You’re a beast in the gym.
You eat burpees for breakfast and demolish barbell sets like they’re nothing. You sweat protein shake. You know exactly what exercises to do to ensure that every fiber of every muscle on your body is maximally ripped.
You’re not such a beast, however, when it comes time to get more personal training clients.
You want to grow your personal training business but you’re not sure how to get more clients.
Let me help you out. In this guide, I’ll walk you through proven strategies for growing your personal training client base.
To get personal training clients, you need to identify your target audience. Listen. You may be a super trainer, but realistically you can’t help everybody. You need to define who you focus your personal training efforts on.
Do you have any special certifications? Do you have a passion for working with a particular type of client, such as those going through rehab for an injury? Or maybe you want to work with the elderly. Who do you primarily want to work with? That’s the million-dollar question.
The more narrow your niche, the more targeted your marketing strategies can be. You can speak their language, address their specific problems, and help them achieve their goals.
Your marketing messaging will resonate much more with potential clients than if you speak in bland, broad, boring beige terms. If you’re too broad with your marketing, you won’t attract anybody so really niche down until you find exactly the type of client base you want to work with.
The good news is that you already have people in your network who can benefit from your personal training services. Tap into this network to find personal training clients. Who do you know that could benefit from working out with you?
It may take a little courage but don’t hesitate to tell people you know that you’re looking for new clients. As you begin telling people that you’re taking new clients, word will begin to spread.
Your brand is what people think about when they think of you. It’s what sets you apart from other personal trainers. It’s who you are and what you value.
You need to define your personal brand and Unique Selling Point (USP). Your brand should reflect what you’re known for. Maybe you’re the guy who helps people lose huge amounts of weight. Or maybe you’re the woman who helps clients get massive strength gains. Or maybe you’re the recovery trainer, or the youth trainer, or any other type. You get the point. Whatever it may be, make sure it’s clear to potential clients what you excel at.
To define your USP, think about what makes your approach or services unique. Maybe you offer virtual training sessions or have a background in physical therapy that sets you apart from other trainers. Highlight these points in your marketing materials and use them to differentiate yourself from competitors.
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing strategies out there. It’s like gasoline on fire. People may not believe what you say about your personal training business, but they’re likely to believe what others say about you.
Ask your existing clients to provide referrals. You could even create some form of referral program in which you reward people who refer new clients to you. You could give them a free training session or something like that.
When was the last time you turned down something free? It’s probably been a while. It’s hard for people to say no to special promotions, which makes them an ideal strategy for getting more personal training clients. Some ideas for promotions include:
You have loads of knowledge as a personal trainer, and you’re just bursting at the seams. Share your knowledge with prospective clients by hosting free workshops. These workshops could cover any number of topics, like nutrition, stretching, introduction to yoga, etc. You get the point.
One advantage of doing workshops is that you can speak at length on a subject you’re passionate about. This allows you to develop stronger relationships with potential clients. They see that you’re an expert in your field and are more likely to select you as their personal trainer.
We’ve touched on the importance of defining yourself but it’s worth looking at in a little more depth. You need to be absolutely clear on what type of personal training services you offer. If you try to be the grand Golden Buffet of personal training, you’ll overwhelm people with too many choices.
You also dilute your expertise in people’s eyes. If they see that you focus on just a few things, you look like an expert on those things. If you offer 25 different services, it’ll look like you’re a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Narrow down the services you offer as a personal trainer until you have nice, neat expert packages to offer.
Do you have strong testimonials from your existing clients? Then share them all over the place. Don’t be humble. Splash them on your website, on social media, and on any other marketing materials that you use.
If you don’t have many strong testimonials, start working to get some. Ask your clients to honestly share their experience with you. Direct them to review sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook. Reviews are a really strong type of word-of-mouth marketing that can boost your brand and strengthen your reputation.
Social media is a great place to start sharing about your personal training offerings. What should you share on social media? It’s all about value. The more valuable content you can share on social media, the more people will respect you as a personal trainer. So think primarily of how you can add value to your audience rather than how you can promote yourself.
You can share things like workout plans, videos of you doing specific exercises, diet recommendations, and other valuable content. You also could occasionally share success stories of your personal training clients.
It’s better to share consistently on one or two social media platforms than to spread yourself too thin across 10 different ones. Determine where your audience spends most of their time and focus on those platforms.
Your website is your home base for all your online marketing strategies. You will regularly be directing potential clients back to your website and you want your site to look as professional as possible. In light of this, invest the time and resources necessary to get a sharp website that resonates with your potential clients.
Your site should include key information, such as:
The good news is that you don’t need to spend a huge amount of moneyto design a great site. Use a platform like Wix or Squarespace to get a professional-looking site in a matter of hours.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website available and appealing to search engines like Google. Improve your website’s SEO and your site will show up in relevant searches, like “personal trainer near me”. The more you show up in searches, the more personal training clients you’ll get.
Now, SEO is a huge subject that can’t be easily covered in a single paragraph. There are multiple elements to it and it has to be tackled from different angles. To help you get started with SEO, here are two in-depth, tremendously helpful guides:
Both guides walk you through the beginning steps of SEO and help you get your site up and running.
Email marketing is a fantastic way to attract new clients. It allows you to speak to a large number of people at one time while also maintaining a sense of intimacy. It’s a great way of communicating your expertise and authority to your audience. You can share valuable content with your audience in every email, which builds your relationship with them. The stronger the relationship, the more likely they are to choose you as a personal trainer.
A great way to get people on your email list is to give away a free resource on your website in exchange for their email address. For example, you could give away a diet plan, a workout sheet, or a nutritional guide. The key is that the free resource has to be valuable enough for people to give up their email addresses.
Networking with other personal trainers and fitness professionals is another great way to get more clients. It gives access to an audience that you wouldn’t have otherwise and it enables you to get your brand out there in front of brand-new potential clients.
Start by collaborating with local health professionals like physical therapists, chiropractors, and massage therapists. These individuals will almost certainly encounter people who need your personal trainer services. If you have a strong relationship with them they will be likely to refer these clients to you.
Also, consider building relationships within your community, like with local gyms, studios, and wellness centers. The more you’re involved with the community, the more likely it is that community members will seek you out.
It’s essential to follow up on every prospective client. Each one represents potential revenue that can keep your personal trainer practice going. Put a system in place that will enable you to follow up with everyone.
You can do this through email, phone calls, or even social media. Keep track of who you’ve contacted and when so you can follow up at appropriate times.
We’ve touched on the power of having an online presence, but it’s worth going a little deeper. Few things can help you get personal training clients like having a strong online presence. Here’s why:
What separates you from every other personal trainer out there trying to get clients? Why should someone choose you?
You need some sort of credibility. Something to show that you get results for people as their personal trainer. Having an online presence allows you to build the credibility you need to attract an audience.
If you have a great website where you give away lots of free valuable information, and you regularly post similar information on social media, you show that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to personal training.
If you have a lengthy list of positive reviews that you share on your site and on social media platforms, you will build your credibility. People will trust you to be their personal trainer.
With traditional marketing channels like radio, print, or putting up flyers at a gym you’re pretty limited in terms of who you can target with your marketing. Having an online presence gives you access to an enormous audience that contains many of your ideal clients.
These ideal clients can see what you’re all about as they follow you on social media and as they consume the information you give away on your website. They can connect with your message and become passionate fans of your brand. They can share your content with their friends and contacts on social media, which spreads your message to an even larger audience.
Where else can you get this kind of audience? Where else can you find thousands of people eager to work with you? Having an online presence allows you to reach a much wider audience.
Having an online presence allows you to easily connect with individual potential clients. You can respond to comments on YouTube videos and social media posts. You can interact in groups and forums with people who need exactly the services you provide. You can also reach out to potential clients through email marketing campaigns or by offering exclusive discounts and promotions on your website.
Word-of-mouth marketing is awesome but it can’t carry the main load for you. You need to be out there, talking to as many people as possible about your personal training services. Having a strong online presence allows you to do this.
In many ways, you can control what people think of your brand through your online presence. Before someone signs on with you as a personal training client, they’re going to do their research. You know they’re going to Google you. What will show up in the search results?
If you have a great website and strong social media profiles, that’s what will show up. All the great content you share online will be at the top of the search results. However, if you don’t have a strong online presence, searchers may find nothing, or even worse, negative reviews.
You want searchers’ potential future clients to find loads of great content from you when they search your name. That’s why you need a powerful online presence.
Finally, an online presence allows you to track the performance of your marketing efforts. You can see whether your website is getting more traffic. You can track how many views a YouTube video gets or how many followers you have on Instagram. And most importantly, you determine exactly how many clients you get as a result of your marketing strategies.
As the data starts to come in, you’ll begin to see what’s working and what isn’t. You’ll determine what subjects resonate with your YouTube audience or what types of images work best on Instagram. You can then take this information and tailor your future marketing efforts to align with what is currently working best for you.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just work out, and post photos of yourself on Instagram, and people would come flocking to you? You’d never struggle to get clients again. Alas, that isn’t how it works.
The good news is that if you’re willing to put in the effort to market yourself, you really can grow your business. It probably will take some experimentation. You’ll need to figure out which marketing strategies work best for your personality and your business. But you’ll get there.
So start building now. Start testing different marketing methods to see what you feel best about. Once you find one or two that you really like, focus on those for a while. Then move on to some of the others.
You’ve got this.
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