YAK Grills is a startup yakitori grill brand based out of Vancouver, BC
This project took place during the summer of 2020
TWIST Performance was founded by fitness icon Peter Twist. Over the 25 years TWIST has been in business, they have had the opportunity to train thousands of professional and Olympic athletes and tens of thousands of amateur and youth athletes. Their professional facilities, great customer service, skilled coaches, and full-service offerings have always allowed TWIST to deliver a premium service. It doesn’t matter if they are strength training with NHL players, or giving nutritional advice to a 12 year old pursuing the top team at tryouts.
Back in the day, there was much less noise and competition in the marketplace and clients would roll in through referrals alone. Sessions were full, staff was booked, and business was booming. During this time, TWIST had two locations, TWIST North Vancouver and TWIST Tri-Cities.
Over the years, the sports training industry continued to evolve, new competition started popping up like weeds, and the marketplace became noisier. In addition to this, the core TWIST family began to move on. Many of their well-known coaches pursued other opportunities and Peter began to step back from his daily operations. Up until this point, it was okay for TWIST to rely on founder Peter Twist’s brand and the ongoing referrals, but afterwards, it became evident that TWIST needed to adapt their marketing efforts to meet and exceed the evolving fitness industry.
Shortly after TWIST underwent changes to their operations, the world came to a screeching halt. The COVID restrictions hit TWIST hard and unfortunately left TWIST North Vancouver no choice but to close their doors for good (Dec. 2020)...
This left TWIST Tri-Cities owners Michele Mauer and Lisa Gervais in a tough spot. It was no longer feasible for them to wait for people to come to them.
Michele and Lisa, like many entrepreneurs, thought they had to execute every task themselves in order to grow their business.
So they wrote email campaigns, ran sessions, answered the phone, took consultations, posted to social media, managed the finances and more. Their hard work was good for TWIST, but under the surface there were problems...
Michele and Lisa came to the realisation that they needed some help. At this time, Wilson Media had already been working with them to take photos and videos for social media. Michele then reached out to Outwork Media to discuss helping TWIST out with some marketing in addition to the photos and videos.
Shortly after reaching out, Wilson Media set up a consultation with TWIST and it became clear that:
With this in mind, TWIST collaborated with Wilson Media to create a social media plan to solve these issues. Here is what we came up with:
Up until this point, the content that was created for TWIST was of great quality. Michele leveraged both Wilson Media and other content creators to produce professional photos and videos. However, the content was simply that - professional photos and videos, and failed to provide lots of value to TWIST’s followers. So, our plan was to create content that inspired and/or educated TWIST’s followers. Most commonly, workout videos and advice. Here’s what we did:
One of the big burdens on Michele’s list of marketing tasks was to "keep up with posting". Granted, she put tonnes of effort into the posts that went out, but at the end of the day, it seemed like it was not worth her time. Outwork Media’s next task was to post the content we created on TWIST’s behalf. Here is what we did:
As TWIST’s audience began to grow, it became critical to maintain those positive relationships. Michele struggled with time and was not able to commit to communicating with TWIST’s fan base on a regular basis. Therefore, the next task Outwork Media had was to manage the comments and messages. Here’s what we did:
At this point, Michele and Lisa knew they could not continue to just wait for people to come their way. Instead, TWIST had to put in the work to initiate contact with as many people in the Tri-Cities and surrounding area as possible. So, Wilson Media’s final organic social media task was to execute outbound engagement on their behalf. Here’s what we did:
Our social media organic plan was set up to get things going. However, we didn’t want to just get things going, we wanted to accelerate TWIST’s marketing.
Everyday Instagram and Facebook are becoming more and more of a "pay to play" platform. Which is fine, you just have to adapt to the game. Because TWIST had a small online audience, we wanted to run an ongoing brand awareness campaign. Here’s what we did:
After we started executing this plan, things picked up. TWIST’s community began to grow, the content received very positive feedback, and Michele and Lisa were once again able to focus their time on what they do best!
It is a huge relief having Jordyn (social media manager) schedule the content. Also, we have been getting great feedback on the videos. All in all, I'm happy!
Michele Mauer
Unfortunately, the conversion rate with our new audience was low.
Why?
Because we were building the foundation.
We were not presenting offers.
We were nurturing TWIST’s community.
TWIST, on the other hand, became eager to begin converting their new profound audience as time passed. They wanted to make a change.
Over the month of September, TWIST did exactly that and in this article, we are going to explain how.
It was August 2021 when Wilson Media began to expand conversations with TWIST beyond just social media management and content creation. At this point, we had built up a custom audience on the Facebook Pixel of around 80,000 people through brand awareness campaigns and social media.
Pretty exciting!
But these 80,000 people who knew about TWIST and expressed some interest were useless, unless we could get them in the door...
So, TWIST set up a strategy session with Outwork Media. Throughout the session, it became clear to Outwork Media that:
With this in mind, TWIST collaborated with Wilson Media to come up with a lead generation strategy to get people in the door. Here’s what we came up with:
Marketing is actually very simple. All you have to do is create an offer, and then share that offer with people. However, just because it is simple, that doesn’t mean it is easy.
In order to get people in the door for TWIST, we had to give people a reason to show up. In order to give people a reason to show up, we had to create an offer. But not just any offer…
It had to be an offer prospects couldn't say no to, one that came without risk, and most importantly, one that TWIST could deliver on.
TWIST’s current offer was to "book a free functional assessment". Although the core offer was sufficient, the way it was presented was too weak to generate consistent results.
So, the first task Wilson Media had was to create a new offer for TWIST. Here’s what we did:
Now that we had our offer made, it was time to share it with people. Here is how we did that:
Our plan here was simple, establish rapport and then offer a no risk and no obligation functional assessment. In order to effectively do this however, TWIST needed more followers coming down the pipeline. So with that, the first thing we decided to do was to supercharge the outbound engagement to the point where we were effectively generating 75-100 followers/week.
This new profound follower base was great, but again useless unless we could convert them.
So, the strategy TWIST and Wilson Media settled on was to first sort through the new followers to find those who would be ideal to come in for a functional assessment. Once we found a prospect, we would reach out to them with a custom message to establish rapport. After conversion struck, we would continue conversing, and then, when it made sense to do so, offer them a free assessment.
The final piece to the puzzle was Facebook Ads. Over the past couple months, TWIST and Wilson Media were able to build a custom audience of roughly 80,000 people. Now, it was time to leverage this audience through Facebook Ads. Excited to get things going, Outwork Media created a facebook ads strategy for TWIST. Here’s what we did:
The plan was set, and we we’re ready to go
TWIST gave Wilson Media the green light and we launched the campaigns. Here are the results
Small audience with a hyper targeted audience. We spoke to hockey dads and they responded.
Always wanting what’s best for their child, we used language in our ad copy relatable to moms and they responded.
Never do we want to hear again that brand awareness “isn’t worth it” the retargeted campaign had, by far, the lowest cost per lead.
Remember our social media outreach strategy? Over the span of 4 weeks, Outwork Media was able to successfully generate an additional 49 leads for TWIST. The best part, these leads came with no additional ad spend and our work was already included in their social media package.
We have many more screenshots available, but you get the point...
TWIST has been able to successfully close a large percentage of these leads on training packages ranging from $99 - $1500+
"We're very happy with the marketing campaign! We have been able to close some big clients from the leads. Not to mention our brand awareness and email list has grown! All in all, very successful!"
And that is how TWIST and Wilson Media worked together to create new marketing results that we are in control of for the established TWIST brand.
If you would like to work with Wilson Media to grow your social media, generate leads, and create marketing systems you can rely on just like Michele and Lisa did, schedule a free consultation today and we will take you through the same process to achieve YOUR goals.
*Please note, our services are NOT AVAILABLE to sports clubs, fitness centres, and gyms operating out of the same city as our current clients.
