Blue Grid Media runs Google Ads for gyms and fitness franchises across the US: exclusive leads from an account in your name, $795 a month on ad budgets from $2,500, month to month.
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A location with a waiting list and a new build with three hundred spare memberships do not want the same budget, and they are not bidding against the same competitors. Blended across a brand, the money goes to whichever market is cheapest to advertise in rather than the one with room to fill.
Blue Grid Media runs Google Ads and Local Services Ads for home service contractors. That is the business, and most of this site says so. Gyms are the one category outside it, and they are here for a plain reason: we have managed 56+ gym accounts across two franchise groups, which is more volume than we have in several of the trades that have their own page.
That is not scope creep, and it is not us deciding fitness looked interesting. The whole argument this company makes is that a specialist beats a generalist because they have seen your economics before. Gyms are on the list because the volume is real. Nothing else is. If you run a category we have not worked in, we will tell you rather than learn on your budget.
A free trial signup is close to free to buy and means very little. A member who joins, stays past the first billing cycle and is still there in month three is the only thing that pays for the facility. Those two numbers move in opposite directions often enough that optimising the first one actively damages the second.
This matters more in fitness than in most categories because the product is recurring. A contractor sells a job. You sell a subscription, and the subscription has a churn rate that varies by location, by acquisition channel and by which offer brought the member in. A discount-led trial campaign can look like the best performer in the account and be the worst source of members you have.
We run gym accounts nationwide, and the campaign is not the same everywhere. These are the three market types that change how a gym account gets built, and the metros where each one applies.
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles
Several gyms inside the same few blocks, the highest cost per click in the category, and a member who will switch for a better class schedule. Budget here buys differentiation, not reach, so the campaign leans on what the location actually has that the one down the road does not.
Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Tampa, Charlotte, Nashville, Las Vegas, Orlando, Jacksonville
Population inflow and new builds, which means pre-sale campaigns for locations that have not opened yet and a steady supply of people who have just moved and have no gym. Pre-sale is a different campaign from acquisition and wants its own budget and its own page.
Columbus, Kansas City, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Memphis, St. Louis, Omaha
Lower membership prices, higher volume, and a shorter payback window per member. The same cost per member that works in Manhattan loses money here, which is the whole argument for setting budgets per location rather than per brand.
This is the part a single-site agency never has to solve, and the part that 56+ accounts across two franchise groups forces you to get right. Three inputs decide what a location should spend, and none of them is the brand average.
A location at 94 percent of capacity does not need more acquisition spend, it needs a waiting list and a price review. Spending into a full facility raises churn, because the floor gets crowded and the members who leave are the ones who were paying longest.
Cost per click for the same keyword can differ several times over between two locations of the same brand thirty miles apart. A brand-level bid strategy quietly overpays in the cheap market and gets outbid in the expensive one.
Membership price and churn both vary by market. A member worth $1,100 over their life supports a very different acquisition cost than one worth $380, and setting one ceiling across the portfolio guarantees you are wrong in both directions.
Capacity fills, competitors open and close, and churn shifts with the season. Allocation is not a setup task done once at onboarding, it is the recurring work, and it is most of what we actually do on a franchise account.
Each of these converts at a different rate into a member who stays, so each gets its own campaign, its own bid and its own landing page. Run together, the cheapest conversions win the budget and the members who actually stay go unfunded.
High intent, high competition, and the place where cost per lead and cost per joined member diverge most. A trial signup is not a member. We optimise to the person still paying in month three, which usually changes which keywords deserve the budget.
The cheapest conversions in the account and the easiest way to make a report look healthy. Worth running only when the trial-to-member conversion is actually measured and fed back, otherwise it quietly inflates the lead count and hides the real cost.
The highest revenue per client in most gyms and almost always bundled into the membership campaign. It deserves separating, and the trainers may qualify for Local Services Ads under the Personal Trainer category even though the gym itself does not.
Someone buying a ten class pack is not shopping the same way as someone signing a twelve month membership. Different ad copy, different landing page, and a much shorter decision.
A single HR buyer bringing forty members at once. Long cycle, low volume, and almost nobody bids it, which is exactly why it is usually the cheapest qualified traffic in the account.
Lapsed members already know the facility, the staff and the commute. Reaching them costs a fraction of a cold acquisition and converts at a multiple of it, and most accounts have no campaign for it at all.
Founding member offers in the eight to twelve weeks before opening. A completely different campaign from steady-state acquisition, with a different offer, a different page and a hard deadline that does the persuading for you.
Competitors bidding on your brand name is normal and cheap to counter. Leaving it unbid means paying for awareness and handing the click to the gym across the street.
A gym as a facility is not one of Google's Local Services Ads categories, so the Google Guaranteed badge is not available to the business. This catches people out because the rest of our site is full of Local Services Ads work, and because agencies do sell it to gym owners who have not checked.
What is eligible: Personal Trainer and Yoga Studio, both inside Google's Wellness group. Those require an individual background check for each trainer rather than one check for the business, which is a real operational cost worth knowing before you plan around it. So for the gym itself the answer is Google Ads and Google Business Profile, and if you run a personal training arm there is a separate Local Services Ads route for it.
Ask these before handing over the ad account. The answers separate most agencies faster than any case study will.
Locations do not share an auction. They have different competitors, different membership prices and different capacity. A blended budget funds whichever location is cheapest to advertise in, which is rarely the one with room to fill.
A free trial signup costs almost nothing and means almost nothing. If the reporting stops before the join, and before month three, it is measuring the wrong end of the funnel.
Win-back is the cheapest membership in the building and it is missing from most accounts. An agency that has not asked for your lapsed list is not thinking about your cost per member.
Franchise budgets are large and seasonal. A percentage fee scales with January and with every new location, whether or not the work scaled with it.
A gym is not a Local Services Ads category. Personal trainers and yoga studios are. An agency selling you gym LSA has not read the category list.
Every physical location needs its own profile. Consolidating them is the fastest way to make a multi-location brand invisible in local results.
Your ad budget is separate and billed by Google directly to you, so you can see every dollar of it. Above $10,000 in ad spend the fee becomes 10% of spend.
$750 setup, then month to month with no minimum term. The Google Ads account and every Google Business Profile stay in your name.
Blue Grid Media runs Google Ads for gyms on total monthly budgets from $3,300: $795 a month for management and at least $2,500 a month in ad spend, paid to Google directly, plus a $750 one-time setup in the first month, month to month with no contract.
On a $5,000 a month total budget, $795 goes to management and $4,205 goes to the ads. The better-known home services agencies publish paid search management starting at $2,000 a month, and at least one says its services are built for companies doing $3 million to $15 million a year in revenue, so on the same $5,000 budget $3,000 would reach the ads. The figures are in our study of 62 contractor marketing agencies.
| Total monthly budget | Management | Ad spend to Google | Share reaching the ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3,300 | $795 | $2,505 | 76% |
| $4,000 | $795 | $3,205 | 80% |
| $5,000 | $795 | $4,205 | 84% |
| $7,500 | $795 | $6,705 | 89% |
| $10,795 | $795 | $10,000 | 93% |
Above $10,000 a month in ad spend the fee becomes 10% of spend in place of the $795, with Local Services Ads included.
Below $3,300 a month in total we are not the right fit yet, and we will say so on the call rather than take the account, because an ad budget under $2,500 is too small for a gym campaign to learn from its own calls. If that is where you are, run Local Services Ads yourself first: it charges per lead rather than per click, and it builds the review base the Google Ads account will need later.
Blue Grid Media runs ClickGuard on the Google Ads accounts it manages for gyms, which watches every paid click and blocks repeat and automated clicks by IP address as they happen, and sets device bid adjustments so the account stops paying for the devices whose clicks never turn into calls or forms.
Clicks that Google’s own systems judge invalid are taken out of your reports and your bill, and if Google finds them after you were charged, you get a credit on a later invoice. That catches a lot, but not the person who clicks your ad every morning. (Google Ads Help)
ClickGuard checks each paid click against rules: the same address clicking again and again, and traffic that behaves like a bot rather than a person. When a click breaks a rule, the address is added to the campaign’s IP exclusions, so that source stops seeing your ads. Google allows up to 500 excluded addresses per campaign. (Google Ads Help)
We compare clicks with calls and forms by device: phone, computer and tablet. Where one spends without producing gym calls, its bid comes down, or it is switched off at -100%. On Smart Bidding that last setting is the only device adjustment Google still applies, so on those accounts exclusion is the lever we use. (Google Ads Help)
No tool stops every invalid click, so we do not promise a percentage. What you can check is your own account: the excluded IP list and the device bid settings sit in your Google Ads account, which is in your name.
Home service contractors are the core of the business, and gyms are the deliberate exception. We have managed 56+ gym accounts across two franchise groups, which is more volume than we have in several of the trades we publish pages for. We are not a general fitness agency and we do not take on categories where we would be learning on your budget.
56+ gym accounts across two franchise groups. We do not name the brands. The relevant part is that multi-location and single-site gyms are different problems, and running both at that volume is what teaches you to set budgets per location rather than per brand.
Not as a gym. A gym as a facility is not one of Google's Local Services Ads categories. Personal Trainer and Yoga Studio are, inside the Wellness group, and they require an individual background check for each trainer rather than one check for the business. So for most gyms the answer is Google Ads and Google Business Profile, with a separate Local Services Ads route available if you run a personal training arm.
Per location, from its own numbers. A location in a saturated metro with a waiting list does not want the same budget as a new build with three hundred spare memberships. We allocate against remaining capacity, local competition and what a member is actually worth in that market, then rebalance monthly as those change.
Google Ads management is a flat $795 a month on ad budgets from $2,500 to $10,000, and 10% of spend above $10,000. Local Services Ads can be added to Google Ads for $995 a month in total, which is relevant if you run personal training. Setup is $750 one time and includes a landing page for each campaign. Ad budget is separate and billed by Google directly to you.
Both, and they are different engagements. A single franchisee wants one location filled. A corporate or multi-unit owner wants budget allocated across a portfolio and reported so they can see which markets are worth opening in next. Tell us which you are on the call.
No. $750 setup, then month to month with no minimum term. The Google Ads account and the Google Business Profiles stay in your name, so if we part ways you keep the account, the history and the landing pages.
Same approach, different economics. Each page carries the cost and job value data for that trade.
Blue Grid Media provides exclusive gym membership leads in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix, and in roughly 50 United States metros in total, generated from a Google Ads account, plus a Local Services Ads profile under the Personal Trainer category for the training arm held in the client's own name rather than bought from a lead seller and shared, priced at $795 a month for Google Ads management on ad budgets from $2,500, or $995 with Local Services Ads, month to month with no contract after a $750 setup.
We do not sell gym leads and we do not resell them. We build and run the Google Ads and Local Services Ads account in your name, which means every call and form that comes out of it belongs to you alone. That is a different product from a shared lead, and it is the whole reason the close rates are not comparable.
We provide exclusive gym leads in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix, and in roughly 50 United States metros in total. Campaigns are managed remotely, so the market is set by where your members live rather than where we sit.
Not on the list does not mean not covered. We run gym accounts nationwide across the United States, including smaller and rural markets where the auction is usually cheaper than any metro above.
Joining a gym is a feeling before it is a search. A short video of a full class or a facility tour on YouTube and Shorts, shown to people who live near the location, does more for trial sign-ups than another search ad for "gym near me".
Blue Grid Media runs Google Demand Gen campaigns for gyms on YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover and Gmail, included in Google Ads management at $795 a month on ad budgets from $2,500, as a second layer once Search is running; the ad spend is billed by Google directly.
YouTube including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Display Network, per Google. Display campaigns are moving into Demand Gen from June 2026.
Awareness and retargeting. These people were not searching yet, so we judge it on site visits, return visits and the branded searches it creates, not on calls in the first week. Search stays the lead engine.
People near you who match your best customers, through lookalike segments built from site visitors, past customers and YouTube viewers, plus people who visited your site and did not call.
Your best photos and short videos, vertical video for Shorts, and conversion tracking before launch. Google recommends a budget of at least 10 times your target cost per acquisition when bidding to a target.
Placements, audience rules and the budget guidance are from Google Ads Help, “About Demand Gen campaigns”, read 13 October 2026. Demand Gen is added once Search is running; we do not start a new account with it.
A franchise sending every market to the same page cannot mention the local timetable, the local price or the location that is actually nearest. Per-location pages are the difference between a click that joins and a click that bounces to find the right branch.
Most local searches happen on a phone, so the page is built to load fast there. Faster pages convert more of the clicks you have already paid for.
Every call and form is connected to tracking from day one, so you can see which ads and which pages actually produce booked work rather than just traffic.
On-page SEO and local schema markup so the site earns map and organic visibility over time instead of only working while the ads are switched on.
30-minute call, operator to operator. We look at your gym account, tell you what we would change across your locations, and you decide whether to continue. No pitch deck.
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