Specialist Leisure, Sport & Physical Activity Consulting
The Carbon Group has an experienced network of leisure industry professionals to help you maximise the marketing, commercial and operational performance of your business. Having worked with leisure centres, sports facilities, visitor attractions, boutique and budget clubs of all sizes and models, across the private and public sector, we have a strong passion and experience for helping you to optimise the performance of your business.
Mathew Smallwood brings 20 years of marketing and communications leadership in the leisure and physical activity sector. Having spent 13 years as Group Marketing & Communications Manager at Active Nation — overseeing leisure centres, theatres, a golf course and a museum — he understands the commercial and operational realities of leisure businesses in a way most marketing consultants do not.
If your business operates in leisure, sport, hospitality or physical activity, Mathew is the right person to talk to. He knows your sector, your data tools and your challenges.
Marketing Strategy
Our specialism lies in creating a full marketing strategy for leisure operators. From start to finish, we get underneath the core values of the brand, examine how the brand story is communicated, look at the commercial objectives across your business and develop strategies for how best to generate a return on your investment.
For some clients we act in a Marketing Manager capacity, delivering every aspect of your marketing plan, whilst for others we support on a project by project basis as needed to help you achieve your objectives.
Our approach isn’t just about theory, or a plan that sits on a shelf gathering dust. We have a hands on approach to planning, delivering and evaluating success. We are very visible, working with you side by side, being on site regularly and acting as part of your team.
Digital Journey
We love building websites, integrating leisure management systems, and configuring tech to enhance your customer experience.
Having worked with all of the sectors main CRM systems, Apps, and tech providers, we have become experts at mapping and delivering customer journeys for our clients.
Whether we are building new websites for our clients, or applying our expertise to project manage a system install, what is essential is that the customer journey is planned, friction free and user friendly. We are passionate about getting systems to talk to each other, getting data pulling into one place and making technology do the heavy lifting. Whether you need a new website, support with procuring and launching a new CRM, App or leisure management system, we know how to deliver a system that suits your needs.
Sales Campaigns
Despite the noise of price promotions and no joining fees, the leisure sector has still only persuaded 14% of the UK population to have a gym membership. What is clear is that a price led approach only persuades the minority to hop from one gym to another or make a short term commitment. What we need is a different approach.
Our passion is to design, develop and deliver campaigns that inspire people to make decisions based on health and happiness. Telling the brand story, using real life case studies and creating value adding content for your website will be far more inspiring than the chance to save £20 on your joining fee. We love to develop campaigns that grab attention, have a quirky approach and actually mean something to your audience.
Whether you are looking for a pre-sale campaign, or something to slot into your annual marketing plan, we have a proven track record of supporting sport and exercise facilities of all shapes, sizes and offerings.
The Carbon Group have been brilliantly attentive to our needs. Having worked with them for the past 12 months, they have given more purpose and clarity to our strategy, and dramatically uplifted our marketing performance. First class marketeers!
John Oxley