Win the New Year Rush Without Desperation Marketing

When it comes to marketing your gym, the hardest part isn’t coming up with ideas — it’s managing competing demands.

The January Dilemma

In January, every audience segment wants something different, and you can only market to each so often. At Business for Unicorns, we recommend:

• Never Been Clients: about once a month
• Former Clients: about once a quarter
• Current Clients: about once a quarter

Market too often and you’ll look desperate. Market too little, and your growth and cash flow stall.

And then there’s timing.

If you just ran a Christmas promotion, is a New Year’s offer too soon?

If you skip it, do you lose out on one of your best periods of growth?

A well-built marketing calendar, like the one we give all Unicorn Society members, eliminates that guesswork. 

But let’s look at a few simple plays you can run to capitalize on the New Year rush without burning out your audience or getting lost in the noise.

Current Clients

• Audience: Current Clients
• Timing: First week of December 
• Offer: Pay-in-full (PIF) now, get X free sessions and the rest of December for free
• Number available: about 5, depending on the size of your gym.
• “Fine Print”: Free sessions must be used within 3 months, they can’t freeze their membership to use the free sessions, and like all PIFs there are no refunds.
• Marketing channels: Everywhere you connect with current clients - email (and text) list, in-session announcements, individual in-person conversations for people you think might be interested, private Facebook group, signage in your gym, nutrition or momentum coaching sessions, etc.

Typical PIF offers discount too heavily, cutting into future revenue from clients who would’ve stayed anyway. If your goal is a short-term cash infusion, that’s fine, but if you want sustainable profit, add value without slashing prices.

This version works better: instead of discounting, you bonus extra sessions and a partial free month. The free month is a <8% free discount (plus they are locked into a year anyways), and the extra sessions add little cost while delivering strong perceived value.

Your local car dealership will probably do something similar: buy a new car this month and get a free set of snow tires and the first oil change on them.

I recommend only doing this offer for your two highest training frequency memberships as an incentive for people to upgrade if they are on a lower number of sessions per week.

Example:

• PIF 12 months of 2x/week → get 8 free sessions and the rest of December for free
• PIF 12 months of 3x/week → get 12 free sessions and the rest of December for free

You’ll also beat the big-box gyms to the punch by running this before their January blitz.

When it comes to the messaging, it’s all about ending the current year and starting the new year strong. 

Emphasize the benefits of coming more frequently. Emphasize that they can get a kickstart in 2026 with extra sessions. And dangle the carrot of the rest of the year for free.

Your members are probably thinking about their 2026 goals anyway, so this offer becomes a low-friction pathway to commit to those goals. 

Former Clients

• Audience: Former Clients
• Timing: Friday December 26th through Friday Jan 2nd
• Offer: 2 weeks of unlimited training for $1
• Number available: Technically unlimited, but you may want to cap it based on capacity and to provide scarcity
• “Fine Print”: They have to claim the offer (pay for it) by Friday Jan 2nd and start by Monday Jan 19th
• Marketing channels: Everywhere you connect with former clients - email (and text) list, personalized texts, DMs and/or voicenotes to select former clients, phone calls to select former clients, messages from your staff to clients they had excellent rapport with, etc.

This offer is simple. $1 gets their card on file for a micro-commitment and a quick win to get them started.

Yes, it’s only $1, and if they were a good client before, you know they will make a good client if they come back. If they weren’t a good client before and you don’t want them back, remove them from your list and don’t market to them.

Where we see Unicorn Society members get the most traction with this is individual follow-ups. Not all former clients are enthusiastically awaiting your next email, and sending a couple personal texts or DMs goes a very long way.

Get your staff to send some messages along the lines of “Hey [NAME], did you see the offer [YOUR GYM] sent out yesterday about rejoining for only $1? I thought of you as soon as I heard we were doing this”. 

It feels like help, not a hard sell.

Be upfront in your messaging: you enjoyed working with them and want them back to crush their 2026 goals. The timing lets you catch them while they’re still motivated, but before January fatigue sets in (or they signed up somewhere else).

Even if big gyms do similar “$1 trials,” your coaching offer delivers far more value than access to a crowded facility. You should make that clear.

Never Been Clients

• Audience: Never Been Clients
• Timing: Friday December 26th through Friday Jan 2nd
• Offer: 2 weeks of unlimited training for $1
• Number available: Technically unlimited, but you may want to cap it based on capacity and to provide scarcity
• “Fine Print”: They have to claim the offer (pay for it) by Friday Jan 2nd and start by Monday Jan 19th
• Marketing channels: Everywhere you get new clients: email (and text) list, social media, A-frame sign outside your gym (if you have one), personal messages to people who booked a consultation but never bought a trial, networking groups, etc.

Yes, it’s the same offer, and that’s intentional. 

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time you run a campaign. Reusing proven offers saves time, reduces errors, and keeps your team focused on execution.

The difference here is messaging. Since you don’t have a relationship yet, you need to speak directly to their motivations and fears:

• What results do they want most?
• What’s stopping them from starting?
• What emotions drive their fitness goals (both the ones they feel from not exercising now, and the way they want to feel in the future)?

Your content should hit these notes consistently. With this group, frequency matters more than familiarity — so email often, post daily, and keep stories active all week. 

They need to feel like your gym is everywhere.

A quick note on 2 weeks for $1

For both the former and never been client offers, you do have some wiggle room on the price point. 

First of all, you aren’t trying to make a profit on a low barrier offer; you are trying to build future recurring revenue with it. Don’t price it too high.

If you want to increase the price, you can, and it will come at the cost of less leads and less total sign ups (even if you have strong sales and conversion systems in place).

Think of it this way. Would you rather 

• Get 3 takers on the offer who convert to 2 clients
• or 10 takers who convert to 4 clients? 

The former is less work, the latter is more clients. Adjust for your specific needs.

Final Thoughts

“People don’t buy when you’re ready. People buy when they’re ready”.

The new year is a time when you need to capitalize on the time of year because people want to buy.

And with the above offers - provided you plan ahead, create great marketing, and have robust follow-up systems - you will get the new growth you are looking for while creating value for the people you want to help without getting lost in the noise.

Ben Pickard

COO and Coach

Business For Unicorns

P.S. If you are a gym owner with 30+ members making at least $10k per month and are looking to grow your gym by $5k-$10k/month or more, book a free 10-minute Brainstorm Call to see if we’re the right fit to help.

If we are, we’ll help you build a gym – and life – you love. And if we’re not, we’ll point you in the right direction.