Create and Execute a Strategic Marketing Plan for Children’s Athletics
Discover Gymnastics is one of the leading gymnastics and youth fitness facilities in Houston. Founded in 1999, the company has grown to serve over 1,500 students a week. The 22,000 square-foot facility’s offerings include gymnastics, dance, cheerleading, children’s fitness, and a competitive team program for both boys and girls. Also, Discover offers ancillary activities including birthday parties, gymnastics training camps, and stay-and-play programs. In addition, Discover hosts two of the largest gymnastics competitions in the state, The Texas Classic in the fall and The Svetlana Boguinskaia Invitational in the spring.
The Challenge
Discover plans to expand its existing location. To expand, the company needs to increase its current enrollment to support the additional space.
- Prior to FrogDog’s engagement, there was no clear marketing strategy and plan to attract the additional enrollment needed for expansion.
- The facility had very little activity during school-time hours—meaning significant capacity for a potential revenue-increasing opportunity.
- The company’s key audiences perceive Discover as a gymnastics facility. Consumers had very little knowledge of the breadth of activities offered. Discover minimally promoted ancillary programs, such as dance, tumbling, and cheer, resulting in very low enrollment.
- The company had very limited time and resources to devote to marketing efforts.
FrogDog Solution
- FrogDog’s ability to provide strong consumer understanding, rich marketing strategies, and the ability to implement the plan made it the perfect partner to help enable Discover’s growth.
- FrogDog developed a comprehensive marketing strategy and plan to achieve three principal goals:
- Increase participation in ancillary programs such as Superhero, kid fitness, cheer, and tumbling.
- Increase program participation during school-time hours.
- Leverage the media hubbub over current sporting events to build excitement and increase enrollment in gymnastics programs.
- With the strategy in place, FrogDog served as Discover’s marketing arm by implementing all components of the plan throughout the year.
- FrogDog created a more navigable Web site for Discover that contained rich media that better defines each of the gym’s programs.
- FrogDog created a social media strategy that coordinated between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Living Social to increase the gym’s presence in the community in a fun, personable way.
- FrogDog identified four groups to help increase school-hour participation. With the groups identified, FrogDog created and implemented promotions to target them through direct mail, promotional materials, and social media.
- FrogDog designed and wrote monthly newsletters to communicate important news, information about programs, calendars of events, and information about the staff. The newsletters provided numerous educational and cross-sell opportunities for Discover.
The Results
- With FrogDog's ongoing marketing support, Discover exceeded its goal of 1,500 students, including an increase in school-hour participation.
- In a 6-month period, the informational videos FrogDog created on Discover’s programs were viewed over 2,400 times, eclipsing the goal of 400 views.
- For the year, Facebook “Likes” increased over 100 percent to 550 Likes.
- Through engaging content, the monthly newsletter open rate averaged more than 26 percent, far exceeding typical consumer newsletter open rates. In addition, parents gave the newsletter highly positive reviews.
Click on the image to view full image and to scroll through the portfolios
Website
FrogDog created a more navigable Web site for Discover that contained rich media that better defines each of the gym’s programs. Each of the site’s subpages has a banner giving depth to each of the gym’s programs.
Social Media
FrogDog created a social media strategy that coordinated between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Living Social to increase the gym’s presence in the community in a fun, personable way.
Direct Mail
FrogDog identified four groups to help increase school-hour participation. With the groups identified, FrogDog created and implemented promotions to target them through direct mail.
Newsletter
FrogDog designed and wrote monthly newsletters to communicate important news, information about programs, calendars of events, and information about the staff.
Does your business need a new marketing strategy?
We would love to learn about your business. Contact us to request a consultation.