The challenge
Planet Fitness needed a steady, affordable flow of membership enquiries across its South African clubs. Gym marketing is seasonal and competitive: January resolutions spike and fade, and traditional channels were delivering leads at a cost that made always-on advertising hard to justify.
What we did
We built an always-on paid social engine led by TikTok Ads, supported by paid search for high-intent "gym near me" demand. Short-form video creative showed real clubs, real classes and real members, and every campaign drove to a simple lead form rather than a generic homepage. Creative was refreshed continuously so frequency never turned into fatigue, and budgets shifted automatically toward the audiences and placements producing the cheapest qualified enquiries.
The results
- R1.13 cost per lead across the account's lifetime, a fraction of what most fitness brands pay per enquiry.
- More than 800,000 membership leads generated from over 2 million ad clicks.
- 3.14% click-through rate, well above typical paid social benchmarks, from 66 million impressions.
- 10 to 15% of leads convert to signed-up members, so the lead flow translates directly into recurring monthly membership revenue, not just form fills.
Because the cost per lead is so low, even a conservative lead-to-member rate keeps the cost of acquiring a new paying member far below the value of their first few months of membership. That is what makes the engine worth running every day of the year, not just in January.
Why it works
The account is managed against one number: cost per signed-up member. Lead volume, click-through rate and lead-to-signup rate are all tracked through to the club level, so underperforming creative and audiences are cut quickly and winners are scaled. It is the same measurement-first approach we bring to every lead generation account.
