You’ve qualified as a Level 3 Personal Trainer and you’re ready to start and grow your own PT business. So, you need to try your best to stand out from the crowd by trying new ideas which have not been done before, as well as the tried and tested methods of marketing yourself and your business to gain clients. Ultimately, this will help you make a success of things. This can help you and your business stand out within the industry. In this blog, we’ll go over our best tips to help grow your PT business.
1. Add a Personal Touch
The last thing you want your PT business to do is to blend in within the sea of other PT businesses, standing out from the competition and showing your own personality through your company is a great way to hook your target audience as most personal trainers are looking to create a solid connection with their clients as they normally go on a journey together. Showing personality and adding a personal touch to how you present your business helps potential clients recognise your company through aspects of your branding giving you strong brand recognition and allowing people to always remember who you are.
Your PT business should be a reflection of your passion for fitness, this is why it is important to have your own tone of voice so you and your business stand out to new customers who come across your website or social media.
2. Create Positive Word-of-Mouth
Your business will never grow if it’s never spoken about within the fitness community or by existing customers. Word-of-mouth is a great way to get your brand recognised in the world of personal training if you deliver good results to your current PT clients on their fitness journey. In no time they’ll be recommending your business to those who didn’t even know you exist. Having good word of mouth is the most reliable way of marketing as they are honest reviews coming straight from the customers mouth and because of this you will create a warm lead to any new clients as they have already heard such good things about you.
A good way of maximising word-of-mouth is to offer an incentive for someone who recommends you. This could be a free session or something financial (people always love free stuff).
3. Use Social Media to your Advantage
Social media is now one of the strongest and fastest ways to grow any business and having your own social media presence is a must in this day and age as a single picture can be shown to anyone around the world with a click of a button. Applying the right social media marketing techniques can boost your PT business to the next level bringing in more customers for your PT business. The advanced analytics social media provides means you can create a stronger target audience and figure out their demographics to make your campaigns more specific helping you grow locally.
There are many different social media platforms out there ranging from Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok. As these social media platforms grow the best content to push out is visual, for a personal trainer, this is amazing as you can show off your client’s progress to gain new customers. You can check out our Instagram to see how we do things.
Our advice is to get the basics nailed down in terms of creating both video and static content. All you need is a smart phone and some editing software like Canva.
4. Partner with Local Businesses
When starting your PT journey you may find it hard to get your name out there or gain clients to start off with, this is why it is a good idea to work with local businesses who can help boost your business to the next level. A good example of this is working with your local nutritionist or gym as they can help boost your name and brand within your local fitness community, capitalising on this and dropping flyers and business cards around local places such as gyms can also boost your business’s visibility.
5. Offer Online Coaching
If you’ve qualified as a PT with a reputable online personal training course, the chances are you’ll be half decent using technology. Online coaching can be a great method of working remotely but still training clients. Some people who are just starting their fitness journey may not feel confident enough to take that first step into the gym. With online coaching, your PT business can help those who aren’t quite ready to start their fitness journey in the gym. Helping people who aren’t as confident as others is a great way to build your brand’s credibility as it shows you genuinely care about your clients as you will go that extra step to help start their fitness journey.
The online coaching itself can cover a wide range of assistance for your clients, from nutritional plans to specific workouts that will help the clients reach their goals. A good example of “online coaching” would be Peloton, if you are in the PT world then you’ve 100% heard of them, a perfect example of how you can branch out to those who aren’t confident enough to go to the gym.
A word of warning though; experienced personal trainers tend to transition into online coaching as they’ve built up the knowledge gained in the gym over a period of time. Also, online coaching lends itself well to certain ‘genres’ of personal training, such as bodybuilding, CrossFit or performance coaching.
download course guide
Download our course guide for an overview on all our courses, what you’ll learn and our prices. Fill in the form below and we will email it across to you.
6. Interact with your Audience
Once you have gained the attention of current customers or new ones you need to engage with them and interact with their comments or content. Social media is a great way to interact with your audience as it can be seen by others creating a better brand image and showing you care about the community which surrounds your brand. If you are someone with a PT business and are unsure how to interact with people as they are responding to your post you can always head on over to their profile pages and interact on their posts as you push your name out to a wider audience which might not know about your brand. Responding to comments, emails, direct messages and mentions is essential to a successful social media page.
7. Advertise a free session
Being told you can get something for free always piques the interest of sceptical consumers, those who would like to try out what your business offers but don’t know if it’s worth the money, that’s where a potential free session comes into play. A free training session can bring in people who were second-guessing whether they’d take interest in your services, even if they don’t end up coming back straight away if you show them that your services are fun and interactive they’ll be certain to keep your business in mind when consulting a PT in the future.
8. Deliver Results
At the heart of a successful PT business is results, if you want to grow your PT business deliver results, show them off and outshine the competition. Showing your client’s fitness journey and their testimonials installs trust into new customers who are sceptical about joining your training programme. By providing a high-level results-driven service you can show results to your audience, encouraging them to reach out to you, and bringing rolling interest into the business.
9. Use Video for Promotion
Starting to use video within your business will make everything feel more lively, from promotional videos behind your header on your website all the way to behind-the-scenes reels that show your processes. Hiring a professional videographer for introduction videos or simply recording what your business is doing on a busy day, then proceeding to post it on your social media stories really helps people get to know your business and the services it offers.
Having an archive of video footage of your training sessions and your day-to-day activities gives you a lot of content to use on your website and social media accounts allowing you to grab the attention of your audience quickly, these videos can also be chopped and edited to be a separate video allowing you to schedule your content and make sure you have a content flow of new content on your social media.
10. Never Stop Learning
Regardless of how professional or experienced you are, there’s always bound to be a new lesson or fact that you can learn, bringing more knowledge into your business will help more than you think. There are always new products, diets and workout ideas in the fitness industry, it is a great practice to keep track of updates in the industry and bring them into your business if they can help improve your clients’ workouts and results.
Want help to grow your PT business?
If you want help to grow your personal training business we have the perfect programme for you! Our PT Mentorship Program has been designed to take out the guesswork of setting up, running and growing your own Personal Training business. Book a discovery call if you would like to find out more!