GLL CASE STUDY

GLL is the UK’s leading provider of Leisure Centres and Libraries, operating in over 400 locations across Britain under their ‘Better’ brand, on a mission to make a real difference to local communities and people.

As a charitable social enterprise competing against better funded and more famous commercial gyms, GLL had to make every penny count. All Response Media was charged with delivering growth in this highly competitive market.

Whilst the larger competitors had the advantage of fame and scale, GLL had the benefit of being the local leisure centre, with a genuine link to the towns and cities that they serve; national presence with local relevance. The ARM team doubled down on this insight, delivering national, regional and hyper-local campaigns across, and achieving amazing results.

The overarching challenge
To deliver growth.

To deliver growth in membership of GLL’s 280 leisure centres across the UK, by combining local activation campaigns with regional and national healthy living messaging. Consistency of messaging, offers across the brand and activation campaigns were ultimately the difference between success and failure.

The solution
Follow the data, pull the thread.

Two of ARM’s values are to ‘follow the data’ and to ‘pull the thread’ which is exactly where we started.

By analysing GLL’s customer database, we were able to create segments based on each individual’s CRM status, taking into account membership lifetime value, overlaying pages visited and granular on-site interactions. This was also used to generate lookalike audiences to reach new potential members.

This audience segmentation enabled us to plan across numerous digital formats, targeting specific customer profiles and segments with messaging designed to resonate with their profile at a national, regional, and hyperlocal level.

The national campaign was planned to grow GLL’s membership base by educating people on the benefits of an active lifestyle, converting them into paying members, and complementing the regional and hyperlocal performance campaigns as a result.

Moving into 2022 we knew the market would be highly competitive and by our calculations we would be looking at a share of voice of <5%. With an audience-first strategy and tactical budget deployment, we aimed to avoid premium CPC placements and stand out from the crowd with our thumb-stopping creatives across Facebook and Snapchat:

The results
Real-time optimisation of messaging and creatives across all activity delivered results which surpassed expectations and exceeded targets.

All Response Media grew paid media memberships by 120% by using paid media to replace footfall lost by coronavirus restrictions. Multivariant creative testing improved CPC by 27%, despite rises across most of the market.

Exceptional performance enabled the GLL marketing team to secure increased budgets for future campaigns and to continue their mission to improve the physical, mental and social well-being of local communities.

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