Staying active and fit is not just good for physical health but mental health too. With the demand for personal training on the rise, now is the time to start a fitness business that meets the needs of your target customer.
The market size of personal training in the UK is growing by £70 million a year, making it an attractive sector in which to work. As well as employment opportunities, starting your own personal trainer business could also mean realising your dream.
Staring and managing your own business is rewarding but not without its challenges. You may have all the skills in fitness you need, but what about business management skills? Just where do you start when it comes to starting a personal training business?
We’ve already said that in the UK, the personal training and fitness industry is booming. Clients are always looking for new ways to get and stay fit. Trends come and go, for example, Zumba classes were once bursting at the seams with boxercise and similar high impact activities attractive to many.
You need to be sure that there is a demand for personal training in your area and, if there is, what it is people are looking for. As a personal trainer, you’ll be working with people on a one-to-one basis or in small groups, as well as possibly running premises for gym users.
With an idea of how big your market is, you can start to add detail to the plan for your business.
You must be clear about what you are offering, to whom, when, why and how. By being able to answer these simple questions, you are outlining the parameters of your business.
Understanding your customer demographic is key too. Who is it that you are aiming your professional PT business at? Keeping it too vague – e.g. anyone who wants to get fit – means that your marketing will be too wide to be effective.
Focussing on a specific expertise or niche will give your business the starting platform it needs. As you scale and grow your PT business, you can add more services and classes.
To formulate the basis for your business, consider:
Unique Selling Point (USP) is the thing that makes your business different from your competitors. This could be offering exclusive one-to-one training sessions for 3 months or including a mix of personal and small group sessions.
Why should customers come to you? What is their problem, and how do you solve it? By identifying why people use a personal trainer (and more specifically, come to your business), you can show your customer how you solve this problem.
Offering specific services can help to bring in your first customers from a specific set of people. This could be fitness and wellness classes for expectant or new mums and dads, for example. When people see you as an expert or specialist, they are more likely to sign up because they have the confidence you’ll understand their aims.
Being qualified also gives out the right trust signals to people. People buy from people, and so that means showcasing your qualifications and achievements is key to customers signing up to your service.
The costs of starting and running a business don’t have to be sky-high, but you do need to have a clear idea of what the start-up costs are, as well as ongoing costs in the months of your fledgeling business.
As well as identifying what these costs are, you need to prioritise them too.
How much you need to set up your business depends on various factors, but you might want to consider the costs of:
Some personal trainers started their businesses by offering sessions outdoors, such as local parks or on the beach. With a steady base of customers, they rented premises a few months into their business growth.
There are ongoing costs, some monthly some annual, that you also need to take into account including insurance costs, travel including buying or leasing a company vehicle, marketing and so on.
With an idea of your expected expenditure each month, including start-up costs, you know need to make sure that your business is financially viable. And that means understanding how much you’ll need to charge per person or session.
At what point will your business breakeven? How many clients do you need to be in profit?
It isn’t just a case of plucking a figure from the air, however. You need to determine whether this fee per person or per session for your personal trainer services are realistic, competitive and in-line with what your target customer would be willing to pay.
Overpricing means alienating customers, but under-pricing could see you in a whole world of pain where, no matter how hard you try, you never seem to turn a profit.
Every business needs to have a brand. We can all think of a brand that we like and one that we don’t.
Brand values will be at the core of what you do. Deciding what these values are is important, as is communicating these to your target customer.
A logo is not the be-all-and-end-all of branding, but it is a great place to start. There are some rules to follow when it comes to logo design, but in the main, you want your logo to ‘match’ your brand values.
This logo will become, in time, strongly linked to your business. The more times people see, the more likely they are to recognise it and associated it with your business. It will be on your PT uniform, your equipment too, your company vehicle if you have one, on your website and other marketing material.
As part of logo design, you’ll consider colours too. Many businesses develop a brand spec kit – this includes everything from the main logo, two or three different versions of it that you can use on email signatures and so on, as well as a palette of colours. Choosing colours for your business is important because you want a colour that appeals to your customer.
Marketing is the channel that you will use to showcase your personal training business. Some people think that a scatter approach works – generalised marketing that hits everyone – but marketing experts suggest that understanding your customer and targeting them yields better conversion rates. In other words, the better you know your customer, the better your marketing and the more people you’ll have signed up.
Broadly speaking, marketing can be divided into two categories – offline and online.
Offline marketing refers to tools such as flyers, newspaper or magazine ads, radio ads and so on. Online marketing refers to channels such as social media, paid ads and your website.
The key to successful marketing is…
When you know your customer – referred to a customer demographic – you’ll understand which marketing channel and activity will work best.
List all the possible avenues and outlets to market your business both online and offline. When you have the list, make a note of costs associated with each one but, most importantly, who you would be targeting with each marketing avenue.
For example, if you are targeting the busy professional, starting a LinkedIn business page and LinkedIn paid ads would make sense but less so if you want to target new mums.
The web is a crowded place but creating a website is probably one of the best marketing moves you can make. Even simple websites with basic SEO and contact form can make a big difference to your business.
Marketing your business, however, needs to be consistent. When it comes to social media, for example, it is better to choose one platform and makes sure that is updated regularly, rather than spreading marketing efforts too thin.
If you print off business cards and leaflets, you need to have a distribution strategy. In other words, how will you use them so they don’t sit on a shelf gathering dust?
An exciting venture, starting your personal trainer business will take you into new territory. Rewarding and challenging, answering these basic questions will help get your new business off to a flying start.
