Hailing from Austin, Texas, Kettlebell Kings delivers bell-shaped weights to expert bodybuilders and novices alike. Co-founder Jay Perkins, drawing on his previous tech experience with BigCommerce, decided early on to work with Boston-based HubSpot to grow his company’s customer base. And starting out with a customer service operation that involved human beings manually responding to phone calls and emails, Kettlebell Kings looked to HubSpot’s CRM to do the heavy lifting.
Refining customer engagement
“Dealing with limited capital, we had to figure out clever ways to get in front of potential customers and build a brand,” said Perkins, who also serves as managing partner. “There were others selling kettlebell weights, some who’d been online for years, as well as big fitness brands. We needed a way to get in front of people differently.”
Kettlebell Kings drafted expert trainers to provide instructional video content on lifting techniques and tips for better workouts. These trainers gained exposure in front of the brand’s 100K social-media followers, while the merchant drew big returns on sales and customer engagement with a minimal ad spend. According to Perkins, Kettlebell Kings spends five dollars a day on social advertising. The lead generation that results from the content translates to under a dollar per lead.
“HubSpot helped in a ton of ways,” Perkins explained. “The HubSpot mentality is constant content creation. We became the first company in our space, even in the fitness space, that partnered with kettlebell experts.”
Content kings
Over the last three years, Kettlebell Kings has evolved its content strategy, taking full advantage of HubSpot’s blogging support, workflows and landing pages. Beyond the nuts and bolts, Kettlebell Kings shifted the message of its content from sales-driven product pitches to helpful instructional material led by respected trainers.
“Through the interactions we created with these [videos], we have been able to gather feedback about the answers people need, what they are looking for, how we can serve our community and prospective members better — just by people replying to the emails,” Perkins stated.
Kettlebell Kings averages roughly one email per week. From customer responses, they can address community-wide interests and concerns. When some kettlebell enthusiasts mentioned banging their wrists during a specific exercise with the weights, the brand responded with content addressing the problem, showing fans how to move properly and avoid injury.
Holiday bells and the future
This holiday season and last, Perkins also noticed many email responses asking about Black Friday deals, which helped the brand to leverage demand at this time of year and to also better understand the seasonal dip in business, as consumers hold off and wait for holiday deals. To expand its reach, Kettlebell Kings also introduced kettlebell Christmas tree ornaments in nine different colors and styles.
Next year, Kettlebell Kings will grow its audience by rolling out a brand-specific trainer certification program. The program will boost the status of trainers in the community and also enable them to certify others who meet predetermined requirements.
According to Perkins, HubSpot has effectively shifted the merchant’s focus from product sales to content. The partnership will continue to gain momentum through new initiatives.
“The CRM was put in place to realize the objectives and serve people weekly content that they could interact with and share. Moving forward, we plan to utilize it even more,” Perkins said.
“As larger companies like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods have increased competition and spend on ad words we buy, we will be using this more to reach people and build our community,” he adds. “We will begin exploring new ways to reach people through these tools. As opposed to just being ‘kettlebell’ focused, we will explore people who are interested in fitness or losing weight, other interests to reach people past just our niche, using the HubSpot tools to create the content and serve it.”
