📚 What You Will Learn Today:
Your gym can only serve people who can actually get to it. So why pay to show your ads to people three towns over? Facebook lets you draw a circle around your gym and show ads only to the people inside it. This is called radius targeting, and it's the single most important setting for any local fitness business. This guide explains it from scratch.
By the end of this guide, you will know:
- What radius targeting is and why it matters more than any other setting for a gym
- How big your circle should be (and why "it depends" has a real answer)
- How to set it up step by step, with the pin, the slider, and the little options people miss
- Smart tricks: multiple pins, cutting out areas, and targeting people who live there vs. people who just visit
- A week-by-week plan to test your radius and find your sweet spot
🤔 First, Why Is Where People Live So Important?
Here's a simple truth: Nobody drives 40 minutes to a gym three times a week. Not for long, anyway.
Think about a pizza place. The best pizza in the world is useless to you if it's an hour away. You order from the place ten minutes away. Gyms are even more like this, because people go over and over. The closer someone lives or works, the more likely they are to join, and the more likely they are to keep coming.
Radius targeting is simply telling Facebook "only show my ad to people inside this circle around my gym." Everyone outside the circle never sees it, so you never pay for them.
Priya opened a yoga and strength studio in a suburb. Her first Facebook ad targeted her whole metro area, about 2 million people. She got lots of clicks and a few sign-ups, but most of them were from 30 or more minutes away. They came once, said "it's a bit far," and never came back.
She changed one setting: a 6-mile circle around the studio. Her audience shrank to about 90,000 people. Clicks went down, but sign-ups went up, and almost all of them stuck around because they lived close. Same ad, same budget. One circle.
The Two Things a Circle Fixes
- Wasted money: you stop paying to reach people who will never show up
- Bad leads: you stop getting "interested" people who live too far away to ever join
📊 Who Actually Joins Your Gym?
Pull up your member list and check their addresses. Most gyms find the pattern looks exactly like this.
✅ How to Use Radius Targeting, Step by Step
Six steps. The first two are about deciding. The rest are about doing.
Figure Out How Big Your Circle Should Be
Everyone asks "how many miles?" The honest answer is "however far your real members actually travel." But here are good starting points.
Starting Points by Gym Type
- Downtown or dense city studio: 1 to 3 miles. People walk or take a short ride. Anything farther feels like a trip.
- Suburban gym or boot camp: 5 to 8 miles. People drive, but they won't cross town.
- Small town or rural gym: 10 to 20 miles. You might be the only option, and people are used to driving.
- Personal trainer who travels to clients: however far you're willing to drive. Be honest with yourself.
The Better Way: Look at Your Own Members
Take your member list. Put 30 or 40 addresses on a map (even a free one). Draw a circle that captures about 80% of them. That's your radius. It's based on facts, not guesses.
Your current members already told you how far people will travel. They voted with their cars. Listen to them.
Minutes matter more than miles. Three miles across a city with traffic can take 25 minutes. Eight miles down a quiet highway takes 10. If your area has a big river, highway, or hill that people don't like to cross, your real circle might be lopsided. We'll fix that in step 5.
Pick the Right Kind of People Inside the Circle
Here's a setting most gym owners never notice. When you set a location, Facebook asks what kind of people you mean. There are a few choices.
- People living in or recently in this location: the default. Residents plus people who were just there. Fine for most gyms.
- People living in this location: only people whose home is inside the circle. Best for neighborhood gyms where members come from home.
- People recently in this location: anyone whose phone was there lately. Good for gyms near offices, where people work nearby but live elsewhere.
- People traveling in this location: visitors who live far away. Great for hotels. Useless for gyms. Skip it.
A gym in a business district tried "people living here" and got almost nobody, because few people live downtown. They switched to "people recently in this location" and suddenly reached the thousands of office workers who are there every weekday. Lunchtime and 5:30 p.m. classes filled up.
Leaving it on the default without thinking. A home-neighborhood gym and a downtown office gym need different settings. Match the setting to where your members come from.
Drop the Pin and Set the Circle
Now let's actually do it. Facebook rearranges its screens often, so the buttons may look a little different, but the steps stay the same.
- Start a new campaign and get to the audience section (it's usually in the "ad set" part).
- Find "Locations." Delete whatever is there (often it's the whole country).
- Type your gym's street address in the search box. Pick it from the dropdown. A pin drops on the map.
- Look for the radius. Next to the pin there's a number with "mi" or "km." Click it and type your number from step 1. Watch the circle on the map grow or shrink.
- Check the audience size. On the side of the screen, Facebook shows roughly how many people are in your circle. For a local gym, somewhere between 30,000 and 300,000 is a healthy range.
- Set the "people living in" option from step 2 (it's usually a small dropdown near the location box).
- Add age. Something like 25 to 60 is a fine start. Leave gender on "all" unless your gym is truly for one group.
- Skip interests. Your circle is already your filter. Adding "interested in fitness" on top of a 5-mile circle just makes the audience tiny and expensive.
If your audience size shows under 20,000, your circle is too small or you added too many filters. If it's over 500,000, your circle is probably too big for a gym. Adjust until you're in the middle.
📊 Audience Size: Too Small, Too Big, Just Right
Facebook shows your audience size as you adjust the circle. Aim for the green middle.
Use More Than One Pin
You're not stuck with one circle. You can drop several pins, each with its own radius. This is handy in a few situations.
When Multiple Pins Help
- You have two locations. One pin on each, each with its own circle. One ad reaches both neighborhoods.
- Your members cluster in a few spots. Maybe most come from your neighborhood plus one big apartment complex two miles away. Pin both.
- You want to target a workplace. A pin on the big office park with a 1-mile circle, set to "people recently in this location," catches the lunch-break crowd.
- A competitor just closed. Drop a pin on their old address. Their former members are looking for a new gym right now.
A boot camp noticed that a big chunk of its 6 a.m. members came from one new housing development. The owner dropped a second pin right on that development with a 1-mile circle and ran a specific ad: "Live in Maple Grove? Our 6 a.m. boot camp is 7 minutes from your front door." That ad got cheaper leads than anything else he'd ever run, because it felt like it was written just for them. It was.
When you target a specific neighborhood, say its name in the ad. "Hey Maple Grove!" stops thumbs. People love seeing their own neighborhood's name.
Cut Out Areas You Don't Want
Sometimes a circle includes places you'd rather not pay for. Facebook lets you exclude locations, which just means "take this part out of the circle."
Good Reasons to Exclude an Area
- A barrier people won't cross. A river with one bridge, a highway with no exits, a mountain. On the map it's 3 miles. In real life it's 30 minutes.
- An area that's not really people. An airport, an industrial park, a huge empty field. Nobody lives there, but Facebook may count passers-by.
- Your other location's turf. If you have two gyms, don't have them compete for the same people. Exclude each one's core area from the other's ad.
How to Do It
In the location box, look for a dropdown that says "Include." Switch it to "Exclude," then type the area (a zip code, a city, or another pin with a radius). It shows up with a red circle on the map. Everything in red is cut out.
Your circle is a cookie. Excluding is taking a bite out of it. You're still paying for the cookie, just not the part nobody was going to eat.
Excluding one or two areas for a good reason is smart. Excluding ten areas because of a hunch is just over-filtering with extra steps. Keep it simple.
Test Your Radius and Follow Up Fast
You picked a radius in step 1. Now find out if it's right. The easiest way is to run two versions of the same ad with different circles and see which brings in better leads.
The Simple Radius Test
- Make two ad sets with the exact same ad and the same daily budget.
- Give one a tighter circle (say 4 miles) and one a wider circle (say 8 miles).
- Run both for 7 to 10 days. Don't touch them.
- Compare three things: cost per lead, how many leads actually showed up, and how many joined.
Often the wider circle gets cheaper leads but fewer of them show up. The tighter circle costs a bit more per lead but more of them become members. Judge by members, not by lead cost.
Every Lead Still Needs a Fast Reply
Here's the thing about a perfect radius: it gets you leads who live close enough to come in tonight. But only if they hear from you tonight. A lead who fills out a form at 7 p.m. and gets a call tomorrow at 2 p.m. has already cooled off.
Set up automatic texting so every new lead gets a friendly message within 5 minutes: "Hi Marcus! It's Priya from Elm Street Studio. You're just down the road from us! Want to pop in for a free class tomorrow at 6 p.m. or Saturday at 9 a.m.?" Mentioning that they live nearby makes it feel personal, because it is.
After a radius test, one studio found its 5-mile circle produced leads who joined at twice the rate of its 10-mile circle. They moved all the budget to 5 miles, added automatic texts, and saw their sign-up rate from leads climb again because people were hearing back while they were still excited.
Re-check your radius every few months. Neighborhoods change. A new apartment building, a new highway exit, or a competitor closing can all shift where your members come from.
📊 The Radius Test: Judge by Members, Not Lead Cost
The cheaper leads were the worse deal. Always follow the lead all the way to the membership.
📝 Quick Summary
Radius Targeting, In One Place
- Pick a size — 1 to 3 miles in a city, 5 to 8 in the suburbs, 10 to 20 in a small town. Better: map your members
- Pick the people — "living here" for neighborhood gyms, "recently here" for office-area gyms
- Drop the pin — your address, your radius, age range, no interest filters. Aim for 30,000 to 300,000 people
- Add pins — second location, member clusters, office parks, a closed competitor
- Cut out areas — rivers, highways, empty zones, your other gym's turf. Just a bite, not half the cookie
- Test and follow up — two circles, 7 to 10 days, judge by members. Text every lead in 5 minutes
Remember: Your location is your best targeting. Before you add a single interest filter, get the circle right. Most gyms never need anything more.
🎓 Your Action Plan
Week 1 — Learn where your members live
- Put 30 to 40 member addresses on a map
- Draw the circle that catches about 80% of them. Write down the miles
- Set up automatic texting so every lead hears from you in under 5 minutes
Week 2 — Build the circle
- Create your ad set: pin on your address, your radius, ages 25 to 60, no interests
- Pick "living in" or "recently in" based on where your members come from
- Check the audience size lands between 30,000 and 300,000
Week 3 — Test two sizes
- Copy the ad set. Make one circle tighter and one wider
- Same ad, same budget, run both for 7 to 10 days without touching them
Week 4 — Decide and refine
- Count leads, show-ups, and members for each circle. Keep the winner
- Add a second pin if you spotted a member cluster or nearby office park
- Exclude one area if there's a real barrier people won't cross
Big gyms with big budgets can afford to be sloppy about location. You can't, and that's your advantage. A tight, smart circle plus a fast reply means every dollar you spend lands on someone who could walk in your door tonight.
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