02 Sep Find a Profitable Niche in the Crowded Fitness Industry

The fitness industry is in a state of massive growth right now. The opportunities for fitness professionals and personal trainers are amazing.

However, if you have not clearly defined your niche within the fitness industry, then chances are you’ll easily be lost in the masses.

What is Niche Marketing?

Niche marketing is a strategic concept which can be applied to just about any field of business. If your initial audience is the entire world, then it definitely makes sense to try and narrow it down so you can focus your marketing efforts on targeting a smaller group of people.

Why NOT allow space for everyone to become a potential client or customer?

By focusing on a Niche, it allows your marketing to have a more significant direct impact and in turn a much better chance of rapidly growing your business.

People tend to hire a personal trainer because they have specific goal or target in mind. Maybe they want to lose weight, build up muscle or recover from an injury. So obviously when those prospective clients start searching for personal trainers, they are more likely to search for a specialist trainer instead of a generalist.
Just think, if these potential clients search online, then they are going to search for things like, “best postnatal personal trainer” or “top powerlifting personal trainers.”

Even if they only search “personal trainer near me,” they are still going to be more inclined to work with a trainer who specialises in the same domain as their personal goals.

Less Is More

So is it possible to succeed without branding yourself or your business within a specific niche?

Absolutely.

Plenty of fitness professionals and personal trainers have done it. However, even more have failed, or at least experienced minimal success. They are targeting an audience far too vast and aren’t attracting dedicated clients they need to maintain a successful business.

Therefore, having a niche isn’t compulsory to succeed, but it is important if you want a higher chance of success.

Two Immense Benefits of Defining Your Fitness Niche

Targeting a smaller audience with a specialised set of niche products or services has multiple benefits.

1. Become THE Expert
Firstly, your marketing efforts will yield better results. Secondly, it will make it easier for you to improve as a personal trainer. You will be spending so much time working with clients in this tightly-defined fitness area that you will exceed beyond the level of specialist to expert. You can reach a level where you are considered one of the authorities for that niche.

2. Reduce Your Competition
Niching down not only allows you to have a smaller audience and therefore a smaller core set of skills to improve but also gives you fewer competitors to worry about.

For example, think about your current city or town. How many trainers operate there who can help clients lose weight? Probably a lot.

Now, how many personal trainers are known to be experts in training people for ultramarathon races? Does one even exist? It’s highly likely there is a niche you can cover in your area that would allow you to be one of a very select few who provides that service. Less competition sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Creating a tight niche will increase your chance of running a successful business. It becomes more of a matter of skill and perseverance than just a roll of the dice.

Clients Will Thank You

Clients love to work with a fitness professional who they believe is the best in their given field. Trying to market yourself as “the best personal trainer” is a very heavy claim to maintain. It is more likely that your clients would label you as “the best for powerlifting” or “the best for injury recovery,” especially within in your local area.

Also, when clients feel like they are working with the best, then they are more likely to return and also recommend you to friends or family who have similar goals.

Of course, none of this helps you if you are not able to clearly define your niche, market and deliver to it. This may be the most difficult part of the entire process. How do you choose what niche to work with and how do you make yourself a success within that niche?

Two Steps in Determining Your Personal Training Niche

Here are some simple steps that will help you zero in on a niche for you and your fitness business:

1. Examine Yourself
The first step toward defining your niche is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses.

There could be a debate on whether you should focus more on your own strengths or on what the market wants. It is somewhat trivial because ultimately you can only be viewed as a leader in your given niche if you have a strength and passion for it.

Even the most profitable niche is only valuable to you IF you enjoy working in that niche!

Understanding the marketing aspects of showcasing yourself as an expert in a niche will only get you so far. Customers can tell if you have a genuine passion for what you do and that will impact their opinion of you and your fitness business.

2. Define the Scope Of Your Niche
You need to be working in an area that is large enough to support your target niche. If however, you are positioned in an area with a small population that cannot support a tight niche, then it might be necessary to expand your target audience, while still trying to carve out a smaller target niche within that group.

You can certainly look to other successful personal trainers to see how they have defined their niche. But only use them as an example, try not to blatantly ripping off their training business.

The most successful trainers have a set niche that is neither too narrow or broad. There are not many personal trainers who are known as “the best pull-up trainer” – too narrow, or “the best trainer for men” – too broad. A niche middle-ground between the two could be focusing on building muscle mass using bodyweight training techniques.

Your current client base, if you have one, is another great vehicle to use to define the scope of your niche. Do a majority of your customers come in with similar goals? Are they in a particular age range? You might find that your clients already define your niche for you even if you haven’t realised it yet.

Successful Niche Examples
There is certainly nothing wrong with working in a niche that has already been defined by other successful trainers. As a matter of fact, nearly all quality niches have been tapped by coaches somewhere in the world.

The key is to find one of these niches that aren’t overflowing in your local area and one that you have a general passion for.

Most niches have been filled somewhere in the world, but maybe not in your area?

Furthermore, you could actually choose your niche based on function. What will you really be helping your clients to be able to do? It could include helping anyone who’s training for a race, a particular sport or a competition. Figure out what type of clients you enjoy training, then do the research to see if this niche is already being served in your area.

You can create a niche surrounding any type of characteristic that allows a certain people to be grouped together. It could be age or desired function, or could also be based on their career type, medical conditions, or even a life event such as an upcoming wedding. The options are endless!

Summary

It makes perfect sense to tighten your niche to help increase the success of your business. The key is finding just how focused you can go without losing too many potential clients. Determining the right niche in the right area can quickly propel your personal training business to new heights.