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Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies And Tips

personal trainer marketing strategies

Marketing is one of the hardest yet most important aspects of personal training, which is why we’ve compiled a list of the best personal training marketing strategies and tips to help you! 

This article will cover:

Before we get started, why not expand the services that your business can offer by taking one of OriGym’s specialist qualifications, such as a Level 5 course in Advanced Sports Nutrition? Along with strong marketing, this can really expand your potential clientbase!

Enquire today, or download our free course prospectus here

How To Set The Foundation Of A Personal Trainer Marketing Strategy

Before we share our top personal training marketing tips in terms of how and where to market your services, let’s start by discussing the 5 key factors that make up the foundation of a strong marketing strategy.

#1 Establish Your USP

personal training marketing ideas

One of the top personal trainer marketing tips that we can give you is to make sure that you have a clear and established unique selling point (USP).

Your USP is what makes you stand out as a personal trainer, and by communicating a clear USP, you are essentially telling potential clients why they should choose you over a competitor.

Having a USP is important as it is ultimately what helps you attract new customers!  

If you don’t know what your USP is, asking yourself the following questions may help:

  • Who is my target audience?
  • What kind of specialist services do I offer?
  • Do I have a particular teaching style?
  • What are my brand values/ethos?

An example of a USP for a personal training business could be that you offer discounted sessions during off-peak hours, such as mid-afternoon, to accommodate students on a tighter budget. 

This would set you apart from other PTs who are more expensive, and only offer early morning or evening sessions to work clients who have a typical 9-5 schedule. 

Another USP could be that you specialise in a particular personal training niche. For example, you could specialise in training a specific demographic such as females, seniors or disabled clients. 

Once you have established your USP, you should keep this in mind when marketing your personal training business. 

This will make your overall marketing strategy more effective, as it will help to ensure that all of your efforts are created with your target audience in mind and as tailored as possible.  

#2 Set A Budget 

marketing strategies for personal training 4

Another factor that should make up the foundation of your overall marketing strategy, is a clearly established budget. 

Without a clear budget in mind from the start, you could find yourself spending too much one one element of marketing, leaving you with not enough to spend on other elements of running a personal training business such as tax and overheads. 

But with a budget, you can make sure that you are spending your money effectively on the different marketing channels.

According to Empire Creative, the average company spends between 4 and 6% of their total net sales on marketing.

But if you want to know how much you should be spending on marketing, unfortunately, we cannot give you a concrete answer! 

This is because your budget is dependent on several factors, such as:

  • The personal training marketing strategies that you want to use
  • Your target audience
  • Your market position
  • The resources you have access to

However, there are 2 key rules that we recommend you follow when it comes to setting a personal trainer marketing budget:

  1. Only spend your budget on things that you know will create direct leads to clients within 1 month
  2. Don’t use a ‘wait and see’ approach

To demonstrate these rules, let’s say that you've decided to host free online taster sessions. This costs you time, which in turn, costs you money.

After one month, five people have taken your free taster sessions, meaning that you have generated five leads for potential clients. However, after their free sessions, none of them have signed up with you. 

According to our golden rules, you should cut your losses and change tactics. Instead of continuing to offer free sessions, you could try another marketing strategy, such as a referral scheme, or working with a local influencer. 

One month is usually a good measure of whether a personal trainer marketing strategy will be successful. 

However, with some things such as SEO, it can take a bit longer to reap the results. This is because it is a more organic, longer term marketing strategy than something like free taster sessions, which should lead to an almost immediate sale! 

 

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#3 Timing is Key 

A small but effective personal training marketing tip is to capitalise on timings. By this, we mean tailoring your marketing efforts towards certain seasons, events, or trends throughout the year. 

For example, this personal trainer has capitalised on the fact that many people make new fitness goals in January as a New Year’s resolution.

personal trainer marketing strategies 4

As you can see, this PT has specifically targeted people making new year fitness goals by creating a specific ‘8 week transformation camp’ package.

Capitalising on events and trends such as this not only help you keep relevant in the fitness industry, but they are great tools for generating interest and engagement from potential clients. 

Plus, associating an offer with a specific date or time period also creates a sense of urgency, encouraging clients to sign up there and then. 

#4 Keep Your Branding Consistent Across All Channels

marketing strategies for personal training 2

Our final personal training marketing tip is to ensure that your branding is consistent across all of your marketing channels. 

This includes things such as:

  • Including your logo on all marketing materials
  • Having a consistent colour scheme and font
  • Having a consistent tone of voice across all copy 
  • Using the same graphics across all platforms

Chances are, you’ll want to implement a handful of the personal training marketing strategies listed below, and that’s great! 

However, if you are to do this, it's imperative that your posts on social media, for example, consist of the same colour scheme, logo, and overall brand tone as your website or your printed materials.

Brand consistency is important as it helps create a strong brand image that people will remember, recognise and trust. This will then ultimately make people more likely to sign up with you when they are choosing a personal trainer

Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies

#1- Create Social Media Pages for Your Business 

marketing strategies for personal training

Social media is quickly becoming one of the most popular and effective personal trainer marketing strategies. It’s easy to see why, since marketing on social media is easy to do and for the most part, it’s free. 

Plus, research has found that an average of 54% of people use social media to browse for and research products, so it only makes sense that you should capitalise on this huge marketing platform! 

The main social media channels you should use are:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn 
  • TikTok 

But what should you post? And what exactly should make up your social media marketing strategy?

Here’s some inspiration for the kind of content you should share:

Before and after images

Posting a success story of one of your existing clients and showing what people have achieved by training with you can be one of the most powerful personal training marketing strategies.

Here’s a great example we found on Facebook:

personal trainer marketing strategies 3

As you can see, here the image speaks for itself, as it acts as evidence of the results of working with this personal trainer. This therefore encourages someone to go with that personal trainer, as they will want to achieve impressive results too!

User-generated content (UGC)

UGC is simply content that comes from other users, i.e. your clients.

This is a great personal training marketing strategy as it is essentially free, since you don’t have to create the content yourself. 

Here’s what Instapage has to say about the benefits of UGC: 

“Good UGC adds value to the brand. It can show people the capability of a particular product or service, spread awareness, and boost social proof during the purchasing process.”

You can easily implement this into your social media strategy by reposting a client gym selfie or sharing one of the posts they have made related to their fitness journey. 

You should also encourage your clients to tag you in their fitness-related stories and posts, so that you can then repost them to your followers. For example:

personal training marketing tips 4

As you can see, the content here has come from a client posting a story after their session, which the gym has then reposted. This is one of the easiest marketing strategies for personal training you can do! 

Run competitions

You should also consider running a competition or giveaway on your social media channels. 

This is a great way of creating a buzz, generating engagement and increasing brand awareness. 

Your prize could range from anything from merchandise with your branding on to a month’s worth of free sessions. 

Here is a good example of a giveaway post:

personal trainer marketing strategies 2

By asking people to follow, like and share the post, this personal trainer will have immediately reached lots more new people that they may not have otherwise! 

Who knows, this might even generate a few enquiries or the winner could become a loyal client.

Videos

Like images, videos are great marketing strategies for personal trainers as they essentially give potential clients a visual demonstration of your product or services.

With statistics showing that 93% of businesses have reported to have had an increase in new customers since including videos in their marketing, you'd be foolish not to give it a try! 

For example, you could post videos of your clients working out during your sessions - with their permission of course. This gives an idea of the kind of thing that a potential client can expect from your sessions. 

You could also post workout videos of yourself in the gym for users to do, such as this one:

personal training marketing tips 3

This is a great way of marketing personal training services as it gives users content that they can engage with. 

If you feel out of your depth when it comes to social media, or simply want some help with devising a social media strategy, it could be worth outsourcing this task to an individual or an agency. 

Enjoying this article so far? Here’s 3 more that we think you’ll love:

#2- Set Up a Referral Scheme

personal trainer marketing strategies 4

Referrals schemes are a highly effective and fairly low-cost way of gaining new personal training clients. It essentially capitalises on your existing clients to gain new ones! 

But don't just take our word for it. Statistics have shown that when referred by a friend, customers are 4 times more likely to make a purchase, and customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate! 

A referral program in personal training is typically when you offer an existing client an incentive to get a friend to sign up. Without an incentive, a client is likely to forget to recommend you to their friends. After all, what would be in it for them?

Some ideas for incentives to use in a referral program are:

  • A free session
  • A discounted monthly package 
  • A free group session to have with the friend they refer 
  • Free branded merchandise e.g. tshirts, water bottles
  • Free equipment e.g. resistance bands

Here is an example of a personal trainer using a referral scheme:​​

personal training marketing ideas 2

As you can see, they are offering 2 free sessions as an incentive for clients to refer a friend. 

In return for these fairly inexpensive incentives, you could potentially gain a new paying client that will more than make up for the cost of these things! 

This is therefore a low-cost way of marketing a personal training business, particularly if you are just starting out. 

Another way to retain existing clients through incentives is with a loyalty programme. This is another personal training marketing strategy that is highly effective yet easy to implement.

personal trainer marketing strategies 3

Similar to a referral scheme, a loyalty programme gives your existing clients incentives to stay with you. 

There are many reasons why even the oldest of clients may be considering leaving you. It may be that they can no longer afford the sessions, or they are simply experiencing a dip in motivation. 

To prevent these doubts from making you lose a client, you should reward your loyal clients and give them a reason to stay! 

You can do this by creating a loyalty program. For example, for every 9 sessions, they get the 10th one free. 

You can track this either using an online booking system, or with a physical loyalty card such as this one: 

personal training marketing ideas 3

As you can see, a good loyalty card is also a chance to strengthen your branding, by including your business name, log and colour scheme.  

As well as a rewards-based loyalty program, you could also simply give your clients a gift after they have been with you for a certain amount of time. 

For example, you could reward clients with a free session when they have been training with you for 2 months. 

#4- Create Printed Marketing Materials

When it comes to personal trainer marketing strategies, the value of printed materials should not be underestimated!

You may think that print advertising is outdated, but in fact, print materials are a great way to strengthen your brand identity and reach a wider audience. 

Since most of the marketing we consume is digital, when we do receive or read something in print, it is much more effective. For example, a study found that customers open and read 66% of printed flyers, compared to the average open rate of emails of 19%. 

So as well as advertising your business online, why not distribute flyers in your local area? 

For some inspiration, here is a good example of a personal trainer flyer:

marketing personal training services 6

As you can see, it is bold, clear and eye-catching. It contains all the key information a potential client would want to know (what the program includes, price, contact details etc.) and clearly portrays the brand identity. 

Check out our guide to creating a personal trainer leaflet here for more tips! 

Business cards are also a highly effective way of marketing your personal training business. Like a flyer, a good business card should contain your:

  • Name
  • Logo
  • Contact information

marketing a personal training business

As you can see, a business card should have less text than a flyer, focusing on the key information and your logo. 

You should distribute your printed marketing materials in places where you are likely to target people interested in health and fitness, such as:

  • Gyms
  • Leisure centres
  • Yoga studios 
  • Spas
  • Health food shops
  • Sports shops

If you have a personal trainer niche, then you could leave your business cards and flyers in places where you would find your target audience. 

For example, if you specialise in pre and post natal personal training, you could target places like mother and baby shops, cafes, children’s play areas etc. This is a great way of marketing personal training services to your specific target audience.  

If you have a creative eye, you could create your printed marketing materials yourself with free programmes such as Canva. Alternatively, you could also outsource this task by hiring a graphic designer to do it for you! 

#5- Offer a Free / Trial Session

personal trainer marketing strategies 2

If you’re struggling to attract clients, you might want to consider offering potential new clients a free trial session. 

This is an effective personal training marketing strategy as it technically doesn't involve any extra work on your part, and it's something that is already within your skillset.

Although you might be reluctant to work for free, free trials can be beneficial in the long run as they can lead to gaining a client who will then pay for all of their future sessions. So if successful, a free trial can be highly rewarding in the long-run! 

Free trials are particularly beneficial for attracting clients who may be on the fence about signing up for a block of sessions, for example. 

People who are completely new to fitness and are feeling nervous about the personal training experience are also good people to offer a free trial too. 

In both of these cases, a free trial gives them a taste of personal training without the financial commitment- which is what can deter a lot of people from signing up to a PT. 

Another advantage of free trials is that even if someone signs up for one, they will have to give you their contact details, such as an email address. Even if they don’t sign up straight away, you can then add their email address to your email list and re-target them at a later stage through email marketing. 

#6- Offer incentives for social media promotion 

personal trainer marketing strategies

This personal training marketing strategy is an easy and fairly low-cost way to generate exposure and gain new clients.

It involves working with individuals with a large social media following such as influencers, asking them to use their platform to promote your business or services, and offering them something in return.

You could reach out to local influencers and offer them free or discounted sessions in return for them promoting your services on their social media. 

For example, you could ask them to share Instagram stories documenting their fitness journey with you, sharing videos of their sessions or talking about their experience. Or, you could train them for free for a few weeks and ask them to do a ‘before and after’ transformation post.

Whilst you probably won’t be working with the best fitness Instagrammers straight away, you should still choose influencers that already have a substantial following, so that you can reach as many people as possible. 

personal trainer marketing strategy 4

This strategy will be most effective if you look for influencers who already post fitness-related content, as this means that their audience will be even more targeted to personal training. 

This will make their posts about your business seem more authentic, and makes the strategy more effective overall since their followers are likely to be interested in fitness.  

For example, if a fashion influencer who has never posted about fitness before suddenly started to post about fitness and promote your personal training business, it will imply to their followers that the promotion is not genuine! 

Plus, it’s less likely that their followers will be interested in getting a personal trainer.

Some types of influencers that you could approach are:

  • Local bloggers and social media influencers 
  • Local business owners (e.g. health food shops, cafes)
  • Local athletes or sports clubs
  • Local celebrities 

When working with an influencer, it is a good personal training marketing idea to establish concrete terms for your agreement. For example, you could agree that in return for offering them a month of free sessions, they need to do at least one post and one story a week on their Instagram. 

You could even give your influencer a discount code to offer to their followers, so that for every successful referral using that code, the influencer receives a free session.

We would recommend putting your terms in a written contract and getting the influencer to sign it. This makes it more likely that they will stick to their side of the deal, rather than just taking free sessions and not doing anything in return!

 

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#7- Create a Website for Your Business

personal trainer marketing strategy 3

Whilst it may take a bit more time and effort than some of the other strategies on this list, one of the most effective personal training marketing strategies is to create a strong website.

Having a website gives you a platform to really sell yourself and allows you to display all relevant information about you and your services in one place! 

A strong website increases your exposure to potential clients, as it means people who have never heard of your business before, can find you via Google. It also gives you a space to direct potential clients who want more information about your business. 

Most importantly, all of this will help you generate more leads, which will turn into paying customers!

But don't just take our word for it- a study by Demand Metric showed that content marketing (i.e. your website), generates 3 times as many leads as traditional marketing methods (such as print materials). Plus, it costs approximately 62% less than traditional marketing! 

If you have the skills, you can create your website yourself. However, website design is something that most personal trainers choose to outsource, as it requires a high-level of specialist skills if you want to create a truly successful website. 

You could use a website development agency such as Evoluted, which is who we use here at OriGym to create our sleek and effective website:

personal training marketing ideas 5

You could also find a freelance website designer on platforms such as Fiverr, where freelancers advertise their services. 

When creating your website, you should make sure that each page includes the following things:

Calls to action (CTA)

As we have already touched upon, a call to action (CTA) is simply an image or line of text that prompts your website visitors to take a particular action. 

Calls to action are a highly effective way of generating leads and enquiries from your marketing efforts, taking website visitors and giving you the opportunity to turn them into a paying customer.

An example of a CTA is ‘Click here to enquire now’. 

On your website, a good personal training marketing idea is to include CTAs as a clear, ‘clickable’ button. 

Specific to your business, the CTAs you include on your website should depend on what you want users to do. Do you want them to enquire? Sign up? Give you their email? CTAs are crucial in turning your website users into leads, so including them is imperative!

In order for a CTA to be effective, you need to make it crystal clear what you want the user to do. 

marketing a personal training business 2

As you can see from this example, the ‘Book a free consultation’ button leaves no doubt as to the action being taken. By clicking on that button, the user can book a free consultation. It is as simple as that!

High quality images

When adding visuals to your website, including relevant and high quality images is key to making your content look professional, engaging and informative. 

If you look at any of the best personal training websites, you’ll see that they all use high quality images. 

This is because users prefer to see something visual over a massive block of text, because they relate better to an image compared to a paragraph of words. This means that they are more likely to engage with you and your brand, and ultimatley turn into a paying client! 

Here’s an example of a great use of imagery from Chris Mason Performance, an online coaching business:

pt marketing

As you can see, this website has included high quality and relevant images that illustrate exactly what the business is all about. You don’t even have to read the text to know that this business is all about results-based coaching, as this is clearly indicated by the ‘before and after’ images. 

You can get your images either by taking them yourself, by outsourcing a photographer, or by downloading them from the likes of Adobe Stock

SEO optimised content 

If you’ve already spent some time looking for personal training marketing ideas, you will very likely have come across the term SEO.  

If you aren’t familiar with it already, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to the process of creating content in a way that increases traffic to your website.

Good SEO can help your website to rank at the top of Google for search terms that are relevant to your business, which brings relevant users and potential leads to your website.

personal trainer marketing strategies

As you can see, these personal trainers have used SEO to optimise their websites so that they appear in the first few results on Google when users search the term ‘personal trainer wirral’.

Considering that 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results, appearing high up on Google significantly increases the chances of people visiting your website and potentially gaining a client. 

So, how can you implement this when marketing your personal training business? Here are 4 SEO factors that every page on your website should feature:

Keywords: Including keywords in your website’s copy is important as it essentially shows Google what your page is about. This then helps you rank (appear on Google) when people search for that particular keyword.

personal trainer marketing strategy 2

Using Google’s keyword planner tool, you can find keywords that are related to your website and profession. 

For example, if you're writing a webpage about your new fat-burner programme for clients, search for “online weight loss personal trainer” and select a keyword with a high traffic and low competition score. You can then include the keyword ‘online weight loss personal trainer’ so that you appear on Google when users search that keyword. 

Short paragraphs and images: When you’re writing your webpages, you need to keep in mind “dwell time.” 

Dwell time is simply, the amount of time that readers spend on your page. The more time people spend on your site, the higher Google will rank you.

Short paragraphs and images are good for increasing dwell time, as they are more engaging for users compared to large chunks of text. 

This is because they are easier to read and digest, making the reader more likely to continue reading and stay on your page.

Social media links: Having social media links on all of your webpages prompts readers to engage with your website (another Google ranking factor) and increases your brand visibility.

pt marketing 6

For example, if they are viewing your website on their phone, clicking on a link to your Instagram will take them straight to the Instagram app and to your profile.

This works both ways too. Including a link to your website on your social media will increase engagement with your website, as it will direct potential clients straight to your website to read about your services. 

Include internal links: An internal link is a hyperlink on your website that directs the user to another page on your website.  

For example, you might include a link on a blog post directing users to another blog post, or a sales page.

This is a good personal trainer marketing strategy as it essentially keeps users on your website for longer! 

This is because instead of going to another website to find more information about something, if you include an internal link, they will stay on yours. 

With that in mind, there are 6 core pages that any good personal trainer website needs, those are:

Homepage

Your homepage should clearly communicate your brand identity, so it's vital that your logo and name are clearly displayed and easy to read on this page. 

One of the best personal training marketing tips we can give is that this page should have a clear call to action that encourages readers to an end goal, whether that be prompting them to enquire, sign up, request a consultation or download a prospectus. 

Surprisingly, 70% of small business lack a CTA on their homepage. So stand out from the competition and make sure that you include a clear CTA on your website's homepage! 

Here’s a good example of an effective personal trainer website homepage:

marketing personal training services 4

As you can see, there is a clear call to action, with the ‘Join Today’ button. 

This homepage also clearly displays the brand logo, and clearly states what they offer (a ‘6-week transformation program’). 

Here is an example of another personal training business that really makes their branding message clear on their homepage: 

marketing personal training services 5

Again, this homepage has clear branding, a clear message and a call to action with the ‘Enquire Now’ button in the top right hand corner which directs the user to an enquiry form.

Services pages

This is perhaps the most important part of any personal training marketing strategy as it is essentially where you list your services, prices and ultimately get clients to sign up and hand over their money!

In fact, once on a company's website, a survey found that 86% of visitors want to immediately be able to find information about their services and pricing. 

For that reason, it's important to take the time to get it right. 

When crafting a description of your services, you need to sell the benefits, not just the features. Ensure to go into detail about your unique selling points (USPs), and mention any specific qualifications or experience that make you an expert in your niche.

This is essentially where you can present your various packages. 

Here is a good example of a services page:

marketing a personal training business 4

They clearly outline each of their services, including what each package involves, how much it costs, how long it is, and clear call to action buttons. 

We have a whole article on personal training package ideas here if you want to learn more about how to create them and what to include. 

About page 

The about page is your chance to really elaborate on who you are and what your brand is about. You can write this in more of a personal, story-telling tone compared to the rest of the copy on your website.

Here you can talk about your experience in the industry and list your qualifications, which will increase your authority and credibility. 

Feel like you’re lacking some more advanced qualifications? OriGym offers a whole range of specialist Level 5 courses such as Advanced Sports Nutrition and Lower Back Pain Management that will enhance your skills more and expand your clientbase! 

On your About page, you could also talk about:

  • How you came to start your business
  • The company’s values and ethos
  • Your personal fitness journey

You want readers to relate to your brand values and build trust that you’re the right trainer for them and appreciate your journey. 

Below is a particularly good example of a personal trainer About page. This PT has chosen to really go into detail about their own fitness journey.

marketing personal training services 2

marketing personal training services

marketing a personal training business 5

They then go on to cover different stages of their life and their relationship with fitness, and how it led to them becoming a personal trainer today. 

Whilst you definitely do not need to go into that much detail, if you feel it is relevant, it can really help attract potential clients who may be able to relate what you have gone through!

For more tips on how to write about yourself, check out our guide to writing a personal trainer bio here 

Blog page

You may not think of yourself as a blogger or a writer, but having a blog in itself is actually one of the best marketing strategies for personal training!

Your blog is a major platform for your brand to talk directly with potential and existing clients. Plus, having a good blog with well-written content is key in effectively optimising your website and increasing traffic.

Your blog shouldn’t be limited to posts about your business and services, instead you can share content that demonstrates your expertise in a particular personal trainer specialty

For example, you could share coaching techniques or nutrition tips for your specific target audience.

Here is an example of what your blog page could look like:

marketing personal training services 3

A blog page is also a great way to market yourself as an expert and create a voice of authority, which will all help to attract clients! 

Contact page

This page speaks for itself- it is where you list all of your contact information so that interested potential clients can get in touch with you. 

You should therefore make the information on this page as easy to read and as clear as possible.

It should also be easy to find from the homepage; the user shouldn’t spend longer than a few seconds trying to find it!

You should include as much information as you can, including your phone number, email address, and social media links. 

You could also include an embedded contact form as a widget, such as this one:

marketing a personal training business 3

Having a built-in form makes it even easier for potential clients to enquire. Plus, you can get exactly the information you want from them, by making fields mandatory to fill in. 

#8- Set up Google My Business

Having a Google My Business account improves your visibility on Google, helps website SEO, and acts as a lead generation tool. 

The statistics speak for themselves- 64% of consumers use Google My Business for finding out information about a company, and 16% of business receive direct leads from Google My Business alone. 

The best part is that it’s completely free to do!

It also allows clients and leads to easily find your contact information, business hours, a link to your website, and customer reviews - a huge factor in helping earn the trust of potential clients. 

For example, when we searched for ‘online personal trainer near me’, these locally-based businesses appeared:

pt marketing 2

The online PTs who have created a Google My Business page appear along with their Google reviews, business hours, and a link to their website.

The below screenshot shows what appears when we scroll past these results on Google:

pt marketing 7

As you can see, the Google My Business pages are appearing above big websites such as a local newspaper, Bark (which is a worldwide directory), and Superprof (another international platform).

Normally, the likes of ‘Jodie Martin personal training’ or ‘Joe Neill coaching’ would have a very slim chance of their website ranking above such strong websites. So this demonstrates the power of Google My Business as a personal trainer marketing strategy!

Check out the video below to hear from a qualified PT how Google By Business is a great way to advertise your personal training business! 

We also have a whole step-by-step guide on how to use Google My Business as a personal trainer, which explains how to set up a Google My Business account. 

#9- Use Email Marketing

personal trainer marketing strategy

Once you have created a website, another great personal training marketing strategy is email marketing. 

This simply involves building email lists by capturing people’s contact details, and then sending targeted marketing emails to those individuals.

Those emails could be about your services generally, or advertising any promotions or offers that you are currently running. This builds brand awareness and can of course lead to more sales!

The best way to get email addresses is to offer something in exchange for free. Ever seen something along the lines of “enter your email here to receive our free workout guide” while you’re reading an article? The owner of that website is trying to use content to develop an email list!

If you offer something of value related to the content of your website or the article, the reader will happily supply an email address.

For example, here at OriGym, we use email marketing by offering readers of our website an incentive, such as this:

personal training marketing ideas 4

As you can see, the incentive here is a free personal training business plan, which we offer the user in return for their name and email address. This information can then be added to our list of emails for our email marketing, giving us another potential customer! 

This has proven to be a highly effective marketing strategy, as just this small addition to our webiste has generated 16,921 leads. 

pt marketing 3

In other words, email marketing has helped us to reach and send direct marketing materials to 16,921 potential paying customers that we would have otherwise missed!

How often you send emails out is up to you, but they should be regular enough to keep people engaged, but not too often that they are discarded as spam! Aim to send one out when you have something specific to advertise, such as a special offer.

Again, you can do your email marketing yourself using software such as MailChimp, or if you don’t feel confident, outsource an email marketing specialist to do it for you.

#10- Gather Testimonials and Reviews

When someone is choosing a personal trainer, one of the main things they will look at are testimonials and reviews from previous clients. So including them as part of your personal training marketing strategies is vital! 

There are several benefits to testimonials for your personal training business, including:

  • Increases your exposure if reviews appear on Google or Trustpilot
  • Builds trust in your brand
  • Increases client loyalty 
  • Can lead to referrals
  • They are easy to share on social media

You should get into the habit of asking your clients to write a review after their session and posting it to your social media and website. 

We recommend having a whole page on your website dedicated to testimonials, such as this one: 

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This is an example of purely text-based written testimonials. However, depending on what your niche is, you may find it better to use more image-based reviews. 

For example, this personal training business have an extensive testimonials section on their website: 

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As you can see, you can even filter the testimonials by sex, age, program type and program duration. This allows a potential client to see testimonials that are more relatable and tailored to them. 

On social media, testimonials can take the form of reposting someone’s review on your story, retweeting a positive review, or creating a testimonial post, such as this one:

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marketing your personal training business

This personal trainer has created a graphic with an image, a section of the testimonial and the name of the client. They have then included the full testimonial in the caption. 

This is a great way to include a testimonial on social media as it is still easy to read and not too text-heavy, yet still conveys the message of the review. 

Check out our complete guide to personal trainer testimonials here for more tips and advice. 

#11- Write Guest Posts for Blogs

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As we mentioned when discussing your personal trainer website, writing blog posts is a great way of establishing your authority and fitness knowledge. 

Similarly, writing guest posts for other blogs is also a great way of marketing your personal training business. 

Not only does it further build your authority and market you as an ‘expert’, but writing for a reputable site will increase your exposure to potential clients, generating more potential leads. 

Once you have built up a portfolio of your own blog posts, you could try pitching article ideas to influential blogs in the fitness industry. 

To be a successful guest post blogger, it is beneficial to have a niche area that you are an expert in. Most websites will be looking for experts in a very specific subject, so this can help you stand out. 

To become a guest blogger for a fitness website, you may be able to simply email them asking if they have any opportunities available.

But some websites will have an application process to become a guest blog writer for them, such as this one:

personal training marketing tips 2

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As you can see, this particular website asks you to provide links to articles that you have previously written. However, others may accept writers with no experience.

 

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#12- Use Paid Ads

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Most of the personal trainer marketing strategies we have outlined so far have been free or low-cost, also known as ‘organic’ marketing. 

However, if you have the budget, it may be worth getting into paid advertising too. 

If you have found that organic marketing methods are not getting you the results you want, or you have reached a plateau in your business, then this is where paid ads step in. 

The aim of a paid ad particularly for Facebook, Twitter, and Google – is to get your brand in front of a very specific audience.

Paid ads exist in lots of forms, but the most popular form is Google Ads. 

This essentially works by you paying Google to display your website higher up in the results page. The more you pay, the higher up in Google your site will be placed. 

However, there's no need to let costs put you off this strategy, since Google Ads are Pay Per Click (PPC). This means that you will only pay for the advert when someone actually clicks on the link and is directed to your website. 

You may not have noticed it before, but the top results on a Google search page have the word ‘Ad’ next to them. This indicates that the company has paid for Google to rank their website at the top of the page. 

Here is an example of a paid ad for the search ‘personal trainer dublin':

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As you can see by the ‘Ad’ icon next to the results, these businesses appear at the top of the results page because they have paid for Google Ads. 

Paid ads are a good way of marketing a personal training business as not only will it generate more visits to your website, but those visits will be from your target audience, since they have directly searched for what you are selling.

The more targeted your clicks are, the more likely it is that these clicks will turn into paying clients!  

Before you go!

So, we hope that you have got some useful personal training marketing ideas that you can implement to improve your business! 

If you’re feeling inspired to enhance your career prospects, taking a specialist qualification such as our Level 5 Advanced Sports Nutrition course is a great way to do this! Enquire today, or download our free course prospectus to browse the full range of courses we offer. 

Written by Alice Williams

Content Writer & Fitness Enthusiast

Alice is a content writer at OriGym. With a first-class degree in French and Linguistics, she loves all things language, fitness and culture. As part of her degree, she spent a year living in France where she worked for a lifestyle blog, gaining professional experience in both translation and content writing. 

When she’s not writing, you can usually find Alice practicing yoga and she hopes to one day become a yoga instructor herself. She also loves running, tennis and cooking up a vegan storm in the kitchen! It was this passion for health and fitness, combined with her love for writing, that brought Alice to OriGym.

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