Building reputation – a fitness business case study

January 22, 2023

This is a real case study for a Range of Motion Business Mentoring client. Names and identifying features have been changed to preserve confidentiality.
 
I. Introduction
 
Alexis is a Personal Trainer who offers face-to-face consults (from a large chain gym) and online programming.
 
She wants to scale her business, particularly the online side.
 
II. Background
 
A professional athlete, Alexis is time poor and has low capacity for more face-to-face clients but has built good systems since starting with Range of Motion Business Mentoring to make her online business scaleable. The experience she provides to both physical and virtual clients is of the highest quality, and once people start, they tend to become very long term clients.
 
Referrals are a main source of income, but a lack of awareness from the wider market means that leads from outside her current referral base are hard to come by.
 
Alexis has tried traditional marketing but a lot of the strategies have been short term and have only delivered short-term results. In fact, the approach has been more ‘tactic’ focussed, rather than ‘strategy’ focussed.
 
III. Approach
 
Working with Dan Williams from Range of Motion Business Mentoring, they identified the need for a longer term approach, leading to a slower but more sustainable and ‘future-focussed’ marketing strategy.
 
Through fortnightly video-based Mentoring Consultations, Alexis and Dan implemented several strategies to build long-term reputation.
 
The ultimate goal was to make Alexis the ‘go-to’ online Fitness Professional in her space, and widely known for the unique and ‘high-touch’ service she delivers.
 
They implemented a six-step plan:
  1. Put a regular and consistent content marketing plan in place to build reputation and authority. When Alexis’s target avatar thinks about online programming, they should automatically think about her.
  2. Systemise this content creation process to leverage content across the different platforms her avatar frequents (YT, FB, IG, TikTok).
  3. Automate the distribution of this content to ensure that it doesn’t add to her already limited schedule.
  4. Build a system to document and ‘hero’ client achievements, creating a ‘reality TV’ presence on ‘short term’ social media (like FB and IG stories). Catalogue this content in the long term to create client-journey videos.
  5. Incentivise clients to post their journey within her business, creating a small army of ‘micro-influencers’ who rave about her business.
  6. Leverage the content marketing into a fortnightly email to her subscriber list (which they’re currently working on growing).
 
IV. Results
 
As a results of these six steps, awareness of the service has grown rapidly, with increases in social engagement (including social media interaction, email subscribers and email open rates).
 
This has already begun to transfer to new leads and client sign-ups, an early positive sign considering that the plan is for long-term business sustainability and success.
 
V. Conclusion
 
A long term ‘strategy-based’ approach to marketing, that positions the fitness professional as an expert in their field is the best method of building long term business success.
Dan Williams

Dan Williams

Founder/Director

Dan Williams is the Director of Range of Motion and leads a team of Exercise Physiologists, Sports Scientists, Physiotherapists and Coaches. He has a Bachelor of Science (Exercise and Health Science) and a Postgraduate Bachelor of Exercise Rehabilitation Science from The University of Western Australia, with minors in Biomechanics and Sport Psychology.

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