We’ve been working with Gold’s Gym for about four months on their continually-expanding Facebook presence. Prior to this project, Gold’s Gym had a web site, but no online community. Rather than build one from scratch, they decided to build a fan Page on Facebook — in effect, letting their existing community band together on a third-party social network. This is a progressive way of thinking for such a giant brand, and it has been very cool to help them design and execute on that strategy.
This has been a fun project for us on a lot of levels — we’ve been able to push the boundaries of what’s possible through Facebook’s Pages product; develop and release multiple branded applications; and watch a new online community grow and thrive.
Organic growth IS possible
Gold’s has employed a 100% organic strategy in promoting this page — they haven’t spent a single dollar buying ads for the Page on Facebook or anywhere else. Only viral growth through fans and application users. Since the page’s launch in early October, Gold’s has racked up:
- Nearly 7,000 fans
- More than 5,200 monthly application users
Even better, more than 1,500 users have identified the Gold’s Gym location to which they belong, which gives Gold’s tremendous regional marketing insight.
Taking the gym online
Gym members feel a strong sense of community with other members — and gym managers know that forging that sense of community is the best way to ensure members keep their memberships!
Gold’s Gym experimented with an online community in late 2007/early 2008 that had only moderate success. The Gold’s Gym Challenge let users create a profile, track their workouts with blog posts, and post on each other’s “walls.”
This year’s version of the Challenge promotion was supported online via Facebook rather than a stand-alone site. Using the My Goals application, Facebook users can create a fitness goal and log their progress; recruit supporters (friends) to cheer them on; post comments to a wall; join their virtual gym; and see friends and other Facebook users with similar goals.
Gold’s knows its own strength
Gold’s plans to continue its Facebook strategy in 2009 by encouraging gym owners (many Gold’s Gyms are franchised locations) to create their own page that’s linked to the Gold’s Gym main page. Each individual gym will build its own community, while leveraging the social tools and applications of the main site.
Gym members are already using the social features of the main page and application About pages — the Wall and Discussion Board — to have discussions about their fitness and weight management goals; talk to their personal trainers; and give props to their favorite place to work out.
We’re looking forward to helping Gold’s expand this online community in 2009!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting post- looks like nice work. I understand the strategy of “since we’re starting from scratch, why not leverage an existing community rather than build our own”, but am interested if (at the end of the day) Golds wanted to get any user data out of Facebook (other than aggregate statistics).
On FB apps that we’ve done, the usage has been high, but often at the end of the project, success has been evaluated on the number of signups to an external database. Put another way, our clients have been impressed with the facebook numbers, but then ultimately disappointed with the conversion to their own database. So great for Facebook, not so great for the company paying for the development. The flip side of course is that for a project where they have nothing to start with, FB offers a ton more exposure.
You guys seem to have a lot of experience in this kind of thing- interested to hear if this has come up as an issue at the end of projects.
regards
Ben
Ben – an excellent question re: ROI of clients’ FB Apps.
Our clients tend to have different goals based on the nature of program (could be Fans, UGC, impressions – or “registrations” as you point out).
For those focused on registrations (capturing users or leads as their “own”), we have seen the best results coming from:
1. Apps linked to specific campaigns… such as the contests for Tostitos and Got2B… or the Bayer WomenHealth giveaway, or
2. Apps that offer some real-world value linked to that company, such as the features offers by the Gold’s MyGym and MyGoals apps.
In both cases, users are explicitly sharing their information – in return for some value from the company.