How to use a Fitness eBook to Grow your Fitness Business.

Do you have a personal training business and looking to get more leads? If so, writing a fitness eBook can be a great way to get more leads. The idea is simple. Social media has evolved. People are demanding more content and more valuable content at that.

Releasing an eBook is great because if you go into enough depth about the topic of your choice, then people usually won’t hesitate to download it. Then if it’s a good eBook – as in, something people can use as a resource – then they may come back to the source/author of the eBook.

First, where to get started.

In order to get started, like any project, you want to figure out your topic and target audience. If you are an experienced personal trainer, then this part may be easy.

Ask yourself this, what niche do you occupy and who are your clients? From that, you can figure out the topic of your eBook and the audience you market it to.

If you are a newer personal trainer, this part may be a little more difficult. In this case, it is better to involve experts from sites like Study Crumb to write expert articles. However, much like the question above, ask yourself what niche you want to occupy and what is the audience of that niche. This should get you started on finding topics to write a fitness eBook.

Here are some example topics to consider:

• The science behind weight loss.
  • Audience: People interested in weight loss.
• How to bounce back from pregnancy.
  • Audience: People who are considering getting pregnant, were pregnant, or are pregnant.
• How business professionals can squash lower back pain.
  • Audience: business professionals who suffer from lower back pain.

After looking at your options, if you haven’t found one that works for you, then there are plenty of general options you can choose, such as:

• 20 Health and Fitness Myths Debunked.
• Your Insiders Guide on Practical Nutrition.
• How to start a rewarding career as a Personal Trainer.

These are all great options that would appeal to plenty of people. If you have trouble getting started with actually writing the eBook, then consider employing a writer to get the writing gears turning. Check their reviews to see if it is the right fit for you.

Determine your business objective.

eBooks can take a while to make. They can be somewhat resource-intensive. And like most things, we want to make sure there is a purpose to our madness.

When creating an eBook, or even when you are embarking on a new project, you always want to make sure you have established a clear goal or business objective.

This way, you can establish a clear path and stick to it.

A pretty common business objective for making an eBook is to use it as a tool to collect more leads to market your services towards.

However, business objectives for creating a fitness eBook aren’t limited to just this. Here are a few more examples:

• Use an eBook to strengthen your brand. eBooks can be used for brand awareness and help establish you as an authority figure in the topic you published the eBook.
• An eBook can be used to drive a marketing campaign. eBooks are what we consider long-form pieces of content. Typically they are several pages long. It’s not uncommon for an eBook to reach 5,000+ words long. Because of this, creating an eBook means you can dissect it and use it in repurposed content.
  • You can dissect an eBook into videos, webinars, blog posts, visual graphics, a podcast, and much more.

Because of this, you want to make sure you draft a plan, not only for building the eBook but also for how you are going to market it.

We will go over how to market your eBook later on in this blog.

Planning the structure and content of the Fitness eBook.

Once you have your topic and audience picked out, now you want to take time to plan the structure of the eBook and it’s content.

Planning the actual structure of the eBook is the easier part. Typically, eBook structure follows something like this:

1. Title Page
2. Table of Contents
3. Introduction
   • Introduce what the eBook will be covering
   • And give a short snippet about the author.
4. Chapter 1
5. …
6. Chapter n
7. Conclusion
8. What next (a call to action for those who read the eBook)

Planning the content, however, is a little bit more involved than simply planning the structure. When you plan the content, you want to go section-by-section and just outline that section and its main points initially.

Once you have the outline, then you can go through each section and create the first draft of each section.

Once you’ve got the first draft finished, try asking friends, colleagues, or family members to read it and give feedback. The changes they suggest will be used to create the final version.

Let’s take a look at outlining each section.

The introduction

The introduction should let the reader know what is going to be covered and interest the reader. Covering aspects like what will be covered and what the reader will take away from the eBook will help ensure more people read through it.

Additionally, you can give a little bit of information about the author as well. This way people know what they are reading and where the content is coming from. This also helps you as the author because if they like it they might seek out more content from you.

Break down the content

Here is where you take a look at the topic you’re writing about and fit it into its chapters. Then once you have it fit into each chapter, digest each chapter like you would a blog post.

Notice how this blog post is divided into sections? Each section tackles a sub-topic of the large topic at hand. Gradually, establishing the groundwork for the large topic being covered.

Compartmentalizing each chapter into sections makes the content more digestible and makes it easier to read for the reader. Content that’s digested easier also means it will paint a clearer picture.

Try your best to maintain a consistent structure for each chapter as well. Much like structuring the content of the eBook, each chapter should have an introduction, content sections that cover the bulk of the material, and then a conclusion.

This way, each chapter is clear in its topic. Introductions are important because they help finish the transition from the last chapter to the current chapter. Similarly, conclusions help start the transition from the current chapter to the next.

Design the eBook

Designing the eBook is important so that you create a branded experience and so that the eBook is not only informative but also visually pleasing to look to at.

If you have some design skills already, then you can take a shot at designing the eBook yourself in software such as:

• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe InDesign
• Microsoft PowerPoint

If you don’t have design skills or you are on a bit of a time crunch then you can try downloading an eBook template.

Here are some places you can find where you can find templates ready to be downloaded:

• The creative market. [Here]
• Venngage. [Here]
• 18 free eBook templates from Hubspot. [Here]

You’ll find that some of the eBook templates are free and some are paid. Typically, the paid versions offer a better design and will help layout the template better for you.

One thing you should keep in mind is a lot of these templates are more likely going to be Adobe InDesign files or a file similar. If you don’t want to take the time to get to know the software, you should keep an eye for templates that are PowerPoint presentation templates or some file type you are familiar with.

Make sure you incorporate visuals

Make sure you include images where you can. But, you also need to make sure you include high-quality images.

Images are good because they can be fun to look at, they add to the overall experience of the eBook, and they can even help explain things better.

Incorporating images like infographics can help make your eBook a little easier to read.

If you are looking for a source of good, high-quality images, here are a couple of good sources:

• Freepik
• Unsplash
• Pexels
• Mixkit Mixkit actually offers more than just pictures. They offer free video, Adobe Premier templates, pictures, and audio.

All of those are free or offer free subscriptions. You should be able to find some good images there. However, make sure you don’t just settle on your images. While those sources do offer free images, some of them look too staged.

A couple of good rules of thumb for images are to make sure they don’t look staged and they appeal to the average person.

Here’s an example:

While the image on the left is a cool picture, it is not relatable. You want the eBook to be as relatable as possible. Additionally, the image is very obviously staged.

The image on the right however, is simple and relatable. This is important because the image’s you choose will also help the eBook feel more authentic and not like a marketing stunt.

Convert it to a PDF

Once you have the fitness eBook finished, export it from the software you are using to create the eBook into a PDF. This way it’s not editable and prevents anything from happening to the structure of the eBook you have worked so hard on.

It’s time to launch

Now, it’s time to market your fitness eBook. The first step is, you want to create a landing page for the eBook where people can go to download it.

Landing pages are simple web pages designed to fulfill a single purpose. In our case, it should be designed to give a high-level overview of the eBook and capture the contact details of those who are downloading it.

In order to create a landing page that allows for people to download the eBook and collects the contact info for you, you’ll need to use a service that gives you the option create a landing page and either collect the data or integrate with an additional service that collects the data.

Here are some examples:

• Wix and Mailchimp integration. With Wix, you can create a simple landing page, and then with a couple clicks of a button, integrate the landing page with Mailchimp. Wix provides the landing page, Mailchimp will collect the contact info for you.
• Webflow and Mailchimp integration. Much like Wix, you can build your landing page with Webflow and then integrate Mailchimp into the web-page to collect the contact data of those who download the eBook.

Promote the landing page and Fitness eBook

Now it’s time to promote the eBook and landing page. There are many options for this. One option is you can create a Facebook ads account and run ads on Facebook and Instagram.

When people click on the ad, it should bring them to the landing page you created where they can easily download the eBook.

An additional option is to create a Google Ads account and bid on words you think are being searched by people who may find interest in your eBook.

Other options include posting on your social media accounts announcing your eBook.

Once you get your ads live, let the campaign run for a little while. Continue to optimize your campaign to make sure it’s delivering to the best possible audiences. Some people may suggest setting a specific time frame you run the ads in but if your campaign is doing well then there’s no harm in letting it run until you feel satisfied.

It’s important to remember, the amount of time you promote your eBook for could be entirely dependent on your business objective.

What’s next?

Okay, so you’ve run ads promoting your eBook for awhile. You’ve gotten some leads, but the question is what do you do with these leads you’ve gained?

Something a lot of people do is run an email marketing campaign to the people who have downloaded the eBook.

Here all you want to do is send them one or two emails a week promoting your services or relevant content you think they might enjoy.

However, there are email marketing strategies you want to make sure you follow. While we won’t go over email marketing in this blog, here is a good article that should better help you understand email marketing strategies: 8 Effective Email Marketing Strategies, Backed by Science.

Relevant content: Marketing funnels for personal trainers

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