Now that you’ve passed your Fitness Theory exam, gone through the steps and gotten certified to be a personal trainer, it’s time to think about how to build your business and actually get some paying clients under your belt. In other words, now comes the hard part where you actually need to go out and build a successful personal training business.
If you’re in this industry, you’re likely already passionate and driven to provide the best service possible to your clients. Those are necessary prerequisites but there’s a lot more to business than just being passionate and dedicated.
The Basics
To create a successful personal training business, the first thing you want to think about is what kind of clients do you want to serve? What does your ideal client look like? Are they busy executives looking to train early in the morning before work or late in the evening after work? Or are they stay at home parents looking to stay fit while their children are in school/daycare? Maybe they’re professional athletes looking to get a competitive edge by improving their strength and conditioning.
Whatever it might be, you want to figure out exactly who you’re looking to serve so you can decide what skills you need to serve them and how to best reach and communicate your message to them.
The second thing you’ll want to do is have a marketing system. You want to have a systematic way to sell your services. Look at investing in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software that works on both desktop/laptop and mobile devices – you’ll likely be on your feet most of the day so this is important.
CRM makes it easy to track your clients, the sales process for new clients, and allows you to approach sales in a more systematic way.
Digital Marketing for Fitness Professionals
Websites for Personal Trainers
Research has shown that over 2/3rds of buyers will research a brand or company online before making a purchase decision. This means that even though your business is mostly hands-on, you need to be online. There are a lot of easy website makers out there like WordPress or Wix – do your research and find one that works for you.
Once your website is up with some basic information, it’s also important to include a blog. By writing regularly on topics your ideal customers are interested in, you increase your visibility on search engines like Google and demonstrate your expertise to these potential customers. Once you get a few clients, make sure to feature their testimonials on your website as well. For example, video testimonials are especially powerful. For example, if you want to build your niche in weight-loss, make sure you feature some “before-and-after” testimonials on your site to help build trust online.
Social Media Marketing for Personal Trainers
In addition to a website, you’ll also want to start building a social media presence. As a personal trainer, you’ll likely have a very hands-on and close relationship with your clients – you might even treat them like friends. Visual social media platforms like Instagram can really help make your brand more personal so that your clients feel closer to you. It also allows you to showcase what you do day to day and makes it easy for clients to share your contact information with their friends who might also be looking for a personal trainer.
Word of Mouth
While many people these days are focused on digital, the most trusted form of marketing still is and always will be word of mouth, so don’t be afraid to ask for referrals. Make sure you have a systemic way to ask your clients for referrals and automate it as much as possible. Some examples could be to include a section asking for referrals or offering referral incentives on your invoices to clients.
Invoicing/Billing
One of the least fun aspects of the personal training business is handling billings and invoicing. There are many paid and free tools out there to help you handle invoices, but ZipBooks is one of my favourites. There is a free tier with most of the features you need, but if you upgrade to a paid tier, it will allow you to accept credit card payments online.