LifeStyle Fitness club-Study Case

🧩 Case Study: Lead Generation Campaign for Local Fitness Brand

Project Overview

Executed paid media strategy as a Junior Media Buyer within a full-stack digital team.
Led Meta Ads efforts across multiple campaigns, collaborated on funnel design, and contributed to TikTok and Instagram creative planning.

🔹 Focused on lead generation & CPL reduction in a highly competitive fitness market
🔹 Supported campaign testing, targeting, and budget allocation within a performance-driven team
🔹 Played a key role in aligning creative messaging with ad platform behavior and funnel conversion goals

❗Problems Faced

The fitness brand was blocked by multiple growth barriers:

No consistent lead pipeline or digital acquisition strategy
High cost-per-lead with zero attribution or channel clarity
No structured funnel for nurturing traffic into paying members
Weak social presence, fragmented messaging, and no offline-to-online connection

They needed a fast, reliable, and cost-effective system to acquire high-intent leads — while building brand trust in a crowded space.

💡 Strategy

The brand leveraged two main acquisition channels:
🔹 Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram) — the primary engine for conversions
🔹 Search Advertising (Google Ads, Yandex Direct) — used as a supporting channel

My focus was on optimizing the Meta Ads funnel, which drove the majority of leads and CPL reduction.
I structured the campaign to capture attention, drive engagement, and retarget with offers to boost conversion.

The funnel covered:
• Audience targeting
• Platform optimization
• Creative testing
• Retargeting with urgency-based CTAs

here’s simplified version of the funnel

👥 Audience Strategy & Segmentation

To drive high-quality leads, we layered multiple audience strategies — including CRM reactivation, lookalikes, geo filters, interest-based segments, and retargeting. These groups were tailored by platform and offer type:

Client Reactivation
Identified dormant CRM users (inactive >2 months)

Sent re-engagement offers with urgency and incentives Lookalikes (LALs)

Age segmentation
18–24 / 25–35 / 35–50 / 50+. Allowed us to tailor copy, visuals, and offer framing.

Geo targeting
• Radius targeting: 3 km around each gym
• City-wide reach for branded campaigns
• High-end districts for premium/online training offers

Interest-based audiences
Fitness, wellness, lifestyle, travel — aligned with digital-first positioning

Retargeting
• Users who viewed the *Instagram profile in last 180 days
• Website visitors via Facebook Pixel
• Deep visitors (3+ min) — shown a strong lead magnet:
“🎁 7 Days of Unlimited Fitness – Free”

Mind-map after the briefing

🧲Landing Page Strategy

The main website wasn’t fit for cold Instagram traffic.
Instead, we redirected users to the optimized Instagram profile and DMs.

Key points:

Keyword-friendly username for search visibility
Bio with club locations + link to site
Pinned Stories with Before/After results
Feed promoted active offers and beginner tips

This setup improved lead capture without needing a separate landing page

📈 Traffic Targeting & Ad Objectives

We used the Instagram profile not just for engagement, but also to build lookalike audiences based on followers and interactions.

To drive traffic, we ran two key campaign types:

Traffic (Profile Visits)
→ Built retargeting pools and warmed up cold audiences
Messages (DMs)
→ Promoted time-sensitive offers and encouraged direct chats to speed up conversions

We tested lead forms, but they underperformed — cold users weren’t ready to share personal info without trust

🔥 Creatives & Offers

Below are examples of the best-performing ad creatives, including those used specifically for promoting limited-time offers and discounts

We tailored creatives to fit different audience segments (by gender, age, and location) and used video ads to showcase gym facilities.

Main creative angles:

Offers & Discounts – Free trials, promos, limited deals
Trainers & Equipment – Professional staff, modern gear
Group Classes – Especially for women 35+, showing variety and energy
Success Stories – Before/after results for correctional programs
Location-Based – Highlighted gyms near user areas

Personalized creatives by audience type led to stronger performance

📈 Top creatives after testing showed an average CTR of 2.3%

🔗 Best-Performing Ad Combos

Minsk’s small market meant no room for wasted spend. The client had prior campaigns with weak performance — I used those insights to refine and scale what worked.

1. Lookalike — Client Database
→ Lead Magnet: “7 Days of Unlimited Fitness – Free”
→ Strong response from cold traffic

2. Lookalike — Instagram Engagers
→ Same lead magnet
→ Ran for over 6 months
→ Consistently delivered 15–20 new clients/month
→ Over 70% converted to paid memberships + extras

3. Broad Audience — Women 20–45
→ Offer: Free session with personal trainer
→ Low barrier offer that brought volume at low cost

Creo used

A creative featuring a man on a yellow background delivered the highest volume of quality leads.

What worked:

Simple offer + broad audience
Started generating results during the testing phase

⚠️ Missed opportunity:
We skipped testing lead forms (based on past experience). But for this type of offer, they could’ve worked well.

Lesson learned: always test

💬 Results & Takeaways

Role: Junior Media Buyer focused on Instagram (Meta) lead generation for a fitness brand
Objective: Deliver high-quality leads with a low CPL in a saturated, competitive nich

📊 Leads & Performance

Qualified Leads (Instagram): 2,320
Ad Spend (Instagram): $10,490
Average CPL: $4.52
Total Clicks: 26,106
Average CPC: $0.19
$4,438 of the budget directed to the optimized landing funnel

💡 Strategic Wins

Outperformed major fitness brands (GYM24, XFit, World Class) with targeted lead generation
Achieved consistent lead flow and strong cost-efficiency despite high-niche complexity
High retention and conversion potential based on Telegram channel behavior
Proved the viability of performance-driven paid social for long-term acquisition

📆 What We Achieved

We worked with the client for 5 months — during which we launched 10+ paid campaigns, tested 14+ audience segments, and ran dozens of creative variations optimized for engagement and cost-efficiency.

We also tested 5 unique landing pages, each designed around a different entry point or user intents

🕒 Seasonality

The fitness niche showed peak demand between August and November.
During this time, we doubled down on high-intent campaigns — featuring club walkthroughs, seasonal promos, and location-based targeting (GEO) to match user behavior

💬 Why It Worked

The campaign’s success came from tight collaboration across ads, sales, and creative.
We worked in close sync, ran continuous A/B tests, and adapted strategy quickly based on real-time data and feedback