Whether you are running your own personal training business or you work as a private contractor in a local gym, you will need a strong portfolio of clients to grow your fitness business. At the end of the day, personal training is a business like any other. And without clients, you will struggle to make ends meet.
Hence, you will need to be marketing and promoting your services constantly to attract clients and keep growing your fitness business. The good news is, personal trainer marketing isn’t the overwhelming or tedious task that you may imagine. There are several easy but effective personal training marketing strategies, which you can implement to attract more clients.
In this guide, we will take you through 7 innovative, inexpensive and powerful personal trainer marketing strategies, which can help you to land high-quality clients, grow your personal training business and take it to the next level.
1. Run Group Fitness Classes
If you are looking for an easy but effective method of how to market your personal training business, then you should consider running group fitness classes. Group fitness classes provide a great opportunity of promoting your personal training business to large audience.
Whether you decide to hold a yoga class, a circuit spinning session, a Pilates class, mobility class, or a HIIT class, group fitness classes will help to enhance your reputation as a personal trainer.
Also, such classes will get people talking about you. And as you may probably know, word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective methods of advertising for personal training business.
Furthermore, group fitness sessions will help you to get your personal training services in front of more potential clients. And, if everything goes according to plan, you will end up fielding lots of calls from interested personal training clients.
2. Reach Out to Local Partners
Another easy marketing for personal trainers method is by reaching out to local partners and seeking out opportunities for cross-promotion. With this method, you will be promoting each other, to help both businesses reach a wider client base. This way, you will also end up reaching and attracting more personal training clients.
Local physiotherapists, nutritionists, and chiropractors, as well as retailers of fitness equipment, fitness gear, and fitness supplements, are some good examples of partners you can reach out to for cross-promotion.
For instance, a chiropractor could be sending you their clients, looking for personal training services. On the other hand, you could be sending them your clients, who may need the services of a chiropractor.
Through this personal trainer marketing strategy, you will be entering into a mutually beneficial partnership. And, it may lead to a constant stream of high-quality personal training clients, having spent almost nothing.
3. Grow Your Social Media Presence
Social media marketing provides one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for personal trainers. With social media marketing, you will be sharing relevant and informative content and engaging your audience. And when done right, it can help you to get personal training clients, increase your revenues and grow your fitness brand.
There are several social media platforms, which you can use for personal training marketing. Some of the most popular ones include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. However, avoid spreading yourself too thin. You’d rather be highly active on two social media channels as opposed to opening 10 accounts where you are not active.
Regardless of the platforms that you choose, here are some tips that will help you to get the most out of this online personal training marketing method.
3.1 Know Your Target Audience
To succeed with social media marketing, you will first need to know your target audience. Knowing your target audience will help to create and post the right type of content, which will keep them interested and engaged with your personal training business.
One of the easiest methods you can use to determine your audience is by using buyer personas. If you’ve already created buyer personas for your personal training business, you can use the same details to define your target audience.
In case you don’t have buyer personas, you can simply compile data from current clients. In particular, you should pay close attention to their age, location, interests, spending power, stage of life and interests.
Once you’ve defined your target audience and the platforms they are most active on, you will know the type of content that will keep them interested and engaged with your personal training business.
3.2 Post Consistently
You must be ready to post good content consistently on your chosen social media platforms, to ensure your target audience keeps remembering you. At the end of the day, your target audience is also following thousands of other individuals and businesses. And, their feeds are constantly filled with different types of content.
So, if you only post once per week and disappear, no one will remember you, when the time comes to hire a personal trainer. The question is, how frequently should you be posting on social media. Well, it will mainly depend on the platform you are using. But on average, you should aim for at least one post per day.
Also, it will be advisable to post different types of content. Your content on social media should include a mix of inspirational and informational. You should also throw in a couple of funny posts occasionally, to showcase your funny side.
3.3 Engage Your Audience
The purpose of social media platforms is to socialize. So, if you are looking to grow your presence on these platforms and attract more clients, you will need to create time to engage your audience.
After you’ve created and shared content, you should spare a couple of several minutes a day responding to comments from your audience, liking their posts, replying messages and even sharing some of their posts.
By posting high-quality, relevant, and informative content consistently and engaging with your followers, this online personal trainer marketing strategy can provide a powerful tool for increasing your client base and growing your personal training business.
4. Bring a Friend Workout Session
One of the easiest marketing strategies for personal training is to request your current clients to bring their friends – for a free workout session. Friends like working out together. And by rolling out such an offer, there’s a high chance that some of your existing clients will bring some of their friends during their next workout session.
You can make the deal even sweeter by offering a reward, for everyone who will bring their friend to the workout session. The reward can be a sponsored dinner, a free training session or Amazon gift cards, just to name a few.
Once the prospects arrive at your gym, you will first collect their contact information. From there, you can then share your fitness expertise with them and make training suggestions. And, you may just end up bagging several clients. In case they don’t sign up on the spot, you can use the contact information you collected to keep nurturing them.
5. Market Your Personal Training Business Locally
Traditional marketing strategies like distributing business cards and flyers to local businesses provide an inexpensive and simple means of reaching out to more potential clients.
You simply need to identify where your potential clients hang out, create some business cards and flyers and then distribute them. Some of the local businesses that you can target with this advertising for personal training strategy include restaurants, coffee shops, juice bars, hair salons, and health shops, among others.
While this method may appear old or outdated, it remains effective even today. Besides, it’s also free. Hence, you can’t afford to overlook it. It will help to spread the word about your personal training services, among people who live close to your fitness business.
6. Launch a Video Series
A highly effective method of promoting your personal training business is by launching a video series of a problem or a topic that your target audience may be struggling with or may want to learn more about.
For example, your target clients maybe women in their 40s looking to lose some weight, feel better and look better. You should then research their struggles and find out the challenges they may be facing in pursuit of their fitness goals.
Once you’ve gathered this information, you should then go ahead and launch a video series, which will help them with that. Ensure you post consistently and deliver high-quality content.
Also, remember to keep engaging them and ask for feedback. You can also request them to provide you with some topics they may want you to cover in your upcoming video series. And, when they decide it’s time to hire a personal trainer, you will definitely be the first one on their mind.
7. Organize Fitness Challenges and Contests
Fitness challenges and contests provide a great means of marketing for personal trainers. Also, they provide an incredible opportunity of showcasing your expertise, boosting brand awareness and reaching more personal training clients.
You can opt to host these fitness challenges and contests either online or in your gym – if you already have one. Ensure the prize you offer for these fitness challenges and contests is worthy enough, to convince the participants to share their contact details.
Also, you can encourage the participants to sign up for your weekly newsletter. This method will help to grow your email list while generating hundreds of personal training leads.
8. Wrapping It Up
Marketing your personal training business doesn’t have to be a complex affair. By simply implementing some of the ideas we’ve discussed above, you will notice a considerable change, in your client numbers and your income. And, your personal training business will grow.