Marketing Strengths

Did you know that a majority of fitness businesses won’t be around in just 2 years?

It’s a scary stat if you’re running a fitness business. Even worse would be the stat that shows how many fitness business owners, trainers and fitness pros are struggling to pay their bills and running a business where they don’t pay themselves.

I’ve seen a lot of these passionate, great people suffer through business challenges in hopes that they can help more people.

You don’t want to fall into either of those categories! And if you’re currently a struggling, frustrated business owner this article may be the thing that gives you the breakthrough you need.

A Better Marketing Method

There are a million ways to market your business. From low cost, grass roots efforts to fancy funnels that require you to invest a good chunk of change to make them work.

Do a quick search around the internet, and there’s no shortage of articles and info telling you about the brand new marketing strategy/tactic/trick/etc. that will turn your business around. Want to know the truth?

Marketing is a consistency game. It ebbs and flows like everything where you get a steady, slow drip of leads and every so often you hit a home run and bring in a surge of new leads.

The key is doing it consistently. But, your time is limited. You don’t have the extra resources to explore dozens of marketing ideas. So, you need to stick to the most efficient and effective strengths that will actually produce results.

The easiest and best way to find those activities is to focus on your strengths.

Educational Based Marketing

As a fitness pro you love helping people. You have a passion for sharing the info and knowledge that you’ve worked hard to gain over the years.

You can take this same approach with your marketing. Educate your leads and the market that you serve with valuable content and information that will help them reach their goals and overcome their problems.

Embrace your role as a coach and extend your reach and impact by putting out valuable content. Not only will you position yourself as the expert in your area for helping the people that you serve, but you’ll begin attracting a lot more leads.

Providing value to your audience allows you to ask them to do something for you. When you share tips, advice and recommendations that allow people to understand their problems better and see possible solutions, they will want to repay you.

They repay you by following your coaching, taking action on your requests and eventually becoming a paying client.

The Long Road To Gaining A Client

Another great benefit of education-based marketing is that you can nurture leads a lot longer. Most of the time fitness business owners go in for the kill right away with leads. They are out there seeking the people who are ready to make a buying decision.

It’s the referrals that you get, the leads that call in or fill out the application on your site to get more info about training.

But what about all those people out there just now looking for possible solutions, seeking info on ways to overcome their challenges but not quite ready to hire a trainer to help them? Could you educate them and provide valuable content to help them out and then progressively explain what you do, how you help them and why it’s important for them to use a coach or trainer?

That seems like a much more effective way to market than only trying to find the people that are ready to buy right now. The trouble is it takes a little longer to nurture these leads.

The payoff comes after consistently providing valuable content, building your audience and nurturing them along. You will have a much larger pool of leads to eventually turn into clients.

And you won’t miss out on those people that are ready to buy right now! Those people will still be reaching out to you and taking action to take the next step with you.

Defining Your Strengths

Any good marketing plan starts with a marketing strategy. You need to have a solid Core Offer in place, identify your Ideal Client, and work through your Local Market Positioning.

This provides you with the understanding of what you’re selling, who you are trying to help and why you’re the best choice for them. It gives you valuable insight into where to find your target market and how to speak to them.

These things all flow into your marketing plan. If you don’t have them and try to put a plan together you’re taking a big gamble. You don’t have a target to aim at, so your chances of hitting your mark are slim.

It won’t take you long to go through all those things, and it will be a great investment of your time. But, let’s move forward assuming that you’ve got them done. What’s next?

Now I want to create a list, a complete brain dump, of all the assets you possess. Don’t worry about them being marketing specific. An asset is a strength. It’s defined as “a valuable person, thing or quality.” So what qualities, people or things do you have at your disposal?

Here’s a quick list of possible ideas:

• Extra money (marketing budget)
• Writing skills
• Public speaking skills
• A big network
• Relationship building skills
• Connections to high-powered individuals in the community
• Video skills
• Graphic design skills
• Web development skills
• FB advertising knowledge
• Copywriting skills/experience
• Friends in marketing
• Space in my facility

If you have a team, do this exercise together and find ways to leverage the best assets from the entire team. You may be surprised at the hidden strengths that you can use to market your business.

Once you have your complete list, go through and find the 3-5 assets or strengths that you can put to use right away and that you will enjoy doing. Don’t pick things you hate unless you are 100% sure they will produce results quickly. Enjoying your marketing will make it more fun, and you’ll be more likely to actually do it.

Your Marketing Superpowers

Now that you have your 3-5 marketing assets selected your job is to turn them into your marketing superpowers. Figure out how you can leverage those strengths and implement them in your marketing plan right away.

You don’t have to do everything under the sun to be good at marketing and grow your fitness business. Finding a few key activities that you can do, enjoy and that produce results is enough for you to have an extremely successful business.

Putting these marketing strengths to use to provide educational-based marketing to your target market will result in long-term success and a thriving business for you!