You’ve gained a great amount of knowledge regarding training, diet and fitness and you now want to share your insights to develop a career. The knowledge you’ve gained is only half of the equation because now you have to connect with people to showcase your abilities. This can be what makes or breaks a successful personal trainer.
A great personal trainer is three things: A coach, a therapist, and a marketer. You need to design programs and adjust things as you go; you need to listen and get to the underlying desires in people to lose weight and get fit, and you need to market and promote yourself.
Here are 7 things you can do to showcase your personal training business
1. Free Sessions
If you’re just starting out, it’s imperative you build up a portfolio of previous clients you can refer future customers to. It’s hard when you’re just beginning with little experience to convince people to train with you. This is where you’ll want to do free sessions to not only build up experience but to do them in exchange for testimonials.
Having these clients to refer to will help you become more polished but help for future business. It’s great if you can have the people from the free sessions be willing to be contacted by new potential clients to get an idea what the experience of working with you is like. New customers always like to see people who were in the same position as them have success. So this means doing some free work when you start out but it will be worth it in the long run.
2. Use Current Clients For Referrals
This is one of the best ways to showcase yourself and it involves using your existing clients for referrals and future business. They are your network to other people and growing your business, especially if they’ve stayed with you for a while and had great results. The number one thing that shows how good a personal trainer is are their renewal rates. Personal training is not always cheap and a person who renews with you is the ultimate spokesperson for your abilities.
In exchange for them putting people in contact with you, you can offer them some free sessions for every person they refer who ends up training with you. It’s the ultimate win-win situation.
3. Run Information Clinics/Sessions
This is an amazing way to get your face in front of many people, give great value, and get good leads at the same time. At your gym or club, offer to host an information night on whichever topics you think will be of value to people. You can do a session on nutrition, fitness, weight loss information, or any topic you think will be of value. Anything to do with weight loss and nutrition usually goes over well. You can have sign-up sheets around the gym and have the attendees leave their contact info at the session. The main priority is giving them value but take a moment at the end to share what your personal training is all about and the benefits of working with you. You can even offer a free session to anyone who signs up with you after that night. You can now start running these events monthly and let them grow.
4. Have A Niche
It’s great to be into general fitness but if you want to stand out, you need to narrow things down a bit. If you have a speciality, you need to focus and showcase that. It may be pre-natal fitness or training for volleyball. Whatever your niche is you need to showcase that so that you are the go-to person for it. It helps you to find a more specific audience that will be more likely to train with you than a run-of-the-mill personal trainer.
5. Share Your Story
Don’t forget when people purchase personal training sessions they are essentially buying you and you need to show them where you’re coming from and what makes you unique. Share your journey that got you where you are today, and your life as it pertains to health and fitness. This will help people to know you, like you, and trust you.
And never think you need to be a Mr Olympia competitor to have a great personal training business. It doesn’t matter where you are on your own fitness journey people will gravitate to you more when they see you’ve faced the same struggles they are. Some people like coaches who are just a bit further ahead than they are as they can see that success is possible.
6. Using Social Media
This can be a whole giant topic on its own but you still want to use social media to showcase your personal training business. It’s probably the easiest thing but requires attention and strategy. I’d say the two main platforms to focus on are Facebook and Instagram.
Entire careers are made on Instagram but remember the competition is high. It’s great because it’s a visual platform where you can show training and progress. You want to use relevant hashtags to get your post in front of as many people as possible. Also, be sure to have contact info and what you do in your bio. A good tip is to follow other accounts that are also in the industry and like and comment on their posts to get in front of their audiences. It might be better to engage with smaller accounts compared to people with millions of followers where your interactions may get lost in the shuffle.
With smaller pages, you are more likely to be seen and get people to check your account out. It helps to add tips and value to comments you make so people see you as helpful compared to just generic and self-promoting.
7. Promote Yourself In Public
Whenever you’re out, it’s a great idea to wear branded clothing that features your gym, business, and personal training business. If you’re in line at the grocery store and the person behind you sees “personal trainer” on your back it may make them strike up a conversation and ask fitness questions. This can now be a potential new client you got just from running errands.
Another good tip is to wear customised personal trainer clothing when you work out. Trust me, everyone will know that you’re a trainer and if you work out during busy hours, it’s some great face time that can bring you more business.
Wrapping It Up
Being a successful personal trainer goes beyond target heart rates and program split design and is about being able to market who you are and what you can provide. A great trainer is also a great marketer and you need to showcase yourself and your services. Hopefully, some of these tips will help you in developing into the personal trainer you want to be.
Jamie Logie – Personal Trainer
