How Gymshark Became a Titan in the Fitness Apparel Industry

We are all aware of fitness apparel giant Gymshark. If you’re not, you should be. Gymshark is a British fitness apparel and accessories brand based in England. Founded in June of 2012, the brand utilized a combination of influencer marketing, user-generated content, early social media platform adoption, and community creation to maximize the fruits of its labor. The results were tremendous.

Influencer Strategy​

The first thing Gymshark did right was to focus its marketing budget on influencer marketing rather than advertising. One of the best ways to get a product in front of your target customer is to get the people your target customer pays attention to or watches to rep your product. Naturally, people want to be like the people they look up to. That is why getting the influencer, in this case, the professional bodybuilder, to use your product (wear the Gymshark merchandise) is one of the best ways to market a product. The consumer wants to use the same products their favorite influencer uses. By focusing Gymshark’s budget on influencers with its target audience, Gymshark cut the cost of its marketing efforts. Since they no longer have to spend the money to develop that target audience, they can use that money to give the influencers a product to showcase or acquire other influencers. Influencer marketing also plays a large role in developing the community behind the brand which we will get into later.

User Generated Content

Another powerplay Gymshark made was relying heavily on user-generated content to market its products. This partly plays into influencer marketing strategy since Gymshark is extremely selective in the influencers they use and the fact that you cannot apply to be an ambassador you have to be invited to be one. The way to become an ambassador at Gymshark is to buy their products (regularly), post about/you in their products (regularly), tag Gymshark (regularly), and they invite which influencers are providing the most value to their target audience via inspirational, educational, and entertaining content. The influencers practically create all of the content for the brand allowing the Gymshark team to focus on the management and facilitation of new content. Gymshark also does an outstanding job of creating interactive marketing campaigns that play off of user-generated content. For example, Gymshark created a “66 Days, Change Your Life” challenge in 2018 on TikTok where people would post their before and after photos of their fitness transformation in Gymshark apparel. The campaign had tremendous consumer buy-in resulting in a flood of user-generated content. The campaign was so successful they brought it back again this year as #Gymshark66 after realizing its ongoing potential.

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Platform Adoption​

The “66 Days, Change Your Life” campaign is also a prime example of Gymshark utilizing social platforms for its marketing efforts, especially new platforms. Gymshark launched that campaign in the infancy of TikTok back in 2018, which due to its massive consumer buy-in, led to the TikTok feeds being flooded with Gymshark content. Gymshark does a superb job of utilizing the Platforms their target audience resonates with. From Instagram and TikTok to Spotify and YouTube Gymshark has created its own world seemingly. Across their platforms, you can get advice on apparel styling, meal recipes, workout routines, workout music, life hacks, and most importantly for the fitness industry inspiration and motivation. When people buy Gymshark apparel they aren’t stepping into a new outfit they’re stepping into a new world with like-minded individuals pushing each other to achieve their best selves every day.

Community Creation

This is the heart of Gymshark’s genius marketing. They are experts at creating a community that everyone wants to be a part of. Naturally, people want to feel like they belong to a community. This is why, although their ambassador program is highly exclusive, the overall Gymshark community is highly inclusive. Gymshark has high-quality fitness content for everyone whether you are in shape, out of shape, a man, a woman, old, or young. They’ve done an excellent job of developing separate pages for each facet of the content they offer. For example, on Instagram, they have the main overarching page @gymshark where they promote their main brand. Then they have their women's fitness page @gymsharkwomen where they promote female fitness content and products. Then they have their training page @gymsharktrain where they promote all of their fitness training content and training products. Each of these pages has a community of its own within the overarching Gymshark community. The Gymshark fan base refers to the Gymshark community as the Gymshark Family, constantly pushing and motivating each other to become the best version of themselves. This provides that sense of belonging we all yearn for. However, it is not easy. The marketing strategy they have developed with influencers, user-generated content, platform adoption, and communities has given Gymshark the content cache of every digital marketer's dreams. They have a plethora of exceptional content to pull from and use for marketing efforts with some to spare. All of which are created by the people that USE Gymshark apparel.

Paving The Way For Future Brands

With the mass attention and success that Gymshark has acquired, they have become the poster child for every fitness apparel brand in the making. Gymshark was conducting influencer marketing before the term “influencer marketing” was even coined. The techniques and strategies Gymshark used to create its brand have become the staples of modern-day digital marketing. These same techniques and strategies can be skillfully tailored to any business to evolve its marketing efforts to produce what we all want: HIGH-QUALITY RESULTS. That’s where Tribu comes into play. We believe in digital marketing that doesn’t pollute the internet and in nurturing brands that truly resonate with the human heart. We work because we deeply enjoy what we do – we love business, we love creativity, and we love people. If your business needs branding or digital marketing, schedule a free consultation with us today! Find out how one of our graphic designers gained 10,000 organic followers in 3 months on his personal Instagram account. Click here to read his blog. Don’t forget to follow us on social media!

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