Clients have their own unique qualities, however, clients also share similarities. It is important to view your clients under a large umbrella when you’re marketing and then to target them more specifically in their training. If you can fulfill this, you will continue to maintain happy and motivated clients whilst providing them with successful results.
There are 3 logical steps required to identify and understand your target market:
Step 1: Look at yourself
In this series so far, we have covered the importance of being certified and being known for your skills. These steps are the starting point when analyzing yourself and your fitness business. Understanding your fitness or sport lifestyle coupled with your knowledge and expertise (from your respective education) will lead you to the ultimate clients you should be targeting.
Step 2: Build your personal fitness target market profile
You need to categorise current clients as well as potential clients into groups or as a collective. This involves considering factors such as age, availability for training, gender and target market. This step allows you to envision how you will target them in the future (Lesson #4 will cover how to target your clients). Once you have considered these factors, you will be able to market yourself better. For instance, you can ask yourself, do these clients use social media? Are they regularly in the gym? Do they read certain magazines? Do they want to look a certain way? Do they drive, use public transport or do they live locally? This allows you to personalise your services to clients exact needs therefore instilling in them comfort and the belief that you are the right fitness professional for them.
Understanding your clients needs will expose their limitations. If you have a range of clients with knee pain or a certain exercise or solution that works for them, you can potentially try this with others. Learn from each of your clients in order to gain a better understanding of human body functions as well as yourself as a personal trainer.
Simply put, if you don’t understand your clients then you won’t have a successful business. People will not even consider your services if you’re just recycling a cookie cutter method you got from a book. Find out client differences well as similarities and move on to step 3 below.
Step 3: Test your market area
You need to confirm clients are in the correct target market once you have segmented and profiled your clients. In Lesson #4 we will guide you through techniques that allow you to effectively target your fitness market.
Exercise: Take 2 minutes to write down the age, interests, source of your clients and training times of your clients. Once completed, look for any patterns and focus your efforts on attracting people with similar features and aligning yourself to clients with unique needs.
