20 Epic Ways to Get More Personal Training Clients

As a personal trainer, it can be easy to get caught up with mastering your craft, but now it’s time to market yourself to get more clients.

Fitness is a competitive industry, and with so many fitness influencers, gym instructors, and even more personal trainers, you’ll need to market your skills if you want to rise above it all.

Warning these aren’t “get viral quick” schemes, you’re going to have to put some work and planning into these tips if you want to see real results.

Here are 20 epic ways to get more personal training clients for your brand:

1.Master Your Branding

As a personal trainer, you need to walk the walk, both on and offline. That’s where personal branding can help you to get more customers.

Personal branding involves developing a recognizable impression around who you are and what you do.

For starters, your body is your visual resume and speaks volumes about your branding as a trainer of what you can do for your potential customers. If you don’t take your body’s health and weight seriously, potential clients might not think you can help them either.

A good personal brand will set you apart from the rest of the competition. It helps you to connect with people who see your story, work, and efforts and are encouraged to work with you. Every trainer is different, and everyone has a different style.

Start defining your brand by identifying what kind of fitness are you going to specialize in, how you tell your brand story, and how it helps to push you as a trainer.

To get started, here’s a detailed article on The Complete Guide to Growing Your Personal Brand as an Online Fitness Coach.

2. Create a Fitness Website

As a personal trainer, you’ve seen a consultant or a brand, which means you’ll need something substantial to represent your work and book clients than an Instagram page.

Your website also helps with SEO and works as an online source for people interested in your service to easily find you.

Create a website for people to see your work, clients, online training, and contact you professionally for future bookings or questions they may have before working with you.

Today, you can create a website in 5 minutes tops, without paying for a coder to make it from scratch. Choose from multiple website builders with pre-built templates that can be easily edited to suit your needs.

Squarespace

Wix

WordPress

3. Create a Fitness Instagram Account

Having a strong online presence is good for branding, especially on such social media platforms like Instagram.

Grow a following with a fitness hungry audience by posting high-quality images of your workout routine and day to day as a trainer.

Instagram is a known platform to help businesses turn followers into clients. To help increase booking, you’ll need to give customers the option to book your services on your profile. Add apps, like you can use apps such as Appointy, Booksy, and Acuity Scheduling.

4. Host a Free Training Session at a Fitness Centre

Get the word out about your services by hosting a free training session at your local gym. This helps your branding as a personal trainer in three ways:

New clients can sample your workout session, meet and greet with you to get to know you.
You’ll be establishing yourself as a trainer and build a relationship with your local gym.
Gym-goers who you see you instructing a class might be interested in booking a training session with you.

Here are four things to check off your list when you’re planning a free training session:

Start promoting your free training session beforehand, send invites via email, promote social media ads, and send flyers.
Go live or ask someone to take pictures of you in action during your sessions so you can have content for social media, or you can use it for your next ad.
Collect emails and numbers from everyone who attends your session so you can confirm bookings with them.
Thank the gym for letting you host your training session and offer free or discounted training sessions for their clients. This builds rapport with your local gym, so they see you as a go-to if their trainers are busy.

5. Develop Relationships With Local Gyms

Earlier, we spoke about building rapport with your local gym. This should be an action point on its own because your reputation with your local gym can make or break your relationships with clients.

Be professional and respectful when using gym spaces and interacting with employees; these can be your biggest advocates when clients are looking for personal trainers they can hire.

6. Start a Fitness YouTube Channel

YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, and 68% of YouTube users have watched a video to help decide on a purchasing decision.

Starting a fitness YouTube Channel can help you, potential clients, to find you. Uploading helpful workout videos and meal plans.

Personal Trainer Maddie Lymburner host, a YouTube Channel, called MadFit, every week she uploads fitness videos based on her fan’s popular request.

7. Post Customer Reviews

As a personal trainer, customer reviews are essential to your success; after all, your service is based on what your customers think you can do for them.

About 72% of new customers won’t take action until they read reviews and, 15% of users don’t trust businesses without reviews.

When you post your customer reviews, you help to build trust with potential customers. Before they made a financial commitment by hiring you, they can see how other customers have benefited from working with you.

Here are 5 Ways to Display Client Testimonials on Your Fitness Website.

8. Build Relationships with Your Current Clients

Don’t get so caught up with getting new customers that you forget to build a relationship with your current customers.

Your past and current customers are like your brand ambassador. They can either have a lot of good or bad things to say about you. Try and maintain a healthy professional relationship with them.

Even after training is over, check up on them, send them an email, give them a call, or let them know when your hosting events in their area. You never know when they might become life long customers.

9. Network with Fitness Professionals

Marketing expert Porte Gale once said, “Your network is your net worth!”

It’s true, for you to get more clients you have to network with fitness or health professionals in your area. Networking with fitness professionals and other personal trainers can:

You can learn from experts who have been in the field for years. Even try to find a mentor to guide you along as you grow in your career.
You can stay up to date with the latest trends, fitness personalities.
You can get referrals from customers to work with (and those you should avoid).
Collaborate for social media content, workshops, and training events.

10. Print Brochures & Business Cards

Business cards are still relevant today. When you introduce yourself hand over a few professionally designed business cards to clients, gym owners, or other fitness experts.

You can use free graphic designing tools like Canva to get started. Choose your free fitness business card template and start editing.

11. Offer Free Meal Plan With Consultation

Meal plans help us to stay disciplined and guide us on what our day to day meals should be so that they can reach our fitness goals sooner, if not better.

Forge Nutrition and Fitness Coaching offer free meal plans regardless if the person downloading it becomes a client. It’s a great idea to get people hooked on your content.

Some people fear that training might not be enough to save them from their bad eating habits, so why not throw in a free meal plan with each consultation or training session.

Free meal plans show that you care about your clients well being in and outside of the gym.

You can also offer free meal plans on your website or on social media to attract potential clients or followers to your page.

12. Create an Online Training Platform

Your clients don’t have to come to the gym to meet with you. Instead, some personal trainers meet with their clients virtually or post their workout routines online.

You can also create online training for aspiring personal trainers.

Start by choosing a platform or software to host your website. You can use online platforms like Udemy, Skillshare and Teachable.

After you need to create ads on social media and online to promote your course, you’ll need to do this heavily for the next three months if you want to get proper exposure for your online course.

For more, you can read this guide on How to Get Started as an Online Personal Trainer.

13. Use Instagram Ads to Get Clients

Instagram ads have proven to help grow businesses and generate ongoing customers.

Brands like Beachbody that used Instagram ads received a 72% increase in subscriptions, compared to the previous year when they did promotions without Instagram ads.

With videos, images, and gif’s, you can easily create ads like this one below to push traffic to your profile or website.

Here are three things you should consider before promoting your ad:

Define your target audience: who exactly do you want to see your ads, where are they located and what kind of interest do they have? Once you can answer those three questions, you can narrow down your targeted audience, which increases the success of your ad.
Instagram now allows you to place ads in feed and Instagram stories. Both of which are effective. You can either do both or choose between the two.
Decide where you want to direct the people who click on your ads. This can be your website, your profile, to shop on your Instagram store or even to direct message you.

Need more help planning your ads? Use this guide on The Anatomy of a Perfect Instagram Ad to get started.

14. Ask Medical Professionals for Referrals

Earlier, we spoke about how important it is for a personal trainer to network with gyms and other fitness professionals around him. The same applies to health professionals, as well.

This could be reaching out to chiropractors, doctors, weight loss surgery clinics, and physiotherapists in your area. Join forces and do a copromotion or refer to each other clients to get new business.

15. Start a Fitness Blog

66% of B2B marketers who use blogs generate more leads than those who don’t. So why not join them?

Starting a fitness blog also shows off your credibility as a fitness expert, readers can look to you for advice and clarifies any questions clients may have about weight loss or training before they book a session with you.

When you’re starting a fitness blog, you need to decide at least four crucial things:

Choose a blogging platform and hosting: You can choose from platforms like Wix or WordPress to host your blog. If you already have a website, add a blogging page to get started.
Master blog SEO: SEO skills will help your blog rise in Google ranking. The easier it is for people to find your blog articles, the higher your chances of being booked by a client becomes.
Start writing and publish a post: Don’t talk about writing articles for your blog, start typing away. If you’re not sure what to write about, start with your fitness journey or why you decided to become a trainer.
Build a content calendar: Once you have articles posted, you want to keep your content fresh. Start a content calendar and decide how often you’ll be posting and stick to that schedule.

Here’s a fun tip, create stunning gym infographics with statistics, guides and work out routines to grab the interest of your readers.

Here are 21 Tools to Create Infographics Will Save You Tons of Time (And Your Infographics Will Be Stunning.)

16. Take an Online Business or Marketing Course

Fitness is for the brain as marketing is for sales.

Improve our career by taking an online business or marketing course to help improve your skills. As a fitness consultant, you’re a businessman first and a trainer second.

Taking a marketing and business course will give you added benefits like:

How to grow your business in the future.
Learn to market your business like a professional.
Market yourself to brands and corporations.
Manage and maintain your money and business relationships.

17. Apply to Every Personal Training Directory

Do a simple Google search, and you’ll find that there are tons of personal training directory listings to help you get more exposure and allow your services to be seen by more people.

Just like most marketing strategies, it’s a numbers game, and the more directories you sign up for, the higher the chances are that you get accepted to them.

Here are six well-known online directories you can get started with:

18. Run a Fitness Giveaway or Contest

Having a giveaway is a great way to boost engagement and leads for your fitness brand. You can choose to have an online giveaway with a landing page or host your giveaway purely on social media.

When planning your giveaway here are some key things you should consider for a successful giveaway:

Think of a grand prize or a collection of prizes that will excite followers to enter.
Choose an end and start date. Give your giveaway enough time to get entries and let contestants know the start and end dates in the caption, along with when you’re announcing the winner.
Pick an exciting or fun picture for your giveaway; people see images before they read texts.
Use clear instructions about how to enter so contestants can know what to do. It also helps if you get any complaints after the contest.

Ready to start your giveaway? Wishpond offers contests & promotions features that make it easy to get the most out of your contest and giveaways.

19. Guest Post for Popular Fitness Blogs & Magazines

Find popular magazines and fitness blogs to do guest posts and interviews to increase your brand awareness as a personal trainer.

You’ll be seen by experts and big brands in your industry. This can help you network with other professionals who might reach out.

Guest posting and interviews your online career with SEO, when people search for your name or visit the website, you’ll pop up, boosting your credibility in the field.

20. Attend Fitness Contest

Enter a fitness contest at a local gym or a well-known event. Believe it or not, winning a few trophies and medals can shine a bright spotlight on your training skills and career. After all contest help, you test the same training efforts customer book to learn from you.

A contest can get you noticed by fitness brands, gyms, and industry experts that you’d like to work or network with in the future.

Summary

Being your own boss can be overwhelming, between managing bookings, finding new clients, keeping yourself in shape, and now marketing; it can feel like a full plate.

With time and a set system, you’ll begin to see results and find a routine that works for you.

Doing at least three or more of these tips can help to improve your branding and get you more personal training clients.

Let’s recap the 20 ways covered in this article:

Master Your Branding
Create a Fitness Website
Create a Fitness Instagram Account
Host a Free Training Session at a Fitness Centre
Develop Relationships With Local Gyms
Start a Fitness YouTube Channel
Post Customer Reviews
Build Relationships with Your Current Clients
Network with Fitness Professionals
Print Brochures & Business Cards
Offer Free Meal Plan With Consultation
Create an Online Training Platform
Use Instagram Ads to Get Clients
Ask Medical Professionals for Referrals
Start a Fitness Blog
Take an Online Business or Marketing Course
Apply to Every Personal Training Directory
Run a Fitness Giveaway or Contest
Guest Post for Popular Fitness Blogs & Magazines
Attend Fitness Contest

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