How to Market Your Personal Training Business | Nextdoor

While you’re dedicating your professional life to keeping people healthy and in shape, are you also ensuring your marketing tactics stay fit and trim? The key to a successful personal training business is not only having knowledge of the body and physical wellness but also shaping a carefully considered fitness marketing plan and putting it into action.  

If you’re a personal trainer and not quite sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog, you’ll learn about the importance of having a well-defined audience and a few strategies you can use to make sure you’re reaching your target market in the right way. 

Let’s start by defining your buyer persona as a personal trainer.

Define your buyer persona

Before you can decide on how to advertise personal training businesses, you’ll first need to break down who you’re trying to reach. Are you targeting the bodybuilder who wants to take her workout routine to the next competitive level? Or are you hoping to help elderly clients regain more movement and vitality in their older years? As you can imagine, these two buyer personas would respond to fitness marketing messaging differently.

To outline a profile of your ideal buyer persona, consider their:

• Basic demographic information
• Motivations and goals
• Interests
• Occupation
• Education and income level
• Pain points
• Preferred method of browsing and connecting with brands
• Location

This way you’ll be able to target your advertising more effectively and, hopefully, benefit from a higher return on investment. Remember: Specificity is key. Give your buyer persona a name, age, and full bio, and refer back to it each time you take on a new marketing campaign. 

3 marketing tactics to build your personal training business

Once you’re clear about who your advertising efforts are targeted at, it’s time to shape what you have to say and how you say it. Whether it’s building an educational blog, engaging new customers on social media, or optimizing your email marketing campaigns, there are a number of ways to fortify your overall personal trainer marketing plan.

Here are three strategies to get you started off in the right direction.

#1 Optimize your website

When deciding on whether or not to make a purchase, more than 80% of consumers research a business by searching for information about them on the internet¹. So if you don’t have a website for your personal training business, the time is now. If you do have a website, be sure you’re making the most of the digital space by doing the following.

Make it user-friendly

When dedicating time to revamping your website as a business owner, you’ll want to focus just as much on the content as you do on the navigability of the site. You should include a user-friendly menu that clearly outlines your service offerings, highlights your contact information, and provides the user with more information about who you are and what, exactly, you do as a fitness professional. You’ll also want to consider adding:

• High-quality photo or video content so visitors can have a look into the studio space itself 
• A catchy tagline that encapsulates your brand identity and values but also speaks to your buyer persona’s motives and interests
• A clear call to action (CTA) that guides users towards the action you’d like them to take on your website, such as following your social media pages, requesting a consultation, or signing up for an email newsletter

Start a blog

Your blog is a highly effective content marketing tool to check off a number of strategic boxes. Here’s why it’ll make a difference in your personal training marketing efforts:

• It allows you to put your expertise on display by covering topics related to personal training best practices, how to pair workouts with a well-balanced diet, and client success stories. 
• It provides your prospective clients with educational content that adds value to their daily lives. Instead of simply selling your services to them, you’re offering something helpful to them in return (beyond personalized workout plans) for free. 
• It helps to establish credibility and trust with your clients. Your well-written and expertly researched posts give your audience the sense that their fitness journey is in good hands with you. 
• When done right, it carves out a space for your business among the top rankings of Google’s search results. Include a few well-targeted keywords, internal linking, and a click-worthy title, and Google’s web crawler just might bring your website to the top of the list. 

Create a subscriber pop-up

If you haven’t already, consider strengthening your marketing plan by shifting your focus to email. According to a study reported in Insider Intelligence, 80% of professionals attributed successful customer acquisition and retention to email marketing². That’s certainly a noteworthy number but how does that translate into actionable steps for your personal training business? 

• Start by including a pop-up notification that appears when users visit your website and invites them to subscribe to your email list. If you’d rather pass over the pop-up option, include a form with a clear call to action instead, either on the sidebar of your site or on the footer section of each page. 
• Take advantage of your growing email list to contact subscribers about special deals and promotions, updates to your equipment or service offerings, or to share a monthly recap in the form of a newsletter. 

Infinity Athletics:  Website optimization in action

For some real-world inspiration, take a look at Infinity Athletics, a small personal training studio based in Ithaca, New York. Their website is not only visually appealing but also informative and easy to navigate. Here are the major takeaways from their site that you can make note of for yours:

• A show-don’t-tell approach – Their home page is uncluttered and quickly entices users with an engaging video in the hero section that showcases their personal training programs in action. 
• A simple and well-placed CTA – Just below the video, Infinity Athletics includes a clear call to action that invites users to request a consultation. This is done in addition to a pop-up that appears when first logging onto the site. 
• A well-crafted blog – Click over to the Infinity Athletics blog and you’ll find a number of useful articles covering everything from client spotlights to what to eat before, during, and after workouts. 
• A newsletter sign-up – If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a footer section with a simple sign-up form for their email newsletter as well as links to their social media channels. 

By following their lead, you can improve your marketing outlook when it comes to widening your audience, capitalizing on leads, and turning them into successful conversions. 

#2 Offer a few freebies

What better way to attract new clients than to sweeten the deal with a few free items or services? Get some inspiration from the ideas listed below and share the deals with your audience via email, on your social media channels, or by posting about them on your Nextdoor Business Page. 

• Offer a free trial session – You could tell your audience how effective your personal training programs are but why not show them so they can see it for themselves instead? Give interested clients the opportunity to work with you for free by offering a free trial session to those who sign up for your email list or follow your page on social media. 
• Raffle off workout gear or gym equipment – Whether it’s a trendy new workout set, a yoga mat, or an insulated water bottle, host a giveaway on your social media channels in which participants are encouraged to comment on or re-share your post in order to enter. This will not only drive engagement directly to your profile but will also spread the word about your business when shared across your audience’s channels. 
• Encourage current clients to use a buddy pass – Harness the power of word-of-mouth recommendations by offering buddy passes to your current clients for your personal training services. This will get them talking about your services, recommending them to their friends, and essentially, taking care of new client acquisition on your behalf. 
  

#3 Maximize your visibility on social media

There are billions of people on social media, and that number is only expected to grow over the next few years. With that said, it’s time to increase the visibility of your personal trainer business by becoming more active on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Work with a local photographer to capture professional photos of your team of trainers, the training studio itself, and perhaps even a few action shots. 

Training Ground, an independent personal training studio located in Bethesda, Maryland, is a model for businesses that may or may not already have an Instagram account and aren’t quite sure how to funnel their marketing efforts into creative posts and videos. Here’s a look at what they’ve done well:

• They’ve hosted Instagram giveaways that hand out free 60-minute training sessions to winners. To enter, participants must tag a few friends in the comments sections or re-share to their profile, helping to boost engagement and spread the word about their business. 
• They’ve shared product education posts that guide users through the process of using their fitness app. 
• They regularly post client feedback to help build a positive brand image and build credibility with an unfamiliar audience. 

Start by clearly defining your marketing goals and come back to this example whenever your social media channels could use some well-guided direction. 

Strengthen your marketing plan with Nextdoor

If you’re looking for another way to make connections with a hyperlocal audience for your personal trainer business, add Nextdoor to your list of marketing tools. Through your Nextdoor Business Page you can share updates about your businesses, chat directly with interested clients, and even run targeted advertising campaigns that are customized to reach interested users in your zip code. 

Take your marketing plan to the next level by creating a free Business Page with Nextdoor today. 

 ¹Beam Local. 5 Reasons Why Every Business Needs a Website  

²Insider Intelligence. Email Marketing Is a Double Win for Customer Acquisition, Retention