Case Study - Boxing Woest
A Fight for Attention and Retention
“When Junior Bauwens wanted to start a boxing club, he knew he would be entering a totally different arena. He would have to deal with business plans and start making money from pretty much Day One. And he realised online marketing would make or break it.”
When former Youth World Champion and multiple European Boxing Champion Junior Bauwens asks you to help put his Boxing Club on the map, you don’t think twice. And you don’t negotiate prices too hard either. You get to work. And you make sure his website gets hits, so you don’t.
I’m kidding of course. Outside of the ring, Junior is one of the most easy-going people you’ll ever meet. Always in for a laugh, Junior doesn’t worry easily. However, when he decided to retire from professional boxing, he and his lovely wife Daphne (no stranger to the ring either) did worry quite a bit. When they wanted to start a boxing club, they knew they would be entering a totally different arena. They would have to deal with business plans and start making money from pretty much Day One. And they realised online marketing would make or break it. So Brandtag came to the rescue.
This battle would be won or lost on Google. On social media. And on their own website. And it would take the same dedication both of them display in the ring.
A website that’s easy to maintain for the Woesties
And that currently ranks top 3 in Google
Round 1: the website
After they thought up a name and a logo for the club, we got to work. A website was the obvious first step. The requirements for the website were pretty straightforward:
Fast time-to-market
Easy to update
SEO friendly templates
Smooth integrations of third party apps
Pricing model inline with the growth of the club
We decided to go for a Squarespace website and started from the Moksha template. We then organised a photo shoot with Jan Opdekamp from Junior preparing CEO’s for their first boxing match and started filling the website with content. Daphne turned out to be quite the copywriter. Jef Boes made a wonderful introduction video and Niko Caignie was kind enough to allow us to use his photos from a previous shoot.
We were up and running in three weeks after Daphne and Junior had found the name for the Boxing Club. Woest was now officially live.
Round 2: getting hits from Google and Social Media
Junior and Daphne had the zeitgeist on their side. With an annual growth of 15%, boxing is clearly on the rise in Flanders. With 21 clubs in the province of Oost-Vlaanderen alone, the competition amongst boxing clubs in Ghent is quite fierce. Some of these clubs are amongst the oldest clubs in Belgium and some enjoy a strong reputation amongst boxers.
However, we had a few aces up our sleeves too. None of the other clubs could say that had former European Champion Junior Bauwens as a head-coach. The targeting of women via the ‘Kick-ass Ladies’ sessions also proved a real hit. Next to that, we put a lot of effort in Google My Business from day one. We kindly asked members to leave a review and nearly all of them rated them with a perfect score.
Furthermore, Woest turned into a real community, with a hyperactive Facebook Group and a very lively Instagram feed, all contributing to the online presence from the club.
Results of these efforts? Woest pretty much dominates the online arena: they rank number one and three in Google on broad searches such as ‘boxing club’ and they are omnipresent on social media.
Round 3: taking the courses online
In the area of online attention, it’s fair to say that Daphne and Junior pretty much K.O.-ed the competition online. That translates to Real-Life success: after less than a year, Woest was already growing out of their training facilities. However, they didn’t get where they are today by resting on their laurels. So when Corona gave them a nasty surprise uppercut, Junior and Daphne didn’t stay on the canvas for long. Within a week, they integrated online coaching sessions in their website and that also proves a fierce success.
There’s just no stopping Woest.
Woesties can subscribe online