When people are searching for a fitness center, what impacts their decision are the amenities the facility offers. For families, it’s a major bonus if a fitness center is family-friendly and offers services and spaces tailored to kids.

One of the best things you can do as a fitness center or gym facility is to make your space family-friendly. This addition to your business will encourage your members to visit you often and improve member recruitment.

Including family-friendly features in your fitness center can be easy with some creativity. With kids clubs, family fitness classes and other kid-inclusive options, you’ll appeal to more families.

Transform your fitness center into a place that welcomes all types of members with family-friendly amenities. Learn how to create a family-friendly gym by following this guide with helpful tips and ideas.

Table of Contents 

Finding a Marketing Balance

Fitness centers, big and small, compete with each other to gain new members and retain clients through numerous marketing routes. Gyms may offer discounted memberships, renovated workout facilities or special amenities that attract new members. Tailoring your fitness center to be a family-friendly location is an ideal way to set yourself apart from other facilities.

Marketing yourself as family-friendly helps attract members with kids, but what about the other individuals who don’t have kids and are looking for an awesome gym for their workouts? Finding a balance between a family-friendly and more inclusive health and fitness facility is essential when creating your marketing plan.

While word-of-mouth is a beneficial marketing strategy for fitness centers, it’s not the only one you should be utilizing. Check out these helpful marketing strategies that will help position yourself in the competitive fitness market:

  • Make a user-friendly website: The digital world has taken over, and it’s not going anywhere. Strategizing your digital marketing plan is a smart way to become successful and enhance your business. One of the best ways to improve your digital marketing is to create a user-friendly website for your family-friendly fitness center. Outline all the services and amenities you offer in an easy-to-follow layout. Ensure individuals have access to sign up for a membership and look at the equipment, classes and add-ons you have to offer.
  • Utilize local SEO: Implementing a solid local SEO plan can boost exposure in your community. As 46% of all searches on Google are local, this strategy lets you market yourself as a family-friendly location and a quality gym. Keywords and key phrases that include your city or town with terms like “family-friendly fitness centers in” or “best gym near” are excellent to use throughout your copy. Keep your Google My Business account updated and add information to appeal to families and individuals without kids, as well.
  • Implement content marketing: Incorporating content marketing into your strategy can help balance your efforts between a family-friendly fitness center and a great workout gym. Publishing helpful content can help attract potential members to your website. Posts like “Fun Workouts to Do as a Family” or “Toned Arm Exercises at the Gym” can relate to two different groups.
  • Try out video marketing: Videos are one of the best marketing techniques to use, especially for a fitness center. The number of video ideas you can execute involving group fitness classes, sports, family-friendly amenities, exercise ideas and health tips are almost endless. Even content options like live streams are beneficial to incorporate into your marketing strategy.
  • Use social media: Utilize social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, to market the services your fitness center provides along with helpful fitness and health tips, business hours and other facility updates. Cater your posts to your different members by scheduling family-friendly content and quality workout content.
  • Offer promotions: An effective way to attract new members to your fitness center is to offer promotions on your memberships. Provide discounts for family memberships to promote your family-friendly atmosphere or offer discounted membership specials a few times throughout the year for individuals without kids.
  • Offer referral incentives: Referral programs are a smart way for fitness centers to gain new members and market their business. If members refer their friends, family or coworkers to sign up at your facility, you can offer various rewards as incentives.

Ways to Make a Family-Friendly Fitness Center

Fitness centers that include kid services are beneficial to families and allow more people to use the gym. If your fitness center has the resources to include family-friendly services, like employee training, extra insurance coverage and facility space, implementing new amenities to your gym can be extremely beneficial for your business. You can include various services and offers for families so they can get more out of your fitness center.

Learn about effective family-friendly fitness center ideas to welcome more people to your facility.

Include family friendly play areas

1. Include Family-Friendly Areas

The layout of your fitness facility is essential to the flow and movement of your members. Designate space in your fitness center for family workouts. This designated area will be a safe space for adults to supervise their kids and enjoy a successful workout.

Make family-friendly areas stand out with appealing structures like indoor play spaces or fun decorative elements. Themed playgrounds are inviting for kids of various ages, while family-friendly exercise zones promote physical activity for everyone.

Enforce rules in your facility that other areas of the gym are off-limits for kids. These requirements are for safety and liability reasons as exercise equipment and free weights may be dangerous to certain ages. Encouraging families to stay in designated areas will also provide a positive experience for members visiting without kids who want to use the rest of your facilities.

2. Provide Child Care

Child care can provide gym members an amazing opportunity to still go to the gym and get in a workout while their kids are supervised at the same facility. Facilities must obtain specific licenses, provide the proper training for employees and follow local zoning laws and regulations before opening up a child care program.

To enhance the child care program at your facility, you can include kid-specific workout programs or play equipment. Kids need the opportunity to be active and learn the importance of physical activity and a healthy lifestyle. Offering kid-safe equipment, sports and active games during their time in child care is valuable to kids. Parents and potential members will appreciate the value of this type of child care program at their fitness center.

3. Offer After-School Programs

Many parents in the U.S. work full-time jobs and search for after-school care for their kids. Schools might offer child care where kids can start on homework or enjoy activities, but having multiple options for child care can be beneficial for working parents.

Organizing an after-school program for kids at your fitness center can help members who have kids by providing supervised child care before they leave work. An after-school program at your gym can offer kids a fun opportunity to be physically active. Encouraging physical activity and exercise at a young age can help promote a healthy lifestyle for kids, which parents will appreciate.

4. Offer Family Fitness Classes

Encourage families to become healthy and active together by offering family fitness classes at your gym. Family group fitness classes are a fun way to show how exercise and being healthy can be enjoyable. Family members can motivate each other and establish a healthy family lifestyle together.

Family group fitness classes can help kids and adults improve physical abilities, like balance, strength, stamina, heart health and lung capacity. Classes can include fun games or modified cardio and strength classes to cater to all ages. By offering these classes, you can showcase your family-friendly equipment and use those offerings for marketing opportunities.

5. Sponsor Community Events

Your local community may host numerous events throughout the year that are both family-friendly and involved in health and physical fitness. Events like 5k runs, charity organization events and fitness or health festivals are great to sponsor, showing your support and commitment to a healthy community. This type of exposure will help show families a fitness option that can work with their schedules and needs.

Host special hours

6. Host Special Hours

Young members, like teenagers, typically go to the gym after school gets out, which is before 5 p.m. on weekdays. To make your fitness center more appealing to this age group and their parents, consider offering a discounted membership for teens who attend the facility after school. This offering can also encourage parents to become members at your fitness center and include their entire family because of the family-friendly atmosphere.

7. Provide Kid-Specific Nutrition Resources

Numerous fitness centers offer nutrition counseling for their members to enhance services and help members improve their overall health goals. Most facilities offer nutrition counseling solely for adults and their health concerns, but you can include nutrition services for younger members, also. This offering can help young athletes or kids looking for healthy snack and food options and other benefits that come from nutrition counseling.

8. Offer Kids Sports and Recreation

If your fitness center includes sports amenities like basketball courts, tennis courts, pools and other sports fields, consider offering the space for local youth sports teams. You can then include younger community members at your fitness center and show parents your family-friendly atmosphere.

Offering a space for youth sports teams can also include providing sport-specific conditioning sessions. Kids can focus on improving their physical abilities through weight lifting, cardio conditioning and other exercises to help better skills for sports.

9. Host Special Events for Kids

Providing a space for kids to socialize and appreciate their community is a wonderful way for them to get involved and meet new people. Offering special events just for kids at your fitness center, like sports tournaments, activity clubs and other gatherings, can help make your center stand out. You’ll show the community you’re committed to providing a family-friendly fitness space for everyone.

Benefits of family friendly fitness center

The Benefits of Family-Friendly Fitness Centers for Parents

An amazing way to impact your community and attract more members to your facilities is by becoming a family-friendly fitness center. Parents looking for a gym may be more inclined to join a facility that offers plenty of kid-friendly services and activities. Overall, becoming a family-friendly gym brings plenty of benefits to you, but it also benefits families and the community around you.

Understand the importance and benefits of becoming a family-friendly fitness center and how it can impact the parents and kids in your community with the below advantages.

Parents Can Be Consistent With Fitness

Parents who want to be healthy and work out at the gym need to find a child care option for their kids. Finding a babysitter every time they want to head to the gym isn’t practical, and home workouts can be distracting with kids running around. Fitness centers that offer child care make including fitness into parents’ schedules much easier. Facilities with child care also increase motivation for a more consistently active lifestyle.

Parents Can Meet Other Parents

The gym is a wonderful place to meet new people and friends with similar interests, especially for parents at a family-friendly gym. Fitness centers with child care and other kid activities give parents the opportunity to meet other parents and feel closer to members of their community.

Families Can Encourage Physical Activity to Kids

Parents who bring their kids to the fitness center on a regular basis encourage exercise and teach kids why it’s important to stay active. Kids will take note of what their parents do, and watching their parents enjoy the gym and work out consistently can help kids understand the value of exercise.

Kids Can Try New Sports

Fitness centers that host youth sports or offer organized sports clubs provide an excellent opportunity for kids to try new sports and activities. Parents can work out while their kids try soccer, basketball, racquetball and more activities. For parents, this benefit means they can encourage their kids to try new things and make friends in their community.

Families Can Work Toward a Healthy Lifestyle

Exercise and nutrition play vital roles in a person’s overall health. Going to a fitness center that offers resources for great workouts, sports, play equipment and nutrition advice can help promote a healthy lifestyle for both the parents and their kids.

Browse family friendly equipment form Soft Play

Browse Family-Friendly Equipment From Soft Play®

When parents look for a fitness facility, some of the key features may include quality of equipment, location and hours, but most importantly, their kid-friendly amenities. As a health and fitness business, it’s helpful to get creative and expand your resources for higher member retention and features that will attract new patrons.

Start transforming and consider installing indoor jungle gym equipment or browse other products from Soft Play. Our play equipment can help your fitness center appeal to families who are searching for a welcoming, family-friendly environment. We are proud to provide safe forms of play to businesses, like fitness centers, to help promote physical activity through play.

Upgrade your fitness center and build your playground experience today with our products and free design consultation. Learn more about our play equipment and services by contacting us to request a quote.