to look for the small ad label. If your ad looks like a ChatGPT flyer announcing half-year enrollment, people will scroll past, and you will only reach the hottest buyers, many of whom you could have reached without paying Facebook anything.
Build the Base, Then Spend
Dan closes by hoping these tools help owners decide when to start spending on marketing and how to do it well. Get the baseline in place and the marketing will start to cook.
Thank you for listening to the Cheer Biz Podcast. Join the Cheer Gym Owners and All-Star Cheer Coaches and Owners Facebook groups, consider a Cheer Biz Accelerator event, and tune in to the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like “I Never Knew I Could Be “Marketing” And Still Staying Invisible”
