Marketing With Purpose Kit: Customer Connection in a Data-Driven World
Lindsey McFadden, Chief Marketing Officer at Stretch Zone, joins The Bliss Business Podcast's Marketing With Purpose Kit to explain why people interact before they transact, and how a singular focus, clear definitions, and steady communication keep marketing human, personal, and focused on helping people.
People want to interact before they transact, and that one idea steers how Lindsey McFadden, Chief Marketing Officer at Stretch Zone, leads marketing. In this week’s Marketing With Purpose Kit, host Michelle Brasfield asks Lindsey how to keep customer connection human when dashboards and KPIs are everywhere. Stretch Zone has opened 140 new studios to date and supports over 400 locations across 41 states, without a single studio closure.
In this episode we explore:
• Why a people business needs data and human connection working together
• How one singular focus keeps campaigns, brand, and growth goals aligned
• Leading through a crisis with constant, omni-channel communication
• What a flat New Year campaign taught Stretch Zone about timing
• Why defining terms like member and lead fixes CRM and reporting
• Keep, kill, and combine: how Lindsey keeps a marketing team engaged
Stretch Zone offers a personal, one-on-one service, and members come in one, two, or three times a week. Lindsey’s view is that KPIs guide smart decisions, but the pendulum has swung too far toward the numbers. Every campaign comes back to the one thing the brand does, Practitioner Assistive Stretching.
Her crisis lesson dates to 2019, when she was a consultant working with the CEO. Stretch Zone held a morning stand-up call with its network every day, even when nothing had changed, and sent updates by video, text, and email.
Her data lesson is a campaign that flopped. A New Year creative called Jumpstart landed flat, because the big fitness chains outspend everyone in December. Stretch Zone now runs a resolution reset message for the weeks after.
Behind the scenes, the work was definitions. The CRM and the payment reporting each defined a member differently, so the team agreed on one definition. Lindsey also runs a quarterly keep, kill, and combine exercise with her team.
That same habit of pairing the numbers with the people behind them, and agreeing on what each metric means before anyone reports it, is how Zero Company approaches paid search, social, and programmatic work for its clients.
Key Takeaways
• (3:02) On why connection comes first: “people want to interact before they transact.”
• (4:47) On leading through crisis, the daily call that kept the network informed: “we’re going to have a morning stand up call literally all the time just to connect with our network, to offer them support”
• (8:04) On a campaign that missed, when customer behavior overruled the creative: “New Year, new you, new market, completely flat.”
• (13:43) On fixing CRM and reporting by agreeing on terms: “we want to make sure that we’re speaking the same language.”
• (16:22) On keeping a marketing team engaged, a quarterly exercise: “keep, kill, and combine.”
• (19:28) On purpose and focus, the skill she works hardest at: “saying no to a lot of things that can just be distractions.”
FAQ
What does interact before you transact mean in marketing?
Lindsey McFadden, Chief Marketing Officer at Stretch Zone, says people want to interact before they transact and want to do business with people they like. Brand and relationship come first, and the sale follows.
How do you keep marketing data consistent across a CRM and reporting tools?
Lindsey McFadden says Stretch Zone defined its key terms once and applied them across every system. Its CRM and its payment reporting each defined a member differently, so the team agreed on one definition.
What should a marketer do when a campaign flops?
Lindsey McFadden read the behavior behind the miss. Stretch Zone’s Jumpstart New Year campaign went flat, so the team moved to a resolution reset message aimed at people who feel stiff and tight after the first weeks of the year.
Great marketing does not just sell, it serves, and Lindsey McFadden shows how a people business keeps that promise. Learn more about Stretch Zone at stretchzone.com. See Lindsey’s guest profile, watch the video version, and explore more Marketing With Purpose Kit conversations.
🎙️ Hosted by Michelle Brasfield
🎧 Produced by Martha Huerta
Chief Marketing Officer
Lindsey McFadden is the Chief Marketing Officer at Stretch Zone, where she leads a dynamic team focused on advertising, branding, PR and communications initiatives for both Corporate and Franchisees. Originally introduced to Stretch Zone through a consulting engagement in 2019, Lindsey has seen first-hand both the swift growth of the brand as well as the impact Stretch Zone has made on communities nationwide. Stretch Zone currently has 400 open studios across 41 states and is proud to not have a single studio closure.
Lindsey began her career in the multi-unit space and has spent most of her career supporting multi-unit owners and operators. After a five-year stint with an ad agency diving deep into the creative process, it was time to get back to solving business problems – enter consulting. Lindsey then spent the next four years building a consulting practice alongside two co-founders, while primarily focusing on multi-unit and franchise brands. It was then that she was introduced to Stretch Zone. Since coming in-house at Stretch Zone, the brand has opened 140 locations, with many more on the horizon.
Lindsey earned her bachelor’s degree in marketing, as well as a MBA from Florida State University. She lives in South Florida with her family and works out of the corporate office in Ft. Lauderdale.
