Long Term Results Case study – B2B2C Health and Fitness

Company Profile

Les Mills UK is a satellite office of Les Mills International, a global fitness company founded in 1980 by Phillip Mills and his wife, Dr. Jackie Mills. Les Mills UK was established in March 2012 with the goal of becoming the leading experts in the health and fitness industry in the UK. The products that are core to Les Mills offering are high-quality fitness programmes, fitness equipment and clothing, instructor training, and customer service.

CEO’s Mission

CEO in this position would need to focus on a mission to increase brand awareness, establish Les Mills as a leading name in the UK fitness industry, and deliver exceptional customer experiences to drive loyalty and advocacy. By pursuing these goals through strategic partnerships, innovative product development, and targeted marketing and PR campaigns, the CEO could help Les Mills UK achieve its ambitions and become a well-known and respected brand in the UK fitness market.

Marketing Director’s Objectives

· Develop a B2B Marketing Strategy in line with CEOs mission

· Work with CEO on key business areas to build a Thought Leader status

· Forge Strategic Partnerships

· Communicate B2B marketing needs with global team in New Zealand

What the Marketing Director Did

Research the local market and current customers

Coming from the NZ Head Office to the UK to help found the UK business the Associate completed a 360o evaluation of the existing business, including instructor perceptions, business customer survey and qualitative research to understand the importance as a partner, and brand awareness.

Build a Strong Local Team and create a High Performing culture

Over the first 12 months the Associate identified the areas that required internal FTE to help strengthen the brand, grow awareness and service the Sales team. Completing 6 hires from within the UK fitness industry to bring knowledge and credibility.

Thought Leadership

Working with the CEO, Sales Director & Instructor Experience Director to define our expertise, Instructor Training and Group Fitness Management, and engaged with industry experts such as Ray Algar and David Minton to develop material that we would publish and post through industry publications, events and online media. An especially effective model created was the semiar and webinar programme that we ran for customers and potential customers, 12 topics covering our expertise, but more importantly, their needs as club operators. These aided retention and provided an active pipeline for our Customer Experience team.

Brand Recognition through effective marketing campaigns:

Working with the CEO the objective of creating a consumer following was apparent and over the years we set about directly targetting consumers. This was a lengthy process as we had a limited budget, and limited resources. We approached this in 2 ways. Digital and Experiential Events that were self funding (ticketed). By creating authentic and challenging social media content, the brand resonated with both the licenced instructor base and their clients. Our events became a platform for thought leadership, brand hype and awareness and strategic partnerships with clients and other health and fitness business, including Reebok.

The Results

The Associates marketing efforts undertaken to improve KPIs and revenue with B2B and B2C activities notably successful.

Some notable results of these marketing efforts include:

1. Growing the business revenue by 20% (£2m) YOY for three consecutive years

2. Achieving the five-year business plan goal of 300 club growth within the first two years

3. Improving ticket sales for annual events by 800% (2000 to 16000 attendees) over 2 years, adding over £600k in revenue

4. Creating experiential branded events and delivering fitness festivals across the UK, Scotland and N.I

5. Increasing the social community by 1440% (from <5000 Facebook followers to over 70,000) in 18 months

6. Winning the Best Use of Video Award at the CorpComms Digital Awards – Consumer

Overall, these results suggest that the marketing efforts undertaken by this individual were effective in growing the brand’s presence and revenue in the UK market and the Associate continued to support the Global Head Office heading projects launching new products, organising global creative, developing a Value Proposition and B2B sales materials that were scaled globally.