An extraordinary combo of brains and brawn, Rory Singer, not only has a degree in Biological Engineering, but he has also gained notoriety from his appearance on The Ultimate Fighter series. His MMA career spans AFC, KOTC, PRIDE and the UFC before setting up his MMA gym, SBG Athens, where he coaches BJJ and MMA to kids and people from all walks of life.
Singer is the thinking man’s fighter, far from being covered in tattoos, he has a business edge which comes from his Engineering degree. His work ethic stems from being brought up in New Jersey and watching his mother sometimes do a 4 hour round commute to Manhattan to work to provide everything the family needed. He has one of the most successful Gyms in Georgia (Athens), bringing UFC superstars through their ranks, like Forest Griffin and Brian Bowles. But he wanted more than UFC glory, he wanted to see what AI could do for his Membership pipeline.
Georgia hadn’t been as affected by lockdown as much as some other US states, however US research has shown that 30% of gym memberships never renewed after lockdown and 20% of those have no intention of returning. A 35% plunge in Peloton stock value last week, following successful lockdown growth, shows that people want more than just one form of exercise, finding these people who want comprehensive fitness regimens, and are ready to try challenges like MMA training, is key to filling that 30% gap in the gym market. Working smarter, not harder was key to removing leads that don’t convert to give a pipeline that converts quickly and is full of the right kind of customers.
Fiercely analytical and process driven, Singer had heard of Dream Agility’s Lead AI from some of their other US Clients and wanted to see how AI could give him better leads, higher sales, and even more success.
The Strategy
- One of the unique advantages Dream Agility has over other marketing solutions is the ability to pass the sales value back to the ad/keyword that drove the sale. Other gyms optimise their AdWords based on form fills. If you have a no show or a non-payer, they’re still down in Google as a form fill and Google will keep spending your budget on them as it’s the only measure of success that it has to go on. But when you optimise for actual sales values, the non-converting leads are eliminated from your funnel as they produce a zero value.
- They used Machine Learning on Demand (MLoD), to remove the spend in the account that hasn’t driven sales to reallocate it to where it was making revenue.
- Once the sales value began dropping back into Google, they bid competitively using Bidding Genius ® making it more expensive for competing gyms who don’t have MloD. This necessitates their competitors bid hard across everything, not just the traffic that converts to sales. In turn, this drives up their competitor’s costs and costs per lead, whilst simultaneously keeping SBG at the top of the rankings.
The Results
The results have been outstanding and outstripped the other gyms in Singers gym owners networks.
- Revenues are up 335%
- ROAS (return on ad spend) is up 108%
- Costs only up by 109%.
- The funnel has better quality customers, who convert faster, leaving the sales staff feeling more motivated and the gym buzzing with enthusiastic customers.
Singer says, “Working with Dream Agility has been like training with a top MMA team, constant analysis of performance, iterative process, and laser like precision have been key to us growing faster than other
martial arts academies – their desire to beat the competition is as strong as ours.”
As well as developing a suit of proprietary tech for optimising paid search, Dreamagility.com also have an MMA gym with 3 black belts, including their CTO, nestled in the unsuspecting village of Ramsbottom, so are fully aligned to getting results in the fitness sector and manage gyms all over the US.
