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.
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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. We never take a percentage of spend.
No setup fee, no minimum term, month to month. The Google Ads account and every Google Business Profile stay 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 starts at $695 a month, flat by ad spend tier rather than a percentage. Local Services Ads management is $445 a month standalone or $300 alongside Google Ads, which is relevant if you run personal training. Landing pages are included with no design fee. 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. Month to month, no setup fee, 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.
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 crews work 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.
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 contractor 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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