Multi-site leisure operator · 40+ UK centres
Scaling free-trial sign-ups across 40+ leisure centres
How we took over the Google and Meta advertising for a national leisure operator and turned free-trial sign-ups into a system, growing them nearly fourfold while driving the cost of each one right down.
UK leisure centres on one programme
free-trial sign-ups per year
cost per free-trial sign-up
The client
A national leisure operator running 40+ centres across the UK. Free trials are the front door to membership for a leisure brand, so every site needs a steady, affordable flow of people signing up to try the facilities. That’s the same multi-location challenge a franchise network faces: one brand, dozens of local sites, all needing leads at a price that makes sense.
The challenge
We took over the Google and Meta advertising for the whole estate. The campaigns were generating free-trial sign-ups, but inconsistently and expensively, some months cost more than £60 to win a single sign-up on search, and volume swung wildly from one month to the next. The brief was to turn that into a predictable, efficient engine that could scale sign-ups without the cost per sign-up scaling with it.
What we did
Rebuilt the campaigns around the sign-up. We restructured Google and Meta so every pound was working toward a free-trial sign-up, not just clicks or impressions, and set up the tracking to prove it.
Cut the wasted spend. Tighter targeting, negative keywords and better audience selection stopped the budget chasing traffic that never converted, which is what had been inflating the cost per sign-up.
Refreshed the creative and copy. New ad copy and creative lifted click-through and conversion rates, so more of every click turned into an actual sign-up.
Scaled what worked. Once the cost per sign-up was under control, we scaled budget into the campaigns and sites that performed, growing volume without letting efficiency slip.
The results
Free-trial sign-ups on Google
This was the standout. Over the period we managed it, annual free-trial sign-ups on Google grew from around 1,900 to over 7,300, close to four times the volume. Crucially, we did it while bringing the cost per sign-up down from roughly £38 to about £14, a reduction of around 60%. More sign-ups and a lower cost for each, at the same time, which is the combination most paid-media accounts never manage.
Free-trial leads on Meta
On Meta, we grew year-on-year lead volume by around 12% while cutting cost per lead by roughly 13%, from £14.50 to £12.60, on a broadly flat budget. Steady, efficient growth to complement the search scaling.
A predictable front door to membership
The result was a free-trial engine the operator could rely on: more people trying their centres every month, at a cost per sign-up that kept falling as we scaled, across all 40+ sites. The unpredictable, expensive spend became a system that fed memberships at every location.
Multiple sites, one marketing budget?
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