Anytime Fitness taps on SOCi Listening to understand the conversations around their brand

The Challenge

Anytime Fitness is a 24-hour health and fitness club franchise with more than 4,700 gyms in 35 countries. As part of the Self Esteem Brands family, they operate with a hybrid approach to localized marketing where franchise owners are encouraged to manage their local social media presence in collaboration with Corporate run social efforts. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, gyms were forced to close their doors overnight, creating uncertainty amongst gym-goers across the US. Anytime Fitness needed a solution that would allow them to see what customers were saying about their brand in order to monitor online brand reputation and provide customer care. Studies show that 96% of online conversations are not directed at your brand or on your pages, so it was crucial that Anytime Fitness found a way to monitor and connect with their customers in order to build brand trust and maintain loyalty.

The SOCi Solution

By teaming up with SOCi, Anytime Fitness was able to successfully monitor their brand reputation across all locations. With social listening, they found a more efficient way to gather insights to inform business strategy and provide care to their customers. In just a few months, Anytime Fitness listened to over 3 million online conversations about their brand outside of their owned pages, and in response to their findings created free virtual fitness classes as a way to serve customers and get an edge over their competition during the pandemic. They were able to quickly and efficiently request and receive users’ permission to reshare user-generated content across their local pages, leading to increased engagement and brand loyalty across locations.

SOCi Results

“As a franchisor with multiple brands, we need to be attentive to all customer conversations to stay competitive, best serve our members, and innovate against our digital strategy. The ability to listen to critical feedback and questions on our social accounts and beyond helped us provide virtual classes during the pandemic and allowed us to maintain members during a time when mass cancelations were occurring across the industry.” – Christian Betancourt, Former Director, Digital Marketing (Paid, Social & Local), Self Esteem Brands