27 Tips On Marketing For Personal Trainers
Marketing for personal trainers can be tough at first. But, it’s not a difficult industry to market to. Instead, most trainers start their careers working for a gym owner where the business attracts members and markets for personal trainers. However, the best way to make money as a trainer is to start your own personal training business. Therefore you need to do your own fitness marketing to reach more potential clients. The marketing tips we have here fall into five main categories:
- Knowing your ideal client and target audience
- Applying social proof models
- Creating communities
- Using content marketing to drive value to your business
- Leveraging basic digital marketing tactics (social media, email, and SEO)
The table at the end also provides a quick reference guide you can print and keep for the future.
TIP 1: Know Exactly Who Your Ideal Client Is
Every marketing campaign has to know exactly who it’s speaking to. After all, marketing is just meeting a customer with the right offer, at the right time, and at the right place. So, you need to take the time to think about who is the target market for your personal training business. For many new trainers, the best market to go after is middle-aged and overweight potential clients. These clients are at a stage in life where they can typically afford your training services. Additionally, weight loss can be hard. And most people realize they don’t know how to do it alone.
Regardless of who you think your ideal client is, take the time to define them. You can have a few target markets, especially if you’re just starting out. Then, over time, you can refine what your niche is and the details around them.
TIP 2: Offer Free Content
Everything you know about fitness and nutrition is valuable but that doesn’t mean you should hold out only for paying clients. Instead, give more value away for free. This helps you build credibility and trust with prospective clients. If they follow your free advice and start seeing results, it will increase the likelihood drastically that they’ll pay for your services. Research shows that good free content can increase the opt-in rate by up to 85%. This is because you’re giving prospects an idea of what you can offer them.
TIP 3: Write For Industry Blogs
Writing for major industry blogs such as Idea can increase your exposure and increase your credibility. Even if you don’t get paid, it’s a great way to connect with other fitness professionals and demonstrate your expertise. Simply reach out and make the request. Don’t stop with just one publication, however. Instead, do some research and create a list of all the targets and your communications with them.
TIP 4: Build Your Own Blog To Drive SEO
Next on the list of tips on marketing for personal trainers is to start writing your own fitness blogs showcasing your advice and expertise. Even if you’re not a writer, you can still offer great tips. Valuable content that’s searchable will increase traffic to your site. To enhance your SEO (search engine optimization) make sure you always keep the user intent in mind. What do your current clients wish they knew before working with you? What are the hot topics people are looking up? What questions do you hear all the time about fitness and nutrition? Then, take it to the computer and answer the questions. If you’re not sure how to write, don’t worry. You can look up the top-performing pieces of content and try to address similar topics.
TIP 5: Create Segmented Email Lists
If you don’t have an email marketing platform and CRM, get one. HubSpot has a free and easy-to-use one. Import contacts and add in custom properties so you can segment email lists. Remember, marketing is all connecting with people at the right time, with the right offer. Creating segmented email lists is endless. And, the more free content you give away, the more leads and contacts you have. You can then research what they downloaded or how they interacted with your site and continue the conversation.
TIP 6: Partner With Adjacent Businesses
Find other local businesses that value healthy living. Professions like chiropractors, nutritionists, and physical therapists are obvious. However, partnering with a healthy fast-casual restaurant is a great opportunity. You can bring clients to their business to teach them how to order or do your nutrition coaching on site. In return, you can ask if you can leave promotional materials or if there’s a promotion you can do together. These are great places because it’s just like being at the gym. You have highly qualified leads walking in and out constantly.
TIP 7: Apply To Directories
This is an easy one. Simply search for personal training directories and begin applying. It’s a quick and easy way, especially if you’re looking for more local business, to get your name out there.
TIP 8: Send Value – Add Emails
Email marketing is important to get new clients. In fact, it’s one of the best tips on marketing for personal trainers. However, misusing email can cause you to bleed out prospects. You shouldn’t send more than one promotional email for every three value add emails. Don’t be afraid to give away free content. Again, you’re showcasing what you can do for people. Additionally, send these emails frequently to keep your name top of mind. You can send nutrition tips, exercise technique tips, on-the-road workouts, bodyweight workouts, newsletters, and so much more. You can even align your emails to national “holidays”. Keep a running list of ideas for emails. And remember, you can resend these emails to non-openers or inactive leads. You can even send them to active leads if enough time has gone by.
TIP 9: Use Facebook Ads
After exhausting free marketing types, consider paid ads. Using Facebook ads is a great way to get more clients. Just like email (even more so), you can really customize who will receive your ads. This helps you make sure your money doesn’t go to waste.
TIP 10: Display Client Testimonials
Your clients will be proud when they accomplish their fitness goals! Highlight them! Have them write a testimonial for you and make sure you always have before and after photos. Then highlight these testimonials everywhere in your digital marketing campaigns. Testimonials are so powerful because they show others success can happen and you’re exactly the one to do it.
TIP 11: Create Package Pricing
Fitness professionals are in a great place to create upsells and package pricing. Don’t stop with traditional per session or monthly pricing. Instead, offer larger packages that can include things like nutrition, fitness DNA testing, online personal training and coaching, and other wellness services. Creating a well-thought out package pricing isn’t about sales, it’s another one of the tips on marketing for personal trainers. You have to know what your client wants, and then give them an offer they can’t refuse.
TIP 12: Provide Free Educational Webinars
Using Instagram Live or Facebook Live, start hosting educational webinars for all of your followers. Invite them to bring their friends. You can do quick and easy topics to attract more customers like “How to choose a personal trainer” or “The best fitness tips for weight loss goals”. The list can go on. These webinars can be short and help you build your personal brand while establishing expertise.
TIP 13: Watch The Data And Modify
It doesn’t matter what marketing campaign you’re looking at. Lead magnets, social media marketing, and email marketing all track outcomes. Look at what works and what doesn’t. Every piece of data should help you adjust how you do your marketing in the future. Marketing without data is like driving with no headlights.
TIP 14: Get A Spot On The Local News
If you haven’t done it yet, get a spot on the local news. It’s surprisingly easy. They’re always looking for fitness and nutrition experts. You can pitch a topic on what the segment will be about. Even if you don’t get in right away, keep pitching other ideas and try to time them seasonally to what viewers might be interested in.
TIP 15: Create A Great Onboarding Experience
When you think about your customer lifecycle, consider every element. And, definitely don’t overlook the onboarding experience. This is the first time a new client will get a taste of what they paid for. Create short intro videos, send a welcome email or direct mail piece. You can even connect them to existing clients you have with similar experiences. Make it memorable and offer VIP service.
TIP 16: Make It Easy To Get Client Referrals
When starting with clients, let them know right away you’ll be asking for referrals and reviews. Psychologically, this gets them paying more attention to what they love about your personal training business. It also sets the expectation that you’ll ask for this support. And lastly, you can make it easy for them by having a message already scripted for them. Or let them know the types of free content you give and how much you’d appreciate them sharing it.
TIP 17: Attend Community Events
Get a table at a farmer’s market. You can test body fat, do fitness assessments, and give general fitness advice. It’s a great marketing idea that trainers forget about. You’ll also be able to connect with other local business owners and get their support and be part of a network.
TIP 18: Narrow Your Niche
As time goes on, you’ll learn more about your current clients. You’ll be able to see exactly what they value most about your services that others don’t offer. Refine your marketing and communication strategy as you narrow down exactly what your fitness business offers. Instead of specializing in “Weight loss” be more specific. Talk about who uses your services the most. Is it the working mom in her 40s that doesn’t have time? You make the most out of every minute she has with you to get her to see big results and losing 12 pounds a month. Narrow and keep narrowing.
TIP 19: Teach Group Fitness
You can teach outdoor boot camps or yoga sessions for free or at a minimal cost. Or, you can teach at a fitness facility. Most gym owners won’t want you promoting your business there, but it still allows you to connect with others and get them to know you.
TIP 20: Offer Free Fitness Challenges Or Competitions
Everyone loves a 30-day challenge. It’s a marketing idea you shouldn’t pass up. You get prospects to commit for the duration of the challenge. And, during that time, they get to see your fitness professionalism and expertise. They’ll also grow part of your community of current clients and be more likely to continue the relationship in the end. Here’s what you need to host a fitness challenge and then 15 fitness challenge ideas to get you going.
TIP 21: Create A Facebook Group
Invite clients and prospects to your Facebook group. You can have it as a paid membership or as a free community. In it, engage regularly and offer relevant and useful content. For example, you can off a fitness tip, quote, or exercise of the day. You can also push out polls and surveys to learn more about the members.
TIP 22: Differentiate Your Business
Whether you’re doing online training or live training, know your competition and how you’re different. If you continue with content marketing and giving away free content, soon you’ll have a huge resource library. Maybe your business gives them unlimited access to all your organized content- for life! Or maybe you make fitness a family effort and help design fit lifestyles for the entire family when you’re a client. Find something unique that you know your target audience will like and promote it.
TIP 23: Use Great Subject Lines
When you do email marketing, don’t just guess on your subject line. Make it great. An unopened email is bad for your fitness business. Use a free subject line evaluation tool to score every time you send an email.
TIP 24: Offer A Guarantee
Everyone loves feeling safe. Offering customers a guarantee is a huge statement. In fact, it can be your differentiating factor. You can offer a money-back guarantee that you’ll get clients to their goals. Or you can say clients only pay for the results they see. Guarantees show confidence and help your customer feel safe in choosing you.
TIP 25: Provide Shareable Graphics
Infographics are great pieces of content clients can share. It’s another way you can ask them to help you get referrals. Creating a simple graphic of “Top 5 tips for lunges” or “Pros and cons of the keto diet” or the “best at home exercises” will help your digital marketing efforts. Further, it will increase the likelihood that the content will spread and build your personal brand.
TIP 26: A/B Test Your Emails
Just like writing great subject lines, use an A/B test before you send. This means you create two similar emails and send them to two small sample groups. Then, whichever email has the highest open rates and click-through rates, you push to the entire segment. It’s an easy way to use data to improve your email marketing campaigns.
TIP 27: Use Google For More Content Ideas
If you’re running out of free content ideas, Google can help. For example, if you have a piece of content marketing on squats that does well, look up “How to do squats”. Then, look at the list of “People Also Ask”. It’s a great way to generate more ideas with data from a search engine that people want it.
Learn how to put all these marketing tips together to start a personal training business with an EMAC Online Certification Coach today. It’s quick. It’s easy. And, you can get paying clients within a month.
27 Marketing Tips & Categories
Use this quick guide to apply the 27 marketing tips for personal trainers to grow a business with more paying clients.
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Digital Marketing Tips For Personal Trainers
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