Starting a fitness business, whether it’s group personal training like a boot camp or it’s a one-on-one personal training studio, is the natural progression for personal trainers who want to branch out. Especially if they’re stuck in a big box gym without much freedom. Learning the ins and outs of starting a business probably feels very overwhelming, but when it comes to fitness businesses there are tons of low-cost (and even free) ways that you can market so you’re constantly signing on new clients.

Here are three fitness marketing tips that you can use to start your gym or boot camp off without a hitch.

Who’s Your Ideal Client?

This is vitally important to figure out. Who do you want to serve most in your fitness business? Who is going to benefit the most from my program? By asking yourself these kinds of questions, you’ll be able to narrow down a niche for you to market and cater to. The reason this is so crucial is because your business will rely on marketing. Marketing to get you leads, which turn into clients, but in order for your marketing to be effective- it has to speak to a specific audience.

Not defining your niche market is actually one of the biggest mistakes that new fitness business owners can make. People buy things when they feel like their problems will be solved or when they feel understood, and it’s important to remember this when coming up with your target market. Once you know who you’re selling to, it’s easier to speak their language and get them buy personal training from you.

Good examples of niche markets include new moms who want to lose weight, student athletes, baby boomers or the elderly, busy people who don’t have time to work out, or those who are looking for complete body transformations. The more niche your program, the more you can market the hell out of it. If you chose to market to any and everyone from age 10 to 90 then you’ll have a much harder time making a connection with your potential clients.

Build Relationships

Believe it or not, being a fitness business owner means that you have to be social. Social with your leads, potential clients, and current clients. In order to grow your business to massive success you have to get your name out there and one way to do that is to take the time to build relationships. Relationships with local businesses that relate to your niche market. See a pattern here? You really can’t do much until you narrow down who you’d ideally like to serve.

Once you’ve defined your niche market, find out where these people like to hang out. For moms it might be a gymnastic center or a hair salon. For student athletes it might be some type of trendy, healthy type of restaurant or cafe. Also consider the businesses that are in a close vicinity to yours, whether or not they relate to your niche or not, and ask them how you can promote THEIR business to your clients, then you’ll have the opportunity to ask for their help.

You always want to go into these businesses with a giving hand. Help others so they’ll be more likely to help you. Say something like, “Hi! My name is JOE and I own the local fitness studio down the street and what I’d like to do is offer you free personal training for the next 30 days (or whatever you feel is appropriate) so you can come in and see what we’re all about, and I’d like to let my clients know about your business because they might want to come in and get their hair done (or whatever the business is). Do you have any handouts I can give to my clients?”

Then, you’ll want to follow up with them in a week or so to let them know that the handouts they gave you were a big hit (even if they weren’t). Ask them if they’re able to help you out by promoting your business to their clients and email lists. Let them know about any special offer that you have going on and even give them a couple of coupons or flyers or postcards (if you have them), heck even business cards will help.

Get Clients Fast

The quickest way to get a bunch of clients and get the word out about your business is to build an army of salespeople. And the cheapest, most cost-effective way of building this army is to use a “human billboard” system.

This works best for group personal training and boot camps, but is still applicable to one-on-one training businesses. Here’s what you do: go out and find 20 people, you can do this through Craigslist or friends and family you know, maybe even through social media, and offer heavily discounted personal training in exchange for referrals. Now, the trick is to have them commit to bringing in at least two referrals every week so that you’ll end up with a surge of new leads to sell personal training to.

Then when you sign on these referrals as new members, make it a point to let them know that your fitness business relies on referrals and you’d love it if they could spread the word about it. Make sure that your personal training sessions are fun and exciting enough for them to refer you to their family and friends. Remember to some, workouts are already boring so you really have to make an effort to show them how much fun exercising can be.

So, I hope that you’ve learned a thing or two on how to start a fitness business. Even if you only implement one of these tips, you’re sure to see your business grow.

Good luck!

This entry was posted on January 21, 2014 at 6:05 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Business, Boot Camp Marketing, How To Start a Fitness Boot Camp Business by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet