Case study · Fitness clubs
Adverts shown to the people who can walk to the club
A gym chain ran one national campaign for every club and judged it on clicks. This is how we ran paid social club by club, with each club's own catchment, its own creative and its own membership target.
Project overview
Paid social managed per club.
- Industry
- Fitness clubs
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- Paid social
- Platform
- Meta and TikTok ads
- Timeline
- 8–12 weeks
- Team
- 3 people
- Targeting
- Each club's catchment
- Measurement
- Trials and memberships sold
- Integration
- Membership system
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
Each club had its own target, because a new club and a full club need different things.
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25–45%
Lower cost per new member
Spend goes to catchments and creative that produce joiners.
Target range; measured in the membership system
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30–60%
More trial sign-ups from social
Local creative and a short sign-up form.
Target range per club over three months
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40–55%
Of trials converted to membership
Follow-up begins the same day.
Target range; depends on each club's sales process
Business challenges
Where the client started
One campaign, one audience, one advert, for clubs that had nothing in common.
Targeting
National audiences, so adverts reached people far from any club.
Creative
Stock images that could have been any gym.
Sign-up
A long form on a slow page.
Follow-up
Trial requests waited days for a call.
Measurement
Results were reported in clicks and impressions.
Proposed solution
What the paid social programme covered
Local targeting, real people, and a count of members at the end.
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Catchment targeting
Audiences drawn around each club from where its members actually live.
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Member creative
Short videos of real members and trainers, filmed at each club.
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Fast sign-up
A short trial form that loads instantly on a phone.
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Same-day follow-up
Trial requests sent to the club's team at once.
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Club budgets
Spend moved each week towards clubs with capacity.
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Membership reporting
Trials and joiners per club, per advert.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was more members for the clubs with space. National campaigns could not do that, because they spent the same on a full club as on an empty one.
Club managers were asked for two things: a morning of filming, and a call to every trial request the same day.
What the project had to deliver
- 01Members, not clicks
- 02Budgets matched to club capacity
- 03Creative from real clubs
- 04Trials followed up the same day
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
-
Privacy changes that limit ad tracking
What we did
Joiners were sent back to the ad platforms from the membership system through server-side tracking.
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Seasonal demand in January and summer
What we did
Budgets were planned by season, with creative prepared ahead of the January and summer peaks.
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Clubs with overlapping catchments
What we did
Overlapping catchments were split by travel time, so two clubs never bid for the same person.
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Creative that tires quickly
What we did
New creative was filmed on a schedule and rotated before results declined.
What we watched for
- Target where members actually live
- Refresh creative before it tires
- Follow up trials the same day
- Count members, not leads
Development process
One club at a time, then all of them
The method was proved on three clubs before it was rolled out.
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Tracking
Trials and joiners connected from the membership system.
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Pilot clubs
Three clubs with different needs.
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Creative days
Member and trainer videos filmed at each club.
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Roll-out
Catchments and budgets set for every club.
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Weekly optimisation
Budgets moved towards capacity and results.
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Monthly review
Cost per member reviewed per club.
Technology stack
Ad platforms, fed by the membership system
The platforms optimise towards joiners because they are told who joined.
Advertising
- Meta Ads
- TikTok Ads
- Catchment audiences
Tracking
- Conversions API
- Membership system events
- Google Analytics 4
Creative
- Short-form video
- Club templates
- Creative testing
Reporting
- Looker Studio
- Per-club dashboard
- Budget pacing
Quality assurance & deployment
Checked before it went live, measured after
Marketing work is only as good as its measurement. Tracking was verified before anything launched, technical changes were tested on staging, and every result was reconciled with the client's own sales or booking data.
- Conversion tracking tested end to end before launch
- Technical changes checked on staging with a full crawl
- Redirects, links and structured data validated
- Copy and claims reviewed by the client's experts
- Reported figures reconciled with the client's own system
Deployment
- 01Weekly optimisationBudgets moved towards capacity and results.
- 02Monthly reviewCost per member reviewed per club.
- 03Staged releasesChanges went live in small batches, each one watched in the first days.
- 04Reporting and handoverA monthly review against the agreed targets, and documentation the client's team can work from.
Final deliverables
Each club's adverts look like that club
People near a club now see its own trainers and members, sign up for a trial in seconds and get a call the same day.
The marketing team moves budget each week towards clubs with space, and managers see their own trials and joiners.
- Campaigns per club catchment
- Creative filmed in real clubs
- Trials followed up the same day
- Cost per member reported per club
Handed over to the client
- 01Audit and roadmapFindings ranked by their effect
- 02Implemented changesIn the client's own site, accounts and tools
- 03Tracking and dashboardResults in the client's own figures
- 04Content and campaign assetsTemplates, pages and creative
- 05Documentation and trainingSo the client's team can carry on
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Lower cost per new member | 25–45% | Target range; measured in the membership system |
| More trial sign-ups from social | 30–60% | Target range per club over three months |
| Of trials converted to membership | 40–55% | Target range; depends on each club's sales process |
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