Targeted Digital Strategy For Virgin Active Cuts Through To Generate Close To 3,000 Leads And Over 800 Conversions

The Background:

The Virgin Active Australia chain of health clubs offer premium exercise experiences, unlike mainstream full-service gyms. January and the first quarter are a crucial time of the year and present an enormous opportunity as most people make their new year’s resolution to get fit and healthy, and Virgin Active aimed to capitalise on this.

We delivered over 1 million impressions and a great CTA click rate of 0.23%.

Virgin Active Australia Tasked Ultimate Edge With:

Achieving overall lead and sales goals across the entire Australian club network. Capitalising on the brand campaign to emotionally connect with the audience. Leveraging promotional offers to drive performance. Launching pre-sales targets before the opening of the Bligh Street health club.

47.32% more clicks

Web traffic up by 9.92% YOY

99% more sales

 Generated close to 3,000 leads

The Challenge:

January is a big time for all businesses. The market is incredibly crowded with competitors vying for consumer share in the fitness arena, from boutiques to low-cost budget gyms to YouTube and Fitness Apps. Our proposition and go-to-market communications strategy had to cut through and differentiate the premium Virgin Active offering from the mainstream gym category and inspire action to join the club or book a tour.

Our Solution:

To get a head start on the competition, our media plan was timed to kick off strong with the Q1 brand campaign, including a special January offer.

We implemented a results-driven pragmatic digital strategy to enable us to achieve Virgin Active’s brand and membership acquisition goals. We had to be laser-focused in our targeting – only reaching those consumers living or working in the club’s local areas. Another important consideration was the audience and their media consumption behaviour over the holidays, which was more likely to be device driven. Complimenting that with an above the line campaign commencing in the new year targeted the audience as they returned to work.

The Results

The overall website traffic increased by 9.92% YOY due to our stronger focus on digital channels. We made the deliberate decision to increase investment in paid search and social. Paid search, in particular, saw an increase of 32.28% YOY.

A strong offer in the market and more media spend also boosted the overall organic search traffic. Overall the campaign delivered over 15 million impressions and 91,203 clicks, which generated close to 3,000 leads and over 800 conversions.

Generic paid search CPC reduced 40% although the spend was doubled from the previous year. At the same time, the click-through rates increased by 130%.

A higher investment in prospecting audience across Paid Search, Facebook & Native also contributed a significant rise in the number of unique website visitors, an even higher YOY increase of 20.73%. With the increased Facebook investment in Q1, we achieved 119.5% more impressions, 47.32% more clicks, 43.20% more leads and 99% more sales while reducing the CPA by 15.75% compared to last year.