How Moving Her Business Online Helped PJ Build a Fitness Empire

PJ Wren is a certified fitness trainer and coach who helps women over 40 become fitter, stronger, and more confident.

At the beginning of 2020, she owned and operated her own fitness studio—then the pandemic hit and she was forced to pivot. After moving her business online and creating a series of at-home workouts, her audience and revenue exploded.

Conversion rates as high as 66% | Over 43,000 leads in just 2 years

Today, PJ continues to grow her community by sharing workout tips on her YouTube channel and selling various fitness and nutrition plans on her website Fitness with PJ.

PJ’s story

Always passionate about fitness and health, PJ became a certified personal trainer in 1995 and has worked in the fitness industry ever since.

She got her start by working for local gyms, steadily building her clientele and making a name for herself. PJ quickly realized that working for other people wasn’t for her, so as soon as she was able to she started renting space and running her own group fitness classes, primarily for women over 40.

During this time, she was also posting at-home workouts on her YouTube channel, but with very few views it seemed that her best bet was to continue growing her in-person business.

In 2017 PJ opened her own studio and she found herself with a steady stream of clients who were eager to join her classes. Heading into 2020, she had plans to expand to multiple locations and take her business to the next level.

Forced to change directions

Just like every other gym and fitness company, PJ’s business was severely impacted by the pandemic. With isolation orders in place and no one able to come to her studio, she was forced to give up her lease and abandon any plans for expansion.

But then something interesting happened.

Remember those YouTube videos she had posted that no one was watching? Well, people started watching them. And they loved them.

“In the 30 days after the world shut down my YouTube analytics took a hockey stick straight up and I got a ton of comments saying ‘where have you been all of my life?’ To which I responded ‘here, for the last seven years, with like 100 views.’”

PJ immediately saw the potential for a new type of fitness venture and went all in on building an online business.

Finding her niche

As anyone who has looked for workout programs on the internet knows, the online fitness industry is extremely saturated. So, PJ knew that she needed to differentiate herself.

Up until this point, her online content was aimed at an extremely wide audience. However, her in-person business had always been geared toward women over 40, so she doubled down on that audience.

PJ hired a marketing company to create a message that appealed to her target market. Her new brand focused on getting healthy and building strength, rather than simply getting skinny.

And it worked. Her new videos and at-home workout programs were a massive success, so much so that her online venture began to eclipse the results she achieved with her in-person business.

Leveling up her business with Leadpages

PJ quickly realized the importance of building an email list, so she started doing fitness challenges that required her audience to submit their email addresses.

There was just one problem: thousands of people were trying to sign up, which was slowing down and even crashing her website.

“I was tired of the emails and the comments on our Facebook page saying ‘I tried to sign up but I couldn’t.’ The worst thing for a business owner to read is that someone is trying to get your product but they can’t.”

PJ asked around and discovered most of her friends who were running online businesses were using Leadpages to promote and deliver their offers. So, she decided to give the platform a try.

Not only did Leadpages prevent her pages from crashing, but she also saw her conversion rates go up.

With reliable and higher-performing landing pages in place, PJ has been able to steadily increase both her leads and her sales.

Challenges

As someone who had primarily run a brick-and-mortar business for most of her career, PJ needed a digital marketing solution that was user-friendly, even for beginners. Ideally, she wanted to be able to create landing pages herself, without having to hire expensive developers.

She also needed a proven landing page solution with a history of converting visitors into leads. Her business depended on converting YouTube viewers to email subscribers. Once someone was on her email list she could start promoting her paid products.

Another issue was sending email addresses from her landing page to her email list. PJ used Mailchimp to send emails to her audience, so any lead generation platform she used had to integrate with that tool.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, PJ drove a lot of traffic to her landing pages. So, whatever lead generation tool she chose had to be able to handle that traffic without slowing down or crashing.

How Leadpages helped

250+ templates and a no-code Drag & Drop Builder

Leadpages makes creating new landing pages quick and easy. All PJ has to do is choose a template, customize her text, images, and colors with the Drag & Drop Builder, and then click publish. She can do all of this herself in a day or less.

“The templates are built based on Leadpages experience with what pages convert the best, but they also allow you to be creative and put your own stamp on the page.”

Conversion rates 3x the industry average

Every Leadpages template is built with conversions in mind, so PJ is already off to a great start when she starts building a new page. Even better—over ten years in business, Leadpages landing pages’ conversion rates are triple the industry average.

Seamless integrations

While Leadpages offers a complete lead generation solution, it also plays nice with other digital marketing tools. PJ can easily integrate her Leadpages account with Mailchimp, along with a wide wide range of CRMs, analytics, and ecommerce platforms.

Crazy fast load times

All Leadpages landing pages are served by Leadpages’ servers, allowing pages to load 2.4 times faster than the industry average—even when traffic is high.

Results

Conversion rates as high as 66%

PJ combines her exceptional fitness content with Leadpages’ fully-optimized landing pages to achieve some amazing results. She regularly sees conversion rates over 50%, with her best page converting at 66%.

Over 43,000 leads in just 2 years

Since joining Leadpages, PJ has generated an incredible number of leads for her business. This is a testament to not only the quality of her pages but also the value she provides to her audience.

What’s next for PJ?

In addition to her Fitness with PJ brand, she’s also started a second business called Over Fifty Fitness, which focuses on exercise plans for women over the age of 50. She sees big growth opportunities for both brands, now that people’s eyes have been opened to both the possibilities and convenience that home workouts have to offer.

Overall, her goal is to reach more women, teach them exercises that work for their bodies, and motivate them to find a deeper meaning to their fitness journey than just fat loss. While revenue and numbers are great, she’s more concerned with building deeper connections and leaving the fitness industry in a better state than it is now.

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