Marketing Tips for Online Personal Trainers

In the past year, nine in ten consumers searched online to find local businesses. The question is: does your current personal training marketing strategy help connect you with as many of these potential training clients as possible?

To be fair, marketing is important to all companies. But creating a solid marketing campaign is even more important when you run an online fitness business. Why?

Why Marketing Is So Important for an Online Fitness Business

If you are training clients face-to-face, your only competition are the personal trainers within your geographic area. However, if you offer online coaching, you're competing against fitness professionals around the world. This means that you need to find a way to stand out.

Your marketing efforts need to help you create a stronger online presence. This begins with developing a digital marketing campaign.

Learn more about running a successful online coaching business with ISSA's Online Coach certification, whether you're a new trainer or an experienced professional. You'll be equipped with the expertise you need to get your online coaching business up and running to meet immediate industry needs.

Elements of a Strong Digital Marketing Campaign

Online marketing includes your website, email, social media, and more. Regardless of where you plan to expand your presence online, there are few elements to keep in mind when growing each of these channels.

Building Brand Awareness

This element is especially important if you plan to use a few different digital channels. Ideally, you want your target audience to recognize you whether they click on your personal trainer website, your Facebook business page, or on any other social media platform.

Building brand awareness entails using the same logo, font, colors, and language across all online platforms. Do this and your health and fitness clients will begin to instantly recognize your online personal training business. It's similar to how you can look at a pair of shoes, see only the "swoosh" on the side, and know they were made by Nike. When your audience can do the same with you, they begin to feel more comfortable with your brand.

Use of SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to the words that training clients would likely use when looking for your service. By using these same words in your online sites, it makes it easier for search engines to make the connection. Wordstream shares that some of the best words for fitness professionals are "gym," "bodybuilding," and "exercise." "Treadmill," "workout," and "cardio" have a high number of searches too. There are also a few suggested long-tail keywords—which are keywords that are three or four-word phrases—to consider using too, such as "gyms near me."

Advertising in the Right Places.

When marketing to personal training clients, it's best to place ads where they're most likely to be seen. Knowing this, where do some of the top personal trainers advertise? Options to consider are fitness magazines with high readership levels, on high-traffic weight loss blogs, and in online forums where participants are interested in improving their health and wellness.

Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Personal Training Business Website

When people are actively searching for your personal training business, your website is likely the first piece of digital media they'll see. That makes this medium a great place to concentrate your efforts, particularly when first starting out. What are a few effective marketing strategies for your online business?

Choose the Right URL

URL stands for "uniform resource locator" and is another name for your website address. For instance, the ISSA's URL is n/a. Choosing the right one for your fitness business is critical because it is how your personal training clients will find you. This URL may be your name (such as www.JaneDoe.com) or it may include your title (www.JaneDoePT.com).

Design Your Site with Your Audience in Mind

If you were looking for a personal trainer, what type of website would be most appealing to you? What pages would it have—home, services, about, contact, etc.? What colors would it use? What graphics would it display? All these considerations should be made with your audience in mind, while also staying true to your style as a fitness pro.

Share Your Specialties

If you have certifications and specializations, be sure to share them on your website. This helps your prospective clients better identify whether you're the right fitness professional for them. Examples to mention include exercise therapy certification, group fitness certification, bodybuilding specialist, and corrective exercise specialist. And if you don't have any of these, obtaining specialized certifications can help set you apart.

Publish a Blog

Putting a blog on your website offers a few benefits—the three keys to marketing success:

1. It's a great way to highlight your expertise.

2. It helps your potential clients solve some of their biggest fitness issues immediately, making you the person they go to with future problems.

3. It helps your site's visitors get to know, like, and trust you.

Not sure what to blog about? Think about some of the questions your clients typically ask or what you wanted to know when you got started in fitness.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Online Personal Trainers

Do personal trainers need to use social media? Absolutely! Especially since there are approximately 3.5 billion social media users worldwide according to Statista, with 79 percent of Americans having a social media profile.

Social media is great, not only for sharing your expertise, but also for offering clients encouragement and motivation. It makes your clients feel more connected to you, even when you're not actively training them in the gym.

Because each social media platform is different, it's important to know how to best use each one. Here are a few social media-based marketing tips for online personal trainers.

Facebook Ads

Ads are a great way to market your personal training on Facebook.Lyfe Marketing shares that these ads can help you increase page likes, improve engagement, and expand your content reach. They also improve brand awareness and help you target specific clients via personalized marketing.

If you're new to this platform, Facebook recommends using guided creation, which walks you through the process step by step. If you've used Facebook ads before, quick creation may be a better choice.

Instagram Ads

Did you know that you don't even need an Instagram account to run an ad on this platform? This is because Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Facebook.

If you don't have Instagram, you can create an ad through your Facebook business page. You can also use Instagram for Business to create your own story ads, photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and collection ads.

Marketing on Twitter

You can also advertise on Twitter. These ads can increase the reach of your Tweets; improve engagement via Retweets, likes, and replies; grow your followers; and get more traffic to your website.

To make the most of your Twitter ad, you must first decide the goal of your ad. Next, use targeting to reach your ideal audience and set your budget. Finally, simply be creative with your ad.

Although Twitter was the first social media site to use hashtags, it does recommend not using these in your ads. Why? Because you don't want your audience clicking on the hashtag, moving away from your ad.

Maximizing YouTube

Video social media sites like YouTube are great for personal training professionals. It allows your audience to see what you're like as a person, but it also enables you to show them the one thing many want to know: how to do specific exercises.

Personal trainers know that form is critical to performing exercises safely and effectively. However, proper form is hard to convey in writing. Instead, videos work much better.

You can also create YouTube ads to better promote your business. This platform even has a feature called "Find My Audience." This enables you to learn more about your target client, making it easier to create an ad that speaks directly to them.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Developing Your Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies

With so many options available, it may be overwhelming to figure out the best marketing strategies for your personal training business. To help you better identify which are right for you, as well as which should have priority, ask yourself these questions:

Do I Already Have A Website?

If your answer is no, this is your first priority. Your website serves as the "virtual headquarters" for your online personal training business, so it's important that it be up and running.

If you do already have a website, does it fit your personality and is it appealing to your target audience? Sometimes you have to tweak it a bit to make it more effective.

What Platforms Do My Target Clients Use Most?

Even if you're already active on social media, the idea of creating and keeping track of even more pages may seem daunting. However, you don't necessarily need a business page on every social media platform that exists. Instead, target the one or two platforms your target audience uses most and get used to them. You can branch out from there later, if you wish.

How Much Do I Want to Spend In Ads?

The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that most business spend around one percent of their revenues on advertising. Therefore, this may be a good place to start.

If you're not yet certified as a personal trainer, the ISSA offers a 10-week, self-guided Certified Personal Trainer Program and a 4-week Fast Track Program. Upon completion of one of these courses, you will be able to market yourself as an ISSA Certified Personal Trainer. This shows potential clients that you have the education required to develop effective fitness programs for your clients. Check them out and begin your studies today!