Premier Fitness Camp is a Carlsbad, CA based, live-in weight loss facility operating a transformational fitness camp at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa. Similar to the experiences you may have seen on popular weight loss television programs, PFC assists individuals in losing unwanted and, many times, unhealthy amounts of weight.

With their UCSD recognized program, they focus on the three pillars to immediate and long-term weight loss: Think (the behavioral aspect of why you put on the weight), Eat (nutritionally how to make better decisions), and Move (the most commonly associated fitness aspect).

Improving Conversion Rates

PFC has always been actively involved in search marketing practices, knowing their customers often start online when looking for these types of services. Having been active for more than four years in search, we recognized there was an opportunity to improve beyond incremental gains achieved through standard optimization.The goal for the initiative was to drastically improve the overall conversion rate, improve the quality scores resulting in ad spend reduction, increase the number of leads generated for the sales team, and most importantly, increase booked revenue.

To formulate our plan for reaching these goals, we analyzed the existing landing pages, customer experience from inquiry to booking, overall account performance, organic search rankings, and conversion rate opportunities. These are a few examples of the research used to understand where we are and what measurable goals we would be aiming to achieve.

Our investigation uncovered that while our previous work has been fruitful and gained all of the movement we all hoped to see, we knew much more could be done. If we stepped back and looked at the customer experience, we could reassess the numbers more meaningfully. This was the final driving force that created the need to enhance the program to levels we’re now seeing as business-altering in all the right ways.

If It’s Not Broken, Why Fix It?

The obvious obstacles were present in the form of many projects, how much time it takes to rethink and redevelop large portions of a program, and getting all team members to buy-in to reworking a program that’s already working.

When laying out obstacles, the biggest factors were cost and time. Once the benefits were illustrated clearly enough to get little piece after little piece into action, it was all smooth sailing from there.

Our Approach

The effort hinged completely around one core principle: integrate with the customer journey. Using insights gained from alumni campers, analytics, team members and consumer expectations, we aimed to leverage today’s technology with a more humanized experience. This meant we needed to rework and craft new or updated experiences across all of the below areas of the ongoing program:

• Ad Copy
• Retargeting Graphics
• URL Destinations
• Landing Pages Design, Layout, and Messaging
• Email Automation Design, Layout, and Messaging
• Sales Email & Follow Up Notices
• Calendar Integration for Sales Appointments
• Web Based Chat Solution
• Analytical Tracking Updates

The Results

The result? A 5x improvement in conversion rate, unmeasurable sale team shared insights about the daily efficiency of managing leads and finding the real value, drop in cost per lead by 50%, and a decrease in time from inquiry to booking are a few of the most notable.Our efforts were chipped away over time and are always in a state of continued improvement, using data and insights to continue reshaping how we speak to our current and potential customers.

Below, you’ll see a recent and specific month as a guide to business and performance highlights using August 2015 as our reference point (all metrics are comparing August 2014 vs August 2015):

[pods name=”case-study-result” slug=”pfc” template=”CS Result”]