Running a business in the fitness industry is no easy thing; whether you’re a nutrition coach, sports massage therapist, personal trainer or something even more niche. Unfortunately, it’s an incredibly saturated market filled with unqualified people offering incorrect advice. 

The fitness industry brings unique challenges and opportunities to those looking to scale a business and stand out in an incredibly competitive landscape. 

So, if you’re thinking of starting your own niche fitness business you’ll need targeted strategies designed for a specific audience, as well as offering niche services to capture your audience’s attention; none of which is easy to achieve without a solid business and marketing plan in place.   

Let’s take a look at some actionable marketing strategies that will help you reach your targeted audience, grow your niche fitness business and hit the ground running in this industry.

1. Specialise & Showcase Your Niche Expertise

One of the most powerful ways you can attract people to your niche fitness brand is by demonstrating that you’re an expert in your specified field.

For example, if you’ve become a certified sports massage therapist, highlight your qualifications and expertise by creating content that goes into detail and uses facts and figures to support any information used.

Professionalism is also a huge element in any business that can attract clients, and deter them in equal measure; particularly when faced with so much competition. 

Ensure you have a professional and easy-to-use website. Make use of additional support by hiring a virtual marketing assistant to be as organised as possible when promoting your niche fitness business online. An extra pair of hands will help streamline tasks and ensure your online presence engages the right audience at every touchpoint. 

People want quality delivered quickly, with as little effort on their part as possible; don’t give them any reasons to stop using your services.

2. Make The Most of Reviews

As you constantly battle for attention with other professionals in this industry, you’ll have one thing that sets you apart and makes you unique; your clients. 

Every client you work with, regardless of your fitness niche, will have formed some kind of relationship with you in the process. 

There are plenty of marketing tools available that will allow you to contact your past clients asking for reviews and feedback on your services, which you can then proudly display on your website or in targeted adverts, in your content, or anywhere else you might choose.  

Taking it one step further and creating case studies from your clients’ feedback will allow potential future customers to understand how your services can help them achieve their goals.

Create stories using your past clients’ feedback, follow recovery processes and weight loss journeys and show the targets you have helped people reach. 

Telling your potential clients a story based on the real, tangible successes you’ve shared with others is a surefire way to secure the business of an undecided prospect. 

Credibility is key in this industry, so make sure to utilise yours fully. 

3. Targeted Workshops & Webinars

Due to the personal and highly specific nature of offering niche fitness services, it’s often the case, that costs are higher compared to a simple gym membership for example.  

If you’re planning on becoming a qualified indoor studio cycling instructor, your services on a surface level, will not appear to be any different to other available options in the eyes of a regular fitness class attendee. 

At the very least, the large cost of signing up for several classes without any knowledge of how good the class is can be a huge factor in people’s decision-making. 

This is where you can offer workshops, discounted introductory classes and even webinars where clients can sample what your class has to offer for a fraction of the price. 

Once you’ve got them, you’ll have the opportunity to impress them, upsell long-term programmes or sell them courses that will keep them coming back for more. 

4. Educational Content Within Your Niche

As we already know, this is an industry saturated with unqualified people sharing misinformation that could be harmful to others. 

A superb way to get yourself seen and put your niche business on the map is by actually sharing educational, informative and instructive videos related to your niche, harnessing the power of social media or through website content.   

A great example of this would be for a nutritionist posting food related content to break down exactly why certain foods have specific effects on our bodies and how this can apply to specific types of training. 

Using science and fact to back up your content will help to set you apart from the crowd, and will instill a sense of trust with your audience. 

Be sure to research and provide sources for all the information you share, and offer your resources to your audience so they can see for themselves. By offering actual, fact-based information you’ll be able to position yourself as an expert, standing head and shoulders above the crowd.

5. Stop, Collaborate & Listen

If you’re struggling to gain recognition in your fitness community then seek the help of established and existing businesses with whom you can collaborate. 

Try and find out from your target audience what their local gyms are missing, or isolate weak points in existing fitness regimes, then offer the chance to fill in the gaps. 

If you’ve qualified as a personal trainer and know that your local gym does not offer any options for sports massages and recovery treatments, then teaming up with a local massage therapist to provide a mixed programme of intense workouts and sports-specific massage recovery sessions could be a great way to boost your presence, whilst offering something unique.  

By affiliating yourself with an established and trusted existing brand you’ll immediately be seen as a trustworthy partner by their existing clients, instead of an unknown, unproven entity. 

6. Demonstrate & Engage 

Video has always been one of the key formats in marketing; it’s engaging, can contain as much or as little information as you choose, and with the help of social media, can reach incredible numbers of people. 

So making the most of video as a marketing tool is probably one of the best ways to get your name out there. Whether you’re doing follow-along HIIT workouts, stretching routines, therapeutic manoeuvres or simply explaining your niche in a web-cam style informative video, you’ll be able to allow potential clients to see you in action, make a personal connection and explain your niche in a way that is easily understood. 

Creating videos that perfectly blend education on your subject whilst subtly promoting your services is a fine art, but a powerful tool when wielded correctly; just be sure to keep your videos within your niche so your audience can follow along. 

7. Optimise Your Website for SEO

Marketing is a complex and ever-changing beast that is often best tackled by professionals; however, there are some things you can do for yourself without budgeting for a specialist. 

SEO, or search engine optimisation, basically determines how visible you are to people in your niche as they browse the web. If, for example, someone were to search the internet for pre and post-natal recovery services the results shown are all ranked using SEO practices like location-based keywords, which then direct web traffic in the desired direction. 

Doing some research into how to boost your SEO presence could dramatically increase the flow of traffic to your website and get your content and services in front of as many people as possible.  

It may sound like a lot of jargon, but once you start utilising SEO it can become an incredibly powerful marketing tool.   

Strategies & Growth

There is nothing easy about running your business, but mastering the strategies listed above will go a long way to helping you reach as many people as possible within your niche. 

Don’t be disheartened by an over-saturated market; grow your business the right way by showing your dedication, making yourself a leading voice in your field and showing your clients exactly what you can do for them. 

By applying these fitness marketing strategies you’ll be well on the way to scaling the heights of the fitness industry and will be able to make a real difference in your client’s journey.