Google, Meta or ClassPass for a gym's January budget

The January budget gets set in the fall, and this year the conversation starts from a harder place. In Wellhub’s survey of 662 gym and studio owners in 11 countries, reported last week by the Health & Fitness Association, 82% said their customer acquisition costs had gone up this year, and only 6% had a dedicated marketing team or agency behind them. ABC Fitness’s platform data for January to May showed gym new joins down 9% on a year earlier, with cancellations up 8%. Both are vendor numbers, but they point the same way: every January dollar has to work harder.

Owners usually frame it as three choices: Google, Facebook and Instagram, or a class platform such as ClassPass or Wellhub. Here is what the published numbers say about each, and how we would split it.

What a lead costs on each channel this year

Both of this year’s WordStream by LocaliQ benchmark reports are now out.

• Google search, Health & Fitness. Campaigns from April 2025 to March 2026 had a median click of $6.17, a conversion rate of 6.94% and a cost per lead of $67.36. The previous edition had the lead at $62.80 and the click at $5.00, so search got more expensive.
• Facebook ads run for leads, Health & Fitness. The September edition, covering April 2025 to June 2026, put the median click at $1.84, the conversion rate at 7.98% and the cost per lead at $27.11, down from $52.98 a year earlier.
• Sports & Recreation. If your business is closer to recreation than to health, the same studies put the median lead at $44.26 on Google search and $15.49 from Facebook ads.

These are medians drawn from 13,474 search campaigns and 452 lead campaigns across all industries, not a forecast for your zip code. They also measure leads, and a lead is not a member.

Why the cheaper lead is not automatically the better buy

A Google lead comes from someone who typed “gym near me” or “24 hour gym” and chose to contact you. A lead form on Facebook and Instagram comes from someone scrolling who tapped an offer and handed over a name and number without leaving the app. In the accounts we have seen, the second kind needs a call or text within minutes and a booked visit before it is worth much, which is why a gym that cannot follow up fast should not buy many of them.

The test that settles it is not cost per lead but cost per member still billing three months later. The Health & Fitness Association’s benchmarking put member retention at 66.4% for 2024, so a source that fills January with people gone by March is expensive however cheap its leads looked. Tag the source at signup, then compare channels in April, not in January.

ClassPass and Wellhub are a different purchase

A class platform does not sell you leads. It sends you visits from people who already pay the platform or get it from an employer. The reach is real: Mindbody says ClassPass is available in all 50 states and 31 countries, and Wellhub says employees on its benefit can use more than 110,000 gyms, studios and wellness apps.

Both pitch themselves as a source of new faces. ClassPass says 94% of its users were brand-new to the venues they visited as of January 2025, and Wellhub claims 90% of its members visiting partner gyms are reactivated or new to those facilities. Those are the vendors’ own figures.

What you give up is revenue per visit, on terms set in the partner agreement. Get the payout per visit and any limits in writing before you sign. The arrangement tends to pay when it fills a 10 am class that would otherwise be half empty and you have a plan to offer regular visitors your own membership. It hurts when platform visitors take the 6 pm spots your full-price members wanted.

Studios have more room here than gyms this year. In the ABC Fitness data, studio check-ins rose 27% while cancellations fell 6%, so a studio with spare off-peak capacity has a stronger case for testing a platform than a gym already watching cancellations climb.

Put the lead cost next to what a member pays

ABC Fitness also reported what members spend: an average of $17 a month at enterprise gyms, $27 at small and boutique gyms and $69 at studios. Set the benchmark leads against those numbers:

• A $67.36 search lead is about two and a half months of dues at a $27 small gym, and just under one month at a $69 studio.
• A $27.11 lead from Facebook ads is about one month at a small gym and more than a month and a half at a $17 enterprise gym.

Not every lead joins, so your real cost per member is higher, and only your own tracking will tell you by how much. But the arithmetic shows why a studio can afford search clicks that would sink a budget gym, and why a low-price club should lean on its profile, reviews and referrals before it pays Google for every shopper.

Where we would put January money

For an independent gym or studio, in this order:

• The profile and reviews first. No media cost, and every other channel sends people to check it. Hours that match the door, the right category and recent reviews are the cheapest January work there is.
• Google search for high-intent terms. “Gym near me”, “24 hour gym” and your class types, kept to the distance members will travel.
• Facebook and Instagram for the offer. Live before New Year’s Day, with someone answering every lead fast. Lead with flexibility rather than discounts: owners in the Wellhub survey said members ask most for flexible or shorter contracts (66%), with lower prices fourth at 46%.
• A class platform only for empty hours. Treat it as a test with a conversion offer attached.
• Local Services Ads only for personal training. Google has no gym category; the nearest is Personal trainer, with the Google Verified badge. Google began moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads accounts in August, starting with home and storefront services; personal training was not named in that first phase.

What we are telling clients

• Set the January budget now and spread it over January, February and March.
• Judge every channel on members still billing at 90 days, with the source recorded at signup.
• Fix the profile and start review requests before any new spend.
• Do not buy leads on Facebook and Instagram until someone can reply to each one within minutes during the January rush.
• Before joining ClassPass or Wellhub, get the payout per visit in writing and decide which hours you will open to them.
• Put flexible terms and the cancellation steps in the January ads, rather than a deeper discount.

The cheapest lead on the chart is not always the cheapest member, and January is too short to learn that the expensive way. How we build January campaigns is on our Meta ads and Google Ads pages, and the rest of the gym year is on our page for gyms and fitness studios.