Chinese KEEP APP: Build Emotional Connection Between Users & Brands

More and more people are aware of the importance of health. Many people start doing regular exercise to keep health and lose weight. 

Fitness app is a popular trend in recent years. According to Netimperative,  health and fitness apps have become widely popular over the past few years, with usage growing by over 330% in the past three years. Many fitness and health app users are loyal to their favorite apps, with 96% using only one health and fitness app. Over 75% of active users open their health and fitness app at least two times a week. 

During this hot trend, Chinese Keep App has grown super fast in just four years, from a fitness app to a life-balance platform.

About Chinese Keep App

Keep App was launched in February 2015. Just like many fitness trainer app, it offers many personalized training courses or sets to allow users work out anytime and anywhere. It is also a social platform which encourage users to share their workout progress and result to motivate each other.

From Technode

Currently, the number of users on the Keep App reached 200 million, and the number of monthly active users reached 40 million.

Now, Keep App is not only a training app anymore. It is a social platform to share user stories, interesting workout content, nutrition, and related brands recommendation. For example, users would like to share opinions about what running shoes and sunscreen are good for running outside.

Therefore, workout as a new lifestyle has become the most direct connection between users and brands. This means great marketing value for other brands that want to communicate with customers in the Keep.

"UP" Integrated Marketing Strategy

According to Keep Marketing Vice President, a healthy lifestyle and a positive attitude to life can be a perfect combination of Keep. This concept is also matching the brand proposition of "self-discipline leads to freedom".

Keep came up with "UP" integrated marketing strategy includes five parts:

"Star": Invite super stars to promote related brands and create different tag groups. It helps brands to reach target users accurately.

"Power": It refers to Keep's content system. Power is creating an immersive training experience for brands by combining the content scenes of health eating and practicing. 

"Sound Volume": It is based on the content to build a sport plus life social space. Through online topic interaction, fun facts, and online challenge, it helps brands increase brand awareness.

"Calories": It focus on combine online and offline marketing experience. For example, Keep build Keepland Store and Flash Shop to let customers get in touch with different brands. 

From Social Beta

"Energy": Keep also do some meaningful things with users and brands to benefit society and generate social value.

Find A Connection Between Users & Brands

How to find a good connection between users and brands? Keep gives the answer from two aspects: 

• Based on the user's needs: the specific needs generated by the user in the sport scene are linked with the brand.
• Make brands become part of the workout lifestyle scene: create and share related "Sport+" content in the content ecosystem.

Keep transform the perspective from "brands look for customer" to "customers look for brands". Based on user's existing needs, Keep tried to figure out brand's pain points and then formed a precise match to ensure that the solutions provided by the brand are exactly what users need.

For example, Keep found that users are misunderstood about many sports foods, and chocolate is one of them. Although chocolate contains high sugar, proper intake before training can improve the workout performance. Godiva wanted to promote its black chocolate and integrate user's daily workout scene in the holiday season. 

From Social Beta

Therefore, Keep created the core concept of "Chocolate Abs" for Godiva black chocolate seasonal promotion. By establishing a high correlation between product benefits and abdominal muscles, it enhances the awareness of Godiva black chocolate in the fitness group.

Overall

With 200 million users, Keep is no longer a pure fitness training app. For brands that want to expand their marketing, Keep offers comprehensive marketing solutions and immersive workout experience scenarios that help brand to reach more potential customers and increase brand awareness. As Keep said:" To find the right scene and establish a real emotional connection with the user, marketing can really work effectively."   

Reference:

https://socialbeta.com/t/featured-interview-keep-up-marketing-system-2019-05