Fernwood Carlton is a women’s only gym in Carlton, Melbourne. The club offers personal training, nutrition advice and group fitness including Body Pump, yoga and FIIT30. Part of the Fernwood Fitness franchise network with its own local membership base, Carlton has become a community hub for women in the area.
Grew from 668 to 912 members, a 36% lift.
First time Carlton has broken 900, an eight-year ceiling.
244 net new members, 668 to 912.
Every Fernwood club ran the same national Meta creative, including Carlton. That messaging spoke to the Fernwood brand at a network level and missed the specific Carlton demographic and local motivations. Carlton’s 900-member ceiling had held for only two months at any point since 2017. Growth required a Meta strategy built from Carlton’s own audience up.
The path past the 900 ceiling was audience-led. Three connected workstreams: define Carlton’s audience and personas, build persona-specific Meta campaigns, then capture and nurture every lead directly into the booking funnel.
Growth started with audience clarity. We mapped Carlton’s local audience by age, life stage, catchment location, and the fitness pain points driving them to consider a gym. From there we built specific personas: time-poor professionals, mothers returning to fitness, women focused on weight loss, and members chasing specific strength or wellbeing goals. Each persona became its own campaign structure with distinct messaging and offers.
Every persona ran two parallel ad tracks concurrently. The first carried offers (trials and joining incentives). The second spoke to the specific pain-point barrier (time, confidence, results). We tested three creative concepts per persona at a time, blending video, static and carousel formats, pausing underperformers after seven days and scaling winners. Offer and creative cycled every two to four weeks to keep CPL moving.
Every lead captured through Meta flowed directly into the club’s CRM. On submission, an automated sequence kicked off to book the lead into a club tour. We integrated Zipleads as the nurture layer to keep contact warm and recover leads that didn’t book immediately. The result was a conversion funnel where speed to lead ran as a system, independent of who was on the floor.
The campaign broke every previous Carlton growth benchmark. Membership moved past the 900-member ceiling for the first time in a sustained way, reaching 912 and still growing.
Membership grew from 668 to 912, a 36% lift. The club’s prior peak of 900 had held for only two months since 2017.
912 members is a new all-time record, breaking an eight-year ceiling at 900. The club is still growing past it.
244 net new paying members. Each one acquired through persona-led Meta campaigns and the automated booking funnel.
“Excellent results across the board. JBE’s Meta strategy has taken Fernwood Carlton past 900 members for the first time, setting a new all-time record for the club. Really appreciate the work from Joel and the team, they’ve made a strong impact and I’d recommend them to any gym looking to grow.”
Angelo Saltarelli
Fernwood Carlton
A free audit shows you exactly where trust breaks down between awareness and revenue, and what it’s costing you. You’ll walk away with a clear picture of what to fix first, with no obligation. Built for established businesses ready to scale.
