First things first
As the world of online fitness goes haywire, it’s clear that consumer behavior is going to drive how creators succeed (or don’t succeed) in their online coaching product or service. Building an online product or business is a new concept for many people, but it’s not too dissimilar from trying to grow your Instagram following, launching a product on Kickstarter, or scaling a personal training business in real life.
And while there are no shortcuts to achieving overnight success, we are privileged to live in a growing digital world where we have access to a plethora of online tools, creator success stories, and knowledgeable business coaches to ping for advice. It’s never been easier (and more affordable) to bring your passion online.
If you’re a fitness professional, creator, influencer, or gym-owner, we’ve provided 8 steps below to help you launch a fitness app, from scratch, within 14 days.
Let’s do this 👇
1. Identify your ideal customer type and niche
Knowing your customer is a must when creating any product or service. The world is changing, and online consumers carry different purchasing power than in-person clients. It’s extremely important to keep this in mind—which is why we recommend taking the time to identify your niche and customer type before you jump in further. Trust us, it will save you a ton of time and money down the road.
Business vector created by pikisuperstar
It takes time and consistent effort to find product-market fit. Rather than trying to sell or offer a product to an audience you *think* might be interested, task yourself with finding the biggest product / market overlap for your brand, passion, and coaching style. We like to reverse this concept and instead recommend that you focus on finding market-product fit.
The best way to de-mystify this process is to start by gathering research from friends, past clients, or colleagues, and then cherrypicking the problems and pain-points you’re passionate about solving. Once you’ve had some time to think about the problem you’re passionate about solving, we recommend “pitching” your newly refined vision to friends and fans to ask if they’d be willing to pay you to help solve that problem.
It’s always better to start narrow and get a few superfans than cast a wide net and be disappointed in the results.
2. Decide on a product and offering type
After you’ve identified your niche and customer, it’s time to decide what type of product is best suited for that audience. Remember, this product should feel exciting to you but also touch on the actual “need” that your end customer is looking for.
- One-time purchase products are great if you’re offering 4, 6, 8, or 12-week programs and challenges.
- Monthly membership products are great if you want to create recurring revenue and grow your membership base over time.
- Or maybe, you want to combine the two – i.e., you could offer a 30-60 day foundations program, and then a monthly “maintenance” membership to retain customers who want to continue working with you.
Both one-time and monthly membership products can be used for selling to groups of people, or for one-on-one training purposes.
3. Create an outline of your workout program
Don’t overthink this part. It’s best to start with the first week of workouts, and then fill out the rest. Also, think about fitness-adjascent ways to provide value to your customer—whether it be a welcome kit, nutrition PDF, weekly habits, macro guide, mindset tips, check-in forms, private community group, and more.
Most platforms make it easy to provide this supplementary material alongside your workouts.
One of the best benefits of online products is that you can make adjustments alongside customer feedback over time—allowing constant iteration to find that perfect market-product fit 😉
“Perfection is the enemy of progress.”
4. Create a draft of your sales page or program!
This is a really important step, as creating rough drafts help you envision what your product is all about. Not only that, but rough drafts help you “formalize” some of your thinking into a proof of concept which then provides accountability for your vision. Plus, rough drafts are easy to share with friends, peers, or colleagues, which is the easiest way to get valuable feedback.
*Do not* fall into a perfectionist mindset at this stage. Spend just enough time to create a proof of concept, and then iterate and refine your product and messaging over time.
If you’d like, it’s easy to start creating a program for free.
5. Upload exercises, create workouts, and add onboarding and membership content!
Okay, you’ve identified a niche, decided on a product type, created an outline, and created a draft of your sales page and program.
Now, it’s time to bring things to life.
Here are some helpful video tutorials on how to create content on Superset:
6. Decide on a launch date and create teasers for your program
Now that you’ve gotten a lot of steps out of the way, think about a launch date. Having a date in mind will help you consolidate your efforts across you and your team.
Additionally, start teasing your program to build hype and let people know that you’re launching. We recommend putting out the word on Instagram or TikTok, or through your email lists and group chats if you have those established. Use our promo video creator to create a screen-recording of your program and put it out online!
Lastly, it’s sometimes helpful to offer a coupon or discount to incentivize people to join. Let us know if you’d like to create a coupon code and we can hook you up.
7. Launch and spread the word
Launch day is always crazy, so carve out some time before and after to tend to yourself and your product. Try to spot any bugs, and quickly respond to customer questions that pop-up. Quick communication is one of the easiest ways to build trust online.
If possible, tag @supersetapp on Instagram and we’ll repost your stuff to Instagram story. Also, try to get your friends or peers involved in spreading the word.
8. Post-launch… keep promoting!
Your launch might start slow, but just like working out, if you put in the time and are consistent, then you’ll get results!
One of the most important ways to sell is after you’ve launched. You’ve worked really hard to get to this stage, so keep up the consistency.
It’s obvious that the digital fitness market has quickly shifted toward an entirely new landscape. Digital fitness brands are growing larger by the day, and it’s important that trainers position themselves to compete head-on, and evolve their product offering alongside new consumer behaviors. It’s never been easier to bring your training online and create, distribute, and deliver fitness content (at scale) by creating your own fitness app.
If you’re lost on where to start, we at Superset can help.
Thanks for reading!
