Personal training marketing tips to strengthen your brand

Key takeaways​

• Attract more leads by responding to reviews and managing your online reputation
• Social media and email marketing can help you strengthen your relationships with current and potential clients
• Keep your branding consistent to make your personal training business more memorable to leads and reliable to clients

There’s no better time to be in the fitness industry. Wellness is now a top priority for 42% of global consumers, and 37% of shoppers plan to spend more on services like personal training in the next year. Being a fitness professional is a lucrative opportunity—but first, your personal training marketing needs to rise above the noise.

Getting personal training clients depends on your ability to reach and captivate your target audience. And once you win over new clients, your marketing tactics must build trust for them to stick with you for the long haul. Check out these five marketing tips for personal trainers that can help you achieve your small business goals. Bonus: You don’t have to hire an expensive marketing expert.

1. Capture leads with landing pages

A landing page is a single web page that’s designed to drive visitors to take one specific action, such as joining an email list or signing up for a consultation. Shoppers usually enter landing pages from digital ads or from search engines. When you want to acquire leads fast, creating landing pages can be a highly effective personal training marketing tactic.

What makes a great landing page? The best ones are usually short, sweet, and focused on one specific interest (like weight loss or online training sessions) or a particular segment of your target market (like women interested in cardio). When building a landing page, personal trainers should also to embrace search engine optimization (SEO) tactics such as:

• Keeping page load times fast by reducing image file sizes with free tools like TinyPNG
• Performing keyword research to target one specific word or phrase by including it in the content you create for your website
• Designing for mobile to ensure visitors can easily access your site no matter their device

To effectively use this personal training marketing idea, you can also consider including a lead magnet, which is a free item or service you offer a potential client in exchange for contact information. For personal training businesses, good lead magnets could be a free session with a trainer or a free fitness assessment.

2. Engage clients with email marketing

Email marketing is a great strategy for engaging leads and re-engaging current clients. Through this channel, you can set up automated marketing campaigns that help you reach clients without wasting time. For example, you can use an email marketing tool like Mailchimp or ConvertKit to set up:

• Email reminders to send two days ahead of clients’ appointments
• Congratulatory emails for clients who reach their goals
• Drip campaigns, which are a series of emails that can drive leads closer to signing up for a personal training program

Personal trainers can also use email to send newsletters every month that motivate leads and clients to reach their fitness goals, inform them about schedule availability, or offer fitness tips. This type of content marketing can keep you top of mind while helping clients associate you with expert advice or positive messages.

3. Boost your online reputation with Yelp

The health and wellness industry is notorious for false claims and pseudoscience. When searching for a personal training service, people want to be confident that they’re working with the real deal. Many consumers will turn to online review sites like Yelp to learn what they can expect from your fitness business—directly from your existing client base or past clients. Online reviews are essentially digital word-of-mouth referrals, holding the same power as personal recommendations.

Claim your free Yelp Business Page to manage your reputation online and impress potential clients as they learn about your brand. For example, you can:

• Keep your business information updated to avoid frustrating experiences like unanswered calls
• Emphasize your professionalism and customer care by effectively responding to negative reviews
• Show your gratitude and responsiveness by thanking clients for positive reviews and testimonials

Responding to reviews in a timely, professional manner can also boost each reviewer’s satisfaction with your brand—sometimes enough to get unhappy clients to change their stance and give you business once again.

If you’re looking for even more ways to show the quality of your service, consider investing in Business Highlights, which display up to six reasons why your business is unique and can further boost your online presence. You can choose from highlights like “Certified professionals” or “Results guaranteed” to show searchers why they should trust you. Personal trainers can also invest in Yelp Ads to make their business show up above search results and on competitors’ pages to gain leads and increase brand awareness.

4. Offer value on social media

Social media can be a powerful channel for fitness marketing. Many successful personal trainers use social media marketing to offer value through helpful videos, captions, and other content while building relationships with current and potential clients.

For personal trainers, live video is a particularly great tool for demonstrating expertise and connecting with viewers. Whether you’re guiding users through a cardio workout on YouTube or doing an online personal trainer Q&A on Facebook, video gives viewers a sense of your in-person experience from the comfort of their homes.

When going live, don’t forget to keep an eye on your comment sections. Greeting viewers by name and answering questions in real time can help you make the experience more personal and memorable.

5. Create a consistent brand

When you want to know how to improve your personal training marketing, you need to understand how to improve your small business branding. While the rest of your marketing strategy may be ever-changing, great branding is consistent, dependable, and memorable. Clients can be attracted to your business by marketing campaigns, but when they return to your business time and time again, your brand experience also plays a key role.

To develop a more consistent brand, it’s helpful to create a style guide that outlines:

• Your visual identity. This includes your logo, brand colors, and brand fonts.
• Your brand personality. These are the human traits associated with your brand—like “inspirational,” “empathetic,” or “welcoming.” These traits inform the voice and tone you take when writing social media content, providing customer service, and more.
• Your values. Once you establish your business values, consistently demonstrate them in your marketing materials and offerings. For example, if your company values exercise science, you’ll want to communicate that you use fitness theory-backed approaches when creating personal training plans. 

Bolstered by consistent branding, your business can generate brand awareness faster while giving current clients a reliable experience.

Create a more effective personal training marketing strategy

When you launch a personal training business, you can grow your local business faster by incorporating some fundamental marketing ideas. Whether you’re using Yelp to build your reputation or offering value on social media, these personal trainer marketing ideas are effective strategies for reaching and connecting with clients. Learn about the best places to advertise your business to further increase your influence.