Designing Ads That Sell Franchises

BODYBAR Pilates needed people ready to invest in opening a studio, not just more gym sign-ups. I led the design strategy that turned ad spend into qualified investor leads. Five months of campaigns, 567 leads, and (more importantly) a clear map of what actually converts.

BODYBAR sells Pilates franchises. The real goal isn't memberships; it's finding qualified people who want to own a studio. Previous agencies missed this. Their campaigns pulled clicks and impressions, but the leads never matched what BODYBAR was actually selling: a serious investment opportunity.

We needed creative that spoke to investors, not fitness fans. That meant understanding who those investors actually were before touching a single ad.

What wasn't working

• Creative aimed at fitness enthusiasts, not franchise investors
• High click volume with low-quality lead qualification
• No clear read on which channels or angles produced serious investors
• No persona framework; all audiences treated the same way
• Ad variants rebuilt from scratch instead of componentized for speed

BODYBAR came to us with internal insights on their existing investor base, the profiles, traits, and patterns of the people who had signed and scaled. That knowledge framed the research from day one and kept us focused on the audiences that actually convert.

From there, we built a competitor benchmark in Figma, breaking down how other fitness and franchise brands ran their ads: messaging, visuals, offers, and tone. That gave us a clear map of the category and showed where BODYBAR could stand out instead of blend in.

Three investor personas

Research pointed to three audiences worth designing for. Three profiles, three angles, three creative directions.

01

The Corporate Exec

Profile

Senior corporate leader: CEO, VP, Director.

Motivation

Done with the 80-hour grind. Wants ownership.

Financials

$2M to $6M+ net worth. Highly liquid.

02

The Power Couple

Profile

Married partners with complementary skill sets.

Motivation

Build a family business. Win a local market.

Financials

$2M to $16M+ combined. Self-funded or SBA.

03

The Passion Player

Profile

Lifelong Pilates and wellness practitioner.

Motivation

Turn the lifestyle into the livelihood.

Financials

$500k to $1.5M. SBA, 401k rollover, or family.

This wasn't a one-off campaign. The team needed a system that could keep producing without slowing down. So we built one.

Strategy started where the research left off. Three personas, three angles per drop. Every monthly batch ships as three sets, one per persona, each built around its own message and audience.

To keep it all straight as volume grew, we set a naming foundation early: batch, persona, ad. So 4.2.1 reads as batch 4, persona 2, ad 1. No guesswork when a file lands in Slack or a feedback round, no mismatched assets in production.

Every angle starts as a master concept in one Figma file: hero image, headline, sub-headline, copy, legal line, brand mark, CTA. From there it's adaptation, not redrawing.

One master, every channel

Each master has to live across PPC (Google), Meta, and LinkedIn. Different ratios, safe zones, character limits, legal disclosures. What reads at 1080×1080 breaks at a 728×90 leaderboard. We tune each one so the headline still earns the first scroll-stop.

• PPC / Google: responsive search ads plus display banners (leaderboard, MPU, half-page, skyscraper).
• Meta: 1:1 feed, 4:5 portrait, 9:16 stories and reels. Image and video variants per persona angle.
• LinkedIn: single-image and document ads, sized for the professional feed and the investment audience.
• Legal: franchise disclosure copy and small-print lines tuned per channel and geography.
• Readability: type sizes, contrast, and hierarchy re-tuned per format so nothing gets lost.

Built to scale

Every master is a system of nested components. Headline, sub-headline, copy, legal line, CTA, brand mark, photo slot, all instances of base components. Channel frames reuse those same instances with auto-layout and constraints.

Change the master once, every variant updates. Swap a hero photo, rewrite a CTA, ship dozens of placements without touching individual files. When legal asks for a one-word change on the franchise disclosure, it lands across every format in seconds.

This is what makes the cadence work: a new set of 20 ads per month since April, with full ratio adaptations across PPC, Meta, and LinkedIn. Same system, new angle every month.

AI in the loop

AI sped up the slow parts on both ends. Research: faster competitor scanning, audience synthesis, persona framing. Production: supporting graphic assets, alternate hero treatments, and (most usefully) automated export of every component variant at the right size, ratio, and weight per channel. No one clicking through Figma's export panel one ad at a time.

More time on creative judgment. Less on the repetitive work.

567 leads across five months. But the more valuable outcome was clarity on what actually works: which angles convert, which channels qualify, and where to put the budget next.

What this means

• Scale the Power Couples creative; it's the only Meta angle with qualified output
• Cut channels that bring volume but no qualified investors
• Double down on the franchise website and organic: 78 to 80% qualification vs. 23 to 27% from broad paid
• Search and Performance Max (not Display) are driving the qualified Google leads

“For the first time, BODYBAR's ad spend was tied directly to the goal that matters: selling more franchises.”