Case Studies - The Gym Group
The Problem
The Gym Group is a revolutionary new concept in the fitness industry. The company was looking for an internet marketing company who could share in their vision and improve and simplify the joining experience for the consumer. Their new gyms would be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and only staffed during the daytime and evening hours. The new gyms and supporting website needed to be at the cutting edge of technology to make the project work.
The Gym Group’s owners having come from a long and successful background in the industry wanted to find ways of providing a greener experience as well as being able to widen the demographic of actual gym users. The key was not to lose any of the important stages of collecting member information that would interfere with safety aspects for the gym and its users.
White Hat Media was asked to provide an easy to use website that would allow people to sign up for their gym membership through the website thus cutting out the need for masses of paperwork.
With The Gym Group looking to reduce costs and improve the complete gym experience for the user, the task facing White Hat Media was to be innovative and find new ways to drive website traffic towards the website and to make sure that profit margins were still met at the same time.
The Solution
To allow this to happen, White Hat Media had to work alongside other specialised companies in the fitness industry and create a new software package that would allow The Gym Group to set up a completely paperless membership system.
Working alongside these partners White Hat Media were able to set up a signing up process that was very easy to use and completely web based. This process starts with a virtual tour of the gym area to then registering your interest and payment details. This is then followed by the completion of the physical activity readiness questionnaire (PAR-Q) health form which then allows you to become a registered member with your own pin number for entry to the gym complex.
This one step process allowed the staffing costs of the gym to be cut dramatically with the saving then passed to the customer. The results have seen a dramatically reduced gym membership price without having to sacrifice any quality in their gym equipment. This also allowed gym staff to concentrate on the gym floor and not dealing with customer enquiries about memberships.
With this established, White Hat Media then looked into how they could increase the amount of traffic visiting the website using search engine marketing techniques. The original goal was to sign up 6000 members in the first six months, a target that was far exceeded well before this time.
This was achieved through search engine optimisation (SEO) to drive traffic towards the website with the use of targeted keywords deployed throughout the websites content and coding.
To increase the effectiveness of the SEO campaign, White Hat Media also used link building methods to generate more traffic to the new website and achieve better positions on search engines.
Being specialists in search engine marketing allowed White Hat Media to use their SEO expertise to provide The Gym Group with a premium top position for their core keyword “West London Gym”. With a little public relations (PR) work and an excellent application of search engine optimisation techniques, White Hat Media have created a continuous increase in the amount of traffic The Gym Group website is receiving.
White Hat Media have been able to achieve these results through their broad range of search engine optimisation and professional website development skills which allowed them to combine deep technology programming with the more human element of such a project.
The Business Benefits
The benefits to The Gym Group of this unique set up has allowed them to widely increase their demographic attracting a market that once would have been prohibited from joining a gym by the high costs of membership. The CEO of The Gym Group, John Treharne has said, “The power of the internet lends itself to this user friendly method and it has driven membership beyond all expectations and White Hat Media has been instrumental in making the web work for us.”
Within the first few months there was a three fold increase in the amount of traffic visiting the site and by August 2008 they had to set up new membership applications as the website had been so successful. At the Hounslow site, one third of The Gym members are joining their first ever gym and with only 11% of adults in the UK members of a gym there promises to be huge potential for growth in this market.
This success has seen The Gym Group set to open a second gym in Guildford and with the expectation that another four sites will open by Easter 2009. The use of search engine optimisation could help transform an industry that has been restricted by high membership rates in the past and open it up to many new customers.
Using White Hat Media was one of the best business decisions we made. Because of their long experience of the web, we're in safe hands. Their site development skills marketing expertise is second to none. I'd recommend them to any business that is looking for real results from their web budget.
