Marketing in Fitness Post 8 - A Look at an Indoor Cycling Studio's Marketing Strategy (An Interview).

Hello again Jtrain Nation!

I'm back with post 8 in my "Marketing in Fitness" series! In this post, I will give you the transcript of an interview I conducted with Chris of Applied Fitness Cycle, a small business located in Manassas, Virginia that specializes in providing indoor cycling classes. Chris is extremely passionate about what he does, and left a government job to pursue a career around his love for cycling. I sat down to ask him a few questions about his business, including the marketing strategies he currently uses and plans to use to help elevate his business to continue doing what he loves.

1. What is Applied Fitness Cycle?  An indoor cycle studio that also allows you to bring your own bike and ride it in class. We provide Hand Krank cycles as well. There is only one of its kind in America.

2. Who is behind AFC?  Myself and my Wife Sarah.  My brother who is paralyzed from the chest down was part of the inspiration to include the hand krank cycles. We provide a safe environment for disabled athletes.

3. What do you offer? 20 Real Ryder Bikes, 5 Hand krank cycles and 10 trainers to connect your own bike to.

4. What makes AFC unique?  Our Real Ryder bikes move so it feels like a real bike or at least as close as you can get indoors, we are the only gym in NOVA that offer them.  Also, we offer on and off the bike classes for a complete workout and additional specialty classes like Cycle Yoga, Krank Cycle, and Cycle Bootcamp.

5. What kind of image are you trying to portray with AFC?  We are family friendly environment, a safe place to workout at most ages and levels, our youngest member is 9 and our oldest it 72. 

6. Who is your target market?  Indoor cycling is unique because just about anyone can ride a bike so anyone who is at least 4'11 and wants to give effort is considered our target market.  We do break it down into three general groups for marketing references: stay at home parent, disabled athlete, and the advanced/pro athlete.

7. What form of marketing are you investing most in / rely most on?  We mostly invest in Money Mailers but we use social media the most. It's mostly free and boosting a FB post is much cheaper and can still reach thousands of people for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional marketing.  Word of mouth is everything for us so I consider building relationships within our members a huge marketing tool, another reason we try to get our members out of the studio for rides, swims, runs and races.

8. Do you feel online marketing is important to your business? Why or why not? See previous answer.

If you ARE utilizing online marketing, what platforms are you utilizing most / think have been most successful?  Facebook and Twitter along with our own website.

9. Do you use any analytical tools to examine / understand who is viewing / engaging in your product? Do you use search optimization tools to make it easier for people to find your stuff?  Google analytics is something that we live and die by, numbers are checked daily and we actually rearrange our website if we find people are looking at pages first or second and how long.  Also, we can target where they come from when they come to our website and put more effort and/or money into that.

10. Do you have any future plans to help improve your marketing campaigns? Will it be online or offline and why?  We are always trying to improve our marketing on and offline.  For example, we print out triathlon specific rack cards to pass out at triathlons but then print out "loosing the baby weight with indoor cycling" for our marketing at baby expo's. We are currently making videos to try and spread the word about what we do as well, classes all the way to how to videos.  Also, building strategic partnerships with other local businesses is huge for us, helps with marketing costs if we all want to chip in for a banner for a race or just having our info on their website.

11. Where can people go to find out more about AFC?  @AFCManasses for FB and Twitter and www.appliedfitnesscycle.com

-Jtrain
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