Home fitness marketing strategies
When great marketing resonates, it feels like the brand is communicating directly with you. Let's explore the best and worse marketing within the home fitness industry.
Understand the target customer
If you’re lucky enough to have millions of customers subscribing to your services, then you’ll have a huge amount of data to profile your customer base. In the absence of this, marketing teams can survey potential customers to understand demographics.
In my survey of Peloton members, it become clear that Peloton has a female bias, are more likely to be over 30 years old, with a household income above $200,000.
Peloton initially marketed its product within homes worthy of millionaires and rightly so, given the high incomes of its early adopters.
Understand customer needs
To deliver an impactful marketing campaign it has to speak directly to the customer needs. What is the problem you’re solving for your potential customers?
As you can see from the chart above, likelihood to workout is a real benefit of using the Peloton. The customer need of a convenient fitness solution is a powerful reason to use the product. At the bottom of the ranking is weight loss. Therefore home fitness brands should avoid messages about weight loss or transformation.
So how did Peloton get it so wrong?
Christmas 2019 was a time to forget for Peloton, facing a huge backlash for its ‘sexist’ and ‘dystopian’ advert that showed a now famous actress gifted a Peloton. Putting the sexist undertones to one side, its main message was transformation:
"A year ago, I didn't realise how much this would change me,"
Peloton has since deleted the advert from YouTube. Its share price took a monumental hit, but Covid came and further established the customer need of a convenient fitness solution.
Peloton switched focus, thereafter choosing to highlight its amazing instructors. Look at the its latest advert below; instructors are the glue that ties members together.
Peloton’s instructors are the secret sauce that keeps members hooked. They create a strong link between themselves and members, boosting loyalty and providing a rich experience that members love. It’s extremely astute to focus on them when members rate them so highly (see chart below).
What happens when you get it wrong?
Vaha is a German company and I spent time on its website, browsing the product and understanding the brand. I was intrigued by images of friends in your home watching the workout. But who works out with friends watching? This feels totally off and misses the main customer need entirely.
A similarly bizarre photo shows a friend helping with form during exercise. Perhaps I’m missing the customer need but how many of us work out in front of friends and ask for help with your yoga form? Perhaps it makes sense from a commercial perspective to get as many people in a household using your product, but it’s not authentic.
Peloton’s advert above shows a similar scenario with a mother and daughter working out together:
“Those of us that work out together, stay together.”
Perhaps this type of group activity has increase during the pandemic? It certainly doesn’t feel authentic. Have people purchased home fitness equipment to workout together? think not.
Nordic track looks for greatness and misses
“Here I find greatness”
There’s no mention of the product need, rather it’s positioned as pushing yourself to greatness. The advert is about transformation and we know how they went for Peloton. A huge miss.
Tonal nailed it in 2018
The advert speaks about its instructors, convenience, with a mixture of men and women. It explains the product in some detail and reemphasises the convenience of working out at home. It nails the customer need for home fitness.
Sponsoring professional athletes
Zwift has sponsored a number of high profile cyclists and triathletes. High profile names like Lucy Charles-Barclay, Mathieu van der Poel, Geraint Thomas and most recently cycling team L39ION of Los Angeles.
Athletic endorsements benefit brands in two key areas:
Positive effect on ad recall
Positive effect on purchase intent
The aim is to cement the relationship between its brand and the athlete. Brands want to build a lasting connection between the athletes, meaning whenever you see that person, you think of the brand. There is also an added benefit of your chosen athlete promoting your product via Instagram.
Vaha has a bizarre athletic endorsement
A somewhat strange choice for Vaha is Manuel Neuer, the professional footballer. In the video below you see Manuel doing floor based exercises with little interaction between with the Vaha equipment. It’s one of the more bizarre athletic endorsements I’ve seen. We know that Peloton has a female bias, so picking a male footballer sounds odd.
Peloton Champions
Peloton has chosen to sponsor the following Olympic athletes to coincide with the Olympic games in Japan. Each athlete has already mentioned Peloton on their respective Instagram pages with Usain Bolt the most followed, regularly posting videos of him using his Peloton to workout. (More on Peloton Champions here).
There are six women (66%) and three men (33%) and therefore a female bias, which correlates to the number of female instructors and class count. It’s exactly aligned to your main customer set with a mix of male and female athletes.
Recommendations
Understand your target customer and make adverts specifically for them
Speak about the needs of your customers - convenience being a key selling point for home fitness
Consider every message and make it authentic - commercial benefits are rarely customer benefits
Athletic endorsements can provide positive associations with your brand but choose the athlete that matches your target customer
If you enjoyed this newsletter, subscribe to receive future editions directly in your inbox, every week. I write analysis on Peloton and home fitness.