6 Personal Training Marketing Ideas

Are you a personal trainer who loves helping clients reach their fitness goals but you just don’t know where to start when it comes to marketing?

So many personal trainers end up leaving the industry because they’re unable to bring in enough clients to make it viable. Or they end up charging a low price for their services and working ridiculous hours to scrape by.

In this article, I’m going to share some effective marketing strategies to build your personal training business.

You’ll also learn how you can build your authority in the industry, allowing you to charge higher prices. And how you can scale your training services to a larger audience.

1. Create Your Own Fitness E-Book

Did you know that anyone can publish their own book now?

Through platforms like Amazon Kindle, it’s never been easier to self publish your own book – especially ebooks.

An e-book probably won’t become a major source of income for you. But it will give you a lot of extra credibility. Being able to say that you’re the author of a fitness book will change the way people perceive you.

It will trigger what’s known as authority bias. This is a psychological bias, which I explain in more detail in my post on fitness marketing psychology.

Basically, people are more likely to become a client of yours if they view you as an authority in the industry. And people automatically associate book authorship with expertise.

Not only that, but people will also be willing to pay you more when they view you as an industry authority. So you can charge higher prices for your services.

If you want to go a step further, you can also have hard copies of your book printed as well. It will cost more. But a hard copy will further enhance the perception of authority and credibility.

You can even use the book as a gift for your clients, which will promote client retention. Or you could gift it to potential new clients.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of trying to get your website to show up higher in search engines. For example, if you’re a personal trainer in New York you might use SEO to rank on the first page of Google when people search for “personal trainers New York.”

The higher you rank in Google, the more (free) traffic you get to your website. That means more enquiries and more clients.

If you’re in a larger city, a page 1 Google ranking could generate hundreds or even thousands of visits to your website every month.

I wrote an article about SEO for gyms and a few strategies to improve rankings. You can apply these same strategies to personal training.

Learn SEO Strategies For Gyms & Personal Trainers

3. Guest Post On Local Websites

Search for websites that post local-based content about your city or region. Many of these websites will allow guest contributions.

There are several ways you can benefit from guest posting on local websites…

It will give you free exposure to a local audience. You can use Similar Web to get an estimate of how many visitors a local website gets. Having a guest post on a larger local website getting 10,000+ monthly visits could bring a lot of attention to your personal training business.
It positions you as an expert and an authority. When someone reads your guest article on on credible, local website they will perceive you as an expert. Just make sure your article is informative and well written.
It can help with your SEO. If you’re trying to rank higher on Google as I discussed earlier, guest posting can help you. Most websites will allow you to include a link to your website when you write a guest post. This is known as a backlink, which is a key driver of SEO.

Start by running some Google searches for local websites. Some websites will promote that they allow guest posts. While others, you will need to contact them to propose a guest post.

4. Create An Online Program To Scale Your Services

When you’re working as a personal trainer, you’re limited by the number of training sessions you can do in a single day.

Now, more and more personal trainers are creating online fitness programs that allow them to serve clients at scale. With an online program, you’re not limited by the number of hours in a day.

In the long term, it can be much more profitable than running one on one training sessions and you can potentially reach people all over the world.

Keep in mind that creating an online program will require a lot of time invested upfront. You will also need to work out a way to promote the program, which will usually require a lot of time or money invested.

I wouldn’t recommend this idea for new personal trainers. Focus on getting clients for your in-person training first. But it’s worth considering for more established trainers.

5. Partner With Related Services

Look at other businesses that would serve the type of clients you want. This could include physios, chiropractors, nutritionists, golf coaches and tennis coaches.

Many of these businesses will have close relationships with their clients and those clients will trust their recommendations. If you can get them to recommend your personal training services to their clients, it can be a major source of new business for you.

Many of these professionals will be guarded with who they provide referrals to. So it’s important to establish a relationship with them over time before asking for referrals.

You can meet some of these people at local networking events. And you can also use LinkedIn to connect with other local professionals and build a relationship from there.

6. Run Facebook Ads

Creating a Facebook ad campaign for your personal training business is a quick and effective way to reach a large audience.

When I say Facebook Ads, this also includes Instagram – which is part of the same network.

Facebooks Ads allows you to target your ads based on various factors..

Firstly, you’ll want to ensure your ads are targeted to people in your local area that you serve only. If you only train women, you can target by gender. Or if you prefer to train older clients, you have the option to target by age.

Facebook allows you to set your budget and you can start as low as $5 a day. Then you can stop your ads at any time.

If you don’t have a website, you can run a Facebook Lead Form ad. This ad opens up a form to collect people’s details right there on Facebook when they click on the ad.

But if you do have a website with a proper landing page set up, I’d recommend sending people from the ad to this page on your website.

Summary

These are just some of the more effective methods you can use for marketing a personal training business.

In addition to these, you can also use social media channels, create your own fitness blog, host events or use group training sessions to attract new clients.

I recommend pursuing marketing strategies that will help you build your credibility. This can be done by publishing a book, guest posting on other websites or starting your own blog.

Higher credibility and authority allows you to charge higher prices. That means you can work with fewer clients and earn even more money.