Anytime Fitness Rebounds Through Search

Anytime Fitness, one of the country's largest fitness chains, found itself forced to act quickly and make tough decisions to support a vast network of franchise owners during 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Search has always been a key element of Goodway Group's strategy for Anytime Fitness. When the pandemic started, it proved to be even more essential to helping Anytime Fitness engage new members while contending with various closures and reopenings across the country.

Goodway runs always-on and promo search campaigns to ensure gym prospects consider Anytime Fitness. As shutdowns occurred, the team noticed increased information-seeking searches from current members and recommended pausing the always-on campaign for a few months to avoid spending on members. When the campaign resumed, the team implemented impression share-based spending, reactivated different locations as needed and added negative keywords around COVID-19. The team launched Anytime Fitness' three-week $1 joining fee promo campaign in September. The strategy mirrored the always-on campaign.

Both the always-on and fall promo campaigns were successful. For the always-on campaign, the Goodway team kept the average monthly CPL under $10 and drove 58,952 leads. The fall promo search campaign CPL came in 7% lower than the goal and 52% lower YoY than 2019's campaign. Additionally, Goodway drove 25,993 leads, an increase of 52% over 2019. Finally, Goodway's proprietary cross-channel insights tool showed search performance improved by up to 200% when users were exposed to additional channels.