Fitness, Business, Fitness Business, & Achieving Life Goals

#5 Successful Personal Trainers are Specialists

Successful Personal Trainers realize that you will draw more attention when you own a niche, a specific, narrowly defined market.

 Whether you are a weight loss specialist or a youth fitness specialist, you need to narrow your market in order to get more business. This stumps the average Trainer. “By narrowing my market, I decrease my chances of picking up new clients.” is the thought process.

Think about this, in a sea of Personal Trainers that “do everything” how exactly do you stand out? Being a generalist says that you specialize in nothing. What if I’m looking for someone to help me continue getting my newly replaced knee back in shape (after I’m through with physical therapy), and none of the Trainers at my club list post-rehab as their area of expertise, I might as well roll the dice to find someone to work with, IF I don’t decide to go elsewhere. But, when one Trainer states that they are post-rehab conditioning specialists, they will stand out dramatically to me and will be the one I hire.

The fact is, the more specific that niche, the more likely you are to be found. If you are a senior weight loss specialist, even among senior fitness specialists, you stand out for those older individuals where weight loss is their primary concern. Now, I will throw this caveat in, your niche has to have enough of a market in your area to be viable. In New York City a Bridal weight loss expert has vast potential for clients, where, in Saco, ME, with a handful of weddings per year, wouldn’t work as well.

While many Personal Trainers think that it deminishes their market, having a niche actually increases your chance of being found, building your business. It also doesn’t have to be all that you do, but it is what you market yourself as. I am a post-rehab conditioning specialist and that accounts for about 60% of my training. The other 40% is weight loss, general fitness, sports conditioning, etc.

For more on the need to niche, see Jack Trout’s book Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition for more.

Check out the full Successful Personal Trainers series.

Top 10 Traits of Successful Personal Trainers (Series)

Top 10 Traits of Successful Personal Trainers #1

Top 10 Traits of Successful Personal Trainers #2

Top 10 Traits of Successful Personal Trainers #3

Top 10 Traits of Successful Personal Trainers #4

P.S. Also, follow my Business of Personal Training page on Facebook.

I just finished reading The Long Tail, Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. Having read the phrase “The Long Tail” in various blogs and postings, and never quite catching the full meaning, I was curious. Come to find out that it’s a very interesting phenomenom that I will attempt to explain here.

In a nutshell, it’s the idea that anything produced has hits, very popular big sellers, then some medium sellers, dropping off to nothing. In the physical world there are limitations that don’t allow for anything less than big sellers. You may not be able to find that book you wanted in the bookstore because they can only carry so many titles. The same holds true for music stores, video stores, etc. there is a limit to the available shelfspace. So, we have been only able to get what is relatively mainstream. Well, the times they are a changin’.

The Long Tail is the trickling down of volume of items to be consumed and yet still being available to all.

The Long Tail: Green = what was traditionally available, Yellow = what is now, additionally available.

Three factors have come into play that have allowed us to have greater access to whatever we want:

1) Anyone can produce. Videos, blogs, newsletters, music, etc. are now so easy to produce and store digitally, anyone can do it. It doesn’t have to appeal to everyone and be a hit. It is about the specialties, the niches.

2) Easy means of distribution. Upload your videos, music, ebooks, etc. to the internet for the world to find.

3) Connecting the supply and demand. Through search engines like google.com, commercial sites like amazon.com, and various auction sites like ebay.com, the public can find items in whatever niche they choose. It doesn’t matter how obscure, if the owner/producer is putting it out there to be found, it can be found.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, posted a great example of how Netflix utilizes the long tail of video. Read here: Long Tail 

So what does this mean for us in the health and fitness world? Do we have a long tail of opportunity? There definately is. No longer do we have produce hits to be able to get our workout videos to those that want them, or educational videos, ebooks, newsletters, blogs, class playlists, etc. Niches make their mark in the long tail. There are even storefront services that help you create your virtual store such as Yahoo Stores or kickstartcart.com/ .

Be a niche and find your market in the long tail of fitness products.

Good luck and best wishes, Mark.

New game show? Nope, it’s the critical biz question you have to ask yourself. The fear of cutting out potential clients causes Trainers to say, “I can train anyone”. Maybe you can, BUT, when you say I can train anyone you’re also saying that you specialize in nothing. If someone has a special need (and everyone believes they do) they want someone that is exceptional in that area to help them. They will look for specialists, not generalists and you will get left out in the cold. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t train others, but you want to lay claim to only specializing in a couple of things at most.

In example, I have been a Personal Trainer for 30 years. I have certifications in many different areas. I CAN train people for almost any need. My claimed specialty niches are Post-Rehab Conditioning and Brain Fitness. I have had weight loss listed as a specialty and I’m going to even drop that because, let’s face it, what Trainer doesn’t say they’re a weight loss specialist. So, nobody is special.

Thinking that you are losing business because you name a specialty couldn’t be further from the truth. You are, in fact, giving people a reason to choose (and refer) you above others. So go on and Name Your Niche!