Let's start with the definition of ‘Market' as it applies to your fitness business the most common mistake I see here is when people refer to the industry as their market. The majority of the people I speak to are in the Health and Fitness industry therefore they say they're in the fitness market or health market. This is too broad of a definition for most businesses, a yoga studio can't advertise to all the potential clients in the world. Their market is smaller and needs to reflect whom they want to come to their studio. 

A good definition to use for companies and individuals in the fitness industry is; actual or potential buyers of services or products that you offer.

If we use this as a base then we can now start to narrow it down for our yoga studio example their service is yoga so their market is actual or potential buyers of yoga services. From this you can shrink it down to your city or even a few block radius around where you hold the classes. For most fitness companies this is about a 20 minute radius by whatever mode of transportation the potential client uses; the more specialised your service the larger the radius can be, maxing out at around 45min.

Take an even bigger step and achieve greater results. Now we are all speaking the same language when we say market, but those of you that are looking to truly excel and become a leader in your market you will need to take your business a step further. You will need to find your ‘Market Niche' to achieve it we will need to break down the services and offerings of your business. We will use Yoga Studio X as our example but you can sub in your business at any point and start to find your market niche.

Here is what Yoga Studio X needs to do:

• Start by breaking down their services and style of yoga that they do Flow, Ashtanga or Hot as an example.
• If they are a new company list out what type of clientele that they want or desire
• If an existing company look at your clientele to determine what your market niche is. Be very specific about who they are.
• Yoga Studio X is a start up and the owners have an extensive athletic background they specialise in Ashtanga and Flow yoga. After much discussion they decided to work with athletes in their early 20s to 40s. If you are a trainer you can take this right down to a sport, for yoga or Pilate's or other service providers I recommend staying with athlete and age groupings.

Answer the following questions to try to help determine your market and market niche.

1. Who are you? This is the hardest question and you may need to ask friends and family and be brutally honest; likes, dislikes, activities, patience level, mannerisms, education, speaking ability and the hardest what is your approach to life are you positive or negative.
2. What do you do? List all services and offerings from your business
3. Profile your ideal customer? Do not limit to age and sex, instead broaden the scope to include their interests, activities, type of work they do and what makes them who they are. Example; our training studio went after medical professionals so their profile was 40-60 year old M/F that are driven, A type personalities, quick decision makers, high stress jobs, long work hours, highly educated, above average income, sporadic recreational habits and some knowledge of the human anatomy and physiology. Note you can do more than one profile.
4. Does your profile(s) of your ideal customer (#3) want the services you offer (#2)? Take a minute to actually think about it before answering.
5. Now the Jeopardy question this will make sure you were honest when answering #4 "Why does your ideal customer want the services that you offer? It is very important that you know the answer, if you don't then there is a good chance that they might not actually want your services and you are going to spend all your time trying to convince them. It is best to know this now because you can go back and redo these questions but it is way harder to redo your business.

Good luck and I hope this exercise will help you capture your market niche and surge ahead of your competition.