How to get clients as an online personal trainer

Dec 16, 2020 | Announcements, Cloud software, Practice Management Software, Tips

With COVID-19 having had a radical impact on the way in which we conduct business, the rise of the online personal trainer has begun in earnest.

As with any venture, there is a constant burning need to get more clients. If your calendar isn’t full, your cashflow will be undeniably low and your ability to grow your business or even earn a living is diminished.

How to get more clients

If you’ve moved your personal training business online, or even started in the online space from scratch, we need to piece together a plan for online personal trainers to get more clients.

Position yourself as a leader

Firstly, online personal training is, well, personal. You are the product as much as your services, so you can’t be shy about promoting yourself. This approach is pretty much a combination of ‘thought leadership’ and ‘personal branding’ and its largely driven by social media.

Use your social media presence and website to push high quality videos, blogs and photos of yourself giving advice, tips, exercise instruction etc.

This will not only get people familiar with you and your face/voice, but will position you as someone who actually knows what they are talking about. This will ease the booking process if someone is looking you up as their potential online personal trainer.

Ask for referrals

Actively ask your current online personal training clients for referrals.  They are your best ambassadors and if you are doing a good job, I will be natural for them. Either bring it up with your favourite clients or entice them with discounts for referring a friend.

Be a gun at your job

Put simply – be an undeniably awesome personal trainer. Use the best setups, have the best attitude, deliver the best outcomes and be friendly, approachable and knowledgeable. If you are a friendly and results driven weapon of a personal trainer, you wont even need to ask for referrals, or worry too much about getting clients, they’ll happen naturally.

Professionalise your website and socials

If you have a personal website or social media pages, be sure to have them fully filled out, well branded and have your booking link nice and central. When clients seek your services as an online personal trainer and see inconsistent branding, hard to find booking links or a lack of professional effort, you’ll turn them off in an instant.

Advertising for personal trainers

If organic ranking and social marketing isn’t quite cutting it yet – have a think about introducing an advertising campaign that doesn’t break your budget. There are a few ways for online personal trainers to go about this.

Social media boosting

Using your social media channels to gain clients is already a fantastic and free avenue. You can boost your efforts by ‘boosting’ your posts. Facebook for example, alongside Instagram and others will provide the function of boosting your posts.

This is a natural way of advertising since it doesn’t appear to a user as an ad necessarily, but just like any other post in their feed. By choosing one of your best posts and then adding some money behind it, you gain higher consideration in the algorithm and will get more views, clicks and interactions as a result.

Social media and google ads

If you want to go further, try Google or social media ads. These will get you top of the page for search results and will flood social channels with your online personal trainer promotion.

Its best to save this for a deal, offer or other such material as it will be less organic. It will get you seen though, so set a budget and be sure to monitor your return on investment to see if it’s worth the expense.

Traditional ads

Less useful nowadays is the traditional ad. Bus stops, magazines, radio etc are not only expensive, they aren’t necessarily the best method either.

But wait! What about low budget traditional ads? Think about asking your local supplement store or gym to let you put up a poster or contact sheet. Maybe a small local newspaper will give you reasonable rates on print ads. If you keep it local, creative and cheap,  there’s no reason this wont bring in new clients.

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