In life everything must grow in order to survive and thrive. In business, marketing for business growth is the number priority to remaining successful. If you are not growing then your business is most likely suffering a slow, painful decline. But with careful nurturing you can learn to take care of your business and ensure a long lasting life. Here are five growth and marketing strategies that will assist you in your business.
Innovate by introducing a new product or service
•Assess your current services and if they look, sound and feel like everyone else’s chances are you should break out of the mould and start innovating. Your ideas are your golden ticket to your continued growth and success. The more creative you are the better off your business will be because it’s extremely difficult for people to copy true innovation quickly. The more new products or services you can bring to market the more potential you have to build your revenues.
•If you’ve been thinking about an idea but haven’t moved forward on it, then this is the time to act. Sometimes people let fear get in the way of them trying new things especially when the ideas have no proven track record. Or maybe your idea is so novel that it’s even difficult for you to assess its value. Whatever issue you may be facing which is blocking your idea from taking form and becoming a reality I say, feel the fear, have a marketing plan and do it anyway.
•If your brain is completely blank with no ideas then in order to stimulate your creative juices consider reading a book, socializing with different groups of people, take a walk, write in a journal, paint, sing or even dance your way to creativity. Do whatever it takes to get out of your own head so that you can tap into your endless supply of creative ideas. They are in there and it’s only a matter of drawing them out.
Add new end user customer in current markets, in new markets, and in new geographies.
•Most businesses spend a lot of time searching for new clients but may not be looking at new market segments or geographies. While I’m not suggesting you start travelling all over the place, you may want to assess where your current clients are coming from and where there are areas for potential growth. For example, if you train in one community but notice that another area is being under serviced by personal trainers then you can set a side a day and train in that area. Find a central location where you can train from and build a clientele from that location. You won’t have to travel back and forth but book clients only on that day.
•Examine your current client base and see if you can chunk them into smaller market segments. For example, you may only train women but discover that most of your clients love to run. You can then target more women who run opening up another market segment to attract.
•If you train mostly men then perhaps you can add women to the mix or young adults.
Sell new applications of existing products or services to current customers
•Most trainers offer some sort of assessment prior to starting with a client. If you offer this service for free you may consider charging a small fee. Or you can build a bigger assessment program separate from the clients’ initial assessment and charge a bit more. You can package and market assessments where the client does one once every six weeks to stay on track.
•Try adding posture and flexibility assessments as a separate service offering.
•You can also provide thirty minute partner assisted stretching to your services. Since many clients don’t take the time to stretch, this is a great opportunity for them to just lie back, relax and get stretched out.
•If you focus mainly on weight training with clients you can build a cardio/speed/agility session to round out their fitness. Perhaps you can offer this in a group setting for your existing clients where everyone comes together and works hard on improving their anaerobic conditioning.
Reduce customer attrition.
•The best way to reduce customer attrition is to treat them like kings and queens. You can never thank a customer enough for doing business with you. Having said this, thanks to all who read my columns and do business with me. I appreciate you!
•Take the time to create a customer service strategy where you work to build connection with each person you are working with. It’s much harder to attract new business then it is to keep people happy who already do business with you.
Raise prices
•Many trainers are fearful of actually raising prices because they are concerned clients will go elsewhere if they are too expensive. While this does have some truth to it, you can’t keep your prices the same year after year. Annual increases are common in most industries so prepare your clients ahead of time that prices may increase come January.
•If you offer something truly unique and not comparable to someone else you can charge a premium for it. How would you compare an apple to an orange? There are lots of differences and only a few similarities. Would you pay more for one or the other? That would depend on the value you perceive you are receiving. If you are concerned about raising prices for a comparable service then change what you offer so people can only evaluate what you have based on its own merits. Remember, people will gladly pay more if they receive more value for their money but make sure you communicate those differences in your marketing material.
Well there you have it, five strategies for growing your revenues in your business. Take one at a time and build a marketing plan around it. When you have done that successfully you can move on to the next item and so on. If you need some assistance taking the step to business growth then consider consulting a business coach and get regular assistance. This will ensure you don’t lose out on any business growth opportunities or ideas.
Author Resource:
Donna Hutchinson is the author of the How To Guide To Starting Your Own Personal Training Business and the How to Guide to Growing Your Own Personal Training Business. She is the owner of On The Edge Fitness Educators which provides marketing and business coaching services. http://www.edgefit.ca
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