How Plus Fitness Dominates Search Results for 200+ Gym Locations
About Plus Fitness
Plus Fitness is one of the largest Australian owned gym chains with 200+ local clubs. They are known for great customer service, gym equipment and world-class facilities. Plus Fitness' franchise model required the National Marketing team to juggle a lot of responsibility. They identified the need for a digital marketing agency to manage their online campaigns and recruited Rocket in early 2017.
Challenge
Plus Fitness had to quickly gain traction on digital platforms, given the competitive nature of their industry. Their main goals with their digital marketing campaigns was to increase membership sign ups and boost brand awareness. Their biggest challenge was how to approach national marketing from a digital perspective. With 200+ clubs, the campaigns had to deliver results to a wide audience.
Solution
Early within the engagement, Rocket identified that despite the high website traffic Plus Fitness gained, the conversion rate was relatively poor. We introduced a robust remarketing strategy using channels like Facebook and Google Display network.
As the campaigns progressed, we expanded the channels to include SEO. We cannot understate the importance of local SEO, in particular the importance of business listings in SEO to rank for all Plus Fitness locations. We also had to consider how to improve GMB ranking for Plus Fitness, how to enhance the website functionality and UX, as well as heatmapping and the like.
Plus Fitness plan out their annual marketing calendar and work collaboratively with Rocket to take these to market, digitally. This includes developing creative static images, videos, copy and launching them on different ad platforms with smart targeting and budget management to support conversions from campaigns.
Outcomes
12.28%
YoY Increase in Organic Conversions
42%
Greater Keyword Visibility vs. Top Competitor
#1
Search Rank for 'Gym Sydney'
Result
The digital marketing campaigns that Rocket launched for Plus Fitness via Remarketing, Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and SEO gave the business competitive advantage over other gyms in the area.
Membership sign-ups from digital are up by 22% YoY with just a 5% increase in media budget.
In 2020, the goal was to improve organic conversions by 5% YoY. With Rocket, Plus Fitness achieved a 12.28% YoY increase in online conversions, more than 2x our benchmark. To put the results in perspective, compared to their closest competitor (with over 200 gyms), Plus Fitness has 42% better keyword visibility i.e. higher chances of being found by interested prospects on Google.
Rocket has done some amazing work where Plus Fitness mostly dominates non-brand search for all franchisees i.e searches like "[suburb] + gym". That’s dominating non-brand gym search for 200+ locations! Examples include:
- Gym Sydney
- Gym lidcombe
- Gyms Richmond
We are ranking #1 in the local pack for gym Sydney ..that’s huge. A keyword which has over 3,600 searches per month.
Award-winning campaign!
- Finalist 'Best Local Campaign' APAC Search Awards 2021
- Finalist 'Best Local Campaign' SEMRush Awards 2020
- Finalist ‘Best Social Good Campaign' AMY Awards 2019
- Winner ‘Best Display Innovation’ Google Premier Partner Awards 2017
"Rocket are by far the best digital marketing agency in Australia. Their work has played a key role in 20% annual growth for Plus Fitness in gym members and Franchisees. The ‘Rocket difference’ is that they don’t just tick boxes and run tactics, they drive marketing strategy and hold themselves (and us) accountable.
The owners and their team at Rocket are not only great marketers, but great people. The focus they place on both relationships and results will see us remaining with them for many years to come."
Nigel Miller
General Manager, Plus Fitness
Campaign Creative
Rocket supports all Plus Fitness marketing campaigns with compelling creative that's used across channels. We produce videos, web banners, Facebook posts, copy, landing pages and more to drive conversions.
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