How To Get More Personal Training Clients

Growing your client base is one of the most important aspects of being a personal trainer. More clients mean more revenue. With more revenue, you can expand your personal training business. It may seem like a daunting task to get new clients for your personal training business, but it is easier than most people think! While there is no guaranteed way to acquire new personal training clients, there are multiple strategies that can help. In this article, we will go over multiple ways that you can get more clients for your fitness business.

Use Social Media To Your Advantage

Over the past few years, multiple social media platforms have emerged. With their success comes many potential opportunities. It is now easier than ever to connect with millions of people located across the world. This is why it is so important to use for your personal training business. Social media has made it easier than ever for potential personal training clients to find your business. So, what are some aspects that can help you grow your social media audience and in turn, your fitness business?

Be Consistent

One of the biggest aspects of social media is consistency. This not only has to do with the number of times you post, but with your overall voice, content, and aesthetics. Know the people you want to engage with and develop content targeted at these individuals. Make sure that your content is visually appealing. Humans are naturally driven to aesthetically appealing visuals, so making your content look professional will help you with engagement. However, arguably the most important part of growing your social media platform is posting consistently. Posting often not only shows your audience that you are active and engaged, but it gives you more opportunities to be found organically. Additionally, posting at the correct times has a large impact on your engagement. Do some testing and find the best time to post your content.

Share Your Expertise

Showing users and potential personal training clients why you are a fitness expert is extremely important. This builds your credibility and adds valuable content to your social media page. It can also create very good impressions for new users visiting your page for the first time. If you are an expert in nutrition, create posts about healthy eating tips, how to eat nutritiously on a budget, or any content that shows users why you are an expert. Another option is writing up informational blog articles and cross-posting them to your social media. This not only helps your rankings for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but you can go into more depth about a subject.

Engage With Your Audience

It is vital to engage with your audience and potential personal training clients when using social media. Make sure to respond, comment, and thank your audience if they give you positive comments. You should also like and comment on their personal posts. This builds a positive relationship with your social media audience and can go a long way when building trust with personal training clients. Posting on your client’s photos, timelines, or tagging them in a post (must ask permission first) is a great way to engage with your clients.  For example, saying, “great workout today Julie – you have gained a ton of strength – 20 lbs increase in your squat in just 1 month.  Your rocking’ it girl!” can help you build extremely positive relationships with your clients. 

FitSW has progress tracking graphs which you could post as well. These automatically take workout data and put it into beautiful-looking graphs. Additionally, it is a great way to show the progress that your fitness clients are making. This is a way to extend your reach as well, as many of the client’s audience will see this.

Call-To-Actions

Call-to-actions are an important part of social media campaigns. Make sure you tell your users what they should do at the end of your posts. For example, let’s say you just wrote a new blog article on the best full body workouts to do in less than 30 minutes and you want to drive people to your blog. You share it on social media and patiently wait for people to visit your article. However, without a call to action, people will not be inspired to go to our blog. If you put a simple call to action telling users to check out your blog post, you will see much better results. They can also be used to drive engagement. Simply getting users to comment on a post can help your page be viewed more on people’s social media feeds.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way for your brand to reach users that are not already following your page. However, too many hashtags on specific social media platforms can make your posts look cluttered. Use 2 or 3 hashtags that are directly related to your business or your post. This will help you drive organic engagement to your site. Once these new users are on your page, you should use the social media strategies we outlined above to make them new clients.

Referrals From Current Personal Training Clients

Referrals are a crucial part of not only growing your business but maintaining a steady client base. Most personal training businesses are dependent on referrals, though you would be surprised how many personal trainers do not ask their clients for them. This may feel awkward for you to ask your clients for referrals, but it is well worth it.

The PTDC created a sample script of how to ask a current client to refer them:

Me: “Thanks again for your great work today! You really smashed those deadlifts. There’s something I’d love to have a quick chat with you about.” (Make the compliment specific)

Client: “Of course.”

Me: “I’ve noticed that I’m going to have some gaps in my schedule coming up due to some personal issues with a couple of other clients. I’m asking my clients first if they know anybody who might be interested in training. I want to make sure I keep the spots open to looking after my client’s friends and family first before marketing to the outside world. Do you know of anybody who might be interested in training?”

Client: “Actually yes. My sister was talking about working out but is afraid because she’s had an old shoulder injury, I think it’s tendinitis.”

Me: “Great! I have a lot of experience working with shoulder injuries and am happy to get in touch with her physio to get all the details. Do you mind asking her permission for me to call her?”

Client: “Not at all. I’ll ask her tonight.”

Me: “Thanks. I appreciate that. Here’s a card for a complimentary meeting and week membership that you can give to her.”

Structuring Your Referral Script & Asking For Referrals

The script above is merely used as an example and is a good place to start. However, make sure you find a script that sounds like yourself and works with your business! Make sure your script offers the client a free meeting and training session to pass on to the personal training client they are going to refer. This is very important as it gives the client being referred a chance to try your services for free.

Do not be afraid to ask for referrals! You might be afraid that it seems desperate or it may feel awkward, but it is not that way at all! If you have a good relationship with your clients, they will be willing to refer a friend because of their good experience. Furthermore, these referrals have a much higher chance of becoming your personal training clients! The NFPT proves this fact by saying, “referred prospect conversion rates are much higher than most other leads”. The best part of referrals is that they are free! In this competitive industry, it is nice to have a free option to get more clients.

Offer A Free Session Or Trial

A free session should not be something you only offer for referred clients, but something you should offer to all of your potential personal training clients. Free consultations or sessions are a great way to make new personal training clients feel comfortable and see what kind of trainer you are. Consequently, it is important for these prospective clients to have a good experience. Look professional, be friendly, and make sure you are approachable. Also, make sure they know how you can help them on their fitness journey. If you make a great first impression, show that you are an expert, and you’re friendly, you will gain a lot of new personal training clients through these free trials.

Offer A Free Group Session

Offering a free group session to prospective personal training clients can be a great way for your business to gain exposure. This should be done in a public place, such as a park, that is in a central location. Post fliers, send an email, and post this free group training session across social media. Furthermore, you should take a strategy from later in this article and post fliers in coffee shops (see more information about this in the Referral Exchange With Other Service Professionals section).

It is important to note that you should make this free session as fun as possible. You want new personal training clients to have the best experience so they have a higher chance of coming back. Additionally, you want to make sure that people know that you are a fitness expert. If you spend 30 minutes posting fliers & sharing them on social media and 20 people showed up to your free fitness session, it is well worth it.

Testimonials From Current Personal Training Clients

Would you rather buy a product off of amazon that has an average rating of 4.5 stars or one that has 2 stars? The answer is clear. Testimonials are very important in any business, but especially in the personal training business. They offer potential clients a chance to see what other people think about you. However, asking for testimonials can seem like a daunting task, similar to asking for referrals, but it is vital to growing your client base. So, how do you ask for testimonials from current personal training clients?

The PFP came up with a list of sample questions to ask your current clients:

• When did you start your fitness journey?
• What motivated you to start?
• What were some of your goals when you started?
• How have your goals changed?
• What have been your greatest achievements?
• What were/are your biggest struggles?
• Is there any advice you would give to new clients/members?
• What is your favorite thing about your workouts?

This is just one example of a script to gather testimonials, but do some research and find the perfect script for your business. However, make sure you have a way to gather testimonials from your clients. It will offer social proof to prospective personal training clients and really help you grow your business.

Referral Exchange With Other Service Professionals

Using other service professionals in your area is a valuable resource you should be utilizing. There are a number of ways that personal trainers are able to obtain new clients by using businesses in their areas. First, post your cards in coffee shops and similar businesses. This takes minimal effort and time and can get you a few new clients. You should also be forming cross-referring relationships with local businesses. This includes nutritionists, chiropractors/physical therapists, hair stylists, massage therapists, sports coaches, doctors, and anyone similar to this in your area. Reach out to these people/businesses and offer them a cross-referring partnership/relationship. The more referrals you give them, the more they will give you. This is a sure-fire way to grow your client base, while also helping out other local members of your community.

Emails

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools that any business can use. There are a number of reasons for this. First off, it is highly affordable compared to other marketing strategies and yields breathtaking results. It also offers you a chance to build rapport with your clients. Your personal training clients want to know that you are dedicated to helping them during their fitness journey and email marketing is perfect for this. Emails are also a great way to generate new leads for your business. For example, if you offer an eBook on how to eat healthy on a budget, in exchange for a individual’s email, you can build an email list full of people who look to you as an authority on fitness.

How Often Should I Send Emails & What Should I Send?

Sending the right amount of emails with the right content is important to keeping users on your list happy. You want to send at least one email a month, or a maximum of once per week. Make sure not to send too many emails, as this can become annoying and people may start to unsubscribe from your email list. Additionally, do not only send emails about signing up for personal training. Offering your list high-value information, such as free eBooks or quality information about your niche is vital. Without these emails, no one will open your sales-focused emails. If you do not know what to send your clients or are having a bit of writer’s block, hiring a content manager may be your solution. They can create high-value fitness articles that will bring in a lot of fitness clients.

FitSW Wants To Get More Personal Training Clients!

We want to help you grow your personal training business! From the day FitSW was founded, our goal has been to help personal trainers grow their client base. We offer a “Trainer of the Month” promotion in which we select one trainer a month and share their story with the world! All you need to do is email support@fitsw.com and answer the questions they provide you! It’s that simple! Once you are chosen, we will post all of your information to our blog and social media accounts. If you would like an example, please check out this featured personal trainer article! If you have any other ideas on how we can help you grow, we would love to hear your thoughts! Reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or on our support page!