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Personal Trainer Marketing Tips

Marketing
April 26, 2024
John Robertson

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As a personal trainer, staying on top of your marketing strategies is crucial to attract new clients and to grow your business.

To get started, it's essential to assess your current situation by answering some key questions. Who are your existing clients, and how did they find you or vice versa?

What has worked well and what hasn't in your previous marketing efforts? What are your competitors doing to attract new clients? And, what are your specific goals for your business?

This article will dive into some of the top marketing tips for personal trainers to help you get more clients and reach your goals.

From running promotions and offers to working with other professionals, utilizing social media effectively, and more, read on to find actionable strategies to grow your personal training business.

1. Run Promotions and Offers

Attracting new clients is essential to growing your personal training business. One effective way to achieve this is by offering promotions and special deals to incentivize them to sign up with you.

Another way to increase your client base is by offering something of value for free in exchange for signing up for your email list.

This will not only help you build your database of potential clients but also allow you to keep them engaged with your business through regular updates and promotions.

2. Ask Current Clients For Referrals

Get current clients to help grow your fitness business! Personal referrals carry a lot of weight, and if you can get your customers to spread the word, you'll see great results.

To incentivize them, consider offering rewards or discounts for each new client they refer.

This strategy brings in new business and strengthens the bond with your existing clients.

So don't miss out on this powerful opportunity - start using referral marketing today!

3. Ask Current Clients For Reviews

Gain new clients by showcasing positive feedback from your current ones. Encourage clients to leave reviews and take the time to thank them for their input.

Utilize particularly glowing comments by asking for permission to showcase them on your website.

The more positive reviews you have, the more likely new clients will choose you as their personal trainer.

To get you started, check out our guide on how to get reviews and testimonials. Finally, remember to leave a reply for each review, even if it is just to say thank you.

4. Showcase Your Expertise and Professionalism

There are several effective strategies for showcasing your expertise as a personal trainer and establishing yourself as a professional in the industry.

One way to do this is to create educational content highlighting your skills and subject knowledge. This could include writing blog posts, recording podcasts, making videos, or giving presentations and talks.

Another essential aspect of professional presentation is consistency in communications and branding.

Make sure that all your marketing materials, including emails, flyers, and social media posts, have a consistent look and feel and accurately reflect your brand and message.

5. Ensure All Promotional Material is Accurate and Up To Date

This is another way to signal your professionalism. Go through everything you can think of and check that all details are accurate and up to date.

This could include your website, other sites where your business is listed, social media accounts, ads, and so on.

It’s also vital to proofread all content and ensure there are no spelling mistakes, typos, or errors – get someone else to check for you if necessary.

Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of first impressions to your potential new clients.

6. Tap Into Networks and Build Partnerships

Working with other individuals and businesses in your community can be a great way to build your personal training business and attract new clients.

Joining local networking groups is a fantastic way to achieve this. Networking is not only about making new contacts, but it is also about sharing your expertise and increasing your confidence as a personal trainer.

This can be accomplished through engaging in group discussions, attending events, and building relationships with other individuals and businesses in your community.

In addition to networking, you can also reach out to potential partners and collaborate on mutually beneficial initiatives for both of your businesses.

For example, you could propose running joint promotions or marketing campaigns targeting new customers.

These partnerships can help you reach new audiences, increase visibility, and drive more business to your personal training services.

7. Review Your Social Media Strategy

Regularly evaluating your social media presence is key to ensuring you're effectively reaching your target audience and getting the desired results.

To start, consider which platforms you're using and whether they are the right ones for your current and potential clients.

It's important to ensure you're reaching the right people on the right platforms. Need help with ideas of where to begin? Our social media planning guide will get you started.

Next, look at your social media metrics. Are your followers increasing, and do they engage with your content? This will give you a good indication of how well you're doing and if you need to make any changes.

Take note of what kind of content works best for you and try replicating that success.

Additionally, think about timing. Does it make a difference when you post? Does posting at a certain time of day or day of the week have a positive impact on your engagement? Experiment with different posting times and observe the results.

8. Boost Your Search Results

To reach new clients. You need to increase their chances of finding you. You don’t have to be an SEO expert.

There are plenty of basic strategies you can focus on to boost your search ranking, such as identifying keywords, posting regular high-quality content, and building links to your site. Read our article on local SEO for more tips on improving your search results.

9. Pay For Advertising

Using online advertising can help you reach a large audience quickly and effectively. However, it's also important not to dismiss offline advertising as it can still be an effective way to reach potential clients.

Some examples of offline advertising include print ads, flyers, and customizable poster designs.

These types of advertisements can be especially effective when targeted to specific local communities, such as gyms or fitness centers, where your target audience is likely to be.

10. Reconnect With Former Clients

Getting back old clients can be a valuable source of new business for personal trainers. To win back lost clients, it is important to understand why they stopped using your services in the first place.

The Importance of Return On Investment in Marketing

There are two kinds of ROI that can be applied to digital marketing – financial and non-financial.

Financial ROI relates to direct, quantitative results from marketing, such as increased sales, while non-financial ROI is associated with indirect, qualitative benefits, such as increased brand awareness.

There are various ways of measuring financial ROI, but a common one is using the formula {sales profit - marketing spend/marketing spend}, in other words, subtracting the cost of your marketing activity from the income generated by it, then dividing that figure by the cost.

A result below 2:1 is poor, while anything around 5:1 or above would be considered a good ROI.

Measuring financial ROI is a straightforward way of assessing whether a marketing campaign has been worth carrying out and can be applied to any kind of specific activity with tangible results.

For example, you’ve paid for a digital ad giving out a promotional code to potential new clients; the ROI is the profit made from your new signups minus the cost of designing and placing the ad, divided by that cost.

Non-financial ROI is less rooted in hard results but just as important to measure, as it can give you a good indication of things like brand awareness, audience growth and customer loyalty.

It can be assessed by tracking data such as the number of website visits, number of social media followers and social media engagement (likes, comments, shares).

This should be monitored on an ongoing basis, as well as following specific activity such as a new blog post, video or newsletter, and the results should be weighed up against the associated costs and other resources.

Five tips for achieving better ROI

Here are some tips to help you get started with measuring ROI and achieve better results:

  1. Take a strategic approach
    Set clear targets, identify the methods you’ll use to achieve them, include these in your marketing strategy, and ensure this aligns with your overall business plan and budget.
    Focus on the most important benchmarks for your business. Measuring ROI should be an ongoing, manageable and insightful activity.
  2. Review your costs
    When measuring ROI, be sure to take into account all of the costs associated with your digital marketing activity.
    These could include equipment, external expertise, subscriptions and advertising, as well as your own time. Can you make any savings? Should you be investing more?
  3. Consider all possible metrics
    Make a list of all the things you could measure, and determine which might be the most straightforward and/or helpful to track.
    The list could include things like numbers of new subscribers or followers, sign-ups for classes, video views or downloads of passive income generators such as ebooks or fitness plans.
  4. Get into an ROI mindset
    Make things easier by getting into the habit of building ROI into everything you do and including simple ways of measuring success, for example by using trackable links in your newsletters to monitor the take up of offers or promotions.
    See Content Maximiser’s How to create trackable links to measure your campaigns for guidance.
  5. Get value for money from your marketing assets
    Make sure you’re getting the most out of any marketing asset that you create, by repurposing or reusing the same content across different channels.
    For example, a video posted to your Instagram profile could also provide content for an associated blog post, LinkedIn update and newsletter item.

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By analyzing this information, personal trainers can create strategies that appeal to these clients' specific needs and interests.

One way to do this is by offering an incentive to return, such as a discount or a limited-time promotion. This can be a powerful motivator and the difference in winning back their business.

Additionally, by regularly staying in touch with past clients, you demonstrate that you value their business and are always available to help them reach their fitness goals.

Growing your personal training business requires attracting new clients and keeping current ones engaged.

To achieve this, it is important to run promotions and offers, ask current clients for referrals and reviews, showcase your expertise and professionalism, ensure all promotional material is accurate and up-to-date, tap into networks and build partnerships, and regularly review your social media strategy.

By following these steps, you can increase your visibility, reach new audiences, and drive more business to your personal training services.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2023 and has been updated to give you up-to-date information.

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