Localized Social Marketing Q&A: Crunch Fitness

Localized social marketing drives increased traffic and sales to local businesses. But, what are the benchmarks for success? What does it mean for marketers? And what can marketers take away from brands that are doing localized social marketing well?  

What is Localized Social Marketing, and Why Does It Matter?

Now more than ever, localized social marketing is a key driver in consumer behavior. After all, 78 percent of purchase decisions are influenced by social content, and more than 75 percent of brand engagement happens on local pages. Further, consumers now consider ratings and reviews the number one influence on their purchases. 71 percent of consumers read reviews before every purchase, and this increases to over 80 percent for consumers ages 18-35.  What these consumer behaviors and the key findings from SOCi's 2024 Consumer Behavior Index Report make clear is that a localized social marketing strategy needs to be a core component of any franchise brand’s overall marketing strategy.  As part of this content series, SOCi sat down with brands recognized as leaders in the localized social marketing space and asked a series of questions about their strategic approach so other marketers can learn best practices from the brands that are excelling! 

Crunch Fitness: A Multi-Location Brand Excelling at a Hybrid Approach to Localized Social Marketing

Crunch Fitness was recognized as a top 10 brand in the 2019 Localized Social Marketing Benchmark Report. Crunch was recognized for its performance in localized social marketing, in the form of brand’s localized presence, customer care (in the form of local ratings and reviews) and local community engagement across the top localized social marketing platforms – Google My Business, Facebook and Yelp.  

According to its website, Crunch is a multi-location franchise gym that believes in making serious exercise fun by fusing fitness and entertainment and pioneering a philosophy of ‘No Judgments.’ Aminta Iriarte, Crunch Fitness's Social Media Manager, answered the following questions on the brand’s best practices for local social media.

1. What does the term “localized social marketing” mean to you as a marketer?

Localized social marketing means getting super local on social and giving people specific information that is relevant to them. Depending on where you are in the world, you’re going to want to see different types of content from the brands or franchises that you follow on social media. It is imperative for brands to recognize this, and provide the specific types of information that they want to see or engage with. 

2. Considering the above, do you see localized social marketing as a key area of focus in your marketing mix today? Why or why not?  

Localized Social Marketing is absolutely a key area of focus for Crunch. We have more than 300 locations worldwide. So, when we post something from corporate headquarters in New York, it may not be relevant to someone who is a member of our club in Chambly, Canada. So, localizing that content to each community we serve helps increase the relevancy, likelihood for engagement, and ultimately, the probability of a Crunch membership signup. When we have someone that gets onto social and visits our gyms’ local pages on Facebook, Yelp, Google My Business, or Instagram, they need to see location-specific imagery and content. On social, it is important for the users to see photos and posts from the actual club, so they know exactly what to expect when they sign up for a membership. Without the concept of localized social marketing, we would be posting generic, corporate-branded content that is not necessarily representative of each club, or relevant to each local audience. 

3. When thinking about the areas of localized social marketing, which include local profile pages like GMB, review sites like Yelp and local social pages on site like Facebook - are these areas generally managed or maintained centrally by corporate marketing, decentrally - meaning these assets are managed at the individual local or franchise level or a hybrid of the two?

At Crunch, we have a hybrid approach to localized social marketing. At corporate, we post multiple times on the local social pages for the franchisees, which includes more generic, branded content. However, we also give the local club owners the reins to post, since we do realize how important localized content is.  With this hybrid approach, we have encountered some challenges with consistency. Some club owners just get it - they post club-specific imagery and create content that is engaging for their local audiences. But other franchisees have required a bit more assistance from corporate - they either don’t have a marketing background and find social media to be intimidating or are too focused on the day-to-day operations and can’t spend time maximizing their presence on their local pages.  At corporate, we have tried to work with these club owners to foster the relationship, showcase best practices, and empower franchisees with tools to create and manage the content. 

4. Based on the management approach mentioned above, what do you think is working really well in your program?

Franchisees feel empowered to create their own content, own their reputation, and own the brand—and some of them thrive off of that. This helps local owners feel proud of their work in the digital space. The franchisees are able to be a part of the well-established Crunch brand but add their spin to it while maintaining a positive online reputation. 

5. Based on the above-mentioned management approach, what are some key challenges or issues you are facing in your program? 

There are some challenges with our hybrid management approach. Some franchisees don’t have the time or the knowledge to dedicate to building a well-rounded localized social marketing presence and reputation. They’re too focused on the day-to-day management of the club, and they sometimes fail to see the correlation between the digital reputation management and the selling of memberships. Social doesn’t have to be a hard sell, but a lot of the local organic content tends to be focused on selling. Most of the time, our followers are already our members - so they don’t need to be sold to. Breaking that sales-only mentality has been difficult, though not impossible. While we do supplement with paid social ads, organic should be more focused on building community and providing excellent customer service. Additionally, we have experienced challenges with creative. Local imagery is key to a localized presence for the clubs, but sometimes we’ve seen low-quality, blurry images posted to local pages. When it comes to other creative, at corporate, we will make it for them, but there is a turnaround time. Some franchisees aren’t planning out their content calendars in advance, so rather than waiting for corporate to create something for them, they pull an image that is not high-quality or on-brand. 

6. If you had to select a social or review platform that would have the most impact on your franchise, which would you choose and why?

This is so tricky! In Google, we trust. But especially after watching the presentation at the 2019 Local Social Marketing Benchmark Report Reveal Event, I lean toward Google because of its localized social marketing capabilities. However, our franchisees ' Facebook audiences are very engaged. So, for our brand, Google is everything, but for our local franchisees, Facebook reigns supreme. 

7. Are you currently leveraging localized ads in social to supplement your efforts? Why or why not?

At the corporate level, we work with an agency for our digital ads. We manage all creative in-house and strictly work with the agency on managing and executing the campaigns.  Most of our digital ads focus on lead generation, and we reach our prospects by targeting lookalike audiences, followers of our competitors, and interests. Additionally, we have localized ads for certain clubs that are hosting local events or posting about club updates.

8. If there is one learning or pitfall you have learned through your localized social marketing efforts that you would like to share with other marketers, what would that be?

The number one learning for other marketers is to listen to your franchisees. One good example is that we were previously using a tool for reputation management that was made for marketers. While it had a lot of data our team was excited to have, our franchisees found it difficult to use. There was just too much information, the tool was too robust, and overall, the experience was not user-friendly. In multi-location businesses, you have to remember that franchisees are not inherently marketers. That’s not how they’re typically wired. So, give franchisees something they can actually use, and they will be more likely to use it. 

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