Planning is Essential
One of the biggest mistakes when starting any fitness business is lack of planning. I’ve seen many small businesses fail – and not just fitness businesses – because the owner hasn’t set aside enough capital, fails to market his business effectively, or simply doesn’t understand what’s involved with running a small business.
You’ve had (another) bad day and you regularly drive past a property that’s been for lease for a long time. It’s perfect for a fitness business – you think – and next thing you know you’re meeting with a realtor who’s telling you all sorts of wonderful things about the place. The rent is affordable. You have the necessary month in advance and deposit, plus enough to turn on the utilities.
But have you got a business plan? Have you really got all the capital necessary for starting a fitness business? Can you honestly say you know exactly what you need to do to promote your business effectively and do you have the finances in place to sustain your lifestyle while you build your business? Do you have an entrepreneurial mindset, or are you just a dreamer?
It’s time to plan.
(more...)
As a fitness business owner - even if you’re just starting out and you’re a one-man operation – you’re essentially a manager. Look up the word manager in the dictionary and you’ll find a definition something like this: somebody who is responsible for directing and controlling the work and staff of a business, or of a department within it.
Enter Fitness Business Time Management
If you’ve ever worked outside of the fitness industry, say in an office or retail, managers spend a lot of time in meetings discussing ways of improving business, and time management is a major concern. The cost of labor is the largest expenditure for many companies and managing the time that staff spend doing certain tasks can mean the difference between profit and loss.
But how does that apply to your little fitness business? Well let me put it like this, why are you doing tasks you shouldn’t be doing – and yes that may mean cleaning your studio – when you could hire someone else to do it for a measly few bucks an hour?
If the answer is “I can’t afford to hire someone” my response is you can’t afford NOT to hire someone! How is vacuuming your studio moving your business forward? All that’s doing is wearing you out, prolonging the hours you work, and diluting the income you get from doing more lucrative things – the reason you started your own business!
This is where the 5% rule comes in.
(more...)
No we’re not talking about bloating and water retention here – we’re talking about how to keep the clients you’ve already spent a lot of time and money recruiting - Fitness clients retention that is. And that’s the key. Marketing is time-consuming and expensive and if you hate the closing process it only makes sense to do everything you can to keep the clients you already have coming back.
There’s always going to be a certain amount of natural attrition, if a member moves out of the area for example, but if people turn up irregularly and then disappear completely, you’re going to have to find out why.
Fitness Business Retention
Relationships with Clients
From the start of your fitness boot camp business you should always be building solid relationships with clients. By getting to know them and showing an interest they are more likely to be honest with you, instead of sliding away and refusing to answer your phone calls. If you’re getting a large percentage of clients who don’t renew, then something’s up and you need to know the reason.
Send a friendly email containing a well constructed but short questionnaire, that also offers a limited time coupon with a deep discount if they do renew. Leave a space for comments and take careful note of all the responses and take action. You’re boot camp sessions are too strenuous, some haven’t seen results they were hoping for, they’d rather do Pilates – whatever – these are all things that you can address – especially if you see a common thread.
Do whatever it takes to get those clients back into the fold. Offer Pilates sessions; offer a free personal consultation with the client so she will achieve the results she wants. Those few minutes can ultimately save you a lot more time and money required to market and recruit new clients. (more...)
It doesn’t matter what business you want to start or have already started, finding the right marketing strategy is going to be the way to get paying customers through the door, and fitness business marketing is no different.
You can’t be All Things to All People
You can learn a lot from looking at all kinds of advertising when planning a marketing campaign for your fitness business. Big name advertisers concentrate on one thing only when they set out to create a television ad for example. Let’s say it’s a new kind of whitening toothpaste. The company may also make mouthwash, toothbrushes, shampoo, and soap and just about everything else you can find in a bathroom, but they concentrate on one item only to get their message across.
(more...)
One of the most important aspects of starting a fitness business is marketing.
If nobody knows you exist, you’ll be closing the doors in no time at all.
In the beginning you probably won’t have many clients. Some fitness professionals manage to create a following while working for someone else and those clients will follow if he opens his own facility but it’s rarely an adequate number to pay the bills and make a profit.
A monthly budget should be set aside for marketing for at least your first year of business and factored into your startup costs. You should also concentrate on targeting your advertising towards the market you wish to attract, so it’s going to take some research to discover where you will get the most bang for your advertising buck.
It’s also expedient to monitor the responses you get from all your marketing campaigns. If you’re using newspapers or magazines including a coupon from which you can monitor the source will be very helpful. Groupons and coupons that can be used with smart phones are gaining rapidly in popularity.
Of course you will probably start a FaceBook page and a blog for your fitness business and you can also code any coupons and special offers accordingly. The best way to get attract new members initially will be by offering freebies and coupons.
Now, let’s say you’re a few months down the road and you have a growing clientele, how can you use your new clients to generate business for you and why should you?
(more...)
In order to have a thriving fitness business you’ve got to be an excellent trainer AND an excellent salesperson as well. If you’ve been in sales you know the most difficult part is closing, and it’s no different when selling personal training.
I’ve come across lots of excellent trainers who have no clue about the psychology of selling and how to close, so I’m going to explain the most effective way of closing most fitness clients without ever having to sit down or waste hours of your time.
If you get five or six people coming through the door every day looking for fitness training, you certainly don’t want to spend six hours a day dealing with people who end up making excuses and coming up with the same run of the mill objections.
Knowing how to sell personal training and how to sell fitness effectively gets easier, and for many of us who already “get it” closing rates can be anywhere from 90% to 100% and it will only take a few minutes every time.
(more...)
Building a website for your fitness business can be a daunting task if you’ve never done it before. Its actually a lot easier and cheaper today than it used to be before WordPress came along, but there are still so many things to remember and rules that must be followed to keep the search engines happy, especially Big Brother Google.
Domain Name
Finding a good domain name these days is difficult but if you’re starting your own fitness business and you’re using your own name that can be a lot easier. Make sure your domain name is relevant and easy to remember, .com is still the extension to go for.
Choosing a Host
You’ll need a host with great customer service 24/7 and one with a good reputation with secure servers, backup and minimal downtime. (more...)
This is a guest post by Fit Body Boot Camp co-founder Bedros Keuilian.
Enter Bedros...
I’ve been coaching and offering consultation to fitness professionals for well over a decade and I wanted to share an abbreviated version of an email I recently sent out to my subscribers titled the Official Annual State of the Industry Report which could also be called a Fit Body Boot Camp Franchise Review.
I didn’t expect the enormous response I got but it was good to know so many people in this industry are eager to understand which way the business is headed. My Report is all based on careful research and facts, and anybody who knows me personally will tell you I put my best efforts into everything I do.
(more...)
Okay you’re fitness PRO, not some marketing whizz. The truth is that most fitness professionals have little or no clue about how to go about how to market a fitness business. They think that having their credentials on the wall with a photo of them doing a smiling oily pose is going to entice everyone to sign up with them. Wrong. You have to get prospects in the door first, and secondly they don’t care too much about what you look like, it’s what they hope to look like after they’ve used your services!
It’s all about the prospect.
As everyone in this industry knows, the best (and cheapest) leads are referrals, those prospects who lift the phone because their friend, co-worker, colleague – whatever - has gone from being a blob to a babe. See where we’re going here? People want proof.
(more...)
