How to Target and Engage Customers at Every Franchise (Anytime Fitness Case Study)

In this exclusive Q&A, we will be discussing how MomentFeed, a leader in mobile customer experience management for multi-location brands, teamed up with Anytime Fitness to help streamline and optimize their social marketing – engaging consumers on mobile around each of their 3,000 franchised locations in 20 countries.

Kristen Pechacek, Senior Manager of Digital Strategy at Anytime Fitness, will talk through best practices on how to better target and engage the community around each location from both a corporate and individual franchise perspective.

Franchise Chatter (FC): Can you tell us a little bit about Anytime Fitness and the challenges you faced in connecting with your local demographic?

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Kristen Pechacek (KP): Anytime Fitness is a health and fitness club where facilities are open 24 hours a day, seven days per week. In 2014 and 2015, the company won the number one spot on Entrepreneur’s top global franchises list, based on size, growth, and financial stability. Anytime Fitness franchisees are expected to provide a consistent brand experience both online and in-store.

However, it can be hard for franchisees to find the time to do it all. What we needed was a way to allow our franchisees to increase their digital marketing efforts and manage the customer experience through the networks and channels consumers are already using, and drive more business as a result.

FC: How did partnering with MomentFeed help Anytime Fitness rectify those issues?

KP: MomentFeed gave us the platform and guidance to enable our franchisees to become mobile marketers themselves. We used a unique blend of corporate and local content, a pre-vetted content library, and a content calendar to keep social media easy for franchise owners. Franchise owners were empowered to manage their social media and customer reviews, and deliver paid ads, keeping their Anytime Fitness franchise consistently engaged and connected with the local community.

Rather than trying to manage every individual social media page on every social network for each location, in addition to running a business, MomentFeed makes mobile marketing simple – and the result looks like fitness entrepreneurs have been transformed into mobile marketing and customer experience experts.

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FC: What are some of the secrets to successful customer engagements?

KP: I would say there are two lessons we preach. The first is to leverage a model that blends oversight and ownership. Each franchise needs to be able to engage with their local community directly while still being true to the corporate brand and ensuring a consistent voice as well as overall brand positioning. With the exception of one corporate post per day which we provide, it’s up to the owners and gym managers to tailor their social accounts to their local audiences following guidelines.

The second is to provide franchisees with the tools they need to connect locally. Corporate brands need to quickly and easily provide franchisees with content, oversight/management of reviews on social media (e.g. Facebook, Yelp, etc.), and the ability to create tailored, relevant ads.

For example, offer your franchisees a curated content library of pre-vetted images and text that can be used on any social media platform that the franchisee can quickly customize to make it personal and relevant to their location and their community. That makes each social feed unique – and really gets fans engaged.

FC: What growth has Anytime Fitness seen since changing strategies?

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KP: After partnering with MomentFeed, social organic reach increased by 210% in just over nine months due to franchisees being more active and posting real community-driven content. Anytime Fitness has also seen a 297% increase in traffic to the corporate website originating from Facebook local pages.

Above all else, this model of franchise independence empowers individual fitness center owners and delivers standout marketing results – with less time and fewer resources. From a corporate standpoint, we maintain a unified brand voice while each location can cater to its unique audience. The MomentFeed platform provides Anytime Fitness with all that our franchisees need to succeed as marketers—and still have time to run a profitable fitness center.