9 Things to Do Before Launching (or Rebranding) your Boutique Fitness Studio: The Ultimate Guide 

If you are planning to start a new boutique fitness studio or take things to next level with your existing brand, this free guide is for you.

We know it can feel overwhelming and we are confident that these 9 things will make you feel confident and ready to launch!

The fastest, most efficient way to attract members and build a community around your fitness studio is through a brand that is strategically, purposefully built around your ideal customer.

Every single successful boutique fitness brand out there was built with a clear vision. None of them thrived by selling spin, yoga, or fitness. These brands are in the business of selling motivation, inspiration, transformation. Here are some examples of the best in the game:

Cycle with Soul. We move people to move the world. – Soul Cycle
Studios that inspire you to perform and luxury amenities that keep you feeling your best. – Equinox
Unlock the greatness within. – Solid Core

Here is a guide of the 9 things to do before launching (or rebranding) your boutique fitness studio. These are tried and true and are crucial for a successful launch. Get your special notebook out, we’re going to put it to practice With exercises after each section.

1. Get to know your ideal customer (inside & out)

Let’s clear something out “women in their mid 30s, high income,” is not it. Why not? That’s basically everyone and when you talk to everyone you are talking to no one. This can be a tough task, because you are also deciding who’s not your ideal client. But this exercise will be worth it.

To be successful, you must narrow down and define your audience, and you can’t stop just at demographics. When you dig deeper into their psychographics, their lives, their problems and, finally, their big dream, then you will feel you are on to something. By defining who this group of individuals is (and who they are not), you will know what they are interested in, you will speak their language and you will speak to them.

And guess what? Marketing to a narrow audience is way more efficient ($$) and the fastest way to grow your business – just imagine all those ad clicks by people who are not interested at all in your business, it’s like burning Benjamins 💸

Let’s put this in practice. Write down: Create a persona (fictional character), give them a name, describe their person and day-to-day routine What’s this person’s biggest challenges? What type of transformation are they looking for to live a better life?

2. Figure out what is your ‘why’

It’s time to go beyond the material and financial goals at this stage. Let’s think big. How is your business going to make a difference in people’s lives? Why is it good for the world? Why do you care?

It’s important to keep in check with your ideal audience. Does your ‘why’ speak to and inspire your audience?

Human beings at their core connect naturally to storytelling and your ‘why’ is a great way to start your fitness studio story and why people should care about your brand.

Don’t forget to be loud about it, your ‘why’ needs to be an integral part of your branding and marketing.

Let’s go, pen to paper: What’s your why? How did it all started? What difference are you making in people’s lives and in the world?

3. Yes, your brand needs a personality

You know all of those times that you just can’t remember which company you used for that service? That’s just terrible for business. Do you want to be remembered and stand out from the crowd? (Yes, the fitness market is a crowded space).

Your brand needs a personality!

This is the fun part of this work. Remember how we created a persona for your ideal customer? Now let’s put your imagination to work and picture this; If your brand was a person what it would be like? How do they talk, what clothes do they wear, what is their vibe and personality like?

And again, circling back to our purpose here; Would your ideal customer persona be attracted and feel connected to them?

This is the path to find your brand’s tone, voice, look and feel that will actually connect with your ideal customer and stand out from the crowd.

Now it’s time to write down: If my brand was a person, what would it be like? How would this person talk? Fave clothes? What type of personality? What’s their attitude? Why would your ideal customer be attracted to?

4. Differentiation & Positioning

Before launching your business, you will need to decide what makes you unique. Why? It’s the single best way to eliminate competition. You don’t want people to compare apples to apples, because if they do it will come down to superficial things such as prices or amenities.

It’s time to be brutally honest and really create some leverage by positioning your brand as one-of-a-kind. Pick something about your method, your brand’s attitude, your why and run with it! Be sure to position your brand in your customers’ transformation or journey, for example:

“We offer the fastest 7 minute workout in the industry”

vs

“Get fit in 7 minutes and get back to your day”.

If you are able to stick with it, you will occupy a special place in customers minds and become the only choice. Let’s look at Soul Cycle (again, I know). They are not just another workout or indoor cycling option. They offer an unique experience, and it comes with an attitude, with soul stirring motivation. That’s it, you book a class because you are looking for an experience, a one-of-a-kind ‘dance party on the bike’ that will ‘ignite passion in your life’. I know… deep, right?

Let’s position your brand: What makes your brand different? Be honest with yourself, is that actually different from your competition? Open their websites and compare. Review it and rewrite your positioning in your customer’s transformation journey (see ‘7 minute workout’ example above)

5. Branding your Boutique Fitness Studio: Attract & Inspire your Audience

By defining your ideal customer, your ‘why’, your brand personality and what makes you different are the building block of your boutique fitness brand. Now it’s time to bring it to the real world with brand-ing, meaning putting your brand to action.

Branding is all about attraction and how do you express your fitness studio brand with visuals and words to connect with your ideal audience. If you keep in mind your why, your personality, your positioning and of course your ideal client, you will create meaningful connections and truly gather a community around your fitness studio, with ease.

Here are the pillars of the modern boutique fitness branding:

Logo and Visual Brand Identity

From logo concept to intricate applying it to your studio space to apparel, print, digital, photography style and beyond you will need an unique, memorable look & feel that matches your brand’s vision.

Remember, that customers should ‘see themselves’ in your photography, when reading your website they need to feel that you are speaking to them, to their challenges and dreams, when they wear that tank top they are proud (death to bedtime wear). That’s the measure to find out if your brand identity is successful, and it takes time to build it, don’t expect to have it all done before you launch it as it will evolve and get shaper with time.

Messaging

Crafting engaging content that keeps the reader at the edge of their seat is so important. Do you really want customers to read it? Don’t talk about yourself. It’s harsh but people don’t really care about your business. They are interested in how you can help them achieve their goals and dreams.Keep your text content short, informative, conversational and stay on track by talking about the transformation that your boutique fitness studio offers and how it benefits your customers.

Website

The year is 2022, if you doubt the need of a website to run your fitness studio… you’re crazy. Your website is the centerpiece of your business, only comparable in importance with your studio’s space, of course. This is the way people will experience your brand (how and why you do things differently) when they are far away – from their home, office and on the go. Make it count.

There’s enough here for a whole other guide, but these are the must haves for your boutique fitness studio website:

• Photography: Custom, killer photography featuring people in your space. Show the experience
• Text: Engaging, conversation, to-the-point headlines and text content
• Social Proof: Testimonials and media features to help creating peace of mind
• Call to Action: Make an offer! Most website visitors are new to your business, have your new client offer front and center, omnipresent. If you inspire them, they will click.
• Online Booking: It comes down to the experience, you new client needs to get inspired and book their first class, right here right now. There are so many great online booking and payment apps out there.
• Performance: I hate to repeat it, but the year is 2022. It’s not hard to make your website blazing fast, it’s just expected.

• Search friendly: It’s obvious, but people need to find you. Work the magic of search optimization and make sure you can be easily found on Google.

Now it’s time to review and revise: Review each of the following and make sure it aligns with your ideal customer, with your brand personality and your ‘why’ is stated. Logo and Brand Identity Needs updating: ______________ Website Needs updating: ______________ Messaging Needs updating: ______________

6. Grow your brand

With a solid branding foundation, your brand is set to expand and grow its reach with strategic content marketing, timely email messaging and ads & funnels to attract more of the right people to your brand, helping to build community and sell more memberships

Social Media

For fitness studio brands social media has been one of the pillars of brand building. It’s important to name what does what for your brand. Social media is not a place for promotions, and sell, sell, sell. Social is actually the perfect place to nurture and build community. It’s a place where people will connect, engage and feel the sense of belonging – yes, even from their couch. Flex your wellness and fitness knowledge, feature an instructor or customer, create excitement about the tribe,  run contests, and hey what not memes?

Ads & Funnels

If you want to reach more people, faster you need to get serious about ads. Creating a well structured, goal oriented campaign will go along way and you will see a decent return on investment in no time. But what happens when they click on your ad? Enters the funnel. You will need landing pages, follow up email sequences, etc to make sure your ad clicks turn into paying customers.

Email Marketing Automation

If your studio has been open for sometime you have access to an email list of all your customers – given that they granted permission for promotional emails. You can segment this list, meaning slice it up in groups of inactive customers, active customers,  upsell opportunities, and many others. With this grouped customer lists, you can now craft a message that’s perfect for their situation and get them excited to reactivate their membership, take full advantage of their existing membership or stop spending money in class packs and jump on a monthly membership already.

Make a plan: Social Media: what are your content pillars/ categories that nurture your community: ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Ads & Funnels: what can be improved, click on your ad as if you were a new client, where does it take you? How easy and how many steps takes them to book their 1st class? Can be improved: ______________________________________________________________________ Can be improved: ______________________________________________________________________ Can be improved: ______________________________________________________________________ Email Marketing Automation: audit each automatic email that goes out, do they sound conversational and on brand? What can be improved: ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________

7. Referrals

This one deserves a dedicated section, but it’s no rocket since. Guess what? Your ideal customers know a lot of people just like them, aspiring to the same dreams, facing similar challenges and seeking the same transformation. Most of the time all you need to do is ask nicely… and reward them.

This is not mandatory before you start your business but, why not? You might miss out on some serious business by not doing this from day one. Just do some quick math, if half of your customers bring one friend each you have a 25% revenue increase. Yup.

Here are proven tactics to get referrals for boutique fitness studios:

Create a Referral Program

It might sound obvious but unless you create a referral program or system, then referrals will be sporadic or impossible to track.

Ask nicely

Put the word out there. Add a referral page to website, send out an automated email every quarter or every other month asking your customers to ‘bring a friend to sweat together’ (see what I did there? I just made referrals fun!).

Reward Referrals

All it takes is a gentle reminder to bring a friend and sometimes a reward. To make it fair, reward both the person bringing the friend and the friend. It’s a win-win-win (the third one is you).

Reward your Team

Your team is a huge asset to attract new customers. Why not reward them as well? A sold class is a beautiful thing to see and beautiful for profits as well.

Affiliate Marketing

While at it, create a full affiliate program. This is referrals on steroids. You can reward influencers, other companies, super-star clients, and more. There are tons of great affiliate apps out there that will generate unique links and track signups for you.

Pick two strategies above and make a plan to implement them in the next 2 weeks:   Tactic 1: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Action: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Action: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Tactic 2: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Action: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Action: ____________________________________________________________________________________

8. Dial up! Or not.

At this point we entered management territory. But you can jump on this even before launching. As a fitness studio owner or marketing director numbers are you best friends. Keep a close eye and track everything.

If a branding or marketing action show some success, whether an ad, a flyer, a referral promo then dial up! Why not double your budget in that one specific effort that brought in 20 new clients? The potential is there to bring in additional 40 new clients, just waiting for you. Rinse and repeat! That’s how you grow your business, it’s that simple.

Something didn’t work as well? Adjust and try again. Or just move on. Not everything you try has to work. Every market and every audience is different.

The best way to be successful in growing your business is watching your numbers. Every week. Set your calendar reminder and every Friday check what’s working and what’s not. Every week is a fresh opportunity to grow.

Pick two things that are working and two things that are not working, make a plan to dial them up or not: This works 1: ______________________________________________________________________ Dial Up Action: __________________________________________________________________ This works 2: _____________________________________________________________________ Dial Up Action: _________________________________________________________________ This doesn’t work 1: _____________________________________________________________________ What needs to be adjusted: __________________________________________________________ This doesn’t work 2: _____________________________________________________________________ What needs to be adjusted: ___________________________________________________________

9. The Launch

This is where sometimes things can go wrong. It might be surprising, but ‘waiting and see what happens’ is not a launch strategy. If you invest time and money on items 1-8 in this guide you should be in a really good place to open doors.

Remember, you already invested a whole lot (of time, money, emotions) up to this point. Now it’s time to speed things up so you can take flight.

Here are some killer strategies to launch your boutique fitness studio:

Create some (or a lot) of buzz

Typically four to eight weeks before opening doors it’s great timing to start creating some hype and the world – well, just your ideal customers – that something exciting is coming to town. There’s a wide range of actions that can be taken at this stage; Anywhere from media interviews or features, to social media through your account, instructors and personal ones, store front banners and posters, pop-up events and much more.

Offer an irresistible founder deal

A great way to boost sales even before your grand opening is to launch with a irresistible founder deal with a promise that only for a limited time you can get this lifetime package and it will never be offered again. It’s a great way to build revenue fast, get a good sized cohort to fill up classes and promote a solid call to action even before opening doors.

Create demand, urgency and even exclusivity

With the founder deal is a great way to create a deadline for people to hurry up and sign up for a membership, but there are other ways too. Another well used, and often stealth, tactic is to create a mix of exclusivity or scarcity. You can promote a founders deal for only the first 50 members, as an example. Or each 50 founder members get 3 invitations only for their friends to take advantage of an extended founder’s deal.

Tap into your instructors networks

Instructors are way more the instructors. They are the face of your brand often times and a great way to attract members. Beyond that they also have a captive audience of previous clients (wherever the taught before), friends and family, or simply some sort of following on social media. Let’s tap on those networks! Offer a special free class trial, pricing and even an affiliate payout, if you want go that far.

Celebrate!

Yes, it’s a party! Launch party, Launch week, Launch month. Celebrate your accomplishment and get as many people through the doors to experience the space and the vibe. It’s a great opportunity to get signups on the spot by creating a unique offer and also collect referrals. Above all, it’s a party.

Who doesn’t love party planning? And yes, you can have a party to celebrate your rebranding too. How are you going to create buzz? How many weeks prior to opening doors? _______________________________ Founder deal: price, limitations, deadlines. _______________________________ Demand, urgency, exclusivity: what’s the plan? How are you going to get your founders to bring in 2-3 more founders each? _______________________________ How are you going to get instructors to be loud about your opening to their networks? What’s the incentive? How can you facilitate it? _______________________________ Plan the launch party. Make it fun, make it happen. _______________________________

 

This is the foundation that build all successful boutique fitness studio brands.There’s no shortcut. Work on your strategy foundation – who are you serving, why, build a brand that is unique and personable. Connect to your ideal audience through authentic branding. Reach more (ideal) people and grow your business through online marketing and referrals. Carefully watch your numbers and tweak your efforts as you go. And finally, celebrate your efforts with your new community with a launch party.

This is a long list of things to do before opening a boutique fitness studio, and you will need help sooner or later – sooner tends to be cheaper, faster way to grow! You can hire experienced professionals or branding agencies to do some or all of the work. Creative Fit works exclusively with fitness brands and specializes in launching and growing their businesses. You can get started by booking a free 40-minute consultation.