Personal story of the main expert of the marathon Ilona Chernobay is the story of victory and overcoming.

After pregnancy, Ilona gained weight, but due to her knowledge, sports background and coaching experience, she managed to lose more than 25 kg. She stuffed a weight loss marathon with these knowledge and skills in order to help girls get rid of extra weight and return their health to the norm.

Positioning through the personal brand of Ilona Chernobay and her story became the hallmark of the project, which made it possible to attract tens of thousands of participants and to successfully run another 42 marathons.

At the initial stage, the project did not have a website, so the personal Instagram profile of Ilona Chernobay and the ProjectX profile became the main platform for gathering leads. The main tools we used were traffic on Instagram and promotion of publications through the app.

The main audiences for ads were:

• people interested in the topic of diets and weight loss;
• young mothers;
• people interested in fitness, healthy lifestyle, exercises..

Apart from these segments, we constantly tested other audiences – from a general audience restricted only by age (no restrictions by interests) to office workers who wanted to lose weight.

As part of communication, we aired the following major advantages of the marathon:

• 10-12 minutes daily workouts;
• visible and tangible results in 22 days;
• it is easier to achieve one’s goals inside a community of like-minded people, getting constant support and motivation;
• affordable cost for a standard package;
• chance to win prizes, to become part of a team.

The first ads campaigns were based exclusively on a video message from Ilona Chernobay. In further ads campaigns we actively used motion videos, banners, professional workout video compilations, slideshows, etc.

Facebook performs very thorough checks of ads related to personal health. Therefore, materials at launch were always subjected to strong moderation and were sometimes rejected (even if there were no reasons for that). As part of the testing of communication, we found an effective approach to attract the target audience and at the same time not be blocked. One of the insights was that the phrase like «up to -12 kg in 22 days» was not banned in the videos, although the same phrase used in texts was regarded as a false promise and such an ad got immediately rejected.

Constantly improving the product and packaging, using lead magnets, developing Ilona Chernobay’s personal brand gave a positive effect in the long run. It also added to successful scaling and avoiding audience burnout.

Currently, the project has a good Social Proof in the form of a big number of real feedbacks and success stories of transformation, which also contributes to effective promotion.

A large generated database of the website visitors and interactions with brand pages on social networks allows to actively launch remarketing campaigns that encourage those who are still making a decision to drop a lead to participate in the marathon.