The Client

Founded in 2010, Boca Raton, Florida-based Orangetheory Fitness revolutionized the fitness industry with innovative one-hour coach-led full body workouts that focused on training endurance, strength and power. Using heart rate-based interval training to match workout intensity with members’ fitness levels, Orangetheory is helping people live longer, more vibrant lives in studios across the United States and 23 other countries, with nearly 1,200 studios in the U.S. alone.

Challenge

In 2018, Orangetheory hired Tombras, an advertising agency headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, to lead its SEO strategy. The first step the two took was to create a single source of truth for all of Orangetheory’s studios using the Reputation platform, as managing up-to-date information for each of Orangetheory’s locations was tricky to begin with and made even more challenging when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020.

As the pandemic began to unfold and spread, all of Orangetheory’s studios were forced to close. The company remained committed to creating the best possible customer experience, however, so Orangetheory proactively paused all membership payments and announced free at-home versions of its in-studio workouts.

“For the first time ever, Tombras was actively encouraging people not to visit a local Orangetheory Fitness studio,” says Jay Bolling, Senior SEO Manager at Tombras. Manually updating Google Business Profiles to reflect temporary closures and reroute people to this virtual fitness offering was time- and cost-prohibitive, as up to 90 studios were closing daily. Instead, the company looked to Reputation’s Business Listings module to complete rapid, efficient, and most importantly — correct — business listing updates as needed.

The integration between Reputation and Google made updating all of the business listings a seamless, hassle-free process. Plus, by eliminating error-prone manual updating, Reputation enabled much higher business listings accuracy.”

Jay Bolling, Senior SEO Manager at Tombras Group

Solution

As Orangetheory’s single source of truth for up-to-date, accurate studio information, Reputation enabled Tombras to pivot quickly, align with their client’s customer-first strategy and ensure the new Orangetheory At Home™ offering gained online visibility and traction. Tombras also leveraged the platform to provide communities with the latest information as local Orangetheory studios re-opened.

“We relied on Reputation’s bulk upload feature to eliminate the time-consuming manual work of updating each individual listing by hand, which would have taken hours per day,” says Bolling. Bolling also pointed out that Google’s “Temporarily Closed” feature was new at the time, and would have slowed the process had it not been for Reputation’s API integration with Google.

“The integration between Reputation and Google made updating all of the business listings a seamless, hassle-free process,” Bolling says. “Plus, by eliminating error-prone manual updating, Reputation enabled much higher business listings accuracy.”

Results

With accurate business listings and great reviews, Orangetheory locations continue to rank high in search results and drive brand awareness and website traffic, despite intermittent closures. The company now enjoys 99.7% business listings accuracy and an average star rating of over 4.5 stars.

Additionally, more than 1.8 million people have been introduced to the Orangetheory At Home™ offering, which positions the brand for continued success.

“As a foundational element of our SEO strategy, Reputation delivers tremendous value to Orangetheory by ensuring local communities have accurate, timely information about nearby studios and alternative services,” says Bolling. “This helps keep members engaged and active, providing a competitive advantage for Orangetheory now and in the months ahead.”

Outcomes

By proactively understanding what would be important to their clients, addressing business listing inaccuracies, and offering ways to provide similar home-based fitness services, Orangetheory and Tombras have been able to: 

• Achieve an extremely high business listings accuracy 
• Earn and maintain a 4.5+ average star rating
• Leverage its Orangetheory At Home™ program to engage with more than 1.8 million people during the pandemic

Conclusion

By partnering with Reputation, Orangetheory and Tombras have turned “fitness” and “wellness” from facility- and location-specific concepts to lifelong mindsets and behaviors that their customers take with them wherever they go.