Adding video workouts to your fitness business and ABC Trainerize-powered mobile app is, hands-down, one of the most powerful ways to enhance your online training services and give your clients an immersive and personal experience.
With video workouts, you can offer way more than just self-guided sweat sessions. Your clients can access your videos on-demand, whenever or wherever they want. It’s like giving them total control to create their perfect fitness class or workout schedule.
The best part? On days when they need an extra dose of motivation, they can hit play on a workout video you’ve created and feel like you’re right there, guiding them through the movements and pushing them through the reps.
But before you set up the tripod and hit record, you’ll want to make sure you have a fully fleshed-out strategy that includes what kinds of videos you want to create, who you’re making them for, and how you’ll use them to grow your business.
So let’s take some time right now to put together a killer video content strategy that will help you truly make the most of this powerful medium.
1. Decide how you want to use video in your fitness business
First things first, you need to pin down how you want to use video workouts in your business.
This is a critical first step because it not only determines what kind of content you’ll create but also how you’ll monetize and market your video workouts later on down the road.
So start off by asking yourself what you want to achieve with your video content. Do you want to:
- Create new revenue streams or offerings?
- Increase the perceived value of your services?
- Increase the price of your existing services?
- Enhance the online training experience for your clients or members?
- Get a leg up on your competition?
- Etc.
You might find that you have more than one goal for your video content, and that’s ok, as long as you have them clear in your mind.
Once you’ve identified your goals, use them to help choose how you’ll use video workouts in your fitness business. There are plenty of options available but some of the most common include:
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Using video workouts to enhance your existing services (e.g., including them in training programs as a different style of workout)
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Including access to your on-demand video workout library as part of your “app membership” (open to all your active clients)
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Offering access to your on-demand video workout library as a premium add-on to your app membership (sold on top of your other services)
- Offering access to your on-demand video workout library as a stand-alone service, turning your training app into a video content subscription app
Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, so think critically about which one will help support your goals. And remember, there’s no rule saying you can’t mix and match the way you use video workouts, so get creative.
At the end of the day, it’s about finding what’s right for your business and your clients or members. Which brings us to step 2...
2. Define your audience
Next on the strategy to-do list: figure out who is going to be using your video workouts, or who you want to use them.
Assuming you’re not brand new to the world of digital fitness and online training, a lot of this will have to do with your business niche and your existing client-base, but it might also mean thinking about new markets you haven’t yet explored.
Based on the decisions you made in step 1 (where you pinned down how you want to use video in your business) ask yourself some questions about how your goals align with your target audience, like:
- If I’m using video workouts to create new revenue streams or offerings: will these new services appeal to my current client-base or market or will I need to attract new or different types of clients?
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If I’m using video workouts to increase the value and price of my services: does my current client-base or market support these higher prices or should I be casting a wider net?
- If I’m using video workouts to get a leg up on your competition: is there a large enough market to support this competition or should I be expanding my niche?
It’s important that you ask (and answer!) these questions before you start creating and using video workouts so you don’t accidentally price out your target market or create video content that misses the mark.
Once you’ve nailed those answers down, it’s time to think a little bit deeper about your audience (both existing and prospective) and break them down into segments.
Segments are smaller pieces of the larger group that have similar attributes, wants, or needs. For example, you might offer women-only programs, but among the women you train you might find segments of
- beginners
- post-natal women
- pre-menopausal women
- advanced athletes
They’re all in your audience, but they can be broken out into smaller subsets.
Identifying segments is key to content development (which we’ll talk about a little later) and can help you create videos that work for your audience at-large but also speaks to different clients at deeper and more personal levels.
It can also help you build super-targeted marketing campaigns for your video content.
3. Write down and organize all your ideas
Once you know who you’re making videos for, it’s time to figure out what you’re going to film! With so many ideas racing around your head, it’s super important that you take some time to write them all down.
Whether you do this in a document on your computer, using a task management app, a note on your phone, or good old fashioned pen and paper doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you make that space your catch-all for video ideas and concepts. This way, you’ll never lose a great idea when inspiration strikes and you’ll be able to create an amazing collection of videos.
Look for gaps in your video ideas. Are there videos your clients or members would love that you haven’t thought of yet? Do you need to create multiple variations of the same video to support your full audience? Check for blind spots and keep adding ideas until you feel confident that, if all the ideas in front of you were turned into an on-demand video workout library, your clients would love it.
Once you’ve got your list of brilliant video ideas written down, the next step is to group or categorize them. Why? Because a random assortment of videos might sound delightful but can actually be a nightmare to keep track of, can be difficult to navigate/search through (as a client and as a trainer), and can make the overall experience feel sloppy or poorly thought through.
By organizing your video ideas into categories, you’re ensuring that everything you’ll create is part of a clear and cohesive vision—a key ingredient when building your brand reputation and when delivering outstanding training experiences.
4. Find your start line
You have to start somewhere but choosing where exactly that will be can be harder than it sounds.
With so many ideas begging to be turned into videos, you might not know where to begin, so it’s important to take a breath and think about what’s known in the design work as the MVP: minimum viable product.
This is the bare minimum you need to get a product or project off the ground and into the market.
For your library of video workouts, this might be anywhere from 5-10 videos that would allow you to start achieving those goals you outlined in step 1. The number of videos you need and what they include will depend on how you’ll be using them.
For example, if you’re using video workouts to enhance your online training experience by adding them into your client’s programs and training phases, you may only need to create a handful of specific videos (likely for your most popular or hottest selling training programs).
On the other hand, if you’re using videos to create a new video workout subscription service, where clients can subscribe monthly and get access to your full library (a choose your own adventure type training experience), you’ll probably want to launch with a higher number of videos either across a few different categories.
Give some thought to how you’ll be using your videos and then use the ideas list you created and its categories to choose which ones you’ll start with.
5. Make it a phased approach
Video content is a marathon, not a sprint. Once you’ve decided where you’ll start, as excited as you might be to dive right into the content planning and recording process, hold tight for just a little while longer and instead redirect that energy to planning out which videos you’ll tackle next.
We recommend planning this out in phases where each phase builds on the content created before and helps you to slowly but surely expand your library of videos.
It’s important to break your video production into phases for a few reasons. First, it makes the sometimes daunting task of creating so many videos into a manageable project. Second, it allows you to continuously delight and impress your audience.
Each time you release a new video (or series of videos) you have an opportunity to reach out to your clients and leads to let them know. This can boost your client engagement and motivation and can help to attract new clients. It can also increase client or member retention because the new video content being released in waves keeps things fresh and interesting.
So don’t skip this step! Take a little bit of time to map out the next few phases in your video production plan. It might seem like a speed bump right now, but trust us you and your clients will thank us for it later.
With all 5 steps complete, you’ve got yourself a killer video content strategy that’s ready to implement! Your next step is to dig into the specifics of each video and get ready to film.
And once you’ve got your videos recorded, take your next steps by laying down a monetization strategy (a.k.a. How you’ll make money with your video content) and marketing plan.
