Certified personal trainers seem to be a dime a dozen in the market, it seems, and beyond skills, experience, knowledge, empathy, and quality of services, a major determining factor in who gets the most clients is marketing.
With the industry growing at an incredible 1.9% a year, reaching an estimated $12.3 billion, it’s unsurprising that the field is constantly changing, evolving, and bringing in new professionals. This makes it even more challenging for trainers to increase their reach, retain old clients, and bring on-board new ones.
You need to implement strategies that will definitively improve outreach and expand your clientele, and here are some ways to get started:
1. Work on improving client retention and loyalty
The first rule to improving your reach as a trainer is to build client loyalty and work on retention strategies. If you’re unable to engage and keep clients you’ve already got on board, you’re making a grave mistake as a certified personal trainer or professional of any kind.
Give the clients you’re already working with your all, pay attention to their needs, focus on what their fitness and health goals are, and facilitate their journey to those, and half your work is done. When your existing clients are fully satisfied with your services, they’ll be able to help you connect with potential new clients in various ways.
The secret to success for most experienced trainers is their long-standing relationship with loyal clients, who trust and prefer them for their fitness training needs.
2. Ask for genuine referrals and testimonials
When it comes to the different ways your clients can help you grow and improve your reach as a qualified personal trainer, the first thing they can do is share testimonials and honest reviews.
They can do this by word of mouth and by talking to their own friends, family, and colleagues, recommending your services based on their own experience, and sharing more structured testimonials that will go up on your website, social media pages, and more.
Many clients are more than happy to share testimonials and provide honest, earnest feedback and reviews, and you need to capitalize on that. Referrals and testimonials are a powerful tool in building more credibility and a stronger reputation as a trainer, given that it encourages people to put more trust in you based on unbiased feedback from paying customers.
3. Share your expertise through writing and media
If you want greater reach and connectivity, you need to put yourself out there as an expert in your field. We’ve said it before, credibility is key to getting more personal training clients, and establishing a reputation for yourself.
You need to make yourself more prominent in circles where it matters, including media platforms and sites, where you can write articles, blogs, and advice pieces, create and post videos that work as tutorials, fitness advice, and even freebie workouts.
The higher quality of your content is, the stronger your expertise seems in the mainstream public eye, making you significantly more desirable as a certified fitness professional.
While it may feel like added work, it sets you apart from dozens of trainers whose marketing is self-centered and self-promotional because you’ll be putting the client at the heart of it.
4. Use social media to engage with your clients
Additionally, you should use social media to engage with your clients directly, too. Not all certified personal trainers are comfortable with promoting themselves on social media platforms or creating content that features themselves, but that’s okay.
There are several ways to engage with clients via social media, including direct communication, tips, and advice, shareable content, promoting services and offers, and even offering online training services. Social media is a great tool for customer service management and remaining accessible to your clients, especially if you’re running an independent service.
Social media is an often free or generally inexpensive way to grow your reach, connecting with clients from within your local vicinity, and outside it. You can use more specific platforms based on the clients you’re targeting, for instance, TikTok for younger clients, Facebook for older ones, and LinkedIn to connect with corporate clients. Don’t sleep on the benefits of social media for personal trainers!
5. Network with other health and wellness professionals
Another highly underrated method of improving your reach as a professional personal trainer is to improve your networking skills. You’ll have some of the most successful outcomes by building professional relationships with other health and wellness professionals such as doctors, physical therapists, dietitians and nutritionists, and other trainers.
Once they build enough trust in you as a trainer, they can refer clients to you through their own practice too, including those looking to benefit from your niche or specialization.
6. Build a strong community of like-minded people
Lastly, remember to build a strong community of like-minded people such as yourself. You can create a physical community, such as a group fitness training session, running and hiking groups, recreational groups, and people who perform different health and wellness activities together, or create a digital space, such as an online group where you connect together.
This helps build a sense of accountability, community, and connectedness that proves valuable when people are looking to take a step in their fitness journeys. If you’re running the community, you’re at the center of this, ultimately drawing more people in, which sets you as a credible authority.
Marketing yourself effectively is half the job of being a successful certified personal trainer, and you can enhance your presence in the market through our courses. We’re offering business development and marketing courses for fitness professionals who want to grow their practice, connect with new clients, and build a successful business.