Setting yourself apart

[CEFitness]

Hey guys, im just getting started so bear with me on these questions, im just happy i have someone to ask! Anyway there is a pretty big boot camp here in my town already. They have it at the park right beside my condo. Its a four week camp, one hour a day, M-F at 5:30 am. They have "expected results" on there site but no "guarantees".

I was just wondering what some ideas could be to set apart yourself from other "typical" boot camps. I was thinking of having my boot camp be 8 weeks instead of 4. I was also thinking maybe a guarantee of so much loss after 8 weeks. I am big on guarantee's, of course they have stipulations but its great for marketing. They also dont supply any equipment or use anything like kettle bells ect. I was planning on supplying mats, resistance bands and such. This could be a niche.

Also only ladies boot camps are offered by them at this time in this town. They have a coed boot camp in another town about 15 miles away. I thought maybe a coed camp would be a good opportunity. Anyway if you guys have any ideas on how to break the mold of the average boot camp, you could share them. Maybe the answer is just to start a boot camp of my own, and go head to head with them, but they are established and experienced so its sort of intimidating.

I also told the chamber crowd today i was planning a "charity boot camp", which i am. Maybe that would be a good way to get people started with me instead of choosing the more established camp.

[kaiser S]

Yeah you're on the right track in finding a niche - Think about a specific audience you'd like to target and market it just for them - An example could be brides -

I have a friend who makes her living doing "bridal bootcamps". I actually did an interview with my friends who did this How to Become a Celebrity Trainer | Trainers: DUMP THE GYM NOW!!!

You don't have to pick brides as your niche, but it's still good to realize that you can make a living by targeting a very specific niche group.

[Tom@foresight]

A niche is vital to ensuring that you get a good share of the market.

If the other lot are not doing camps for males and females, and the female only ones are well attended, who is catering for the men? You may just have found your gap in the market.

The great thing about bootcamps is that they are in course format, so have a start and an end, if the first course you do is not as well attended as you would like i to be then you can always make adjustments ready for the next course. This is something that is much harder with a class.

TOM

[B-Fit Staff]

Well one thing that i would totally do is definitely use the resistance bands.. so your on the right track but one thing I have learned is that when men are working out around men they tend to not want to do their best because they seem intimidated but by all means try and kinda play around with different functional type training.

[getting_big]

Here where I live there are dozens of boot camps - mostly on the beach before and after work. it's very competitive. One PT was very clever and set up a bootcamp for mums at 11 am and hired a babysitter to look after the kids while they train. It's doing really well. You simply have to think outside the box and offer something that all the others are not offering