How we used PPC Management to get 3045% ROI for Symmetry Gym

Blog_Image_Do_You_Even_Lift,_Bro-_The_Symmetry_Gym_Case_Study

In our previous posts, we have talked a lot about effective marketing practices and some techniques that other companies have used to optimize performance. Now, it’s time we share one of our own success stories.

While working with Symmetry Gym, a luxury training facility and the most expensive gym in Dubai, we were able to yield a 3045% ROI on their ad spend in just 2 months. The focus of our strategy was to serve up qualified leads, which we were able to do by driving traffic, capturing leads, and effectively qualifying “right fit” clients.

Background

Symmetry Gym offers premium personal fitness training classes to individuals looking to make a complete body transformation. Like most gyms, Symmetry Gym members are required to pay a monthly rate depending on their level of membership. However, these gym memberships range from $600-$4,100 USD per month and require a 6-month minimum contract. Additionally, Symmetry Gym offers strictly personal training programs, which means this isn’t for someone looking to work out on their own. Symmetry Gym hires some of the most experienced fitness trainers in Dubai–all guaranteeing rapid weight loss, body reshaping, and dramatic increases in overall strength and health–or your money back.

Opportunity Gaps

After our first consultation with Symmetry Gym, we identified three main areas to intervene:

  1. PPC Management – The PPC campaigns needed to be improved to reduce cost per conversion and reduce irrelevant keyword searches.
  2. Landing Page Optimization – Their ads initially directed people to their homepage instead of dedicated landing pages.
  3. Qualification – There was no qualification process online for determining which leads would be likely to buy. This was done in person and wasted a lot of time at the gym.

The sales numbers and other data discussed in this article took place during the months of July and August, 2014.

1. PPC Management

One of the first places we saw room for improvement in Symmetry Gym’s marketing strategy was in their PPC Management. Using keyword research, we tested a variety of different gym-related terms to see which yielded the highest clicks, impressions, conversion rates and ultimately which produced the most qualified leads. Based off of this research, we were able to determine the best performing keywords and organize them into different ad groups. These ad groups would then trigger different ads, such as the ones seen below:

For anyone rusty on the difference between keywords and ad groups, keywords are used to match against user search terms to determine whether or not they see your ad, whereas ad groups are how you organize closely themed keywords into groups. Additionally, there are also campaigns, which are sets of ad groups that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings.

After organizing keywords (i.e., fitness gyms, gym dubai, private trainer) into ad groups, we then organized the ad groups into two campaigns: people searching for a personal trainer and people searching for a gym membership.

We then developed a PPC strategy where anyone searching our keywords within a 25-mile radius of Symmetry Gym would see an ad at the top of their Google search results. In addition to adding relevant keywords, we came up with a list of negative keywords. Negative keywords are specifically designated word groupings intended to avoid triggering your ad. For instance, if your business were selling flash drives, you might use “flash flood” as a negative keyword grouping to avoid uninterested visitors from triggering your ad and therefore costing your business money. One example of this for Symmetry Gym was adding words that indicated employment, such as “personal training job” as a negative keyword.

With this keyword strategy in place, Symmetry Gym currently ranks in the top spot of Google search for anyone meeting the location and keyword criteria. Keep in mind that this ranking is not primarily determined by the organization of your keywords and your ad spending costs. Relevant content is another important factor in sustaining that top spot. Let’s say the top ad spot charges $8 per click and yields a 1% click rate and the second spot, which costs $7 per click, gets a 9% click rate. After also assessing the relevance and overall quality score of your ad, Google may then promote that ad to the top spot. This goes to show that with the right keyword usage and content, you can reduce overall PPC costs.

2. Landing Page Optimization

Every good landing page needs to be effective at capturing contact information. For Symmetry Gym, we decided it would be most beneficial to offer a free training session as the lead magnet. We created a landing page for each campaign–one for personal trainer and one for gym membership. The personal trainer landing page was converting better, so we decided to start running split testing to further optimize it.

Our approach to split testing landing pages is simple, effective, and on-going. First, we target a large percentage of our audience with the current landing page, or the defending champion, and a smaller percentage is targeted using a variant, or challenger. The traffic is split this way to avoid taking too big of a risk with a test variant and potentially causing a drop in sales for that test period. For Symmetry Gym, we split the traffic by assigning 75% to the defending champion and 25% to the challenger.

In the beginning, you should do your best to create landing pages that are as worthy challengers as possible. This is not always an easy task. For us, we had several landing pages that performed poorly before designing high performing ones. The landing page seen below never made it out of the challenger phase:

SG1

3. 7% Conversion Rate

We speculate one of the problems with this landing page was that the “then and now” photo should not be the center of attention. Before you inform visitors what your service can do for them, you should state what your service does in the first place. That is why the current champion landing page uses a business explainer video in that spot. This landing page also used an ambiguous call-to-action. What exactly does “apply for my free training” get you? We quickly realized that our visitors didn’t know either–converting only 3.7% of them. Your call-to-action should clearly reinforce that you will be provided with what the headline promised. Luckily, we learned from our initial tests and have seen big improvements ever since.

The examples below reflect our most up to date landing page conversion results:

Defending Champion

75%

SG3

3.8% Conversion Rate

Challenger

25%

SG2

6% Conversion Rate

If the challenger outperforms the champion (as seen above), it then becomes the new champion and the process starts over again. Keep in mind when running these tests that it is important to get enough conversions for your data to be significant.

  New Champion

Simple-gold-crown-collection-for-women-wear

SG2 (1)

So what is it that enabled the challenger to rise to the champion position? First, we eliminated the phone number field from the opt-in form. We also added an explainer video right next to the form that made it easy for prospects to see the value of Symmetry Gym. We also decided to raise the customer results section above the fold so that it is immediately visible. Even a simple addition like the arrow directing visitors to the opt-in form has been proven to improve performance. Once you have tested a couple different landing page variations, it is best to then begin testing individual elements of the page in order to continue optimizing your champion. For a more in-depth look at landing page optimization, check out our previous post, ” Don’t Let These 8 Landing Page Design Mistakes Haunt Your Business“.

3. Qualification

One of the immediate problems we noticed with Symmetry Gym was that they were getting a lot of opt-ins, but had no system in place for determining which leads were qualified. As the most expensive gym in Dubai, with membership fees up to $4000/month, they needed to determine which leads had the potential to be financially and physically committed to a 6-month contract. To assist in filtering out the qualified leads, we created a 2-part questionnaire which asked questions intended to classify leads as either highly qualified, qualified, or not qualified.

Those deemed highly qualified and qualified were tagged, sent an immediate thank you email, and their information was automatically sent to the Marketing Director at Symmetry Gym for further follow-up. This allowed Symmetry Gym to narrow down the scope of people they put marketing and sales efforts towards.

Results

After only two months, Symmetry Gym was yielding over a 3045% ROI on ad spend. Below is a chart of Symmetry Gym’s training programs and costs for each

July:
19 Qualified Leads from PPC, 5 New Customers

4 Master Memberships Sold = 13,200 AED x 6 month contract = 79,200 AED
1 Platinum Membership Sold = 15,000 AED x 6 month contract = 90,000 AED
July New Sales = 169,200 AED = 46,062 USD

August:
15 Qualified Leads from PPC, 5 New Customers

4 Master Memberships Sold = 13,200 AED x 6 month contract = 79,200 AED
1 Elite Membership Sold = 7,800 AED x 6 month contract =         46,800 AED
August New Sales = 126,000 AED = 34,302 USD

46,062 USD + 34,302 USD = $80,364 USD Total Sales from this campaign in July and Aug

Total Ad Spend for the Month of July and August = $2,555 USD

ROI = 80,365 – 2,555 = 30.45
2,555

30.45 x 100 = 3,045% ROI on Ad Spend

Conclusion

In it’s most simple form, our strategy was as follows:

  Drive Traffic → Capture Contact Information → Qualify → Serve to Client

We were able to help Symmetry Gym drive more traffic, capture the contact information of new leads, qualify those prospects, and then serve up these qualified leads to their sales team for further action. Using PPC management, combined with landing page optimization, and a qualification process, we were able to optimize Symmetry Gym’s sales funnel for a 3045% ROI on ad spending.

Moving forward, there are still improvements to be made in our lead generation process. In the future, we are aiming to:

  • Extend the reach of our ads to different ad platforms
  • Implement a system where, after taking the online questionnaire, qualified candidates will be able to book their free training session right away
  • A prospect nurture sequence intended for those who sign up for a free consultation but either do not attend or do not make a purchase afterwards
  • Continue optimizing our landing pages and testing different lead magnets

As you can see, our lead generation process is an ongoing work in-progress. Through constant split-testing, your business can optimize performance results with unique solutions the way we have done, and will continue doing, with Symmetry Gym.

Are you interested in Yazamo helping you drive more qualified leads online? Visit Yazamo.com, fill out our questionnaire, and if we think we can help, we’ll schedule a call to help you reach your sales goals. Get started by clicking below:

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