Opening a fitness center and adopting a fitness center business plan doesn’t have to be a difficult process. A good business plan in general has the goals that you want to accomplish clearly stated. There are a lot of different routes you can go, but I have spent over fifteen years in the fitness industry and I can tell you from experience that there is an easy way and a hard way to opening a fitness business.
Finding the right business plan is critical for starting your fitness business off on the right foot. And you want your fitness business to start off with a bang, right?
Here are some awesome tips I’ve put together for personal trainers out there who are wanting to open their own successful fitness center.
Great marketing is only great when it’s laser focused on a specific group. Once you identify your target audience you can work on a campaign that will bring you the clients you want. Know that wanting to appeal to everybody is not a good idea because you want your clients to feel like your services were created just for them, that way they are more enticed to buy your products or services.
The best way to figure out what your niche is by looking at the what market that would most likely be attracted to you, and which market you’d like most to train. This makes it easier to decide on what services you’d like to provide like strength training and muscle gaining, or fat and weight loss. The more specific you are the better because you want to position yourself as an expert in your field and you can only do that you’re focused on a specific market.
Tip #2 Find Your Top Three Lead Generating Strategies and Track Them
Not only is important to find the best lead generating strategies, but you have to know how to track them. This is critical because you want to see a return on your investment so you need to find out what fitness marketing strategy is working and which ones are not.
A good way to do this is to set up different phone numbers for the different marketing campaigns that you have going out. If you are running a special and you chose to advertise with postcards, include a brand new phone number on that post card so you can actively monitor the calls that come in. Google voice and RingCentral are good ones to check out (they’re free). If you find out that you aren’t getting very many phone calls with your postcards, but you are getting a good response with a print ad that you published, then you’d obviously want to run a bigger print ad. It’s all about figuring out what fitness marketing campaigns work and which ones do not. Who would want to invest in something that’s not bringing you money, anyway?
Do the research to find out what works and stick with it. It’s not about having 50 different fitness marketing strategies, it’s about finding and using the right ones for your fitness business.
Tip #3 Figure Out What to Charge Your Clients
The last thing you want to do with your fitness center business plan is charge what other fitness centers are charging. You should never look to your competition to figure out your own price points because if you’re good at what you do you should be able to charge what you’re worth.
A few things you can do to get started on charging what your personal training services are worth is by offering risk reversal. Risk reversal is like a money back guarantee, where if your clients aren’t satisfied after a certain number of days they can get a refund and not loose anything. This way they feel completely safe handing over their hard earned cash.
Another thing you can do have social proof. Social proof includes things like testimonials and reviews on sites like your Facebook page, your Yelp account, and your website. This shows the community that you know exactly what you’re doing and positions you as the go-to expert on fitness in your area, and also allows you to charge what you’re worth because people trust you to give them results.
Instead of competing with other fitness centers on pricing, create reasons for why your fitness center is better and more worthwhile to attend than other, that way you never have to worry about what the other guys are charging and you can focus on adding value to your fitness business.
And Another Thing…
One thing you should try to accomplish with your fitness center business plan is to stop being a debt collector and start implementing EFT in your fitness center right away. EFT is great for getting recurring revenue into your business every month. Let your clients know about the convenience of EFT and don’t take a no for an answer. If you’ve done your part in convincing them how much they need your services then they should have no problem switching over to an automated payment system.
Good luck adopting your fitness center business plan and be sure to check back periodically for the best fitness marketing tips, strategies, and tactics for growing your personal training business.