Case study: Fitness First

Latitude Digital Marketing has been running successful integrated digital marketing campaigns for Fitness First since 2007. One of the key challenges faced by Fitness First in March 2010 was the ever-increasing competition in the space. Due to this, the costs per download (CPD) for their campaigns was increasing while the number of downloads generated through PPC alone was reducing. In view of this, Latitude was required to

• Grow the Fitness First brand within the UK
• Grow the number of free one-day gym pass downloads while lowering acquisition costs

Cutting-edge strategy

Latitude’s strategy for Fitness First was to grow the Fitness First campaign into other channels, thereby looking to generate greater brand awareness by tapping into whole new target customer groups. In addition to delivering consistent free one-day pass volumes, Latitude aimed at increasing results and exceeding expectations by successfully blending PPC, SEO, display and affiliate campaigns.

PPC implementation

• Site links were introduced on the majority of keyword terms, including generic expressions. This provided significant cut through on the search engine results page, portraying great offers with fantastic ads.
• Geo targeting was also a significant factor in the campaign’s success. Focusing on the main gyms in locations such as Manchester and London to start, Latitude was able to introduce location extensions, targeting the user by the region of their IP address and the gym most local to them.
• Latitude demonstrated great attention to detail by running specific campaigns for different classes held at Fitness First, for example ’pole dancing’, ’yoga’ and ’spinning’.
• Due to the evolution of mobile advertising, we quickly acted to introduce click-to-call extensions using users’ current locations, which was an essential element to further success and having the most competitive positioning in terms of mobile advertising.

SEO implementation

• Was introduced to ensure organic coverage across competitive non-brand location terms.
• Top location terms that Latitude experts knew drove downloads via PPC but were costly due to competition, eg ’London gyms’ and ’gyms in London’, were targeted through SEO.
• Latitude built pages specifically targeting city locations in the UK in a bid to rank for generic searches.

Display advertising

• Latitude used networks ensuring broad coverage of the brand name.
• Behavioural targeting was applied to ensure we were hitting only those who were in the market for a gym pass. This ensured that the cost per download target was adhered to where possible.
• Facebook was utilised to push out messages to key target audiences, and specific classes were promoted to people who had listed an interest in a similar sport.
• Latitude used networks ensuring broad coverage of the brand name. We also expanded our display activity on Weightwatchers, Marie Claire and Good to Know.

Affiliate marketing

Individual affiliates were identified as being key to Fitness First and, as such, spoken to on a one-to-one basis and provided with material that they required in order to generate significant volumes of one-day passes. All of this was done without compromising quality of the leads.

Optimisation

AB testing of the form page was conducted to further improve conversion of all the passes that were generated by the other online channels.

Results

• 61% increase in downloads from April 2010 to September 2010
• 18% decrease in cost per download from April 2010 to September 2010

Creativity/innovation

Fitness First’s online marketing approach is innovative not for just the comprehensive blend of channels, as outlined above, but also for the co-operation between Latitude’s SEO, Account Management team and Display teams. The Fitness First campaign is a demonstration of Latitude’s core values of Integration, Integrity and Teamwork.

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