11 Amazing Tips to Grow Your Personal Training Business

While your experience and knowledge is important, it may not be enough to grow your personal training practice. You need to understand how to retain your existing clients and get new clients to grow your business for the long term.

Given your rigorous daily schedule, it can be tough to keep up with the best practices to get a consistent stream of new clients.

We have gathered 11 tips for you that can help you grow your personal training business.

Create a Niche

The foremost thing to do to grow your personal training business in the long term is to have a targeted audience or a niche. Don't just blindly follow what any personal trainer is doing. You should be aware of what you're good at and the people who will benefit the most from your services.

For example, if you are experienced at providing HIIT and other bodyweight training or strength and weight training then focus on offering those services to the target audience who want that service.

This will help you in standing out and building an image for yourself helping you to grow your business.

Provide a Trial Training Session

Offer a trial personal training session to your potential clients. They'll be able to experience and understand what they'll be in for if they decide to take your services. They will be able to make their decision easily.

This will also help in building trust about your personal training business among people. Also, if a person loves your service after attending a trial session, apart from joining themselves, they might bring in more people as well.

Offer Engaging Fitness Content

When it comes to marketing your business, content is the king. Creating quality content will help you not only in promoting your personal training business but also in educating your audience about different fitness practices.

Here are some ways you can use to create and distribute content through many ways:

Blogs
Blogs have been an evergreen content medium. It helps you to provide educational content to your audience, engage with them and influence them to take your service.
Moreover, a blog also helps in generating traffic and helps with search engine rankings if you optimize it properly.
Videos
Videos are one of the best mediums to use for content creation. People engage more with videos than with any other content medium. You can create various videos on "Different types of home workouts without equipment" or educational videos on topics such as, "Impact of exercises on different muscle groups".
Podcasts
Recently, podcasts have become a trendy way to create amazing content. People enjoy the ease of listening to a podcast while doing basic house chores or driving. You can create a podcast to host interviews with popular fitness people and discuss various nuances around fitness and training.

For Example:

Marc Dressen is a renowned personal trainer, fitness expert, NLP executive coach and a fitness entrepreneur.

Marc Dressen usually centres his content around weight and strength training. He also creates videos and blogs on diet plans and nutritional tips.

Here are the snapshots from his blog and YouTube channel:

Set up a Referral Program

Word of mouth is one of the most evergreen and cost-effective ideas to grow your personal training business. Word of mouth travels faster than any other way to increase your brand awareness and let people know about your services. Not only that, it leads to more sign-ups since people trust their friend's or family member's word than any other review or feedback.

You can start a referral program where you offer incentives to your clients for referring your services to a friend or a family member. While you incentivize your existing clients, you should also offer some kind of reward to the referrals.

For example:

Offer a home workout and a meal plan to your client
Offer a 30% discount the next time your clients renew their membership
Offer a package deal for both the existing and the new clients to take their sessions together

Host Fitness Workshops

Hosting workshops online or in-person acts as a more structured of way of learning for your audience. Workshops help you to interact with your audience easily and explain them your personal training services. They're also able to ask and clear their doubts more freely.

Workshops also help in improving the credibility of your personal training business and increasing trust among the people.

You should give your contact details along with your address so they can contact to to book a session. Also, collect the contact information of your audience, such as their email ids. You can add them to your email list and send them information about any other workshops and upcoming offers.

For example:

You can host workshops on bodyweight and strength training at home. You can explain how people can workout from the comfort of their home without any equipment and still build muscle and lose fat.

Build a Website

Having a website for your personal training business is a no-brainer. This should probably be your first task to grow your business after you have decided your target audience.

Your website should be easy to navigate and should clearly convey the service that you are providing. Provide basic information about yourself. Mention your contact details and address of your centre.

Also, provide details of various price packages and any offers that you provide.

Add a Call-to-Action so that people can easily to book a trial session with you or sign up for your services.

Publish Testimonials

Collecting testimonials is a great way to get more clients and grow your personal training business. People trust existing clients reviews more than anything else while looking for personal training services.

Ask for reviews and feedback from your existing clients and post those on your website. You can also make testimonial videos to post on the website. You can also share testimonials through emails with your subscribers. People will be more open to booking a session with you when they see the positive experiences of your clients.

Take Different Types of Personal Training Sessions

While offering one-on-one sessions is the go-to path, you can offer some other types of sessions as well to grow your personal training business.

There are some different types of training sessions you can take:

Paired Sessions
If you have clients who are friends, you can offer them to take sessions in pairs. This will help them enjoy their sessions more and keep them motivated to take regular sessions. At the same time, this will help you have clients for a longer period, helping you to get more revenue and grow your business.
Group Sessions
One of the benefits of taking group sessions is that it helps you in creating awareness about your services to a larger audience. You can contact nearby fitness studios and discuss with them an opportunity to take a group session at their establishment.
Online Sessions
Sometimes one-on-one in-person sessions can be difficult, for example, during bad weather or a pandemic. To continue growing your business, you can offer virtual sessions to your clients so they don't miss out and stop taking your sessions while you can keep your clients for a longer period.

Offer Deals

One of the simplest ways to grow your business in the long term and get more clients is to offer amazing short term deals. Don't offer deals that are so lucrative that your clients leave you after the deal ends.

Your aim should be to provide deals that are attractive enough to get clients but don't sell a wrong picture when it comes to the price and value of your services.

Some examples are:

Provide the first month free when a person signs up for a year
Offer the first 10 training sessions at the price of 8
Offer a free meal plan when the client signs up for 3 months

Provide Extra Value through Personalized Emails

Growing your personal training business is about getting new clients but also about keeping the existing clients happy and making them feel valued. Don't let your clients only rely on the training sessions that they have with you. Provide them more value to make them feel like they're getting the most out of their training.

There are various ways you can provide more value:

Give certain exercises that they can do at home to get better at their training sessions
Provide meal plans and tips on what kind of food to consume and avoid
Ask your clients to maintain a journal and track their calorie intake and calorie burn per day which you can discuss every week to understand how they're doing and how you can make the training sessions better for them

Send each of your client’s personalized emails based on their requirements and their areas of improvement. This will not only provide a personalized touch but also make them feel valued and convince them to stay for a longer period.

We live in an age where not having our business on any social media platform basically means that it doesn't exist. Social media is one of the easiest ways to reach out to people, engage with them and make them aware about your personal training business.

There are some essential social media platforms that you can start with.

Facebook is ofcourse on top of the list. It has the highest number of users. You can create a Facebook Group to build an engaging community where you can educate people about fitness and promote your personal training services.

You can use various features of Instagram such as Stories to share any daily updates or insights and Live to go conduct weekly live Q&A sessions with your followers.

Twitter is also a good social media platform. You can post multiple tweets and link them to make a "Thread". It is a great way to share short form educational content with your followers.

Last but definitely not the least, Quora is a Q&A social media platform that also acts as a great SEO tool. You can answer various question that are related to your personal training business and post questions as well.

Conclusion

These tips will help you in growing your business as long as you deliver superior value consistently to your clients and keep them happy with your service. Focus on the activities that will help in growing your business for the long term instead of finding hacks for the short term.