Millennial Health and Fitness App Users and What they Want

Millennials today are increasingly interested in maintaining a balanced and healthy lifestyle. A variety of brands are looking to access this segment of consumers by creating apps and other tools to help them find the right health or fitness program. However, due to the increase of social influencers leveraging this space, and the fact that these individuals don’t follow traditional advertising methods, creators of these apps and tools are having to approach their targeting differently.

Additionally, advancements in tracking and data capabilities have increased the competitive landscape of the health and fitness category. Brands are now forced to identify what barriers and triggers exist for consumers to choose an app in order to remain competitive. To help these brands better understand users of health and fitness apps, and how they can better message to Millennials, we conducted an Agile Attitudes & Usage™ study.

The Research

To determine what apps Millennials are currently using today to influence their health and fitness, and how brands who make these types of apps can better target and message to them, we sought to determine the following

• Key apps Millennial consumers use to influence and motivate their current health and fitness regimes
• Why apps in this category are useful to consumers and what features are “must haves”
• How consumers learn about these apps and what would encourage them to consider incorporating a new tool into their toolkit

The Results

Millennials often utilize multiple health and fitness apps to help them track exercise in order to lose weight or be more aware of their health and physical activity.

While there are many personal motivations for getting healthy or staying active, many Millennials look to a health and fitness app to help them achieve weight loss. The majority are exercising more than 4 times a week, and as a result need something to help track their activity and progress. While some do use an app to help track eating habits, exercise tracking is the number one reason Millennials turn to these apps.

Health and fitness app brands should look to social media to help target and message their offerings to potential users.

Millennials certainly look to friends and family or an app store before utilizing a health or fitness app; however, there is a larger portion who gain awareness of apps through social media. Brands that can target Millennials on social media with the right messaging will help garner initial awareness. Messaging that highlights unique features and a variety of tracking will then help drive usage consideration.

Gender differences emerge when it comes to the desired features and messaging tactics brands should use.

It’s not surprising to find with the variety of gender specific health and fitness apps out there that men and women differ when it comes to not only what they look for in a health and fitness app, but how and why they use them.

To learn more about how to properly target and position messaging to increase usage consideration among male and female Millennials, download the full report below. You’ll also learn about

• Aided and unaided awareness and usage of a variety of health and fitness apps
• Detailed breakdown of the top apps used, including Fitbit and MyFitnessPal
• Motivations and frustrations associated with health and fitness goals
• Length and frequency of usage of health and fitness apps among Millennials
• Barriers, triggers, and usage considerations when it comes to health and fitness apps