It is the same story in most independent gyms. The training is good, the community is real, the members who walk in stay loyal. The website and local search are the part nobody on the floor has time for. Whoever built the site five years ago is long gone.
Owners know their numbers in the room cold: trials, retention, class fill rates. The numbers outside the room are a black box. Who searched for a gym that week, who read the site, who bounced off the booking page. Marketing money goes into ads. The ads send people to a site that cannot finish the job, and the owner blames the ads.