Personal Trainer Market Investigation: Your Key to Powerful Marketing

Research: if the very idea sounds boring to you, you're not the only one out there. If you're a fitness professional reading this article, odds are you chose this career because you were interested in fitness and had excellent social skills, not because you wanted to spend your days processing market data.

But if you want to develop a marketing plan, researching the fitness market is your first-class ticket to success. It tells you what your clients need the most. It uncovers the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. It allows you to identify the exact strategies you need for superior marketing.

Knowledge is power. Here's how you can get it.

1. Learn more about your niche market
In order to get anywhere as a fitness professional, you need to decide upon a specific target demographic. You need to focus on your niche market - the bulls-eye that all your marketing should be aimed at.

Regardless of who you train, focusing on a specific demographic allows you to focus your research. And focused research brings the precise information you need.

Study the habits of your niche market
Of course, you can't just slink around town at night peeking into your prospects' windows - it's hard to conduct business from the inside of a jail cell - but understanding the habits and preferences of your niche market is important. Without knowing how they live, you won't know what they require, and without knowing what they need, you won't know how to pitch the services they're looking for.

Figure out which strategies your prospects respond to
It'd be a waste to run your ad in a newspaper if your niche market prefers the radio. And who wants to mail out 1000 promotional flyers if your potential clients just dump them in the garbage after a brief glance?

Survey current clients about how they learned about your business. Tally up the responses and figure out which medium brings in the most customers. Track the effectiveness of your current ads by connecting bonus offers to them: the more customers who mention your commercials or bring in your print ads, the more effective those advertising media are.

By doing your research, you can identify which advertising methods give you the most bang for your buck - and which will merely waste resources without any benefit to you.

2. Assess your competition
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer", the old saying goes - in short, knowing your customers is important, but it's also vital to know who you're competing with. Finding out who is competing for your clients - and what methods those rivals are employing - will keep you one step ahead of them.

Put your competitors under the microscope
Find out which of your competitors are mining a similar niche and figure out their marketing techniques. If your rivals have any kind of online presence, make sure you get one as well. Sign up for their newsletters and discover what they're up to. Peek at their promotional offers and snatch ideas you can use for yourself. Pay attention to the hotshots who dominate the industry, and determine how they became so successful.

The best way you can beat your rivals at their own game is if you know what game they're playing to begin with.

Find out what no one else is offering
Look for gaps in the services your rivals offer - if there's something you can provide that they don't, that's opportunity knocking. Offering knowledge and services that are in high demand and short supply can set you miles ahead in the fitness industry. Research little-known strategies that you can teach your clients.

Discover your secret competition
Think other fitness instructors are your only threat? Think again. Anything that can siphon business away from you counts as a competitor. Health clubs, YMCAs, recreation centers, and even colleges offering fitness courses can lure potential clients out of your hands and into their own. You should look into which local entities may put a dent in your customer base.

While it's not often practical - or even possible - to wage war against these competitors, preemptive research can win you back your clients. If your potential clients have to choose between taking a weekly fitness class and hiring your services, investigate what that class promises - and offer your prospects something even better.

3. Find out ways to promote your name online
The power of the Internet as a marketing tool is undeniable. Of course, your rivals know this already, so you're up against some stiff opposition: if you don't know what you're doing, your site will end up buried at the bottom of the search results. But it's not hard to boost your site to the top with some Internet knowledge.

Use Google's AdWords to conduct research
Want to know how many people are searching for "personal trainers in Detroit"? Curious how much money your competitors are spending on advertising? Google provides keyword tools, traffic estimators, cost-per-click statistics, and other handy calculators to answer all your questions. You can use the information you obtain through AdWords to help design a winning marketing strategy.

Learn about SEO techniques
The secret to boosting your search engine rankings is search engine optimization, better known as SEO. Keyword-rich web content, backlinks and the concept of "anchor text value" are all subjects you should look into to ensure that Google and other search engines rank your website first in search results. There's no need to become a tech genius, but you can be sure that the time you spend studying SEO will pay off - literally.

All it takes is some time, patience and the willingness to do the research. It's not back-breaking work, but it's not easy, either: if you can pull it off, though, you'll have the edge over all your opponents who didn't do their homework before jumping in headfirst.

Take your fitness career to new levels with Advice For Personal Trainers, the Internet's MOST trusted resource for Personal Trainers and Fitness Experts.

Advice For Personal Trainers is an online resource dedicated to the success of fitness professionals and personal trainers. Topics ranging from health, fitness and nutrition to fitness marketing, courses, salaries and job opportunities.

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