Starting an online fitness business
So you have a passion and want to share it. Promoting and selling classes online may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be difficult, it’s all about choosing the right tools. Here we’ll cover a simple guide on how to set up your online business in less than 5 minutes.
Ok, it’s the 20s again, maybe not quite as roaring as last time, a faint squeal at best, but the point is the future is now! So I’m not going to feed you the old dribble of setting up a WordPress site and just magically attracting customers. Let stick to modern tooling that makes the online part of your business a breeze, meaning you’re free to focus your energy on what you love. So let’s get started in three steps.
- Creating an online presence
- Promoting and selling classes/courses
- Connecting the dots
Creating an online presence
Do I need a website? Probably not and let's be honest; no one cares about your website. It's difficult to find, unfamiliar and far from the crowd. Online fitness has moved to social media and it's all about creating an online personality. This means using platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to promote you as an individual and your offering.
Social media is not just free and easier to manage, it's actually better for your growth as a business:
- Instagram users spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the platform with 200 million users visiting at least one business profile per day.
- YouTube demographic is young with 81% of 18–25 year old being active users.
- Facebook pages are great for marketing your business with 39% of users following pages to receive special offers.
So the first step is to create these accounts, depending on your goals or target demographic you may want to start with either Instagram or Facebook, here you can create a brand feel and promote yourself. From here we can drive customers to search and book our events.
Selling and promoting your classes
I just said you don't need a website so how do we plan on selling classes online? Well, choose a hosted platform that manages everything for you. That means zero maintenance, zero hosting costs and zero stress.
Tomorrow is a platform to help you schedule classes and accept payments online. The checkout can be shared directly through a dedicated URL or dropped into your existing website. Sign up is free and the setup takes seconds.
Once you're signed up you will receive a dedicated URL which displays your classes in a clean and modern interface. Users can search for a specific class and make a booking.
Give it a try: https://bit.ly/3gq7MPw
Tomorrow provides everything you need to get started, you could add the link directly to your social media profile, but let's take it one step further.
Connecting the dots
If you have multiple social media accounts and a Tomorrow booking link, you may want to tie everything together allowing users to navigate between them all. Keeping with the theme of free hosting and zero maintenance lets take a look at Linktree; a hosted page which allows you to create a set of links.
Here, for example, we have a Linktree page which connects our Instagram and checkout page. https://linktr.ee/tomorrowapp
Now with all this finished we have an online presence to promote and advertise our services. A clean interface to manage and book classes and a way to glue it all together. With the free plans available we still haven't spent a penny!
I told you it was easy, didn't I? Now the rest is up to you.
If you want to host your classes online see how Tomorrow connects with services like Zoom for video hosting. https://medium.com/tomorrowapp/taking-your-courses-online-during-the-lockdown-5a2f41d601d4
References
