Help! No Sales on Launch Day

Starting a fitness brand is hard. Very hard, in fact.

At GymFuse we are lucky to chat daily with entrepreneurs, fitness enthusiasts and generally ambitious people who are starting a fitness brand or have built fitness brands.

A number of founders come to us with the following three-piece toolkit:

1. A website
2. An Instagram following
3. A cool logo

Everything is on track and ready to go for launch day, just go live and the sales notifications will come pouring in, right? Quite often things do not go to plan.

Let’s take a look at why and what we can do to prevent an underwhelming launch.

Going beyond

Before any of the above are developed, we suggest you think about what it means to be a part of your brand. Consumers are generally attracted to a brand that sells products that they can either relate to now, or they aspire to relate to in the future.

It is vital to not only create the physical elements of your brand (website, logo etc) but to develop the intangible also. If your brand were personified, how would they act? Who would they hang out with? Are they hard working or chilled? Trendy or a little geeky? By defining the above with excessive detail you can begin to shape not only your brands appearance but also its unique voice.

Let me use an extreme example to demonstrate. I came across an Instagram page called ‘stay the course’ a few years back and took an interest in the brand message. At this stage I believe the page had around 1,000 followers and had just began creating slogan t-shirts. As of today this is 120,000 with an incredible volume of product sales. The brand makes no excuses for who it is, who it is targeting and what it means to be a part of it. We could go further and personify this company into some categories:

– Pro-gun
– Masculine
– Serves in military
– Hunts
– Lifts weights
– Nationalists

Note: we do not condone any of the viewpoints above, the example is chosen to illustrate a brand technique only!

I recommend taking a look at the page and carrying on the above list, as you go on the picture becomes clearer. It is important to note, this brand is not trying to appeal to the majority. It will appeal to a hardcore group of loyal fans (see 1,000 true fans concept in our eBook here).

This exercise is powerful, it can be useful to repeat it quarterly to ensure your brand is staying true to its voice and values.

Keep an eye out for further topics focused around ‘starting a fitness brand’ and the techniques required to enhance the possibility of success.

Cracked glass, cold colours and old dumbbells… Unlikely to be targeting the yoga market.