Many personal trainers have had to watch as the pandemic hit their businesses hard. Clients have struggled to justify placing their fitness before other pressing priorities.
This is why effective personal training marketing strategies are so important now. Whether you’ve been running in-person sessions with extra precautions in place or you’ve focused more on digital communications, there’s never been a better time to improve your marketing efforts.
These ten tips will help you level up your game and outshine your competition:
- Define your ideal client
- Develop your personal training brand
- Dedicate time to your website content
- Write guest blogs for high-authority sites
- Harness social media
- Maximize your visibility online
- Send emails consistently
- Encourage referrals
- Offer clients something that will entice them to take action
- Take it one step at a time
Define your ideal client
It’s always a good idea to determine your perfect audience. Draw upon your surroundings. For example, a personal trainer living in an area with a large retirement community may want to focus on providing personal training for older adults.
Ask yourself the following to help identify your ideal client:
- What is their age range?
- What genders are they?
- What is their level of fitness?
- What are their hobbies and interests?
- Are they professionals, stay-at-home parents, students, or retired?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can build your ideal client profile — which will then inform how you offer your services. For example, if many of your clients work regular hours, it may be wise to adjust the hours you offer to train to weekday evenings and weekends.
Develop your personal training brand
Your personal brand creates a persona that people can attach to you and your services. It should communicate your unique value and exactly who would benefit the most from your personal training. Your brand should truly reflect your personality or people will find it harder to connect with you.
If you have a unique exercise technique or plan, you can promote this as a branded program. Give it a memorable name that will appeal to your target audience. This shifts the focus from being a personal trainer to being the personal trainer who came up with a signature workout. It’ll help separate you from the competition.
Dedicate time to your website content
Owning a professional website that answers your target client’s questions is essential to market yourself in the best light.
Publish blog posts
Blogging is an underrated method for attracting clients. By demonstrating knowledge of specific subjects within personal training, you’ll build your authority and credibility in the field.
Set up a regular schedule for publishing blog posts. You can choose to write them yourself or outsource them to a writer in the health and fitness niche.
Ask for testimonials
In almost all industries, people browse the internet for social proof before committing to a purchase. And 72% of consumers say positive testimonials and reviews increase their trust in a business.
Ask all of your regular clients to submit a review of your services and publish them in a format that’s easy to digest on your website.
Write guest blogs for high-authority sites
When you reach out to a fitness blog or other publisher with a guest blog pitch, they’ll probably check your online presence to assess the quality of your writing and get an idea of your social following. Even if your social media presence is in the beginning stages, quality blog posts show people that you’ll be able to create the same for their site.
Guest blogging demonstrates your expertise and attracts the attention of readers from other sites. Ask the publisher to include a link to your website in your guest post, so that new client prospects can click through for more information about you.
Harness social media
Social media can be a goldmine for personal training marketing opportunities if you learn to maximize its potential.
Focus on the social media platforms your ideal clients use
Find out which social media platforms are popular with your ideal clients. Both Facebook and Instagram allow you to push targeted ads to specific audiences. However, your ideal clients could be elsewhere.
For example, they could be professionals who engage most often with LinkedIn. Or they may split their time between Instagram and Twitter. Any posts you write will need to be adapted for the styles and limitations of each platform.
Set up a social media page
Starting a business page on social media keeps your followers updated on your news and availability. Writing informative social media posts educates and inspires your audience to strive for new fitness goals.
A consistent online presence will also help you stay at the top of their minds. Once they decide to work with a personal trainer, you’ll be the first person on their list.
Build a community
Prompt and continue conversations with your followers on social media to learn more about them, increase your visibility, and develop long-term relationships. Encourage clients to interact with each other, share success stories, or encourage one another to make progress.
Many social media interactions are also opportunities to demonstrate your knowledge and sell your value as a helpful personal trainer. Find out more about how Constant Contact can bring all your social accounts in one place and help with social media marketing.
Maximize your visibility online
With most people first looking online for a personal trainer, being found easily is vital to the success of your business.
Improve your local SEO
When people want to find a personal trainer, they’re most likely to type ‘personal trainer near me’ into Google.
Registering your business with Google My Business means your business can appear as one of the search results in that little expandable box. Encourage your clients to leave reviews on your listing, as a higher star rating will help make you look legitimate.
Get listed by directories
Register your business with around 40 to 60 directories. They should be sites or directories specific to personal training — such as IDEA, Angie’s List, and Thumbtack’s personal trainer directory.
These citations may not significantly impact your online ranking for search terms, but they often provide free inbound links that improve the credibility of your website in Google’s books. And when you improve your overall SEO, it’ll generate more traffic for pages like your blog posts.
Send emails consistently
We recommend sending an email weekly to help you establish a presence in your subscribers’ consciousness. Use email campaigns as part of your personal training marketing efforts. Offer promotions, send links to useful articles or give advice on healthy living. Even if a client isn’t able to attend sessions right now, they won’t forget the value you add to their life.
An intelligent email marketing tool like Constant Contact will allow you to launch full email campaigns, track every email you send to each client, and use marketing automation and segmentation to keep your clients engaged.
Encourage referrals
Personal trainers can attract a significant amount of business from referrals. Consider asking your clients via email if they can refer you to their friends and family, which is usually easier than approaching them in person. Incentivize your clients by offering them a discount or another promotion.
Cross-referrals are also extremely beneficial. Ask other local health-conscious professionals — physical therapists, chiropractors, complementary therapists, or nutritionists — if they’d be happy to refer you to clients looking for a personal trainer.
Offer clients something that will entice them to take action
Even when clients are quarantining, they will appreciate learning about promotions like discounts and other special offers. Here are a few examples of things you can offer.
Online training
Show flexibility by providing clients the option to work out online and broadcasting group sessions on video software. Or offer them the freedom of having their personal training sessions over video call instead.
A free trial
A free session offer can entice potential clients who might have been hesitant to sign up otherwise. After all, if it’s free, what have they got to lose?
A shared experience
Friends like to work out with friends. Run a promotion allowing clients to bring a friend to their personal training session for free. Your client’s friend will get to witness your expertise firsthand, making them more likely to sign up for individual sessions.
Fitness technology and equipment
Personal training clients are often switched on to fitness technology and may expect you to keep up with them.
Buy new gym equipment and let people come and try it for free. Or promote new workout gear — like a smartwatch or an electronic muscle recovery tool — and show how you can adapt a client’s workout to incorporate it. Just make sure everything is disinfected between uses.
Take it one step at a time
It can be easy to feel overwhelmed. You’ve spent years learning your craft as a personal trainer, but you’re probably not a marketing expert.
Consider how you want your client emails to look. Here are some fitness email campaign ideas to inspire you. Looking for a more in-depth guide to online fitness marketing? Check out The Download.
Remember, you don’t need to follow all these personal training marketing tips at the same time. Explore what works best for your business and enjoy watching your brand reach its full potential.
