Working with existing brand identity guidelines, illumanize were asked to develop a website to promote the Fitness Garage to personal trainers and fitness class teachers. We subsequently created a contact marketing strategy to develop to a growing community of instructors and their clients.
When our creative director Pete met Andy Gardner, co-founder of the Fitness Garage, it was a perfect fit as Andy had recognised that creating and managing the ongoing marketing was not a high value area to spend his time. He was looking for strategic, technical and design support and desk-bound Pete needed to get in shape!
So Pete got to work on website design and a content marketing strategy and Andy enrolled him in an exercise class. Since then the Fitness Garage has quadrupled its turnover and Pete has been running marathons — not bad.
The Fitness Garage is not like other gyms — the business model does not offer gym memberships to the public in the usual sense. It’s a fantastic back-street gym, built from a converted car garage with bookable fitness stations on the ground floor and a spacious studio upstairs. It offers rental space to personal trainers who manage their own clients and instructors who offer group exercise classes. The approach works incredibly well and has created a unique environment for training with a strong sense of community for instructors and clients alike.
The first challenge for illumanize was to develop a plan to increase the number of personal trainers and class teachers renting space at the gym. Andy was keen to offer marketing support to trainers, especially those with their own fledgling businesses, to help them attract new clients and maximise bookings for the available spaces.
The brand identity was already in place, but the existing website was minimal and Andy was not enjoying the process of posting to social media, and struggling to find the time to develop and stick to a strategy. This meant the output was inconsistent and lacking in focus for the target audience.
It was time to flex our marketing muscles.
The first thing to do was create a website — a central hub for prospective trainers and clients that would provide separate messaging for these distinct target groups. Our approach to to quickly separate the groups early in the website hierarchy so neither would be troubled with redundant messaging.
We added profiles for all the trainers and class teachers, with details of their qualifications background and ethos. This would help clients find a trainer who would be a suitable match. We went to the trouble of taking a consistent set of portrait photos for the trainers and continue to do so for every new trainer who joins — meeting them early in their journey at the Fitness Garage for a headshot at the gym allows us to have a chat and demonstrate a desire to help promote their individual businesses. And it keeps the presentation consistent and gives a professional first impression. Keeping the website content fresh and accurate appeals to visitors, who tell Andy they find the information they need and Google’s page rank algorithm!
We also developed a personalised service for prospective clients — a free fitness consultation with Andy Gardner, himself a qualified and experienced PT, to assess fitness goals and place people with the most appropriate trainer or class. This add value for clients and allows us to retain contact details for future marketing exercises.
Our content marketing approach was designed to appeal to both target groups. For personal trainers we post about the benefits of using the Fitness Garage – the excellent location, equipment, atmosphere, support and payment flexibility and use a range of assets to encourage engagement including video interviews and testimonials from existing clients and face-of-the-gym Andy. For clients we speak about the benefits of training with a personal trainer as opposed to a standard gym membership often using video interviews and testimonials.
Each month we meet Andy, and our content manager Clare develops a social media plan which Pete illustrates. We post on a range of appropriate social channels including Google Business Profile which has a beneficial effect on local pack listings. We regularly ask trainers and clients for testimonials which we encourage them to also post on the Google profile — at the time of writing, 54 five-star reviews.
We also offer graphic design, creating posters for the gym to help cross-sell different fitness services, after all, if you’re working on strength and cardio you really should be stretching with some yoga too.
At the start of the partnership Andy was aware that the initial marketing spend would be a relatively high proportion of turnover. He also knew that the approach was not a magic wand that would increase business overnight. But, by working in a truly collaborative way we were able to quickly establish growth and build the community month-by-month by the process of campaigning, measuring and making improvements. As Andy would say, “trust the process, feel the progress”.
It takes a little time to figure out what will resonate with an audience but as we move into the later stages we have gained greater insight into the marketing cycle, streamlined our processes and now work with tried and tested formulas.
The social media activity reaches a growing audience of personal trainers and potential clients and the activity as a whole has a positive effect on local search rankings which are consistently high. The Fitness Garage is often the first destination for our target audience in the local area.
illumanize created an excellent standard of website compared to our competitors and it never lets us down. This is reassuring for our personal trainers and their clients.
Pete and Clare are highly responsive and their commitment to the strategy and attention to detail is superb.
