Case Study: Happy Days Fitness

Background

As a dance and fitness instructor, Teresa felt that there was a need in the town where she lives for exercise classes specifically for the over-50's.  She lives in a rural area where is a large older population of retirees, but the local gyms had little to offer other than water aerobics.  Teresa offers several types of class aimed at older active adults, including a dance fitness (aerobics) class, a senior strength class, and a balance class. 

When Teresa contacted us, she knew what classes she wanted to offer.  She had also identify community and church halls where she would be able to put on classes that were available in the mornings.

Fitness classes are a volume business, and Teresa knew that she had to build a customer base of between a hundred and a hundred and fifty regulars in order to make the business profitable.  Being new to the area, she knew that this was a large mountain to climb. 

The largest issue that Teresa faced was to get the word out. Word of mouth is often the most effective when marketing to older women, but that woud require already having an active customer base or network to start with.  This was a chicken-and-egg problem that Teresa was hoping that Startup Circle could help her solve.  Teresa didn't have the time or resources to build the business slowly - it had to grow quickly in order to be viable.

The challenge for Startup Circle was to reach as many of Teresa's target market as quickly as possible.  We knew that the right combination of branding and advertising would be vital in launching the business.  Teresa would need a website, a Facebook marketing campaign, and physical leaflets and posters.  Because it was a single owner/operator business that needed to operate at some scale, automation would also be key in creating a sustainable business.

The first thing we needed to do was to create a compelling brand for Teresa's new business.  We felt that we knew the target audience and service offering well enough to skip most of the customer discovery phase.  Teresa had taught similar classes in the past, and as an older active adult herself was confident that her target market was well understood.  However because every market is different we conducted several key customer interviews.  Applying the Customer Forces model to the results wwe chose a positive message, positioning Happy Days Fitness as being for people who (1) want to feel stronger and healthier and who (2) appreciated a regular, social exercise class aimed at their generation.  Rejected approaches included using fear of injury or lack of mobility.  Happy Days harks back to a golden age of youth, and because England was just coming out of its third COVID lockdown, we chose the slogan 'It's time to feel good again!".

To launch the company we designed and built the website, a Facebook campaign, and a physical tri-fold leaflets.  11,000 leaflets were distributed to every household in the town and surrounding villages.  The leaflet drop was supported by a highly targeted Facebook campaign and free classes. 

We also spent several weeks investigating and choosing a booking platform.  One of the things that we had learned during our early customer discovery was that seniors often led busy and unpredictable lives, and so a monthly commitment was unattractive. We conducted a thorough evaluation of six different systems before settling on GoTeamUp.com.  What impressed us most about this platform was that it supported a flexible system of class passes and courses which allowed Teresa to offer packages of pre-paid classes that could be redeemed at any of her locations and classes.