Joining the ranks of personal trainers is an exciting moment, and the potential to help people and build a successful business is exhilarating. Before you can enjoy the rewards of your hard work, you have to navigate the competitive landscape of personal training that is saturated with other ambitious trainers.
What you need is a marketing strategy that helps you reach clients and create a thriving career. While this is easier said than done and typically takes time, there are a few basic personal training marketing tips you can implement that will kickstart your journey to success.
Key Takeaways:
- Personal training is a competitive field where you have to stand out from the crowd. Knowing how to market yourself as a personal trainer is essential to building your client portfolio and finding long-term success.
How Can You Market Yourself as a Personal Trainer?
As a PT, you’re always trying to set yourself apart from the crowd. Our industry is full of opportunity–but it’s also saturated. So, how can you stand out in your field? Focusing on marketing is a must. Here are a few must-know tips for game-changing personal training marketing.
Establish Your Brand Identity
Having a clear vision of your personal training brand sets the foundation for your business. There are many facets to this conversation, and they extend far beyond a catching business name and a memorable logo (although those things are important).
As a personal trainer, you are the product you’re selling to potential clients. This means that you need to establish your brand identity in a way that appeals to your target audience, instills confidence, and generates interest.
Your brand should include details about your character, the value you provide, the experience you have, and the results you can help clients achieve. It is important to spend time on this process and thoroughly refine your brand. What are your goals? How do you want potential clients to view you? What differentiates you from other trainers?
Answer these questions, and you’ll be well on your way to establishing a strong brand identity that you can use as the foundation for your marketing efforts.
Consider Choosing a Specialty
Many personal trainers find success when they build a reputation in a niche market. For example, you may want to specialize in helping bodybuilding clients, athletes, or people who want to lose weight. You can refine your niche even further by becoming a leading voice in a particular style of exercise, such as kettlebell training, weightlifting, or high-intensity interval training.
Not sure where to start? Check out which personal training certification is best for you!
Personal training marketing requires focus. You need to be able to directly and succinctly communicate to potential clients exactly why they should choose you over someone else. By establishing a specialty, you make it easy for the right clients to find you.
Get Active on Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media is a powerful tool. It can be one of the best options for reaching your audience when considering how to market yourself as a personal trainer because it gives you instant access to a massive online community. With a strategic and consistent approach, you can leverage social media marketing to grow your personal training brand.
While your social media marketing strategy will be unique to you and your goals, there are a handful of tips that are worth consideration.
- Engage with your audience and the fitness community at large. The more present you are, the better your brand recognition.
- Provide value in the form of education. People like learning about personal training, dieting, and so on, and it gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.
- Get creative. For example, you can reveal training secrets, share your personal workouts, or take down fitness myths. Here are more ways to get crafty with your personal training content.
- Post consistently. Much like diet and exercise, social media marketing requires persistence in order to be effective and sustainable.
Embrace Traditional Personal Trainer Marketing Techniques
Digital marketing and social media may be trendy and glamorous, but traditional marketing is still incredibly effective for personal trainers. If you work with clients in person, you likely have a facility or gym (or network thereof) that acts as your home base. This gives you the opportunity to build a community, utilize physical marketing materials, and leverage word-of-mouth advertising to your advantage.
If your gym allows you to post marketing materials, be sure to do so. This is a passive way to market your personal training business, collect leads, and touch base with potential clients.
By simply being active and involved in your local fitness community, you can achieve visibility and establish a positive reputation among like-minded people. Word-of-mouth marketing is especially powerful, as people are heavily influenced by the recommendations of those they trust (like friends and family).
Make a good impression, encourage your clients to spread the word, and your personal training business will thrive.
Don’t Forget These Essential Marketing Tools
The tips above should give you a strong personal training marketing foundation, but they are only the tip of the advertising iceberg. You can use other marketing strategies to continue to expand your brand and find success in the competitive world of personal training.
- Build an intuitive, easy-to-use website.
- Share your knowledge via a personal training blog.
- Host classes, events, or workout challenges.
- Hand out business cards.
- Use online tools, such as booking and scheduling software.
- Network with fellow fitness professionals.
- Collaborate with industry experts, such as nutritionists.
- Continue your education and offer new services to your clients.
- Listen to feedback and learn from it.
- Ask your clients for reviews and testimonials.
- Share your credentials and establish your expertise.
