MIDTOWN: DIGITAL BRANDING CAMPAIGN
Overview
Midtown Athletic Club is a leader in upscale athletics and sports resort management and currently operates ten clubs throughout the United States and Canada. Midtown is recognized for offering first-rate amenities and fostering close-knit communities. While Midtown was skilled in the delivery of a superior fitness experience, however, it lacked a clearly defined brand strategy and strong online presence. Our team was hired to completely transform Midtown’s communications roadmap.
This project presented two unique challenges. The first obstacle we encountered was the development of a compelling brand strategy that would be powerful and yet malleable enough to translate to the digital space. The second task was to re-design the Midtown website to enforce the new brand strategy and improve the club’s ability to generate quality leads online. We also developed a duplicate site in French to accommodate French-speaking visitors.
THE Solutions
Our team took several distinct steps to assist Midtown in achieving their goals, first creating a cohesive brand strategy and then implementing it in the design of a new website.
To identify Midtown’s key strengths and competitive advantages, Marketing for Wellness conducted a workshop with the club’s upper-level management as well as focus groups with real club members. This process allowed us to gain insight into what the members value in their experience with Midtown. We solidified this feedback into a unified, centralized strategy for all clubs under the tagline “Healthy Connections.”
To identify Midtown’s key strengths and competitive advantages, Marketing for Wellness conducted a workshop with the club’s upper-level management as well as focus groups with real club members. This process allowed us to gain insight into what the members value in their experience with Midtown. We solidified this feedback into a unified, centralized strategy for all clubs under the tagline “Healthy Connections.”
Using the feedback gathered during the branding process, Marketing for Wellness developed a new brand experience for Midtown Athletic Club centered around the statement “Seize the Moment.” Individual club pages were created to include programs, services, content, location-specific imagery, and social media. The site reiterated the theme of community experience with testimonials, member stories, and new images and stories of both staff and members captured by Marketing for Wellness during a photoshoot at Midtown Montreal.
wn Montreal.
wn Montreal.
RESULTS
Our collaboration was a two-fold success. The new website design enabled Midtown to improve its marketing and ensured a significant increase in website views, including a 61% decrease in bounce rate and a 21% increase in average time spent on the site. A Pay-Per-Click campaign was similarly enhanced, netting a 148% improvement in number of leads generated with an 82% decrease in cost-per-lead.
Management gained invaluable insight into their primary strengths and weaknesses, as well as future areas of opportunity. This helped the brand establish a unified theme and a cohesive marketing plan for all 10 existing Midtown locations.