All Things Fitness and Wellness

Future of Fitness Business Marketing: AI Search & SEO Strategies | MarketFit by ATFW

• Krissy Vann

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The fitness industry is entering a new era where AI-driven search and SEO strategies are redefining how businesses reach and engage members. In this episode of MarketFit by ATFW, hosted by Krissy Vann, we bring together a panel of experts to discuss how enterprise-level fitness operators can adapt to AI search, Google Gemini, and evolving SEO demands.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
-Why AI search is changing the rules for SEO
-How to show up in ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and AI overview results
-Why technical SEO remains essential for digital success
-Real-world insights from a Fitness World case study

Actionable strategies enterprise fitness operators can implement now
This panel delivers the strategic insights fitness executives need to future-proof their marketing and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Empower your digital presence with Americaneagle.com. From cutting-edge web development to data-driven digital marketing, Americaneagle.com delivers measurable results that will accelerate your business forward. Get started with a Website & SEO Health Check. Contact Americaneagle.com today.

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for every one chat GPT search that's done there are 337 Google searches so it has made a big impact it's already forcing people to other areas to do their searching and to find information that they're looking for but Google is still a huge powerhouse and they get about 68% of the searches to this day we have to make sure that we're showing up on chat GPT we have to make sure that we're showing up in Google's Gemini search results and the AI overview section and all of those things are true no doubt but SEO is the way that you're gonna get there welcome to Market Fit by ATF W the show where we explore the strategy shaping the future of fitness business marketing in today's episode we're breaking down how AI and evolving search behaviors are transforming SEO you'll learn what it takes to show up in chat GPT Google's Gemini results and AI overviews and why strong technical SEO is still the foundation for success we're joined by Chris Smith CEO of Fitness World along with Tony Stein vice president of digital marketing sales at American eagle.com and Matt Kirtley SEO team lead at American eagle.com who joins us virtually together they share real world insights and a fitness world case study that reveals what's actually moving the needle in digital marketing today this episode is brought to you by American eagle.com empower your digital presence with American eagle.com from cutting edge web development to data driven digital marketing American eagle.com delivers measurable results that accelerate your business forward get started with a website and SEO health check contact American eagle.com today I'm your host Chrissy Van and this is ATF w AI optimization content development they're buzzwords that get thrown around basically every single seminar that we went to last year every single show that we went to last year you hear the words but I found Anthony and I you and I talked about this people tend to get a lot less granular than I feel they should in regards to understanding what is moving the needle so that is what we were talking about today from the marketing side in fitness business we're gonna be giving a real world case study with Fitness World and that's why I'll introduce here we have CEO Chris Smith joining us so thanks so much for having us at your gym well thanks Christine and Tony for making the effort to come all the way from Chicago to beautiful Vancouver British Columbia we're glad you made the trip yeah it's a pleasure I have not had a chance to be out here in the beautiful summertime usually we're out here in like October November raining hmm 2 degrees Celsius well done yeah we've trained you well yeah exactly I gotta convert when I'm out here um but no really really honored to be here and uh embark in this conversation because it is a hot topic obviously and it's one that we always get so frustrated about because no one ever takes the time to actually talk about the real tactics and sort of elements to AI that that businesses can implement to really make an impact well Tony you're joining us from American eagle.com and I understand that you also have a colleague that's gonna be looped into the conversation here so on his behalf can you introduce him for us yeah absolutely Matt curtly he's one of our top uh SEOs in uh the organization he uh he oversees our entire SEO and AIO department um he's really leading the the the way as it relates to AI and AIO and AI mode and all of the things that are related to AI and how it can really help our clients so um excited for for Matt to be a part of this and incorporate him into the conversation um throughout different uh segments that we go through today well I'm glad that we're getting granular because that started to sound like a nursery rhyme with a I O a I O a I O it's a lot it's a lot and that's the thing the game is changing so swiftly so we're going to start with the basics here Tony what does AI optimization actually involve when it comes to fitness marketing yeah I think uh AI gets thrown around a lot like I'd mentioned and it's it's not about just being a fancy technology word um it really is about using data to make every touch point with your customer base your member base your potential members um a smarter touch point a more personalized interaction and um often times there are misperceptions out there around how AI is taking over the world and how you know there's no more value in sort of SEO or paid ad campaigns or some of the more traditional forms of digital marketing and that's just simply not true and we're gonna get into the weeds on why that's the case here in in just a few minutes yeah and yourself Chris you're kind of an early adopter in your business or at least from conversations that we have had you've seemed keen from the get go on AI yeah I mean I definitely tried to lean into it from a personal perspective and certainly encouraged anyone that you know works for me reports directly to me from an executive perspective to yeah use the tools and figure out the resources that are available and accessible and you know even with all those conversations I think we're still playing from behind'cause the speed that everything is moving at is just I mean it's difficult to keep up um and so yeah but we're definitely leaning in uh everywhere that it makes sense to well through the conversation I'm looking forward to cause we do have a real world case study that involves Fitness World and American eagle.com in regards to implementation but Tony you mentioned there there's misconceptions so what are the primary ones that keep coming up yeah I think um a lot of people are devaluing uh investment in SEO or in um PPC and and some of the other paid ad campaign efforts um online because we have to make sure that we're showing up on chat GPT we have to make sure that we're showing up in um Google's Gemini search results and the AI overview section and all of those things are true no doubt but SEO is the way that you're gonna get there and having good foundational SEO good technical SEO on your site is a critical piece in making sure that you have the right components to be able to appear in all of those different AI searches um you know it's kind of a fun fact right now but for every one chat GPT search that's done there are 337 Google searches so it has made a big impact it's already forcing people to go other to other areas um to to do their searching and to find information that they're looking for but Google is still a huge powerhouse and they get about 68% of the searches to this I'm really glad that you threw down that stat because I had a friend the other day I'm a heavy user of AI especially in the podcast space there's so many different ways that it's added an exponent to what I'm capable of doing and gaining reach and all the rest of it but I had a friend that was like did you know for every chat GPT it drains a bottle of water and I was like I don't know whether that's fact or fiction but at the end of the day yeah it does sound like a cap and I was like this is the way the future is going like there's no avoiding it so I'm really happy that it was a useful stat versus that but when it comes this is spot on it is it is changing so fast and it's changing so fast that we are all being forced to sort of figure it out together right there's obviously things that we've been doing for the last 12 to 18 months to prepare for this time but you're never gonna be fully prepared and it's changing so quickly that we need clients like Fitness World we need clients like United Airlines and some of our other bigger brand clients to be able to invest in the activities that we can to be able to learn and and it's trial and error to an extent but that data is what's really gonna help us drive drive things forward well when you look at the goal is it more automation or like deeper strategy or where do the two intertwine I think it's all of that but I would also just you know again you don't have to pay attention too closely and it's kind of really all on your face around the the space race of you know meta and what you know they're doing under you know Zuckerberg in terms of going out to acquire top talent AI and what Google is doing and all that and then historically all of those companies have made the training from a marketing purpose is free to people right so it's blueprint and then there's this certification and Google certified and UPS bottles everyone will certify you for free cause ultimately they want you to spend money on their platforms so even with all this stuff like all this enhancement that they're doing they're still gonna want they're they're they're revenue based companies right they're publicly traded companies revenue is critical to them so they're creating these tools and these assets for businesses and companies to leverage in in a smart way um and it's just really like where do you do that and how do you do that again every business is different so again in our in our business so we can talk about we're gonna talk about a little bit later in more detail around you know the concierge services and what does that look like and how does it sound like um but again like you know there's just so many areas that can impact the business and it's just it's really limitless you know one of the things I always hear from my team is that you know and again that's it's true and it's not like it's a a bad thing for anyone that's what Chris you have to remember that the team isn't you so when you want the the the you know the script if you will or the experience to sound like this or feel like this like our average team member can't do that well AI can in fact I could make it my voice if I wanted to or I could use all my words and then have it sound like your voice cause no offense to the fans out there you sound a lot better than I do I'm not you're not scary I'm scary so I can make it my words but sound like you and that's what AI can do and so again where does that intersection what does it look like and again I think its impact will be everywhere again if it if applied the right ways at the right speed and just got to be able to keep up right cause it's just it's moving yeah oh honestly I think of how I had it integrated my own work flows even three months ago compared to now it is radically different and kind of you you speak to it in a roundabout way there about it capturing your voice your tone learning you knowing you I've done so many interviews where they talk about data is the new gold so how important is that data and how underutilized is it because I feel like that's something that comes up with the operators where they have all this information but it's not being implemented into strategy effectively in the long term it's figuring out are we growing over time with our whole presence online and that is goes beyond just SEO and this is something that AI is really forcing us to do which is you can't just sprinkle some keywords on some pages anymore not that you ever really could but it you have to have a picture of your business that if a machine could come online and just look at everything on the internet and go who are you what do you do is you need to be looking at these bigger stats like how many mentions do I have online how many of those are linked uh how are people talking about me and where are they talking about me you're gonna have all your first party data or the data you collect immediately on your website and that will be what you have the closest to you you can use most often but you'll also need to start looking more broadly at uh what are the trends in my industry am I being spoken about in relationship to those trends and you're gonna need ways to track that and see like am I being left out of the broader conversation and if you are what are you gonna do about that do you have a plan for working that into your marketing working that into your content strategies into your social strategies and and in the end all just your brand as a in as a whole do we feel like we are being represented for who we are and does the data back that up are we ranking for those keywords are we showing up on those platforms um when we do some sentiment analysis using things like AI do we even get seen as related to the things we hope we would be so those will be the things I would start with just quick wins what can I do today to improve my website if I want to go write an article but long term what are the bigger trends and what are the metrics I can track for things like mentions backlinks and that growth of your brand overall more insights ahead but first a quick thank you to our sponsor empower your Digital Presence with American eagle.com from cutting edge web development to data driven digital marketing American eagle.com delivers measurable results that will accelerate your business forward get started with a website and SEO health check contact American eagle.com today and now back to the conversation it's kind of crazy to think about but you know two years ago we had this huge shift from Universal Analytics to GA four which threw data upside down and everybody was trying to figure that out and as soon as we sort of start to understand the changes and the nuances to collecting the data and understanding the data and using it to make um smart business decisions now we have this world of AI that is a whole different level of of need for data and AI won't work if the data is bad right like it will work but it will it'll provide you with really bad information and if you don't have that human element to vet out whether or not that information is accurate and you just publish it live now you look like a complete goofball because people are gonna read right through that and so that I guess in a in a in roundabout way also sort of communicates to the need of of having that human interaction tied to AI which is building your strategy yeah I mean to the level set it right so like Tony I were talking about this but you know really if you're enterprise level it's like well what do you need enterprise level to leverage AI well you have to have a data warehouse and the data has to be accurate you gotta be able to you know access that data in real time and then from there the automation and the AI stuff and all those workflows that you're gonna create from an experiential standpoint whether you're talking about saving a member if you're talking about upgrading a member if you're talking about I'm gonna try to get a member to engage in personal training or I'm trying to just to simply increase the lifetime value of that member again there's all these different places you could measure success or where experientially the AI is going to come in but if you don't have the data you're in trouble right and that used to be we would just say BI right like what is your BI what is your business intelligence tools but we're kind of moving into this stream especially I would say at the enterprise level where yeah you just you're gonna have to make some strategic investments um be intelligent about it again to just move your business based on whatever your objectives are right I think the challenge for a lot of the the smaller operators out there is how to use AI intelligently and you know that might not have the same physical resources and so that's gonna be a maybe a little more of a challenge but nonetheless I think they can draft off of other operators that are gonna make the committed capital investment right by partnering with people like American Eagle who will know like the the the playbook if you will right cause they are working with a lot of big enterprise operators and and have the ability to kind of say well here's what we know here's what we Learned and here's how we think we could apply it to to your business so I think there's also an opportunity for smaller companies to kind of draft you know it's probably the right word right just get might not be the first the tip of the spear but you'll be able to kind of still use the same tools yeah well and then there's a use case that's tested because they probably as you say or allude to they don't really have the capital to take the risk whereas enterprise at least you can do know what works and weed it out because we are still learning of what's effective and what is not but on the data side of things I know I had an interview with um be Bill Davis the CEO of ABC Fitness and they had just done a study and it talked a little bit about some of the consumer distrust when it comes to data so when you're looking for partners to work with that's working with this data how important is it to you in regards to the security side of how this information or Intel is being utilized yeah I mean that's always Paramount right and so there's a multiple certifications even depending what country you're in in terms of what's required or not required but yeah that's always a big part of what you're trying to do right um and then you know even for us in fitness world we're 17 clubs strong but yeah we have our own cybersecurity folks that are kind of constantly monitoring tracking the business and we even have our own you know separate cybersecurity policy because unfortunately we do live in a world where things are kind of you know reality always under attack right and so just having the right firewalls and right protections in place to kind of protect the business and backups and stuff in the cloud and so on and so on and so on and Tony would have all the you know specific names of the widgets the tools and whatever but certainly from my perspective you know as a CEO yeah it's just making sure that we've got the right framework to protect the information and protect people's information and and we're certainly proud of Fitness World we've never had any issue yeah it seems as though every company that I've talked to that's working with clientele like that is Paramount because I think that's the big fear at this point is that we have so much in these systems and it's kind of like what you said when you use content that doesn't go through a person it can generate that distrust immediately because it's like oh now I kind of see through what you're doing here and that's the same thing you kind of get one shot at it I think we've all experienced a search probably on chat GPT where we got a whole slew of information and somewhere in there was misinformation and uh it's like way off like it's not even remotely close to what you were what you were hoping to receive um but again if you're not going through it with a fine tooth comb and at least reviewing the information that is given and you're just going to just blast it out like it could really bite you in the butt I saw a good example of this we have a satire publication here in Canada called the Beaver and say what you will with the name uh National Animal regardless the Beaver is pure satire it's similar to the Onion in the States OK and chat gpt this journalist basically posted dying laughing because she had left her like proper traditional journalism career to write for the satire publication and chat GPT used one of her quotes in someone else's article she pulled it it was pulled from the Beaver which is obviously misinformation completely but then it was quoted somewhere else and I was like that is an incredible example and you can understand why the however the algorithm and chat GPT sourced it they're like credible source the Beaver fun fact my favorite bar in Westfield Wisconsin is called Thirsty Beaver I'm gonna leave that one right there they have a great slogan thank you for that yep I can give it to you if we're gonna exit out no no we're good for now okay I do wanna follow up on one of one of the points that Chris made in regard to enterprise level organizations and then some of the smaller operators um I think when you use the word data it can be quite overwhelming because especially in fitness you guys have in my opinion from all the different industries that we work in so many more opportunities to collect unique data points for your perspective members or most importantly your members like talk about like manufacturing companies I guess e commerce is a little bit you know at an advantage in terms of the data that they can collect and the user behavior that they can gap capture but in this industry there's so many different ways for us to do understand what that user experience is what do they care about and then start to future proof how that user experience and user behavior is changing and evolving over time so I think as as far as like a takeaway if you can't build a data warehouse and you can't you know organize data in a way where you're able to capture everything that comes through the front door or comes through your website start to take little bite sizes out of that like start by just understanding the user behavior that's happening online right like collect that website data app usage data social interactions that are happening you can go and scrape reviews about your brand and and sentiment and feedback data and then evolve sort of those efforts once you feel like you have a good understanding of the user behavior data or the sentiment data and you can start to make business decisions off of that and start to predict the future with some of that data then you can get into more of the profiling data and the profile data will help with personalization so I think if you don't have the ability to tackle it all at once take a bite size approach to it and hone in on one specific element of the data that you do have access to that can make a difference and then continue to iterate off of it and evolve with with your strategy yeah I think I for me personally what I'm trying to do today is I thought about some of the stuff we've you know talked about in the past is just try to make things actionable right and so like from this perspective it's you know if you're not spending a minimum 5% of your revenue every month on marketing you're not doing it you're doing something wrong probably right as much as I would probably say the right number the sweet spot is probably closer to 7% of your revenue and again that's not to say all on outbound marketing it could be on strategic investments as it relates to AI investments and back to how do I get the data and what do I do with the data and do I need to hire a consultant or a contractor or do I need to bring in a new full time team member that can help me do that or do I need to learn to hire someone that's really good at prompting help us leverage some of these other tools that are out there in the AI uh universe or might be even to to the point Tony's making back to you know the the E I E I O game that we were doing there a minute ago right is it I need an SEO person or I'm ready for somebody that understands a I O right and so I think just the real time stuff from an application perspective is to say well you gotta spend money right it's a strategic investment so you you gotta you gotta spend a little money to to make some money here and if you don't and you're just like well that but all these tools these resources are free all the all the the really cool tools are all paid platforms to begin with and then from there if you want to really open up the toolbox yeah you're gonna have to make some investments and and I think some of that even back to the humanistic side is by having people on the team that know how to use all those tools yes the right way yep yeah I think a lot of people love to play around on chat GPT and test different things but they're not really using them to their full capabilities or their advantage and so um you know I think going back to the point that these you know LLMs are they they rely on data they rely on good quality data in order to produce answers and feedback and information that are gonna help us move our businesses forward and um and that data has to be organized across the entire user journey from the moment that they think about your brand all the way through the moment that they become a member and potentially leave as a member like discontinue their membership I should say yeah I mean again we want them anyone that leaves the business every fitness operator everyone whether you're in the luxury lifestyle you know brand or you're all the way down to the studios boutiques or whatever and then or anything in between every operator wants the same thing if somebody leaves their business is that they had a good enough experience that when they come back that they're coming back to their brand and their business nobody wants somebody to leave going well the way they treated me on the way out the way they made me feel this and that like beat me up or whatever or tried to charge me extra and all these things that I would say reputationally our industry has fought for a long time to to not be and we're certainly not anymore but we're still kind of running away from the reputation that existed what I would call 10 15 years ago right there's still some people that have that in their head of that's what it meant to kind of quote unquote get out of your gym membership right I mean all all the different cartoon shows from South Park to what's the one with the dad in it there's a lot of cartoons with dad whatever he's got a son Howie I don't know there's all these make people making fun of the industry right because of that and I just think that I look at some of that but again I even say that's where AI can help right is I want I want that experiential side of it and that waterfalling and that cadence of what's happening to that person after the fact yeah we're gonna write it and I want it to sound like me like a hey Tony thanks very much for being a member really appreciate your business and your time here with Fitness World I hope as your future fitness needs evolve and or change that you know Fitness World can still be part of your answer and your solution and and you know whatever you're trying to do you know and again I'm just spitball and all that but like the end of the day I want you to leave feeling good yeah and again yeah I do think AI can be part of that right cause it's hard if you've never worked in a club right so back to operationally anyone that's ever worked in a club knows what our front desks are like in any club and I don't care what they're busy by nature they're busy the cost of labor forces you as an operator to make your front desk busy cause you can't overstaff cause you can't afford to overstaff it right and so if there's always only enough people there whether it's 1 or 2 and if it's three that club's really busy but either way they're still super busy so when someone goes to cancel their membership as much as you'd like that concierge level service to kind of exit them out the door walk them to the door thank them their business one last time and can't wait to get you back you don't have time right and that's back to okay well we have the data we know they canceled so what happens now yeah can you leverage these tools and what additional communication they get what does that communication sound like what is the voice what is the tone like it goes on and on and on right but I think that's the real world experiential of where all this data and these tools are going um but yeah we'll just kind of see where it goes and it might even save cancellations I mean we already know that there's players that are in that space and especially when clicked to cancel I mean that's still part of the conversation but you just talking about the sins of the past following not just in cartoons but Al Nasrawi was just on the show and speaking to exactly that because when the click to cancel ruling didn't go through there I can't remember whether it was New York Times or one of them but basically the headline was like your gym memberships are still gonna be difficult to cancel versus like all the other industries as to why the FTC was putting that through in the first place so but the nice thing is I feel like because of that legislation inching on the heels it's forced a lot of companies that are working in the AI space to create tools to not just help mitigate or give a positive cancellation but to save a cancellation in the first place there's all these key indicators that are happening ahead of that where they are creating a catch basin that otherwise wouldn't have existed yeah that's the Tony's point like we know the data right so I could tell you member behavior wise from a workout perspective when workouts are you know starting to trend to a certain place then we know you're essentially on a cancellation path and that's back to using the AI and the concierge level services whereas previously yeah we would have said okay we we're using business intelligence tools to produce the report to have the data to then do the engagement we'll take this list we'll load it into Hubspot we'll do this so do like it was a bunch of human do do do all this thing versus now it's just gonna be automatic right and it'll just again back to the tone um and the speed will be significantly different yeah well we are on a really fast moving train right now and we're gonna talk now about scaling smarter when it comes to AI so Tony how does AI optimization work when running campaigns across large systems so a little bit about what Chris just said I think makes a ton of sense in terms of automation right like AI we are using AI at American eagle.com to both be more efficient to allow our teams and human components to do more with less to run faster to expedite um certain tactics and efforts that we need to implement to be able to drive results because at the end of the day that's what it comes down to results are all we care about and so what are some real life examples of of things we can do that are at scale that are faster and that are yielding results I think the first one is producing content um content creation is more important than ever it's always content has always been king in the world of SEO that's not changed but the amount of content that we are having to produce the authorship the credibility of this content that has been game changing um that is truly what is going to help fitness world storm smart United Airlines hungry Howie's you name it start to rank in all of these different sections of Google is the more content they're producing the more relevant it is the more areas that they're producing the content on give it that authority that trust and that credibility that all of these LLMs are looking for when it comes to pulling up those those search results content still needs to feel credible and human so what signals do you look for in content that build trust both with search engines and actual members I think we already know the tells in content landscape evolve delve m dashes to the nines but maybe you can elaborate a little bit it's gonna be that it just feels like real content that isn't just being pushed out through the AI slot machine so if you can really prove that it comes from a real person there's a face to it a name to it if it's written content then I would really encourage you to make the authorship clear if you can if you have if your business works where you can have a face to things like if you can put a name of a trainer on something if they can give their stamp of approval you know you could still have your team uh maybe someone's helping write that content but ultimately you're gonna put these faces on it and they genuinely do approve of and agree with what you're publishing so clear author BIOS clear biographies uh personal stories being woven in things that uh come from real human experiences that you get from being a physical human in the world uh perspectives that come from unique life experiences those are gonna be more more valuable because those are the things that are harder to fake or when they're faked it just you see it you know you just read it and you can tell this is not a real person we'll continue the discussion in just a moment but first this message from our sponsor invest in digital marketing strategies that actually work and maximize engagement with your members rely on the team at American eagle.com to drive real results for your business contact American eagle.com today to get started now let's get back to the show content is gonna be huge and then and then personalization the personalization effort there should be no excuses in any of our marketing efforts moving forward from a personalization standpoint because again going back to everything we've been talking about for the last 20 minutes is we have that data we have the sentiment data we have the feedback data if we're sending out any sort of like NPS scores or any sort of surveys to collect data on members who haven't maybe come in or checked in for two weeks let's start to build off of that data and start to understand and get ahead of the game of well why aren't they coming back what are some of the challenges that they're facing how can we actually prevent them from canceling before they even go down that path um and so all that content that or all that data that we're collecting should definitely allow us to be more personalized in every interaction possible I think we were talking about that last night even where somebody checks in we know that they're a guest they've been here three days in a row they've taken yoga class two of those three days not only should the front desk person know this somehow but we should also know that for all of our digital interactions with this individual to get them to convert to a member that includes yoga class and allows them to bring in a guest every day with them yeah I mean for your perspective obviously 17 gyms and counting so the fact that you have implemented some tools I'm curious are there particular KPIs that you're looking for from them right now or are you in more of an exploration phase yeah I think we're just more exploring um I don't think that we've necessarily defined like hey this KPI is gonna improve by X y or Z or or whatever that is I don't think we've gotten to that stage yet where we're trying to measure that um it's more of an exploration so like even on the marketing and just creative right so I'm asking my marketing team just from a creative standpoint with the the assets that we're creating to say you know I want to see you guys use AI tools and create as many things as you can with AI and then we can polish them right and that's can't really measure that right it's just something you do or you don't do and I'm just trying to you know make them more effective and efficient versus again as we scale the business out rather than potentially hire an additional designer AI can do that work for us in an intelligent way and we can kind of proof it and brand it and and polish it up and and and make it the way we want to right so it's it's less about KPIs for me right now and more about just getting the tools plugged in and just learning right and just you know cause that's I think that's the stage we're in right now fair I mean you might each have a different perspective on this but when it comes to AI tools and implementation and bringing on different vendors vendors versus the internal marketing team like how do you see those relationships coexisting yeah I think um the tools are obviously going to span across whatever your company initiatives are um but I mean obviously there's some very popular ones out there that a lot of people are using right now with the chat GPT's the clauds there's the concierges program that I we talked a little bit about yesterday with The X Factor which I absolutely love I think it's it's brilliant and I think a lot of a lot of fitness brands should adopt it because it does serve that purpose of being able to have what feels like a very personalized conversation with a prospective member who has questions who wants to become more educated before they actually step foot in the gym to take a tour or potentially sign up and I think these tools no matter which one you use as a business owner or as a consumer are allowing us to be that much more educated before we make a decision and so that's what's LED to also this sort of can conversation around zero click and the impact that this is having on business and it's like oh my god what are we doing our organic traffic is going down significantly we shouldn't be spending time on SEO we should just be focusing on AI because no one's clicking on our website from the organic listings anymore and it's like no that's actually the exact opposite of what you should be figuring out you should be yes focused on how to rank better and be at the top of those searches where people are doing their research and becoming more educated so top of funnel but if your clicks have gone down what you should be doing is investing in CRO conversion rate optimization efforts and other things that are going to make sure that user experience is pristine once they get to your site because they are more educated they know what they're looking for and they're ready to buy so make it easier for them to buy obviously you have brought on these tools so what have been some of the challenges that have come up when roll doing a rollout or integration because not only are we talking about how fast this is changing but you also have teams that maybe have done things more traditionally in the past and then it's a pivot yeah I think that's the answer right there right it's just the unknown right so it just goes back to that learning curve but I think if you have people that are open and vulnerable and that want to grow and that have kind of signed up for that that embodiment right so again back to practical application like you need people on your team nowadays that are adaptable and that wanna grow and that have that I wanna be a lifelong learner and and see themselves in that light and they're willing to be curious um I think if you're not curious in today's business world then you're gonna get passed by real quick and then it gets hard to catch up um because now you're falling behind and some of that's just really an attitude right back to like I want to learn and I just think if you don't want to learn and you don't want to figure it out then then then you're hurting yourself I mean you know I'm I'm very blessed to have you know Mark Mastro as a partner and you know that's one of the things I'm always most impressed with him is his curiosity right he's always sending me this stuff on Instagram or he'll flip me an article out of somewhere and it's just you know I I just think that level of curiosity and just even for me as an executive right I find that inspiring that that you know I'm like if this guy's finding time to do it then I have to find time to stay curious yep right and that's where I challenge my team to do the same right um and so I'm asking them to bring to me to the table to say well what did you learn this week about AI what's the coolest thing you Learned this week about AI and I think if someone in today's world can't tell you that they Learned something in the last week about AI then they probably didn't do anything with it or pay attention at all which to me is problematic because that's how fast it's moving that you gotta kind of be noodling with some of this stuff just not to say daily or every second but you should be spending some time somewhere um I think from certainly from an executive perspective terms of how do I make my business better how do I fulfill my scope of responsibilities better how do I be actionable and you know tell me second all the and now he's on CRO I think he's on this 15th o now but I just think when you look at all this stuff like yeah just how do you scale it how do you implement it what do you do what's the speed of that and just it all matters and how do you measure the impact so in the spirit of like having that genuine curiosity and getting excited and passionate about something it wasn't too long ago where you couldn't really see the impact of any of your efforts from an AI perspective because there was really not a whole lot of tracking capabilities on these third party sites like Chat GPT or Claude or perplexity and about four or five weeks ago there was a huge breakthrough with that and we as American Eagle and our data analytics team was able to actually leverage Google's Looker Studio and a couple of connectors to be able to pull in all of this data now to be able to show the true impact that ranking in the Gemini search results ranking on chat GPT or Claude or perplexity can have and now we can actually show more than just impressions and that was like a huge breakthrough moment for us we are all like kids in a candy shop excited about it and we have some really cool dashboards that we've built out for our clients now to be able to show the real impact beyond just impressions and reach from AI can you elaborate on some of those findings I mean it's very similar to Google Analytics or website analytics in the sense that we're able to track sessions to your site from those third party sites we're able to track engagement rate we're able to track um the different key events that are happening from those sites so in the past you could say oh look you're the work that we're doing to help you rank in Gemini um has LED to a huge increase in impressions and that was where the buck stopped and now it's like hey look you actually had a huge increase in impressions you've also had 17 new sessions that came directly from Gemini you had another 13 that came from chat GPT and by the way you also had 17 new leads and four online enrollments show up like that's or or four online enrollments happened so like to be able to show the true impact and even though it's still top of funnel right like people aren't necessarily buying directly from a chat GPT search but it's getting there and now we're I mean where we're going Christy and again just for the for the industry right we always want to meet members where they're at right and do business in a way that they want to do business and so you know the conversation I'm having with you know Tony and his team and and obviously you know it's not obvious I mean I do work with American Eagle I'm one of their customers I'm proud of that and they're a great partner for my business but you know we we believe that we can double our online involvement kind of in the next 12 months right like from an annual perspective and that's through leveraging not just it's by leveraging the data by using AI tools as part of it for sure to then automate these workflows the personalization side of it and so on and so forth to just continue to help meet more people where they're at and just streamline the process make business simple and easy for them um just enhance that experience right which ultimately I think if I can make it less friction up front I I think it's also back to what KPIs are measuring I don't know for a fact but I think it is gonna increase lifetime value I think they're gonna stay even longer cause they're merely gonna start in a way that's really conducive to how they wanna do business versus okay I can do this and do this but then I still have to go in to do this ugh versus like yeah you can join online but it's like I I want to be able to join online and it's like well they have to come in to get their first tour well why do they why can't I send them a virtual link with a virtual tour where then they can click on any button to ask a question what time are the classes what time are yoga classes on Tuesdays and you know the I the personalization the concierge service comes in and they'll tell you that like right away so I just want to meet members where they're at right and just help them have the best experience possible well on exactly that I know Fitness World is a case study for your team so tell me a little bit about I mean right there he kind of presented the the goal so how did you work to kind of get things started to meet them where they're at yeah so I think um one of the one of the key strategies that we implemented probably three or four months ago for you guys was was really driven around um customizing the content on the different location pages that Fitness World has on their site um and making sure that we are honing in and writing content consistently for the amenities that Fitness World provides within the specific location that they provided in the first thing that we did was we wanted to protect the brand we always want to protect the brand because obviously Fitness World has done a phenomenal job at building that brand over the last five years or so and so there's searches that you'll do where you specifically you people are typing in does Fitness World Canby have free trials like they're using the Fitness World brand and they're relating it to free trials well if we didn't mention anything about free trials in our content strategy for Fitness World they not show up but instead because we do and we write content on this consistently they're in the AI overview and they're also in the first and second snippet on the side right hand side of of the Google search so then you go like another step further and you're thinking about what questions members or potential members are genuinely curious to know and are asking Chat GPT or asking Google to become more educated and so the next one was well what gyms in Vancouver have free trials right not related to Fitness World well guess what Fitness World's owning the AI overview and they're the very first um AI snippet above Gold's Gym Planet Fitness Ranzalco Fitness etcetera because we've written content about it then you take it one step further and it's what gyms in Vancouver have women's only areas well fitness world I don't think Chris correct me if I'm wrong we don't like go out there and promote women's only areas for the clubs right no not necessarily but we know that this is something that some of the women that are potentially becoming a member wanna know so we wrote a bunch of content around women's only specific workouts and classes and things along those lines and sure enough Fitness World's owning all of the AI sections of Google we do have women's only area in some of our clubs though perfect okay just to be clear yes um would that be Kisilano uh that is one yes okay that's one that was showing up on Google so actually what's even cooler about that is when somebody does click on that link it takes them right to the location page of Kitsilano that talks about the women's only area mm hmm so that scenario continues to evolve more and more and more you got yoga classes what gyms in Vancouver offer cycling what like you just have to take that sort of to the the nth degree and continue to produce content and that's going to allow us to continue to dominate the different sections of those search engines before we dive deeper here's another way you can get ahead in digital marketing invest in your digital marketing strategy today with American eagle. Com's expert marketing solutions their comprehensive services in SEO email marketing social media and more will drive growth and enhance member engagement visit them at American eagle.com let's continue the conversation I appreciate the detailed explanation there we want to talk about future proofing though because one of the main themes of the entire conversation has been how fast this is all moving and so when it comes to future proofing even that can seem daunting because I've had I can think of like the last six interviews that I've done and so many of the top enterprise CEOs even say I don't even know the right thing to answer because it's changing so quickly that what it is probably isn't even invented yet but based on the conversation that we're having currently what should enterprise operators do to avoid falling behind in the now I mean you kind of touched on it there when you were referencing Mark Master I was saying he's constantly educating and being curious but what would be your top piece of advice to your colleagues especially some of the smaller operators that have a thinner team well what I'm asking folks for is their tech road map right and while I certainly understand the speed is unpredictable in in some ways you know the near term certainly isn't and I just want to know you have a plan right fail to plan plan to fail so it's like well based on what you know now what is the plan so if it's like well stuff's changing so fast we just we're not really putting a plan together well then I'm probably not gonna do business with you like I wanna know you know you used to be able to ask people you show me your tech roadmap for the next five years that's not fair anymore but if you can't tell me kind of where you're going the next 12 months right and certainly even to say and then beyond that let me take you through the next eight quarters or kind of just give me a rough outline for three years then that get that makes me nervous right and so I want to know what's that tech roadmap where are you making strategic investments um how are you using the technology today and again while we can't predict the future there's enough information out there to tell you like this is kind of what's next and this is kind of what's coming around the corner and so I'm looking for people that are you know forward thinking thought leaders if you will that are trying to be not you know partners if you will they have to be tip of the spear like Tony in American he has to be tip of the spear as an operator I don't have to be tip of the spear I can say wow I'm gonna let Tony go experiment on that with one of the other partners he has in the fitness health and wellness space and I'll see how it goes and then maybe I'll draft off of that like you know so we can draft again and I can come in behind that or I could say hey man I love this idea and I wanna be first to market with this like let's go I wanna be tip of the spear on this one but again I'm looking for people that are that are you know that's not predicting the future but but have a plan right and are being thoughtful around it and understanding the tools are available and accessible right so that that's kind of what I'm looking for and then again just back to the concierge level and the optimization and the touch points I mean at the end of the day if my goal previously was to net 30 members a month with the advance of all these tools it should be better than that if my retention I'm averaging 3% a month my retention or attrition rate should go down if I'm leveraging these tools correctly again I've talked about lifetime value we can talk about personal training dollars percentage of people that are training with a personal trainer in a club and and participation rate I mean there's so many places you can measure it and again I think it just depends on you know Tony use the phrase business objectives I believe earlier yeah that that's what it comes down to what are your objectives and what tools are you gonna use and you're gonna find some offers you're gonna do it everywhere right they're gonna try to lower everything all at once which again I wish I could I'm at my scale as you know what I would call definitely not necessarily small but certainly medium sized business like we're just not in a position where we can tackle all things at once right we have to go we're gonna attack this okay we got that one let's keep it rolling but now let's attack this right and that's the that's the approach I have to take based on kind of where we're at as a business but I mean yeah I look forward to the day when we can do two kind of big AI projects at once and we can kind of keep the business moving but we're just we're fair where do you feel the focus should be to future proof I think if honestly enterprise or sort of mid level um it would be investing one is recognizing that some of the investments that you make are not going to yield an immediate return I just think that that's a little bit too I don't know it's it's it's unrealistic um especially because there is this learning phase right we are ahead of the curve yet we're all still learning through this but you need to invest in AI content and an SEO strategy together like those two need to go hand in hand it's not one or the other um and and allowing yourselves to be able to do or by doing that you're gonna be able to scale what I referred to earlier as content that is going to be high quality that's going to be structured in a way that can easily be crawled and searched by the AI um or the LMS and then the there you know you're being able to frequently update that content as well so that's gonna be um probably my number one number two is something that we spent the first 20 minutes talking about which is collecting and organizing data um doesn't mean you have to go and spend$250,000 on building a data warehouse but what you do need to do is start to collect that data put it into Big Query or snowflake or somewhere that it can then start to be organized because that data is gonna help personalize every touch point with a member or potential member from every part of their user journey so those are the two recommendations what's the biggest risk if an operator completely delays AI adoption especially hearing like a Chris bringing on tool at a time players bigger bringing on multiples I think the biggest risk is it's just gonna take that much bigger of an investment to get up with the times like if you fall behind now you're either going to have to invest in people education or an entirely new tech stack down the road that's not gonna be because what they're on probably currently is not gonna be able to keep up with um the technology and how fast it's changing so you're either gonna have to invest in people education or redoing your text deck to be able to keep up with everything else that is changing and evolving yeah you're gonna be spending the money at the end of the day Chris what surprised you most about AI's impact so far man I think we talked about how often it's wrong but I would even say for me it was actually I I was more skeptical of how often it would be right right I was like yeah let's see what's up and you know I'm still I'm curious and so I'm more of a trust but verify right so you know I was a guy that would search something on Google and I would click on six different things just kind of really kind of figure out what's the right answer what I really like here what really makes sense to me or made me curious to keep learning more about it whereas now the AI just gives you an answer and so again I was yes it gives you bad information but I mean I've used it to write high school football programs and I say hey I want need an eight week I need an eight week mesocycle um you know to for a high school football team um you know and I want it based on NASM and NSCA standards and this is I I was very specific in my prompting so I have I would say gotten better at prompting but I did a really you know thorough prompt like a paragraph sized prompt hit the word hit enter and out spit eight pages of and again I was certified by the NCAA as you know certified strength coach I'm looking at this thing and I'm like oh my god this is nuts and it was like and I made a few adjustments right I edited and I tweaked it whatever and 90% accurate yeah and I sent it out to my brother who's you know coaching high school football and said here you go here's your because he said hey can you write me a program I said no problem he says wow this is amazing how much time did this take you I said about 14 minutes and it like about 2 minutes to write it technically but you had the knowledge base to do that trust by by verify yes and prompt engineering is huge that's key that is key some people are horrific at prompting so they just don't program it would have been who knows what but I said using yeah an ASM and NSCA and I think I in fact I typed out National Training Conditioning Association standards and applications and I think I even said that have been published and printed in the last five years cause again things have changed more often modified even in the world of strength conditioning for for athletes particularly football players um where mobility has become more important than strength in many ways right so anyway I I it was it was an interesting experience right so I'm using it that way and I'm asking my team to do the same that's what that's what surprised me yeah that's fair to me like in the world cause I use tons of AI tools aside from chat GPT but how much chat GPT has evolved I have a horrific green thumb but apparently I'm in the game cause I basically grew Jumanji and then I got stressed out cause I didn't know what to do about it so it's just continued to expand and I lived in a tiny place I was like this is out of hand I have to do something about this and so I actually took a photo of the plant from different angles and then prompted Chat GPT to give me step by step instructions to not only repot it but to prune it it regenerated all the photos that I gave with exact circles over where I have to prune it with my pruning shears that's why I mean to Chris's point I think the biggest surprise for me is is how like how incredible the responses can be when you know how to prompt the tool like and then the fact that it sort of hints at you at at some other things that you can prompt it with but not in that in that sort of vein of creating a football program but we had to write 600 unique pages of custom content for 600 locations for Men's Warehouse and we created the prompt that had all their brand guidelines in it it had all of the keyword research done for for SEO purposes and then we tweaked it along the way in like three or four different areas and within a matter of a few weeks we had 600 pages of custom content for a brand that is nationally known that were all ranking them very very well from a local SEO standpoint and an AIO standpoint which is just like that would have cost a year ago that would have cost probably six figures to write 600 pages of custom content considering each page takes somewhere between four and five hours of work based on keyboard I mean that is just epic to me in terms of cost savings and I I shared it with Chrissy but I said you know I've had people tell me that I should write a book at this point in my life which you know I'm like wow could be an interesting one could be so I said okay let me ask AI so AI should Chris Smith of Fitness World Canada write a book and if he did what would it be titled and what chapter should he include what would the lesson be again only using quotes and phrases from Chris Smith of Fitness World Canada right so back the tone of voice and sound like it spit out this two page outline for a book and it was like literally and it's all the stories I've told for the last 10 years on different podcast or interviews or whatever and I was like oh my God that's scary and it was so well organized and like even articulated and again it was in my voice yapping and I was like I actually I've shared that that list with Chrissy like she seen it thought he slaved hours on it now I know no she knew she knew right away she's like he didn't do this there's no way was there a um a chapter about how to play golf there was actually it was about like don't take yourself too seriously and that don't think you have to be really good at everything I mean that's one of the things I'm proud of I'm not that great at golf but somehow I'm better than you hahaha some some by the Grace of god there's a 0% chance it's true but I think I saw you get a 12 I'm like the way that you I know you're supposed to have a low score for golf but that doesn't mean you hit the ball backwards well that was a test we trialed in Arizona was it a test to see how strong the tree was it was testing yeah that tree might have been testing you come to BC we gotta ship you back to Chicago tomorrow it's a beautiful red maple by the way that you wrote 3 times more final thoughts here Tony what's one thing you wish more people understood about fitness marketing especially as we look ahead toward 2026 yeah I think the biggest thing when I was I was I was thinking about this question for a minute and I feel like there there's still this you know sort of false reality of you can just pay to play and the more money you have the more successful you're gonna be and I feel like AI has really flipped the script on that whole idea because their Google's paid ads don't even show up above their AIO anymore like which is crazy I'm sure it'll change at some point in time but right now it's not um and then I also think that you gotta take a step back sometimes and look at the entire marketing journey and sometimes people are a little bit short sighted where they just want a quick win now that's going to yield a quick result and I need to be able to measure ROI tomorrow otherwise I'm not going to see the value investing in it and again because of sort of this world of zero click um you do have to maximize every opportunity so much more and so if we are getting less clicks to our website when that user comes to our website they are more educated and we need to make sure that we're investing in other areas of our marketing mix to to capture that uh user's attention to engage them to get them to take action as quickly as possible it's not about just throwing up all your information in front of them right then and there to to try to hit them with anything and everything it's like okay you now know what they typed to get to your site you know the different searches that they were doing the different information that they were looking for they might have done a search on your actual site so serve them that information and get them into that journey that buying cycle as quickly as possible as you kind of started us off here Matt I love learning that fitness is something that you're passionate about and on top of that at American eagle.com this is a brand sector that you've worked with quite a bit and we know that a lot of fitness businesses if they're on the smaller side they're still competing with global brands boutique studios some of them are franchised and therefore have big budgets and then you have influencers online as well so it is a lot of noise so from your experience what SEO strategies and I know you gave us some good low hanging fruit that we can grab onto from the get code there but what help operators stand out that don't have those huge marketing budgets behind them yeah this affects people in every industry so I think about it for fitness I think about this for for example I work with a lot of little local credit unions up against national banks local insurance brokers against national insurance brokers and so it's picking the right fights you think you can actually win so you know if you're a tiny little credit union or if you're a little gym and you try to go after the most high volume but generic search term you might be just picking a fight you can't really win against these companies who have basically bottomless marketing budgets where you can beat them even if they're bigger and have higher will say overall authority online than you is in the things that make you unique so you probably have a better close connection to your local community you might offer a thing that a big brand can't offer and I would really emphasize the stuff that you bring that no one else can really bring and ways you can do that are to make sure that your involvement in your local community is being really mentioned online and that you're making the most of that so uh a more specific example would be if you know that there is a certain um local event or thing that people really gravitate to that a big brand is not really gonna know about making sure that you have content around that that you have it not just for SEO but for social that if there is a local um podcaster influencer those people you can probably just physically meet them you can walk up and talk to them so having an approach where you find ways to prove how truly local and part of the community you are that a big company is gonna struggle to do because they're behind so many walls of you know content approval and PR and press releases and stuff so if you can't be big and you can't fight over those big keywords it's what are the local versions of those keywords is there that keyword plus your you know your city your neighborhood something that is just within that radius where you have your influence and doing as much as you can there and you know the long term goal may be to get that big keyword but you're probably still gonna only do it at a very local level so understanding fight battles you can win uh but plan for how you can win bigger and bigger battles over time and Chris on the enterprise side of things obviously we have a ton of executives joining us here so what's the one conversation they should have with their internal marketing teams based on what they heard today well hopefully they're having the conversation around how they're using AI so I'd say if you're not then it's like well how are we and what should we do and back to shameless plugs I would say yeah the folks like Al Nashavani and like the Fitness Technology Summit would be a good place to start I know they have an event coming up in Chicago this year in October so if you're not signed up for that and you don't know where to start with AI I'd say find your way there um'cause they're doing a lot of phenomenal things in the roundtables and the presentations there are always relevant and even last year and I'm sure certainly this year I'm sure there will be a lot of AI application conversations happening both you know presentation wise I was talking about and then just side bars right cause I think it's a great opportunity to network with operators that are at your scale maybe or even in your category right that might have a unique perspective on how they're approaching it versus what you might be doing and that's where you can kind of start to synergize um a little bit so that that that's one example and again just back to just do your own research right like be curious be curious well Tony we're gonna go to Smithville there we go Smithy okay gonna put you on the spot now if people are like what is Smithville cause I believe I might be speaking to the mayor you are speaking to the official mayor of Smithville um Smithville is a a new kind of show podcast channel that we've taken on with ATF W the goal there is to be even more relatable to more audiences particularly those that are either what I would call entrepreneurial or maybe starting off in their career so whether you're an initial salesperson personal trainer I'm just gonna share as many nuggets and wisdom as you can imagine as possible as part of that journey just so someone can you know hopefully have the same fortunate life if you will that I've had which is again I started on the ground floor as a personal trainer and I've been you know fortunate to be where I am now as an owner and entrepreneur and CEO and yeah I just want to see more people kind of do that through wellness and fitness it's an amazing industry that does a ton of good and I just wanna see more people you know get involved and stay involved right on well Tony Chris thank you so much for joining me today on ATF W oh you're welcome thank you very much thanks Chrissy this was market fit by ATF W presented by American eagle.com Discover how American eagle.com's web development and digital marketing services have been the ultimate game changer for leading brands in the fitness industry looking to drive more revenue contact American eagle.com today I'm your host Chrissy Van thank you for listening remember stay fit stay informed and keep your fitness business in shape

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