Starting an online fitness business does seem like a straightforward idea. You record yourself explaining some exercises, post those videos online and have people pay you for watching them. Simple, right? Well, in reality, to start an online fitness business, you need to prepare similarly as you would for any other business. This means carefully studying your market and preparing correctly for the tasks ahead.
Decide what kind of fitness you do
Before tackling anything else, we would first advise you to consider what kind of fitness you do, high interval training, at-home yoga, or some form of a kickboxing workout. For quite a while now, people have been coming up with fitness programs left and right. In fact, being a fitness trainer is one of the easiest small business ventures in Nigeria. So, to engage in the fitness industry productively, you need to first figure out what your workout is all about.
Study the modern fitness trends
Firstly, we would advise you to study the modern fitness trends. By doing so, you will get an idea of what is currently popular within the fitness industry.
Here, it is essential to outline who your target audience is. Sure, you can try to cater your workout to everyone. But then you compete with much larger fitness brands that have been growing their presence in the fitness industry for quite a while. Instead, we would recommend finding a niche that interests you and figuring out what is popular among them.
Figure out what makes you different from the competition
Once you've outlined your target audience, you need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition. After all, you can hardly hope to compete with established brands if what you offer is simply more of the same. Instead, you need to bring something new to the table and ensure that your innovation is easy to notice and easy to market.
When differentiating yourself from the competition, it is crucial to do so in a meaningful way. Far too many fitness instructors believe that it is enough to bring in one new exercise or highlight specific exercise standards. At best, these are nearly superficial changes that don't bring anything new. So, you need to clearly outline what your niche likes, what it does right, and what it does wrong.
An important aspect to take into account is whether your fitness regime will be personalized or not. If you are solely going to run an online program, you can focus on your content. But, if you are a personal trainer who only wishes to use an online platform for marketing, you need to have a different approach. All in all, we would advise you to take the pros and cons of both methods into account before you make your decision. And to do so before you start building your online platform.
Put your fitness regime on paper
Once you feel that you have an idea brewing, you must put it on paper. Only once you do so will you start to fully flesh out your regime and the different aspects you'll need to tackle. Everything from warmups, training duration, intervals, sets, and stretching. Everything should be put on paper and taken into consideration. Ideally, you should have enough knowledge regarding fitness so that every exercise is meaningful and carefully planned out.
Set up your online presence
Once you've figured out your fitness regime, the time has come to tackle the online aspect of your fitness business. As you'll soon learn, the fitness part of your business is usually the fun part.
Building and running a website
Building and running a decent website is pretty much a must for today's fitness industry. In order to have a shot at online marketing, you need to have a website where you will post your content and base your marketing. Using social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook is pretty much a must, as well as designing an SEO strategy so that people looking for fitness programs on Google can find you.
Whether you are designing an app or a website, a good designer is essential in helping you start an online fitness business.
One of the most important steps here is to find a reliable web developer to help you. While there are programs out there that can help you design a website, know that there is simply no substitute for experience and expertise. Ideally, your web designer will also maintain your website and ensure that it is up to date at all times.
Designing an app
A viable idea is to also make a fitness app. This can be quite feasible if you decide to solely focus on online content and forgo personalized training. Apps are becoming more and more prevalent in the fitness industry. All you need to ensure is that they are easy to navigate and well-optimized. Here, again, it is paramount that you find a designer who understands your needs and can help you with the overall design.
Creating content
While it may seem that taking out your phone and filming yourself is enough for fitness instructors, we would advise you to refrain from doing so. People notice when something looks amateur-made. And, they are likely to ignore that content, as it seems irrelevant. Instead, you need to invest in a decent camera and educate yourself on filters and lighting. Again, this is especially important to consider if you are focusing on online fitness training.
Monetization
And the final point that you need to consider before you start an online fitness business is monetization. Here, it would be best to decide whether you will run a subscription-based website or sell your fitness program as a product. Are you going to separate your program into different categories with different price tags? Or is it going to be only one? Carefully consider what is acceptable within your target market and how your program fits in.
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