It’s easy to think that offering a wide range of services and programs in your fitness business will help you attract more clients and make more money.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it usually works. More times than not you end up with the opposite result when you offer too many types of training programs.
Having multiple programs makes marketing more challenging. You either end up diluting the marketing to try and speak to everyone, OR you have to stretch to market each of the programs individually. Both are bad.
There are times when having multiple programs can benefit your business. But just like a fitness client has to be ready to be able to handle complex movements, your business has to be ready to handle the additional complexity that comes along with marketing, selling, and delivering multiple Core Offers well.
So let’s talk about what to do BEFORE you expand the scope of your offerings.
Strengthen Your Fitness Business’s Core Offer
Your Core Offer for your fitness business is the economic driver of your business. It’s the ONE program that drives your success. It’s the best solution to the problem your Ideal Client is trying to solve. So, yeah, it’s pretty important.
Notice it isn’t Core OFFERS.
There are a lot of gyms out there that make a huge mistake by not clearly defining their Core Offer. That leads to trying to appeal to everyone (scope creep). They are seen as a jack of all trades, master of none. And tragically they never are top of mind as a solution for anyone in their target market.
You want to dominate your area with your Core Offer. It’s the #1 THING you’re known for in your market. If you’ve read ‘Good to Great’, think ‘Hedgehog Concept’.
It’s focused and specific.
Your Core Offer is centered around:
- The results your clients want
- The results you’re best at getting for your clients
- The method you use for getting those results
It’s where your strengths solve the biggest need for your target market..
Once you’ve got that dialed in you need to evaluate your Core Offer. Things like:
- Can you build a sustainable business with it?
- Can you deliver it long term?
- Do your circumstances (space, time, etc.) allow you to deliver it well?
Having a strong Core Offer will allow you to focus your energy and improve your marketing.
Your goal is to grow your Core Offer. That leads to an increase in monthly revenue.
The Power of Focus
Ever used a magnifying glass to burn paper?
The magnifying glass focuses the energy of the sunlight into a small point that creates enough heat to start a fire.
Your marketing can have the same impact. Imagine focusing all your marketing activities on one goal. Everything you do to get new leads should be focused on growing one program.
As a rule of thumb you should have 3 active marketing channels in place at all times: Online, Offline and Internal. Each of these channels should be designed to get someone to take the next step with you through your marketing funnel all the way to your Core Offer. Ex: Email Opt-In to Front End Offer, and then your Front End Offer is designed to move someone to your Core Offer.
Here’s a quick graphic that shows alignment for your marketing funnel:
When you align your marketing activities you’ll instantly start to sense an increase in your momentum. When you’re trying to market your semi-private, your personal training, your running club, and your yoga program all at the same time it confuses the people you’re trying to attract.
When Should You Add Programs in Your Fitness Business?
You should add programs in your fitness business in two cases:
- When you need to complement your Core Offer with supplemental programs
- After you have mastered your first Core Offer and are prepared to scale your business and begin building a second Core Offer
There are times when your Core Offer leaves gaps in your offerings. For example, if you run group training programs you may have some off hours that you aren’t able to fill and run profitably. That might be your opportunity to offer a personal training program to fill in the time slot.
In this case you may want to offer a personal training program to fill in those time slots.
Your marketing and energy will go to building the group training programs. However, you can seize opportunities that come up to provide personal training to clients.
Clients that need extra workouts or more attention could add personal training to their membership, you could fill these times with higher end clients that approach, or you could place clients in this program if your group training times don’t work for their schedules.
In this example, the personal training program doesn’t have to be the primary revenue driver for your business but it could add a good chunk of supplemental revenue.
On the other hand if you’ve mastered your original Core Offer and have built a team, systems and structure to support the marketing and delivery of that program it may be time to add another Core Offer and duplicate the entire process.
If you have room in your schedule, room in your facility and the time to market this new program timing could be right.
The goal is to have it be a multiplier for you, not to have it drain resources from your current Core Offer.
Here’s a very important concept: It is more valuable for you to have 1 clearly defined Core Offer and a well designed Front-End Offer that feeds it than it is for you to have ___ not so clearly defined Core Offers without that well designed FEO. (You can plug in whatever number you want.)
The Challenges
It’s difficult to stay focused on your Core Offer and master your marketing and delivery of that service. Especially when you think there’s an opportunity to make a sale.
The easy route is to offer a smorgasbord of programs and hope that people come to you looking for what you have to offer.
The easy route rarely leads to success.
Shoot Your Shot
But you need to be figuring out what your shot is first.
If you’re just starting to build your fitness business, focusing on one Core Offer is your key to success. You can have the vision of having multiple programs in your business eventually, but the road to get there starts by mastering one at a time.
If you’re an experienced fitness business owner looking to take your revenues and business to the next level the time may be right to add an additional Core Offer to your business. Look at your resources and evaluate the opportunity.
A Stronger Marketing Plan (and Business)
The results of focusing on your Core Offer will be rewarding. It works. The best companies in the world started by focusing on their core competencies. They built the foundation for their overall success by owning one market.
The rules for success are the same for you.
Your marketing will be simpler, yet more effective. Your business will be stronger and more streamlined.
Just think about that for a second….
Feels good, doesn’t it?.
Not sure what area of your fitness business you should be focused on strengthening right now?
Is it your Core Offer?
Maybe your sales process?
What about management/leadership?
I highly recommend taking our Rapid Assessment. You’ll get a report on what stage your fitness business is in and guidance on solving the challenges you’re facing. It’s quick (thus the name). 10 questions and should take you less than 2 minutes. You’ll get the report immediately.
Need more marketing tips? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Gym Business Marketing Plan.
Want more information on how to improve your sales process? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Sales System for Your Gym Business.
