What’s your target market?
Whatever you do don’t try to appeal to everyone. Let the gyms do that.
Answer these questions to help you find out what type of clients you should be targeting.
Just think for a second about who your best clients are. Who do you have the most in common with and enjoy training the most?
Which type of clients hardly ever let you down?
Which type of clients provide you with the most referrals?
This exercise is called profiling. You need to now have a look at what all of these clients have in common. What’s the age range? What types of jobs do they do? Do they have kids? What motivates them?
Are you targeting new mums?
Are you targeting guys in their 20s that really want to put on some lean tisssue?
Are you targeting guys in their 30s and 40s that have let themselves go and want to get rid of that gut?
Once you’ve gone through this and identified your ‘Ideal Client’, you now need to construct your whole marketing message around this and position yourself as the local expert for that particular type of person.
If I’m a classic skinny ectomorph (I am by the way) in my 20s (I wish!), with a decent job and disposable income and have really struggled to put on any lean tissue in the last few months, then do you think your marketing message will be worded slighly differently than if you were targeting women in their late 20s and early 30s that have recently given birth?
Do you think the classic ectomorph guy would rather pay £15 per session with a generalist PT with no obvious track record of people like him or pay £30 per session with a Specialist ‘Muscle Building For Skinny Guys’ PT with testimonials from other guys like him and a guarantee of results.
Once you become the specialist within your niche, you can charge more than your generalist competitors.
In my business I am positioned as the local expert for women wanting to lose fat and look more toned. We don’t deal with injury problems, we don’t deal with men, we don’t deal with the ‘beauty parade’ that hang out at the gym, we don’t deal with anyone over 55 and we don’t deal with super fit junkies.
This is our specislism and therefore we charge more than any other gym, local PT, crossfit, zumba etc. We do sometimes get enquiries from ladies that want to join but say we’re too expensive and so I politely direct them to PTs that I know are charging £10 per session or towards a Pure Gym where they can get membership for less than £20 per month. We don’t want/need these type of clients.
This is one of the most important exercises that you can go through before you start constructing any marketing messages and spending money on ads.
You need to stand out to your market.
Carve out your niche, charge what your worth and be selective about who you take on. It’s a strong stance to take but you gotta do it to avoid mediocrity.
Ricky
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