Delivering 215% Lead Growth for Village Health & Wellness Club Through Full-Funnel Optimisation

Village Health & Wellness Club’s website includes its UK-wide network of gym and wellness facilities, with online sign-ups playing a key role in driving new memberships.

As competition in the fitness market intensified, particularly during peak seasonal periods, the business needed a more joined-up and efficient digital setup to improve conversion rates, attract higher-quality leads, and increase visibility across both search and paid channels.

Our work focused on four core pillars: redesigning the online sign-up experience, increasing visibility across search and paid channels, driving nationwide awareness of its locations through the reactivation of programmatic, Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH), and Connected TV activity, and increasing memberships during the key post-Christmas period.

Our Solution

To improve sign-ups, strengthen lead tracking, and scale acquisition, we implemented a full-funnel rebuild across web, SEO, paid media, and omnichannel activity:

1. Web Development: Redesigning the Sign-Up Journey

We simplified and modernised the membership funnel to reduce drop-off and improve conversions by:

Reducing the sign-up journey from 10 steps to 6
Rebuilding the flow to remove friction at key conversion points
Improving the UI and refreshing copy for clarity and intent
Developing a Vue.js SPA for faster, smoother performance
Integrating with Umbraco for seamless CMS management
Hosting on Azure for scalable performance

To further strengthen performance tracking and sales alignment, we developed a new .NET API integration with Salesforce. This enabled:

Real-time creation of leads as soon as a user begins the sign-up journey
Generation of unique sales URLs for direct salesperson follow-up
Automated capturing of partial entries, allowing the sales team to recover incomplete sign-ups

This data infrastructure underpins the abandoned cart strategy. In strict compliance with GDPR, only the data of users who have explicitly opted in is captured.

When one of these prospective members drops out of the sign-up process, their lead is safely recorded in Salesforce and instantly assigned to the sales team, transforming lost traffic into a structured, fully compliant recovery workflow.

2. SEO: Scaling Local Visibility & AI Search Presence

Our SEO strategy focused on strengthening Village’s dominance in highly localised, intent-driven search environments - where gym discovery is most competitive and conversion-led.

Key initiatives included:

Expanding hyperlocal content across gyms, classes, towns, and neighbourhoods, shifting from city-level to high-intent local search
Enhancing local search performance through improved review management and granular tracking across Google Maps, Apple Maps, and AI-driven discovery tools
Centralising and automating Google Business Profile management, improving listing consistency, and strengthening visibility across maps, voice assistants, and navigation platforms
Using PPC and performance data to refine SEO targeting, identifying high-value geographic clusters, and prioritising conversion-focused search terms
Implementing Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity, improving entity signals, content structure, and citation consistency

These efforts were supported by an EEAT-led content strategy, utilising expert authorship and structured editorial formats to maximise visibility across both traditional and AI-driven search landscapes.

3. Paid Media: Full-Funnel Always-On Performance Strategy

Our paid media strategy was designed to build sustained momentum ahead of peak fitness season and maximise acquisition during the increased January demand period.

December Priming Phase:

Activity focused on building momentum ahead of the January peak, including:

Core campaigns receiving budget upweights alongside comprehensive creative and copy refreshes
Launching a UK-wide Performance Max (PMax) campaign to broaden reach and drive brand awareness ahead of the New Year rush
Introducing Demand Gen campaigns using a visually-led, display-forward strategy to engage prospective members
Expanding the channel mix to include Meta Lead Forms, Pinterest, and Snapchat for top-of-funnel acquisition

January Peak Push:

We capitalised on peak fitness season with further scaling and new activity:

Increasing investment across high-performing campaigns to capture maximum seasonal demand
Expanding the media mix with targeted activity across Spotify, LinkedIn, and Reddit
Continuously optimising creative assets and audience segmentation to maximise conversion efficiency
Implementing AI-driven optimisation via Performance Max within the core generic campaign structure, delivering an uplift in incremental performance

Throughout this period, we maintained a highly agile approach in close collaboration with the Village team.

By continuously tailoring activity to support underperforming regional "need clubs" and providing tactical budget recommendations during key demand windows, we ensured the strategy remained highly responsive while improving overall ROI across the portfolio.

4. Omnichannel Amplification: DOOH, Programmatic & CTV

To maximise local relevance and audience engagement across the UK, we activated Village’s creative across Connected TV (CTV), programmatic display, and Digital-Out-Of-Home (DOOH).

This allowed us to:

Deploy proximity-based DOOH placements within a close radius of selected clubs to maximise visibility among local audiences most likely to visit each location.
Leverage deep audience insights to guide publisher selection, securing premium CTV inventory across Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Netflix, and Rakuten.
Maximise inventory availability and scale by dynamically deploying multiple creative lengths (10”, 15”, 20”, and 30”), with the 10” and 20” variants delivering an exceptional 99% View Through Rate.

This targeted multi-channel distribution ensured high-impact visibility and optimal delivery efficiency across both local environments and premium streaming platforms.

The Results

The combined strategy delivered significant improvements across acquisition, visibility, and operational efficiency:

215% YoY uplift in Q1 lead generation, with a 1,467% YoY increase in leads from new location-specific SEO pages.
77% increase in daily membership volumes during the DOOH, programmatic, and CTV campaign period, capitalising on the New Year fitness peak.

Significant expansion in AI-driven visibility, including:

144% YoY increase in AI search volume, driving a 38% YoY increase in citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity.
107% YoY increase in brand mentions across emerging platforms, resulting in a 64% YoY increase in top 10 positions within AI-assisted local search results.

High-impact cross-channel performance and audience engagement, including:

97% combined Video Through Rate (VTR) across Connected TV (CTV) publishers, led by Amazon Prime Video at an exceptional 99% VTR.
0.43% overall display CTR, significantly exceeding the standard industry benchmark range of 0.05%-0.1% while maintaining a 75% viewability rate.
1.35M DOOH impressions generated from over 395K plays across 2.6K unique screens, driven by major networks Global, Bauer, and JCDecuax, alongside targeted support from Alight and Boomerang.