It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a personal training business or a fitness boot camp, you’ll need a solid business plan that includes an effective marketing plan if you want to get on the fast track to success.

Learn everything you can about marketing. Find out what works for you and concentrate on putting your plan into place so everybody - you, your staff and your clients, will always know what to expect.

Set Goals for Your Business

Your business plan must include goals. Where do you want your business to be in 12 months, three years and  in 5 years?

Only you know how much time and effort you want to dedicate to your business. Many small-business owners end up working seven days a week without a break and that isn’t good. Hence planning well ahead means you can take much needed time off without feeling guilty and you should also be able to take a vacation.

How much money do you want to be earning in five years time? If you can set a realistic goal and work towards that financial goal, you’ll find that instigating an effective business plan will help spur you on.

Finding and utilizing a number of effective marketing techniques will be key to your success. By planning, you can experiment. By setting goals, you’ll be able to drop those marketing techniques that are not working and concentrate on those that are. Therefore, you must always be aware of where your referrals are coming from and which convert the best.

Treat all Your Clients Equally Well

Each person that expresses an interest in joining your fitness boot camp is potentially going to put food on your table, so building a close relationship with each client is vital.

A one-on-one discussion with new clients will help you help them  reach their personal fitness or weight loss goals. Get to know everyone’s name and introduce newcomers to others into your group. That way you can build trust and the results can only be positive. The new client will feel like a valued member of the group and help them build relationships with other members, so they will be more likely to stick to the program.

They will enjoy themselves, reach their goals, and will be more likely to refer your boot camp to other people they know.

Using Scripts

Successful businesses use scripts and so should you. That doesn’t mean you have to sound like a parrot! When it comes to closing and the initial interview there are a number of things you must learn about your client. There are also things she must know, including pricing.

Closing is the most difficult part of selling anything, but sticking to an effective script – not necessarily word for word – can alleviate a lot of the angst many people feel when asking for money. The trick is to ask the right questions, while stressing the benefits of joining your boot camp, not just how much it costs.

Using the right techniques, perhaps using a script initially, you’ll soon discover the most effective way to close most clients without a problem. When you’ve found the right formula, then it’s easy to teach it to your employees.

Work Efficiently

Concentrate on areas of your business that maximize your financial returns and minimize the amount of work you do. Marketing in the wrong areas can be a huge time and money waster and should not be part of your fitness boot camp business plan, and as we mentioned above, it’s essential to monitor your marketing efforts.

You can waste hours Tweeting, blogging and updating your FaceBook page. If you’re only getting a couple of leads from your FaceBook business page each month you’re not getting a good return on your investment. Even though it’s free to use most social media platforms, your time is valuable. Although social media can be an incredible resource, it can be an enormous time waster. Find ways to use social media more effectively, and limit the time you spend on it.

Happy Clients are Your Best Marketing Resource

If you make a list of the marketing resources you use to get referrals, if your existing clients are not at the top of the list, then you’re doing something wrong. Each referral that results in a sign up has cost you money, and it’s easy to figure out how much each referral costs. If you spend thousand dollars a month on paper advertising which results in 10 sign ups, each has cost you $100.

It only makes good business sense to reward those clients that give you referrals! Word-of-mouth advertising is the best! Your client has already done the selling. Reward her and make it known to all your clients that they will receive valuable incentives for promoting your business. You can offer goods, gift cards, and free sessions to turn your boot camp members into your very own sales force.

Become Known in Your Local Community

It really isn’t necessary to pay a lot for advertising locally if you can get out and promote your boot camp by becoming a well-known member of the community.

If you’ve just started your boot camp, introduce yourself to other local business owners and while you’re there, talk about ways you can help each other’s marketing efforts. Don’t just walk in and ask if you can leave a pile of business cards or flyers. Network with other business owners regularly and get to know them.

Join local business groups and you’ll find people who will be only too happy to reciprocate when it comes to mutual promotion. Find ways to get into the local press and, even better, on your local television station. The media is always looking for fresh new stories. Offer your services for free, perhaps to a local youth group. Create a buzz.

Make Your Bootcamp Stand Out

People want to have fun and be with like-minded people. Although the ultimate goal of your boot camp will be to help your clients get fit and/or lose weight, it shouldn’t be something people dread like going to the dentist. If your sessions are not memorable, fun and effective, people will fail to show up, and worse, they won’t refer you to anybody else.

Make Them an Offer they Can’t Refuse

You can’t look for immediate profits with everything you do. That’s why offering specials to new sign-ups can actually be an investment.

One free week isn’t long enough for most people to see results, so a two-week special introductory offer is an excellent idea. Most people will be over the initial pain and seeing and feeling the results of regular boot camp workouts after two weeks. Closing those people will be easy. You will have had time to interact with them, and they will have started building relationships with others within your group.

Don’t be Afraid to Ask

Everybody knows somebody who needs to get in shape or lose weight, so don’t be afraid to ask for referrals. If you have happy members who are seeing results, you may not even have to ask, but by making it known that you offer valuable rewards for referrals, that may just be the incentive someone needs to refer your boot camp to a friend or family member.

The key is to make all your clients feel special, so the best way to invest your time is to concentrate on running a great fitness boot camp business that gets results and everyone enjoys.

This entry was posted on July 10, 2013 at 11:22 am. 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, Boot Camp Strategies, Fitness Marketing, How To Start a Fitness Boot Camp Business by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet