Hall and Partners Agency Uses Similarweb to Evaluate How Covid-19 Changed the Fitness Industry

It’s no secret that the Coronavirus outbreak increasingly forced people to shift to virtual living, as governments worldwide enforced, and continue to enforce social distancing. Hall and Partners, an Omnicom Group agency, and one of the big 6 global agency networks, predicted in April that this ongoing trend would cause online fitness classes to skyrocket, and they were right. Using Similarweb data, they dove into How the fitness industry is trading in-person ‘high fives’ for virtual ‘likes’.

The Results Are In

During the peak of the lockdowns in April, fitness brands that thrived purely on foot traffic before the pandemic – such as corepoweryoga.com and soul-cycle.com – struggled to gain online momentum in their online traffic during the lockdown, as evidenced by their traffic losses in the graph above. However, the opposite trend was seen among fitness brands that had broken into the world of online workout routines before the pandemic and it is likely that these sites will continue to thrive online after lockdowns end.

The trend of online fitness classes is most likely one that is here to stay as traffic to fitness influencers continues to grow exponentially. One of the reasons for this is because the category is such “an anomaly in the influencer business,” according to Forbes. Hall and Partner further elucidate that this is “mainly because they [influencers] get profits direct from consumers, which differs from fashion or travel influencers.”

Other Reasons This Category Has Taken Off

Hall and Partners detail which influencers have benefited most from this latest trend, and why, including Chloe Ting and Joe Wicks. Although each influencer has a slightly different target audience and workout philosophy, the agency found one major similarity between all the fitness offerings stating, “Understanding the huge role this plays in our wellbeing, fitness influencers are tapping into this desire by building a strong knit online community. This importance of community has been a shared sentiment and desire from the beginning.”