You fell in to the classic online trap of getting a 'great looking logo, website and branding' without taking the time to understand the market you were entering - how could you possibly create a brand without knowing who your target market is?
Don't feel bad though, it's a common mistake. We've all been there. Let's see if we can help.
Positioning Your Brand
Black Quixote posed some good questions to help you figure out if your pricing is correct/who your market is. If you want to charge more than everyone else you have to offer more
perceived value. It could be some bullshit gimmick like 'As Seen On CNN - Best Trainer For Burning Fat In New York' or it could be something legit like qualifications, previous high profile clients, facilities etc.
Got one? Congratulations, you've just found your USP. This is what you push when creating your brand, marketing material, website etc. This is why people pay you $100/hour rather than the guy down the road $50/hour.
How Much Should I Charge?
Next, you questioned your price point...yet you've already got 2 clients? Evidently, people think you offer enough value to warrant that spend. Now you have to figure out where these people came from and how to find more like them that are interested in your services so you can scale your business. This is where marketing comes in.
You know exactly how your competitors are marketing their businesses from your competitor analysis...right? Don't be lazy. You need to know your industry inside out. You need to eat, shit and sleep personal training. Analyse your market using the usual tools (SWOT etc) to help you identify areas of potential growth and weaknesses to exploit for your gain.
Personal Training Sales Funnel
First let's look at your sales funnel, then we'll focus on filling it with leads.
See the difference? That backend is what takes your 1k/month side hustle to a serious business that can compete in one of the most crowded evergreen niches. Notice how at any stage from the top tier of the second funnel (the blog, free giveaway etc line) they can jump in to paid customers in the second tier.
- Create a blog with articles from your years of knowledge that provide value to your readers. Don't do this with search engines in mind. Do it with your customers in mind. What are their pain points? What solutions are they looking for? Build a business that search engines have to take notice of because it serves your audience so well, not one specifically for search engines.
- The majority of people visiting your website aren't going to buy. But you're going to spend time and money driving them to your site - so you want to make sure you're squeezing every bit of value you can. How? A newsletter opt-in. You can give away a free product or just weekly updates etc in exchange for an email address that will allow you to build a relationship and remind them of your paid products. MailChimp is free up to 2k subscribers.
- A front-end product functions as a low priced purchase that enables you to build trust and authority with your audience. Imagine if you could train with the author of your favourite fitness e-book? Give them that opportunity. It's incredibly easy to get an e-book up on Amazon, market it via the blog and newsletter and promote a free workout/diet plan at the beginning and end of the book. Easy to implement.
- A free training session/diet/workout plan serves as a chance to get your foot in the door with your more expensive services. If they're local to you a free training session offers you a good chance to hook them with little cost to you - at this stage you have a list of leads that you know are interested in what you're offering, it just comes down to your ability to close on the day.
- Paid training session is self explanatory. Sell bulk sessions at a small discount to maximise ROI on the above.
- High ticket product to generate the $$$. This is your flagship product. You're better suited to think this up. Maybe a boot camp? 5-day intensive boot camp with accommodation etc including, key speakers from the industry, nutrition packs? Who knows. Price around the $200-$2k mark.
Filling The Sales Funnel
I won't go over the obvious business cards, networking etc, that's common sense.
You need to be driving people to the start of your funnel. It's a post in it's own right, but think about where you target audience is and get your brand in front of them. Some of the ones that may work for you..
Outreach marketing - Pretty simple. Reach out to the sites where your audience hang out. You can do the obvious fitness and nutrition sites like everyone else...or you could be clever, think up an angle and go outside the box. Hit up a 'new moms' site and do an article on getting back in to shape after having a kid, then drive the traffic back to your funnel. Something like that. Get creative.
Paid advertising - Pay-per-click, display ads, media buys. If you're on a budget, start out with Bing for lower CPCs, geo-target your area and drive the traffic to a page/article you've got set-up with clear calls to action.
E-books - Discussed above. Create some short, highly informative documents, give them out for free and encourage people to share. Make sure your logo/branding/website is visible and has calls to action at the beginning & end. 'If you found this information helpful, you can find more free articles on how to lose weight after a baby on our site x.com'.
Social - Get involved in the communities. Look in to automation to maximise ROI on your time. Hootsuite is a good tool, will allow you schedule posts across multiple social networks so it will auto run hands off. Find accounts similar to yours and follow their followers. Engage in conversations, link to articles from other sources that your audience will like, become the 'hub' of information for your industry. You can also automate following/unfollowing and even creating discussions as you grow with other tools...but focus on the easy stuff for now.
General Advice
Hopefully that's got the gears turning.
Getting ahead in business is about creating an edge. It's the same in game, sports, poker...life. Game gives you an edge over other men that becomes evident over hundreds of approaches. It's not a miracle cure. Start applying a 'red pill' mindset to business and you'll start to see your edge. But creating an edge in anything is fucking hard work, which is why the majority of people don't bother. You have to be different.
If you want to keep it as a side hustle and earn $1000/month, cool, think like everyone else.
If you want to scale up to a real 6/7 figure business you've got to start thinking on the next level.