Continuing with our How Did They Do It? series, where we interview and spotlight companies who are successfully marketing their brands online, we are grateful to Greg Stallkamp of Holos Fitness for taking time for this interview.
A social networking website focused on fitness, Holosfitness.com is a free online fitness tool, which offers step-by-step instruction on exercises, video demonstration of workouts, and blogs posted by fitness professionals. Launched last year, Holos Fitness now exclusively markets their website on the Internet.
Below is the interview:
How has social media and online marketing helped you connect with prospects?
We have found that using social media and online marketing is by far the easiest way to acquire new members. This is particularly true for Facebook. We have seen tremendous growth by marketing our fan page on Facebook. This not only helps to bring in new members, it is also is a great way to give current members updates on new content on the site. We have established a routine of posting daily updates on our Facebook fan page, which highlight new workouts, videos, exercises, and other information recently posted on Holosfitness.com. This has turned out to be a great way to drive traffic to our site.
How have your efforts impacted the relationships you have with your current and prospective website participants?
We now exclusively market the site through the use of social media and search-related advertising. We have found that traditional marketing (offline) is quite frankly a waste of time. We tried everything from handing out fliers to sponsoring athletic events, and the return on these efforts pales in comparison to the return from online marketing. Quite frankly, online marketing is the easiest way to reach a new audience.
In terms of our current membership, our primary online marketing tool is Facebook. We leverage Facebook as an outlet to keep our members informed of new information on our site. Since a large percentage of our membership base is active on Facebook every day, it makes sense to post updates through Facebook. These updates, in turn, drive traffic to our site, www.holosfitness.com. The best part is that once an individual has become a fan of Holosfitness.com on Facebook, the cost to keep them as a fan and give them updates related to Holosfitness.com is completely free.
When you were starting out a year ago, what online marketing strategies did you try that didn’t work?
An initial tactic that we tried that didn’t yield the results we wanted was blogging. Nearly every consultant and web site “guru” we spoke with told us that blogging is the best way to promote a website and bring in new members. The blogging dynamic and how to go about blogging, however, is not so straightforward.
Blogging is not as easy as finding a relevant website or blog (in our case, something fitness or health-related) and posting a comment or other content. In fact, this is a good way to alienate yourself and upset a potential partner. Despite the fact that blogs make it seem as if they invite comments and participation, this is not necessarily the case. What blogs don’t want is someone to draw traffic away from their site. What they don’t want is competition. If your site is viewed as competition and your comments are seen as information or content that will draw traffic away from the original domain, you will most likely be viewed in a hostile manner.
When we first launched the site, we started blogging and posting comments on a wide array of health and fitness sites. Almost immediately, our comments and blogs were flagged and censored. Many of these potential partners thought that our strategy was to troll through their site and lure participants away from their blog and onto our own website. It turned out we were alienating many potential partners because we didn’t first seek to introduce ourselves (to the blogger) and discuss ways that we could create a mutually beneficial relationship.
How are you using Twitter and YouTube to drive traffic and increase participation?
While we use both Twitter and YouTube, these tools don’t draw nearly as much traffic to our site as Facebook. We post “tweets” daily on Twitter, but I’m not convinced this does a lot to draw traffic. At this point I feel that Twitter is still a novelty; there isn’t a lot of value-add in the Twitter relationship. I don’t feel it helps our business. It is more productive for me to spend time on other social media.
In terms of YouTube, we have a wide array of videos posted on YouTube, which are also posted on our website, www.holosfitness.com. In fact, we have our own YouTube channel and fans. For the most part, we try to use YouTube as a teaser where people initially become interested in our videos, but then they must go to our site for a more complete selection of videos and information. YouTube is helpful in drawing some traffic and creating recognition for our site, but it doesn’t generate the same results as Facebook. I feel that the greatest benefit of YouTube is that it helps to establish brand recognition, since you can create a channel and prominently display your logo and information regarding your business.
What online marketing strategy has brought in the greatest results for your business?
There is no question that using Facebook and promoting our fan page on Facebook have brought in the greatest results for our business. We are seeing strong growth every day (at least 50 new members) thanks to our marketing presence on Facebook. In addition to drawing in new members, marketing on Facebook allows us to stay in contact with existing members. It is a simple tool that can yield tremendous benefits.
About Holos Fitness:
Holos Fitness is a free online fitness tool, which offers step-by-step instruction on exercises, video demonstration of workouts, and blogs posted by fitness professionals. Holosfitness.com allows athletes of all backgrounds, ages, and fitness levels to share workouts, find new workouts, and monitor the progress of existing workouts. Features such as advanced targeting to find individuals with similar interests, video demos of exercises, and instructional blogs written by fitness professionals, help to ensure members are motivated to achieve their goals. Additionally, teams or groups of individuals are empowered through the ability to instantly communicate with other members, upload announcements or relevant data, work off of a common calendar, and share video and other multi-media highlights.
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