Market Your Health and Fitness Business

How to market your fitness/health business successfully.

Do you have a fitness/health-related business? Well, guess what. So does everyone else. It seems like everyone is jumping on the fitness/health niche, with new apparel lines being created daily. Sites like Shopify make it easy for just about anyone to throw up some designs and start selling and drop shipping online. There is an increased number of people hoping to become the next top online trainer or coach or even build up their private health practices (Registered Dietitians, Physical Therapists, etc.)  One thing for sure is that there is a great opportunity for potentially, anyone, to build a successful business. If you can successfully market your fitness/health business, you can build a profitable business and brand.

You want to be sure to jump on board but with so much competition. How can you succeed? There are three essential areas that you must develop in order to position your business for success.

1. Branding 

Here’s a mistake I often see new businesses make. They are eager to start “marketing” their business and move directly to getting a logo made. They will either outsource to a graphic designer, make it themselves, or buy one at a discount rate on sites like Upwork or Fiverr. 

Your logo is not your brand. It’s simply a symbol. A visual. 

Your brand is so much more than that. If you get it (branding) right, it’s what will position your business to become a relevant and well-known brand. 

As a business, your goal is to attract people to your business. This applies even to personal brands (personal trainers, coaches, etc).  Not just anyone but those that would benefit and actually have a need for your products and services. In order to draw people in, you have to first be crystal clear on who those people are. 

There has to be relevant meaning behind the symbol. In order for you to convey that meaning so that the masses will hear and understand it, you need branding. If you want to be recognized and loved by more people than just your friends and family, you need to develop your brand identity and position your brand so that it is clearly unique, strategically targets the right people, 

Creating your brand identity involves well thought out strategies. Ultimately, to be a successful brand you need to convey and evoke an emotional response in your audience’s mind so that your logo becomes more than just a symbol. It represents a bigger ideal. It evokes emotion. Your brand strategy helps you to accomplish this goal. 

Branding is an emotional experience. Simply throwing together a logo isn’t enough. It really boils down to being able to create a positive perception with clear, concise, and clear/ consistent communication. 

Branding considerations:Who is your exact target market? What are their top needs/pain points? How does your business help them solve these issues? What is your USP (Unique Selling Positioning) in other words, why should customers choose your brand over the competition? What do you do better? How are you different?

Fact: Every business that is #1 in their field invests in their branding.

It didn’t happen by accident. Branding isn’t an afterthought or something to consider if you have the budget. It’s a necessity for your business’s survival. It’s a must. 

Fact: It takes more than just a logo to build a brand.

Your brand is your business’ most valuable asset. Your audience’s perception of your business creates your brand. How you shape those perceptions is the key to influencing behavior. And it’s behavior that ultimately impacts your bottom line. 

There’s a great deal of research & brainstorming involved in the branding process. You have to fully know & understand your marketplace & how your business fits in…how it can stand apart. 

Being like everyone else isn’t memorable. You have to be unique and relevant to your audience. 

2. Digital 

The marketing landscape has changed significantly over the past few decades. Increasingly, the vast majority of people on this planet are online. Technology has transformed our world and with that also changed the way we buy.  In just a few short years, we as consumers have grown to expect and demand instant access to everything such as information, 1- Day shipping (think Amazon Prime), and communication (instant text, video chat, etc), banking/$ funds (Cash App, Venmo). Instead of making a trip to the bank, you can now just access funds from your mobile device. Everything can be accessed at the touch of a fingertip. We can literally order anything on demand. As a business owner, you need to seriously consider how you can incorporate digital into your business model so that you are not left behind. 

Traditional mediums like print, television, magazines, newspapers, etc. are being taken over by the digital space. If you are still relying on traditional forms of advertising or just word of mouth marketing, you are missing out. 

Your digital landscape is your business’ presence online. A website that is optimized for mobile usage is critical for success. The number of people buying online has increased yearly and is expected to continue to grow. If you seek to market your health and fitness business, you must be online.

Source:https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-shop-online

Social media

Social media is one of the most valuable and powerful tools brands need for success. Through social media you can:

1. Increase exposure/brand awareness and potentially reach millions of viewers with a single post instantly.

2. Build relationships with fans and customers while creating opportunities for key client/customer conversations. Social media generates a huge amount of data about customers in real-time. This information can be used to make smarter business decisions.

2. Allow key customers to see the human side of your business/brand which helps build trust and humanizes your brand.

3. Become the go-to source for information topics related to your niche and can establish you as a thought leader.

4. Stay relevant and fresh in your audience’s mind because most social media users log into their accounts at least 1x per day which gives your brand an opportunity to connect and engage with your fans every time they log in.

5. Increase traffic to your website and generate new leads with social media posts and targeted ads to market your health and fitness business.

Instagram alone has over a billion active users and over 500 million daily users. The #1 niche online is the fitness/health industry. That’s a ton of competition. On-line purchasing, entertainment, and researching are how we live and conduct business now and it will not be slowing down in the future. The increased use of social media has made our world a smaller place and “users can connect without regard to a geographical obstacle, financial background, or even social status.” –Orrin Broberg

You’ll need to consider a few things in order to create targeted content:

Who is your target audience? 

• Where are they located geographically?
• Gender/age
• Educational Level
• Income Level
• Occupation
• Work Schedule
• Marital Status
• #/Age of children
• Social Life (Hobbies, Dining out, outdoor activities, etc
• Social Media (FB, Twitter, IG, other) used?:
• What do they struggle with?
• Problems do they face?
• Where do they go to find information?
• Are they tech-savvy?

While these are just some of the things to consider when creating a profile of your target audience, having a clear picture helps businesses spend time/effort on the right platforms where your business is most likely to be found by them. 

Businesses need to embrace social media to effectively communicate with their clients/target audience. There are always new and unique ways to further tap into the power of social media. You are really missing out on undeniably one of the most vital marketing tools available today if your social media presence is lacking or missing altogether. When social media is used strategically, over time it is one of the most powerful forms to market your health and fitness business.

While social media can be used to expand your reach and position your business/brand in front of your ideal customers, there’s still another component that needs to be incorporated into your business strategy to market your health and fitness business. 

A common misconception for new businesses is the thought that having a social media presence is their main marketing means. Social media is primarily a networking platform where most people go for socializing and entertainment. People go there to be entertained not necessarily to buy. Social media can be used as a part of your marketing strategy but it should not be relied on exclusively as the sole means of marketing for your business. You’ll need more than this to actually drive profits to your business. 

3. Marketing (Advertising) for fitness businesses

The third component that every business needs to plan for is having an actual marketing strategy set up to drive targeted consumers that are ready to buy and actually convert into a sale. While social media can help you get in front of a bigger audience, your brand isn’t for everyone and most sales are not typically made on social media itself. The conversion happens further down the line. 

Free advertising:

Word of Mouth is one of the most powerful forms of advertising. People generally trust the word and experiences of their friends and family and regularly seek their advice when making purchasing decisions. You can encourage word of mouth referrals by building genuine connections with your customers and asking for reviews/feedback that you can post to your online platforms (builds trust factor), 

Leveraging local media -According to Mediagistic.com, press releases can help create more brand awareness, build up your social presence, and increase your community outreach.

Google My Business Listings and Yelp are great places to advertise if you conduct business locally. The key to using both of these is to regularly push out updates with your latest offers, give information, educate, upload recent photos of your work or clients, etc. Encourage your clients to leave you reviews. This is another form of word of mouth advertising.

Email Marketing can be highly effective for your business since people have to initially opt into your newsletter or mailing service before you can send out correspondences to them. Your list is comprised of people that have shown initial interest in your business making it easier for you to convert them when you do have an offer because they already know and trust you. 

Blogging is effective to help drive traffic to your business website and adds a layer of trust and credibility to your business. Create valuable content that are solutions or sources of information for potential problems that you have identified for your target audience. The more valuable content that you create, the stronger your credibility can be for your audience.

Paid Advertising:

Facebook Ads can be very effective in helping you target your ideal audience. According to an e-marketer.com survey,  (95.8%) of social media marketers worldwide said Facebook yielded the highest ROI out the social media networks. 

Google Pay Per Click Ads Google is the top search engine and most people use Google to search “what to do, where to go, and what to buy”. You can set up a budget and Google offers many different types of support to help you make the most informed and best choice for your business.

Search engine marketing can help drive traffic to your website. Investing in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Google AdWords can help push your content to the top for queries related to your business or subject area with optimized keyword targeting. 

Final Thoughts

You need a solid brand to endure the test of time and have a successful long-lasting business. You need the ability to reach enough of the right people to be able to eventually pitch your products and services to. All three of these elements are necessary for your business to thrive and succeed. Without branding your relevance is unclear and your business will lack positioning and meaning to the marketplace. The world has evolved and your business needs to evolve with it. This means keeping up with technology and showing up in a digital space.

Increased usage of mobile devices, has created an environment of instant access and demand. Any business that is serious about growth, needs to optimize its presence for mobile and establish its presence on a multitude of social media platforms taking into consideration its business goals and target audience. Developing effective marketing strategies helps bring your business, products/services to your ideal customers. If any of these three (branding, digital/social presence, and marketing) are missing, your chances of having business success are virtually non-existent in this day and age. 

Find more branding and marketing related topics here.

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