4 Ideas To Market Your PT Business

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

Personal training is an industry that has really taken off in recent times. While more highly trained professionals can only be a good thing for the nation’s health, it also means that personal trainers face tough competition when it comes to marketing their business and attracting clients. 

So how can you focus your marketing efforts on your personal training business? 

Choose a niche

It’s tempting to market yourself as a one-stop shop for everyone who wants to get fit. After all, you’ve trained to work with a variety of people on their health and fitness, so why would you then cut your audience down by only marketing to a certain type of potential customer? 

Well, by focusing on a particular target audience, you can tailor you marketing to them in a very effective way. For example, if you’re a young man wanting to build muscle and endurance, you’ll automatically look for a trainer who has success with that type of client. Or if you’re a stay-at-home parent who is trying to fit health and fitness around busy home life, you’ll choose the trainer who has proven experience in working with those kinds of clients and their particular problems. 

Do some research into the potential target market in your area, and your own personal interests and narrow down your target market. You can then look at customizing all of your messaging.

It’s worth noting that not all personal trainers have the same business model. Some choose to work in-house at private gyms and health clubs, where training is offered as a perk to clients or at a special rate. Others have referral schemes with a personal injury attorney, nutritionists or any other professional that might be able to refer their clients to you. 

Get your online footprint right

Effectively marketing your services involves being seen in the right places consistently. When you set up, concentrate on the basics such as optimising your Google My Business listing to show up in local searches. 

From there, it’s a case of being where your target audience is. A well-designed website showing your skills, experience and client success stories will give you a professional profile online. You don’t have to be a web developer or spend thousands of pounds to do this. A great looking simple site can be achieved with templates on platforms such as WordPress or Squarespace.

Don’t overlook some of the basics such as a website contact form or clickable phone number. 

As well as a website, social media is also important but can take up a lot of time. Rather than trying to have a presence on every platform, choose one or two and concentrate on making those a success before potentially expanding to other ones. 

Create free content

As a personal trainer, you’re competing for business not only in your local area but online too. A quick search on YouTube will result in millions of free exercise videos. In today’s market, you’re going to have to get your name out there by releasing free content in some form. This doesn’t mean you give away all of your personal training knowledge, but you want to offer something that’s valuable to potential clients and works to improve your reputation as someone who knows what they are doing. 

This could be in the form of short videos online via YouTube or IGTV, or even blog posts giving advice on particular topics. 

Use influencer marketing

The role of influencer marketing in today’s world is often misunderstood. People immediately think of high-profile celebrities, who have millions of followers on Instagram. Most people don’t have the budget for this kind of campaign. However, there are a lot of smaller influencers out there that run great blogs and social media accounts who have an engaged following. 

Look at influencers who represent your target markets such as family blogs or pregnancy blogs. Approach them and offer some free training or advice in exchange for promoting you to their followers. Don’t properly, influencer marketing can be one of the most effective techniques to bring in clients. 

Takeaways

There is a lot of competition in the personal trainer space, but there is also a renewed determination from people to improve their health and fitness after the COVID-19 pandemic. Society is realising that in some cases, a healthy lifestyle can reduce risks associated with many conditions, and they are going to need help undoing a lifetime of bad habits. 

Taking the time to position your personal training services will reap enormous benefits when it comes to gaining clients.