Focus on Growth For Your Fitness Business
It’s rare that you look at the growth of any business and it appears to happen linearly. Meaning that you see a steady rise in the revenue in profit. Instead it usually looks something like this…
Or this…
Those are actual images of two coaching client’s dashboards that we use to track their progress and growth.
You’ll notice dips and spikes throughout the year. If you only look at it month to month it may seem like they are moving backwards. However, if you look at the start and end points, you’ll notice significant growth.
This is the reality of business. You have times where the “gettin’ is good” and times where you simply need to maintain what you’ve built and not lose any ground.
Running a boot camp, studio or even building a personal training business is no different!
Your Hot Growth Periods
Most fitness-based businesses see sharp periods of growth right after the new year and during the late summer/early fall period for back to school times. These are periods where people tend to put the focus back on themselves and feel the need to start a new workout program.
Other key times are surrounding the holidays, but this can be area specific. In my previous business the weeks leading up to spring break and Memorial Day were big for us.
One thing to note is that your growth may not show up for 6-8 weeks during these times. As you acquire leads, get people into their front end offers and then work to convert them into clients, you may have a lag period where you don’t see lots of new revenue coming in.
As long as you are aware of this trend you can work to really take advantage of the key opportunities throughout the year planning for this growth. As you are building out your marketing calendar for the year and setting your business goals, it’s important to know when you should really ramp up your marketing.
Taking advantage of these “hot” times could be the difference between you hitting your goals or not. That takes planning and preparation. All of your marketing should be focused and much of your energy put towards the marketing activities needed to grow your business as much as possible during these times.
Good ideas could be:
- Running challenges and contests
- Ramping up your Facebook marketing
- Doing more networking events
- Spending more on advertisements
- Recruiting joint ventures
- Adding public speaking engagements
A 4-6 week marketing blitz will require a lot of planning and time from you, but it could be worth a whole lot to your business. And after that short period you can step back, take a breath and take care of all the new clients you have while maintaining your baseline marketing activities.
“What About the Rest of the Year?”
In the times between these “hot” periods not all is lost. You can’t just sit on your hands and do nothing while expecting your business to explode.
The rest of the year is spent testing new marketing ideas, building your systems, creating efficiency in your business and leveling up your skills as a business owner.
Consider this the period where you get to build your machine! Of course you’ll be marketing still, but not quite as aggressively. This is where a marketing calendar comes in handy as you can plan out referral promotions, networking, charity events, social media marketing and more.
Sharpen Your Axe
During these slower times of the year where you may not be in a full on marketing blitz, it’s time to sharpen your axe. Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”
It’s about working smarter instead of harder and continuing your development as a business owner.
During your slower times of the year, when you’re not in a marketing blitz and in a flurry of sales appointments, you need to be brushing up your continued education. This is the time to work on personal development so that your marketing and sales skills are on point when you need them to be.
Imagine being able to get in 10% more leads from your next marketing blitz because you learned one new strategy for marketing. Or even better, upping your closing rate by 10% so that you now sign up 1 of the 10 leads you may have lost before by improving your sales skills.
That 10% improvement in your closing rate could be worth thousands to your business when you factor in the lifetime value of your normal client.
The summer and holiday months are great times to focus on your own personal development so that you can lead your team, help your clients get better results and run a better business.
