What's The Most Profitable Online Personal Trainer Niche?

It’s Chris Lynton here from TribeFit.co, and today I just wanted to do a really quick video. Something came top of mind for me over the last couple of days. Yesterday I spoke with a person who is looking to bring her business online for some time, really an expert in this space and know her stuff in terms of IT and tech, who’ve done a fair bit of research and paid way too much for information and education in terms of how to put together packages, and all of those sorts of stuff for online clients when they get clients their funnels are always complex and I guess they’re almost too advanced for their own good.

And I’ve been speaking with him. He mentioned that he could get loads of leads, not ideally the high-quality type of leads he was looking for. So when he would get in contact with them they would think 'oh what’s going on here'. And they obviously wouldn’t turn into clients.

And one of the massive things he said is – although he has no real problem getting leads or enquiries, he just could not turn a lead or enquiry into a paying client.

So as a result, it’s only going to be short-lived because you’ve got cash going out for efforts, going out in terms of generating these leads and generating all these interesting enquiries etc. but they’re not turning into clients and not bringing back any cash flow, and not bringing any results. And as a result, it makes it pretty tough to want to continue.

So, what I wanted to do today is go through what is the most profitable niche as an online training client? If you try to get online training clients, and you haven’t now a profitable niche, then you will have a lot of trouble.

You might be doing all the right things, all the best things, all the correct things but without that one little thing, that little bit of research, picking who you’re targeting and why you’re targeting. No matter what you’re doing, what funnels you have in place, what advertising, strategies you have in place you will struggle. So it’s a very, very powerful thing and that’s why I want to go through it.

So, what is the most profitable niche first and foremost? Before I go through what’s the most profitable niche I want to give some background into why niching is important.

So, as we all know in the fitness space, the health space it’s a very, very competitive space. Every single man’s dog is a trainer, a personal trainer these days, a nutritionist, a weight loss coach, whatever it might be. Everybody’s an expert, everybody’s done training and programs and got the certain qualifications and more certifications and getting more training classes and getting more pieces of paper to plaster on your wall.

This is not going to help you get more clients and to put you a cut above the rest of the people. Pretty much from an RTO or a registered training organisation, they are pumping out people left, right and centre. The courses are getting shorter, the courses are getting faster, they’re getting cheaper, and so rewind 5/10 years ago there weren't as many people getting rolled out fresh personal trainers or trainers or coaches every single day. Now, it’s getting more competitive. You thought it was competitive before, but it’s only going to get worse.

If you do not niche, you are competing against every single person that either thinks they’re a personal trainer, has ever trained before, has ever been in the gym before and is trying coaching clients. Doesn’t matter what certification they’ve got you will be competing against every single one. For example, say, hey I’m looking for clients that are between 20 and 40 years old and looking to tone up and lose fat.

Well, surprise, surprise, so are 99% of the other trainers out there. Every single person says that they can help. A general range, male or female, a wide age range looking to lose fat and tone up. It’s the most predictable, most straight forward, most basic targeting. And as a result, if I was to make up a number, let’s say a million trainers, whether they’re certified or not certified, you will be competing again every single one of those million people.

But for example, if you target say, woman – I spoke to someone yesterday, someone that targets women 30 – 35 years old that have an issue with polycystic ovarian syndrome. It’s very, very specific. The reason why they target that market is that they had that issue themselves. And they were an expert. They knew all the specific things that someone would need to do to get results with that specific condition. If for example, they’re out in the market and they’re marketing themselves to people with those issues, people looking for a solution.

People have been to a generalist trainer before. If they’ve been to a generalist trainer before and they haven’t seen results, they’ll be hurting and looking for someone that has a bit more specificity and knowledge around where they’re at, what they’re looking to do, and who they feel and believe someone can give them what they’re looking for.

So, if you’re a generalist trainer, most of the people have been to that before. They’ve been burnt, they haven’t gotten the results they’re looking for so they’re looking for newer people. They’re looking for people that they believe that if they hand over their hide in cash, they believe they can finally get the results they are looking for. For that specificity, that person I gave before as an example, is a very specific condition, and that person is able to go, ok because you’ve got this condition, if you train like everyone else would tell you to train or eat like everyone else would tell you to train, you won’t get results. You need to do this, this, this and this to get results.

As you can see these are all my testimonials of people with similar conditions (similar gender as yourself) and got the results that you’re looking for. Would you like to come on board with me, or would you like to train with the personal trainer down the road that has just come out of a course, has no idea about your specific conditions, and is just like someone you’ve tried before and never gotten results. It’s pretty obvious that they’re going to choose the person that they believe can give them something for their hard-earned cash. And the person they believe has the most experience helping people with their specific condition as well. They’re obviously going to help – or it's also going to allow them to charge at a higher rate, and it’s also going to make sure you convert at a higher rate as well.

So, that’s why you need to niche.

Instead of competing against the million people out there, like the example I gave before, there might only be 50 people in Australia that target that specific condition, so that person is only competing against 50 other trainers in Australia, for example, versus someone who's going ah, no I’m going to train male and female between 20 and 40 who want to lose weight and tone up. They need to compete against a million people. So as you can see, from a competition perspective, a) they’re going to have to discount their prices more, b) they’re just going to get people that are just keeping ties and speaking to anyone and everyone, because he’s such a generalist, whereas the other person can charge higher and convert easier only a handful of people are able to help those sorts of people.

So, why niches?

We’ve just gone through that. What are the most profitable niches? The most profitable niches, every time I speak to someone, always pick first and foremost the category that you fit within. So for example, I spoke to a guy who’s a 32-year-old guy, fairly ripped, in fairly good shape, lots of tattoos, shaved head etc. etc. and he was targeting, he believed his best niche was females between 30 and 40 years old. He targeted people who were following Michelle Bridges, for example, and he was wondering why he could get leads but he had the struggle to get leads, he had loads of traffic to his site, he struggled to get people to give him details to get in contact and he struggled to get those leads turned into clients. And he wondered why.

A tattooed up guy, very lean, looks good in photos with his shirt off. Looked in great shape, and in a different niche would be fantastic, but he was targeting middle-aged women who were following Michelle Bridges, who is more about having fun, being in a community and more of a mother’s group targeted person.

So that sort of target obviously isn’t going to work at all, whereas if we go to, for example, a guy that I spoke to the other week. He was an ex-police force guy, he knew certain dates when people had to go for tests to qualify within the certain levels of the police force, and he had been through it all before and had been successful. And as a result, he was targeting people who were going to the tests to go to or get to a certain level or the next level of the police force. So he’d been there before. He’d walked the walk and he could speak to those people on a level – it made it a lot easier. So he was getting leads extremely cheap. He was converting at an extremely high rate as well and he had no issues whatsoever. He could speak in their language, he walked the walk. He was his own testimonial, he had his own testimonials as well, he knew all the exact dates and he knew all the hot buttons and paying points for those people in terms of when were the dates for those courses coming up, how far would they need to start training. He would advertise for those dates, and those people had hard needs.

Rather than just targeting people who just want to tone up and lose weight and don’t have a specific reason, if you target people who are the same as yourself. You’ve been there, you’ve walked the walk and you pick a target that has a hard need, a timing hard need, so for example, some of them might be going for a course or a test, whatever it might be. Other ones, like weddings, male and female. They’re running up to a wedding. They’ve got a hard need, on a certain date. They’re waking up each morning thinking, god I’ve only four weeks left, three weeks left, two weeks left and they want to get a result for the big day. Other events, things like that. So if you’re targeting people with a hard need, within a time frame they’re always going to be the easiest to convert, the most likely to pay the price for your services as well, and they’re going to be the best clients. Because rather than just mucking around, they’re going to have the internal motivation, they’re going to have the external motivation from yourself, the internal motivation from the time, and obviously why they’re reaching out. So they’re going to be better clients, they’re going to be more fun clients, they’re going to get better results. And as a result, your services will get a better result. You’ll get more testimonials, and then with those testimonials and case studies, it’s just going to go on like a snowball effect.

So, we’ve gone through the most profitable niches today. If you haven’t had success in one niche yet, don’t branch out. I strongly suggest if you’re a male, target males. If you’re a male, of a certain age who likes certain things, target that. If you’re a female, at a certain age and have had success in that, target that as well.

So, if you’re thinking I’m not quite sure what my niche is. I’ve been in the gym and I’ve been a generalist personal trainer. Which is part of the problem for a lot of people? When they work in a gym, you pretty much get whoever walks in the door. But if you can niche guys – if you genuinely are a personal trainer and an expert, and you’ve gotten great results for yourself, it’s the best place to start. So I suggest you start up there and then go from there. Once you’ve found one, and you’ve really found your groove, you can really branch out but if you have no one, make sure that you find one that has specifics similar to yourself and ideally picking someone that has a hard need or a timeline they need a result by.

So that’s it from me today. Like I mentioned in the comment, comment down below and one-on-one, I’ll be more than happy to review your niche and make sure you’re on the right path, if you’re not getting a lot of leads and if you’re having trouble converting those leads anyway.

That’s all from me today, I’ll be speaking to you real soon. Bye for now.